Part 1 (1/2)
Ruth Fielding At Sunrise Farm.
by Alice B. Emerson.
CHAPTER I-SWEET BRIARS AND SOUR PICKLES
The single gas jet burning at the end of the corridor was so dim and made so flickering a light that it added more to the shadows of the pa.s.sage than it provided illumination. It was hard to discover which were realities and which shadows in the long gallery.
Not a ray of light appeared at any of the transoms over the dormitory doors; yet that might not mean that there were no lights burning within the duo and quartette rooms in the East Dormitory of Briarwood Hall.
There were ways of shrouding the telltale transoms and-without doubt-the members of the advanced junior cla.s.ses had learned such little tricks of the trade of being a schoolgirl.
At one door-and it was the portal of the largest ”quartette” room on the floor-a tall figure kept guard. At first this figure was so silent and motionless that it seemed like a shadow only. But when another shadow crept toward it, rustling along the wall on tiptoe, the guard demanded, hissingly:
”S-s-stop! who goes there?”
”Oh-oo! How you startled me, Madge Steele!”
”s.h.!.+” commanded the guard. ”Who goes there?”
”Why-why-- It's _I_.”
”Give the pa.s.sword instantly. Answer!” commanded the guard again, and with some vexation. ”'I' isn't anybody.”
”Oh, indeed? Let me tell you that _this_ 'I' is somebody-according to the gym. scales. I gained three pounds over the Easter holidays,” said ”Heavy” Jennie Stone, who had begun her reply with a giggle, but ended it with a sigh.
”Pa.s.sword, Miss!” snapped the guard, grimly.
”Oh! of course!” Then the fat girl whispered shrilly: ”'Sincerity-befriend.' That is what 'S. B.' stands for, I s'pose.
Sweetbriars! and I have a big bag of sour pickles to offset the cloying sweetness of the Sweetbriars,” chuckled Heavy. ”Besides, they say that vinegar pickles will make you thin--”
”I don't need them for that purpose,” admitted the guard at the door, still in a whisper, but accepting the large, ”warty” pickle Heavy thrust into her hand.
”Will make _me_ thin, then,” agreed the other. ”Let me in, Madge.”
The guard, sucking the pickle convulsively the while, opened the door just a little way. A blanket had been hung on a frame inside in such a manner that scarcely a gleam of lamplight reached the corridor when the door was open.
”Pa.s.s the Sweetbriar!” choked Madge, with her mouth full and the tears running down her cheeks. ”My goodness, Jennie Stone! these pickles are right out of vitriol!”
”Sour, aren't they?” chuckled Heavy. ”I handed you a real one for fair, that time, didn't I, Madge?”
Then she tried to sidle through the narrow opening, got stuck, and was urged on by Madge pus.h.i.+ng her. With a bang-punctuated by a chorus of m.u.f.fled exclamations from the girls already a.s.sembled-she tore away the frame and the blanket and got through.
”Shut the door, quick, guard!” exclaimed Helen Cameron.
”Of course, that would be Heavy-entering like a female Samson and tearing down the pillars of the temple,” snapped Mercy Curtis, the lame girl, in her sharp way.
”Please repair the damage, Helen,” said Ruth Fielding, who presided at the far end of the room, sitting cross-legged on one of the beds.
The other girls were arranged on the chairs, or upon the floor before her. There was a goodly number of them, and they now included most of the members of the secret society known at Briarwood Hall as the ”S. B.'s.”