"That's just our way of speaking of them. The Upedes are the Up and Doing Club. The Fussy Curls are the F. C.'s."

"The F. C.'s?" questioned Ruth. "What do the letters really stand for?"

"Forward Club, I believe. I don't know much about the Fussy Curls,"

Mary said, with the same tone and air that she used in addressing the little French teacher.

"You're a Upede!" cried Helen, quickly.

"Yes," said Mary c.o.x, nodding, and seemed to have finished with that subject. But Helen was interested; she had begun to like this c.o.x girl, and kept to the subject.

"What are the Upedes and the F. C.'s rivals about?"

"Both clubs are anxious to get members," Mary c.o.x said. "Both are putting out considerable effort to gain new members--especially among these who enter Briarwood at the beginning of the year."

"What are the objects of the rival clubs?" put in Ruth, quietly.

"I couldn't tell you much about the Fussy Curls," said Mary, carelessly. "Not being one of them I couldn't be expected to take much interest in their objects. But _our_ name tells our object at once.

'Up and Doing'! No slow-coaches about the Upedes. We're all alive and wide awake."

"I hope we will get in with a lively set of girls," said Helen, with a sigh.

"It will be your own fault if you don't," said Mary c.o.x.

Oddly enough, she did not show any desire to urge the newcomers to join the Upedes. Helen was quite piqued by this. But before the discussion could be carried farther, Mary put her head out of the window and called to the driver.

"Stop at the Cedar Walk, Dolliver. We want to get out there. Here's your ten cents."

Meanwhile the little foreign lady had scarcely moved. She had turned her face toward the open window all the time, and being veiled, the girls could not see whether she was asleep, or awake. She made no move to get out at this point, nor did she seem to notice the girls when Mary flung open the door on the other side of the coach, and Ruth and Helen picked up their bags to follow her.

The chums saw that the stage had halted where a shady, winding path seemed to lead up a slight rise through a plantation of cedars. But the spot was not lonely. Several girls were waiting here for the coach, and they greeted Mary c.o.x when she jumped down, vociferously.

"Well, Mary c.o.x! I guess we know what you've been up to," exclaimed one who seemed older than the other girls in waiting.

"Did you rope any Infants, Mary?" cried somebody else.

"'The Fox' never took all that long walk for nothing," declared another.

But Mary c.o.x paid her respects to the first speaker only, by saying:

"If you want to get ahead of the Upedes, Madge Steele, you Fussy Curls had better set your alarm clocks a little earlier."

Ruth and Helen were climbing out of the old coach now, and the girl named Madge Steele looked them over sharply.

"Pledged, are they?" she said to Mary c.o.x, in a low tone.

"Well! I've been riding in the Ark with them for the last three miles.

Do you suppose I have been asleep?" returned Miss c.o.x, with a malicious smile.

Ruth and Helen did not distinctly hear this interchange of words between their new friend and Madge Steele; but Ruth saw that the latter was a very well dressed and quiet looking girl--that she was really very pretty and ladylike. Ruth liked her appearance much more than she did that of Mary c.o.x. But the latter started at once into the cedar plantation, up a serpentine walk, and Helen and Ruth, perforce, went with her. The other girls stood aside--some of them whispering together and smiling at the newcomers. The chums could not help but feel strange and nervous, and Mary c.o.x's friendship seemed of value to them just then.

Ruth, however, looked back at the tall girl whose appearance had so impressed her. The coach had not started on at once. Old Dolliver did everything slowly. But Ruth Fielding saw a hand beckoning at the coach window. It was the hand of Miss Picolet, the French teacher, and it beckoned Madge Steele.

The latter young lady ran to the coach as it lurched forward on its way. Miss Picolet's face appeared at the window for an instant, and she seemed to say something of importance to Madge Steele. Ruth saw the pretty girl pull open the stage-coach door again, and hop inside.

Then the Ark lumbered out of view, and Ruth turned to follow her chum and Mary c.o.x up the winding Cedar Walk.

CHAPTER V

"THE DUET"

Helen, by this time, having recovered her usual self-possession, was talking "nineteen to the dozen" to their new friend. Ruth was not in the least suspicious; but Mary c.o.x's countenance was altogether too sharp, her gray eyes were too sly, her manner to the French teacher had been too unkind, for Ruth to become greatly enamored of the Junior. It did really seem very kind of her, however, to put herself out in this way for two "Infants."

"How many teachers are there?" Helen was asking. "And are they all as little as that Miss Picolet?"

"Oh, _she_!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mary c.o.x, with scorn. "n.o.body pays any attention to her. She's not liked, I can tell you."

"Why, she seemed nice enough to us--only not very friendly," said Helen, slowly, for Helen was naturally a kind-hearted girl.

"She's a poverty-stricken little foreigner. She scarcely ever wears a decent dress. I don't really see why Mrs. Tellingham has her at the school at all. She has no friends, or relatives, or anybody that knows her----"

"Oh, yes she has," said Helen, laughing.

"What do you mean?" inquired Mary c.o.x, suspiciously.

"We saw somebody on the boat coming over to Portageton that knew Miss Picolet."

"Oh, Helen!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Ruth, warningly.

But it was too late, Mary c.o.x wanted to know what Helen meant, and the story of the fat man who had played the harp in the boat orchestra, and who had frightened the French teacher, and had afterward talked so earnestly with her on the dock, all came out in explanation. The Junior listened with a quiet but unpleasant smile upon her face.

"That's just what we've always thought about Miss Picolet," she said.

"Her people must be dreadfully common. Friends with a ruffian who plays a harp on a steamboat for his living! Well!"

"Perhaps he is no relative or friend of hers," suggested Ruth, timidly.

"Indeed, she seemed to be afraid of him."

"He's mixed up in her private affairs, at least," said Mary, significantly. "I never could bear Miss Picolet!"

Ruth was very sorry that Helen had happened upon this unfortunate subject. But her chum failed to see the significance of it, and the girl from the Red Mill had no opportunity of warning Helen. Mary c.o.x, too, was most friendly, and it seemed ungrateful to be anything but frank and pleasant with her. Not many big girls (so thought both Ruth and Helen) would have put themselves out to walk up to Briarwood Hall with two Infants and their baggage.

Through breaks in the cedar grove the girls began to catch glimpses of the brown old buildings of Briarwood Hall. Ivy masked the entire end of one of the buildings, and even ran up the chimneys. It had been cut away from the windows, and they showed brilliantly now with the descending sun shining redly upon them.

"It's a beautiful old place, Helen," sighed Ruth.

"I believe you!" agreed her chum, enthusiastically.