Читать книгу Gloria at Boarding School - Lilian Garis - Страница 5

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Two days later Maggie, who swept rooms and talked a lot, also counted hairpins, picked from the dust, and bewailed her own constant loss insinuating a present need, this Maggie, with a season’s new broom and last year’s dust pan, a basket of dusters, brushes, and in the bottom such articles as the girls donated on her rounds, well, anyhow, she came in to clear up Gloria’s room.

“This bein’ a double,” analyzed Maggie, “I’ll have to have it free.”

“Free?” repeated Gloria.

“Yes. I could do it whilst you’re in class, but I like to keep these new curtains well shook and that makes considerable flare around. Ain’t they pretty?”

“Very.”

“Then, jest pick up your precious stuff, I allus calls the little things precious, and whilst you’re out this afternoon—you will be out?”

“Yes.”

“Whilst you’re both out I clean. I allus thinks this is the prettiest ‘sweet’ in the house. Ain’t it now?”

Gloria was hurrying before the wavering broom. Her “precious stuff” would be easily gathered and then she might escape from Maggie’s gossip.

“About the hairpins now, where shall I put them?”

“Oh, keep them,” smiled Gloria. “You see I never use any.”

“That’s so. Ain’t I stupid. Since the bobbs came in it seems to me that hairpins is harder to get. Stores even, don’t allus carry them.” She retrieved a brown lock of hair that was trying to get down her back. “And my hair’s such a nuisance. You don’t wear nets either?”

“No.”

“What a comfort. I’ll put any baby pins and such right—where should I put them?”

“You won’t be apt to find any,” said Gloria, wondering what next Maggie might hint for.

“Well, I’m honest as the sun, Miss Alton says, and what’s on the floor goes on the bureau, every time.” The basket and contents were inadvertently tipped over just then, and Maggie dove after the things that flew.

“There, ain’t that a pretty waist? Miss Davis, she’s the rich girl that has number ten, she’s been here, land know how long, and I asked her yesterday if this was her last year and she didn’t know. She’s the loveliest girl, and so good-natured. I jest said I loved blue and she gave me the waist. I think it’ll fit me.” It was held aloft midway between chin and waistline, and Gloria said it looked all right.

Then she escaped.

And Maggie ostensibly swept the room, aired the pillows and shook the curtains. Trixy’s room had an unusually large mirror hung from the wall, between two windows, and whether Maggie posed in borrowed finery or merely spent time in profitable meditation, is not relevant, for it was her own time as well as her own work, and Maggie managed to finish on schedule in spite of all interruptions.

When Gloria ventured back, after first peeking in from behind Trixy’s curtains, she found things nicely slicked up.

“Good old Maggie!” she thought. “I am sure she is quite as honest as she claims to be.”

Addressing the well dusted bureau with a few more appropriate remarks, Gloria’s gaze fell upon a strange object.

“What’s this?” she asked aloud, for a small, glittering, bead-like stone instantly recalled the other. That one she had replaced in the torn envelope and put back in the strange trunk.

“A gem! A real garnet—or ruby——”

There was no question as to where it came from. Maggie had found it upon the floor, perhaps under the edge of the rug, and it must have fallen there from the envelope marked “Precious.”

Gloria turned the stone over on her open palm. She knew little of precious stones, but she easily guessed that this was valuable.

“What shall I do with it?”

The thought that its owner would resent her knowledge of so secret an affair as the opening of a trunk, and the handling of its contents, was disturbing.

“Oh, bother!” complained Gloria. “What am I going to do about a thing like this, anyway?”

Trixy’s return was welcomed. And the discovered treasure promptly and adequately discussed.

“Suppose you keep it for a day or two——”

“No indeed,” objected Gloria. “I have no wish to be throttled by the pirate’s daughter.”

“But it has been here for days——”

“That’s why my head ached. This thing is charmed. Maybe a drop of some one’s blood is sealed within the crystal,” she flippantly suggested, turning the stone over and over, smiling fondly upon it and otherwise showing neither fear nor distaste for the frozen “drop of blood.”

“I think it’s a garnet,” suggested Trixy.

“Why should a boarding school girl want to lug such stuff around with her?”

“Why?” repeated Trixy. “No custom officers to dodge.”

“But in that trunk! And not even in a strong little box,” argued Gloria.

“Some girls are careless. Also some grown ups. You know how very often real diamonds are hidden in old shoes and retrieved by honest cobblers, who become socialists after receiving the dollar ninety-eight cents reward,” philosophised Trixy. “Still, the girl who dropped them in her trunk must have been in an awful hurry.”

“But why hasn’t the owner advertised on the bulletin?” reasoned Gloria further.

“It is queer. Do you suppose Maggie knows——”

“That’s so. I’ll have to give Maggie something.”

“Better thank her for finding your bead and give her ten cents,” suggested the practical Trixy. “Otherwise, you may not be able to make a satisfactory accounting. Don’t let her suspect what you suspect.”

“A good idea. Listen! I hear her plaintive voice. Let’s have done with it. Lend me exactly a dime.”

“First, put the pirate’s treasure in my jewel box. I’ll be responsible for it and defy its evil eye—until you find the owner,” agreed Trixy affably. Gloria borrowed the dime and thrust it upon the inarticulate Maggie. Money, it seemed, always surprised her into speechlessness.

“And now,” decided Gloria, “I’ll take the ‘evil eye’ down to the office——”

“Suppose it is a real secret, that the owner has some worthy motive in hiding it.”

“Trix, you’re a regular Portia. I do hope you decide to study law. How would you suggest I get rid of the thing?”

“Post a notice, asking the loser of a small red stone to call at this room. We might excite less comment if we said ‘trinket’ instead of ‘stone.’”

“And have every one who lost a hair net, a hairpin, or a barrette, calling,” objected Gloria.

“That’s so. But Maggie may see the notice and recognize her find.”

“She won’t have time to read bulletins today.”

“No, I suppose not. Then just write a simple, unsuspicious notice, and say small red stone.”

“Peachy!” exclaimed Gloria. “Then we’ll have a chance to learn who really is the Pirate’s Daughter.”

Trixy wrapped the vagrant stone in a piece of tissue paper and then in a piece of tin foil from her film package, meanwhile moaning weird incantations. Then, after waving it in the air to break the spell, she very gingerly dropped the paper and tin foil packet into her little jewel case.

Gloria wrote the “found notice” with directions for reclaiming the “red stone” and was off instantly to post it upon the bulletin.

“Thir-rill-ling!” she chanted. “Suppose it’s Pat’s!”

“Or Jack’s?”

“Or just a red bead from the ten cent store?”

“I’d like to get a couple of dozen,” declared Trixy.

“Well, here’s for the bill board. Better watch out. Some one might kidnap me.”

With a parting laugh Gloria raced off and it seemed she was back, out of breath, and out of speech, before Trixy could close the drawer on the jewel box.

“I feel like a thief!” she gasped. “Isn’t it horrid to find a thing so long after?”

“As if you had been waiting for an offered reward?” laughed Trixy. “We aren’t likely to be suspected of anything like that, so don’t worry, lamb. I’m just all a-quiver of anticipation.”

But after lunch the little note was missing from its hook on the bulletin and in its place was found a message sealed and addressed to “Finder.” The girls read it in their own room behind closed doors.

The note read: “Please drop into old brass vase on teakwood stand in alcove of west sitting room.” That was all.

“Oh,” moaned Gloria, in disappointment. “Not even to say drop what.”

“How perfectly mean,” growled Trixy.

“Suppose we don’t. We might say that it ‘must be called for,’” suggested Gloria.

“But then,” mused Trixy, “there may be a real reason.”

“Again, noble Portia, I salute thee,” mocked Gloria. “In other words, just as you say. But I’d hate to be fooled again. That old trunk seems destined to add to my misery. Not that there’s much more room for addition,” (another groan and wild, agonizing rolling of eyes) “but I suppose we may as well drop the ‘jool’ in the vaase.”

“May as better,” amended Trixy.

“You do it and I’ll watch.”

“Foxy. Suppose some of the eagles see you. How do we know this isn’t sort of an initiation?”

“We don’t. I never thought of that, little Brightness. As you say, we had better follow directions, and not be compelled to wear our waists inside out, or parade two different colored stockings. Here, give me the pesky thing. I’ll hie me to the dump with it and so cast off the spell.”

Almost as quickly as she had posted the letter did she “dump the thing and beat it,” in her own inelegant language. She now stood before Trixy making foolish faces.

“Ugh!” she exclaimed, brushing her hands to shed the imagined pollution, “now it’s all over. And we’ve lost trace of the Pirate’s Daughter.”

“There’s no telling,” presaged Trixy. “She may remember you in her will.”

“And again she may not. Well, may all our ill health go with it, as dear old Jane would say. Trixy, when do we go out to see our anxious friends?” (This meant the home folks.)

“I dunno. But let’s stick it out for a while and then, when we do take a little trip to Sandford, we won’t feel like a couple of hookey kids. Not that I wouldn’t love to see my mommer right now——”

“And my—da-da!”

Reflection brought gloom. Forgotten was the frozen blood stone and the old brass vase. Two girls sat glum, with heads down and knees up, with chins pushed up into pouting lips, and naught but an occasional groan or grunt giving sign of articulation.

“I dunno,” said Gloria finally. “But there’s Pat! Mum’s the word, dearie, about the pirate’s watch guard or collar button or—paper weight. Don’t let us whisper——”

“Not a whisper,” agreed Trixy.

So Pat never knew what she had missed, and didn’t even guess that she had missed anything.