"Oh, I'm so dreadfully disappointed!" wailed Katie; "I won't be able to sleep a wink to-night for wondering how that story is going to end."

"We'll never have such a good chance to finish it again," said Allison, "and even if Ida should loan us the book, we'll not enjoy it as much as if she could read it to us. Her reading adds so much to it."

Kitty expressed the same opinion, and openly envied Lloyd and Betty, who, being in the same building, might have future opportunities which would be denied them. At last Ida proposed that they finish the book after the curfew signal, and preparations were hastily made.

As soon as Kitty and Katie were ready for bed, they took possession, as before, of Lloyd's bed. Lloyd and Betty climbed into the one on the other side of the room. Allison carried blankets and pillows from the next room to the divan, where she made herself comfortable, and Ida, putting a heavy woollen bathrobe over her night-dress, and stretching out in a steamer-chair with a shawl over her, began to read. There was a golf cape draped over the transom. Paper was stuffed in the keyholes, the outside shutters were tightly closed, the blinds drawn, and the curtains pinned together over them, so that not a single telltale ray of light could betray them to the outside world. Three lamps stood in a row on the table, so that they might be burned in turn, and no one of them be found with the oil entirely consumed in the morning.

Everywhere in the big building was silence and sleep, save in that one room in the west wing. There Ida's voice went musically on, and, with eyes wide open and every sense alert, the girls lay and listened. The rain still poured on, and the wind rattled the cas.e.m.e.nts. Down-stairs the clock struck ten, eleven, twelve; but not till the bride-bells rang out in the last chapter from the steeple of the little stone church in the English village did they lose interest for a moment in the "Fortunes of Daisy Dale." The beautiful ending was something for them to dream over for weeks. It was Sunday morning before Ida and the three guests stole to their rooms, and crept shivering between the cold sheets.

CHAPTER X.

A PLOT

"IF there's anything I _loathe_ it's a sneak and a telltale!" The Little Colonel's voice rang out so clearly that the girls in the cloak-room stopped to listen.

It was Monday morning, and the pupils were a.s.sembling in the chapel for opening exercises. Lloyd stood near the door, the centre of an indignant little group, which cast scornful glances at another little group, whispering together by one of the windows.

"It's the most contemptible thing that evah happened in the seminary,"

Lloyd continued. "It's a disgrace to have such a girl in school."

Katie, who had been anxiously watching the cloak-room door for the last five minutes, for the appearance of Allison and Kitty, suddenly exclaimed, "There they are now, hanging up their wraps. Let's hurry and tell them before school begins!"

The next instant the two late comers found themselves in a corner, hemmed in by Betty, Katie, and Lloyd, all so indignant that they could scarcely make themselves understood.

"Girls," began Lloyd, in a voice quavering with anger, "you nevah heard anything so outrageous! Satahday aftahnoon, all that time we were making fudge up in our room, somebody was hiding in the closet next to ours, listening to every word we said!"

"How do you know?" gasped Kitty, remembering with dismay several speeches she had made, which would sound decidedly foolish if repeated.

"Lollie Briggs said so. We'd hardly got into the room this mawning when some of the girls began to laugh and repeat every word we had said."

"It's all over the school about our Shadow Club," chimed in Betty, "and think how hard we tried to keep it secret! And the very girls who would have been glad to join, if they had been invited in the first place, are making fun of it. They keep pointing to the ground behind us, and pretend to be amazed at what they see there. Of course they are referring to our shadows, for they make all sorts of spiteful little side remarks about them."

"But there's something worse than that," added Katie, almost tearfully.

"I'll never hear the last of the speech I made about Charlie Downs and the apple-paring initials. Oh, you just wait! They've got hold of every foolish little thing we teased each other about that afternoon; Guy Ferris' valentine and bra.s.s b.u.t.ton, and the little silver arrow Malcolm Maclntyre gave Lloyd years ago, and all we said about the way we'd like to be proposed to, you know--when we were talking about the 'Fortunes of Daisy Dale.' They're telling it all over the school, and making us appear too ridiculous for any use."

"Who could be mean enough to hide and listen?" exclaimed Allison, indignantly. "The sneak!"

"Say snake, while you're about it," hissed Kitty. "They're spelled with the same letters."

"We haven't any idea," answered Betty, "or why the girls who are doing the most teasing and talking should take such a spiteful pleasure in it.

They've seemed so friendly always, until this morning."

"Come, girls," called Mrs. Clelling, in pa.s.sing. "It's time for the silence bell."

Hurrying out of the cloak-room, they took their places in chapel, and obediently opened their song-books at the signal, but it is doubtful if any member of the Shadow Club could have told afterward what was sung that morning. The letter in Ida's chatelaine-bag, which Lloyd had smuggled to her soon after breakfast, on her return from the post-office, absorbed all her thoughts. The other five girls were busy with the one question: "Who could have been such a sneak as to listen and tell?"

There were six bad records in every recitation that the club made that morning. Notes flew back and forth, and anxious eyes watched the clock, eager for recess to come. At the first signal, Lloyd flew to Ida, but before she could outline the plan of action she and Allison had decided upon in the history cla.s.s, Ida said, hurriedly, "Oh, Princess, that letter has upset me so I don't know whether I'm walking on earth or air.

I'll tell you to-morrow--something awfully important, but I've got to plan something now, so I must go off by myself and put on my thinking-cap. Oh, I'm all in a flutter."

Wondering what news the letter could have contained to bring such a becoming flush to Ida's face, and such a glow of happiness in the beautiful violet eyes, Lloyd turned away disappointed. But she forgot both the wonder and the disappointment a few minutes later, as she and Allison walked up and down in front of the seminary arm in arm. Kitty and Katie were just behind them. Betty had not yet come out, having stopped at the sight of Janie Clung's tears to explain a problem in arithmetic.

Lollie Briggs, Flynn Willis, and Caddie Bailey stood on the front steps, and each girl who came out of the hall was called into their midst, and told something with many significant glances toward the four pacing back and forth past them in a fine unconcern.

Presently Caddie called out in a voice intended for them to hear, "I wonder if anybody can guess this conundrum. Nell, can you?"

The question was addressed to one of the older girls who came out of the front door just then, without a wrap around her. It was a frosty morning, and every one else had either a jacket or cloak.

"Wait till I run back and get my golf cape," she cried. "I didn't know it was so cold."

"Now look out," whispered Allison to Lloyd. "They're going to say something to her to try to set her against us. They're stopping everybody who comes out. That makes eight already they've set to whispering and looking at us, all standing there in that crowd on the steps."

Nell came out again, hugging her golf cape around her, and stood on the top step. "Well, what's your conundrum?" she asked, good-naturedly.

Caddie slightly raised her voice. "What's the difference between a person who wouldn't stoop to 'anything so common as a kissing-game,' and a person who would get up a goody-goody club, pretending it was for the benefit of the poor, and yet all the time be using it simply as an excuse to meet and read silly novels on the sly, and talk about the boys, and roast the other girls behind their backs, whom they considered 'too common' to a.s.sociate with them?"

In a flash Lloyd realized what had offended Caddie, and what was the cause of her covert sneers. Whoever it was who had played the sneak had taken pains to report every word she had said about the girls who had played Pillow at Carter Brown's party. She looked around to see who had been the most active in denouncing the club. There they were on the steps, Flynn Willis, Caddie Bailey, Lollie Briggs, all but Mittie Dupong. The same girls she had called common, because they had allowed the boys to take a liberty which she thought cheapened them. She knew now why they were so spiteful in their remarks. Before Nell could gather her wits together for a reply, Lloyd sprang forward, her eyes flashing.

"Why don't you come straight out and say what you mean, Cad Bailey?"

she cried. "You're only telling part of the truth. Now I'll tell it all.

I did say behind your backs that I thought it was common to play kissing-games, and now I say it to yoah faces. I can't help thinking it.

I've been brought up that way, and if you've been brought up differently, then you've a right to think yoah way. If I've hurt yoah feelings, I beg yoah pahdon, but I have a right to express my opinion in my own room to my best friends. We were _not_ 'roasting' anybody. We only made a criticism that you must expect to have made on you, whenevah you do things that are common. And what are you going to say about the person who hid and listened all aftahnoon? _Somebody_ was sneak enough not only to hide in a closet and betray secrets that no girl of honah would have listened to, but she misrepresented the club in repeating them."

Lloyd's temper was rapidly getting the best of her, but in the middle of her anger she seemed to hear her father saying, in the playful way in which he used to warn her long ago, "Look out, little daughter, the tiger is getting loose." She stopped short.

"Who did that?" cried Nell. "I didn't suppose there was such a dishonourable girl in the school."

"Neither did I," answered Flynn Willis, quickly. "I never stopped to ask how the report started. I was so mad at being talked about that I did just what Cad Bailey told me to do, repeated everything I was told, just to tease the club and get even."

All eyes were turned inquiringly to Caddie Bailey.

"I don't know how it started," she cried. "Honestly I don't. Lollie Briggs told me. She and several girls were talking about it this morning before breakfast, out in the hall. They were all furious, and they told me lots of things to say that would tease Lloyd and the rest of them nearly to death. I was mad, too, but I don't know who told in the first place."

"It was you, Lollie Briggs, who told me that somebody had hid in the Clark girls' closet," cried Lloyd. "You know you did, when I demanded to know who had started all this talk. Who was it?"

"I promised I wouldn't tell," said Lollie, sullenly, "and I won't. You needn't ask, for no power on earth could drag it out of me. So there!"

"It's like the story of Chicken Little," laughed Nell. "'Who told you, Goosey-Lucy? Ducky-Lucky. Who told you, Ducky-Lucky? Henny-Penny. Who told you, Henny-Penny?' Seems to me I'd make it my business to find out who this particularly contemptible Chicken Little happens to be, before I'd report any more of her tales."

Nell swept back into the hall, and, as the four girls started to resume their walk, Betty knocked on the cloak-room window, beckoning violently for them to come inside. They ran in pell-mell and shut the door behind them.

"I've found out!" cried Betty, in a tragic whisper. "It was Mittie Dupong! Ca.s.sie found her cla.s.s-badge on their closet floor, and just now brought it down to her. She denied it was hers, but there's no mistaking that queer little stick-pin and chain fastened to it that she uses as a guard. She's the only one in school who has one like that--an owl's head in a wishbone, you know. Besides, there were her initials, M. D., on the under side of the badge. Ca.s.sie turned it over and showed them to her.

She took it, then, but denied having been in the closet, and was so confused and contradicted herself so many times that anybody could see that she felt caught and was telling a story. She even vowed that she hadn't been near the west wing for a week. Then she ran out and banged the door, but Janie Clung said, 'Oh, what a story! I met her coming out of there Sat.u.r.day night, on the way down to supper.'"

"What do you think we ought to do about it?" asked Katie. That was a question no one could answer. In the first flush of their indignation, it seemed to them that nothing they could do to Mittie would be sufficient punishment for such an act of meanness. They felt that she was a disgrace to the school, and decided that they would be conferring a benefit on the seminary if they could succeed in getting rid of her.