CHAPTER XII--A DISCOURAGED REFORMER

Despite the late hour at which members of the Lookout Club had retired on the previous night, nine o'clock Saturday morning saw them gathered at the day nursery, for a final survey of it before the house warming began, which was scheduled to commence at two o'clock that afternoon. As Saturday was a half-holiday for the mill folks, the girls had chosen the time of the opening with a view to giving the mothers of the children, who would partake of its hospitality, an opportunity to inspect the nursery and offer the names of their little ones for registration. A buffet luncheon, contributed by the mothers of the Lookouts was to be one of the features of the occasion, and Mrs. Macy, Mrs. Dean, Mrs. Harding and Miss Susan Allison were to act as patronesses. Mignon La Salle was the only member of the club who did not put in an appearance. Why she had chosen to absent herself no one of the Lookouts knew nor did they greatly care.

"I guess Mignon feels rather queer about facing us to-day after what happened last night," Jerry Macy confided to Marjorie, when the close of the morning brought no sign of the French girl.

"I was truly sorry for her," Marjorie answered with evident sincerity. "She must have been terribly embarrassed."

"Not she," sniffed Jerry. "She was probably mad as hops, though, to think her scheme fell flat. She must have telephoned her house while we were all upstairs dancing. It was silly in her to do a thing like that. It's funny, though, what a crush she's always had on Laurie. She's cared about him ever since her grammar school days, but he has never liked her. He's awfully fond of Connie, though."

"I know it." Marjorie smiled. "Somehow one never thinks of either Connie or Laurie as being foolish or sentimental."

"That's because Connie is so sensible and nice about Laurie," explained Jerry. "She just treats him as a boy friend and makes him understand it. Laurie is different from Hal and the Crane. He's a musician and has associated a good deal with older men. That makes him seem ever so much older than he really is. Naturally he is more serious and grown-up. He and Hal are almost the same age, but Hal seems younger than Laurie. Danny Seabrooke and the Crane are more Hal's speed, but Hal thinks there's no one quite like Laurie."

"Nearly all the Weston High boys are splendid," praised Marjorie. Her glance happening to stray to Lucy Warner who stood across the room, talking to Muriel Harding, she said anxiously: "Jerry, do you think anyone said anything last night to Lucy to hurt her feelings? Just before she went home I tried to talk to her and she hardly answered me. She hasn't more than spoken to me this morning, either."

"She was pretty icy to me when she said good night," returned Jerry unconcernedly. "That's just her way. She's like February weather, always thawing and freezing. I wouldn't worry about her moods. You certainly have been nice to her. Very likely she felt a little out of things last night because she didn't know how to dance. We ought to teach her. Go and propose it to her, Marjorie. Muriel has just left her. Now is your chance. I'll stay here. You can talk to her better alone."

Suiting the action to the word, Marjorie crossed the room to Lucy. "I've something very special to ask you, Lucy," she said, adopting a casual tone.

Lucy frowned portentously. "What is it?" she questioned in cool, terse fashion. Mignon's treacherous counsel still rang in her ears. Her moody frown changed to a flash of interest, however, as Marjorie stated that she and Jerry were anxious to teach her to dance. Something in Marjorie's gay, gracious manner sent a swift rush of shamed color to Lucy's white cheeks. Marjorie had befriended her and she had repaid her kindness by allowing suspicion to warp her belief in this delightful girl.

"I'd love to learn to dance," she heard herself saying heartily. Then on sudden impulse she continued almost pleadingly, "You are really my friend, aren't you, Marjorie?"

"Why, of course!" The answer conveyed absolute truth. "What makes you ask me that, Lucy?" Marjorie eyed her steadily.

Lucy's color rose higher. "I'm glad you asked me that. I wanted to tell you something, but I didn't know whether I'd better. It sounds gossipy." In a few words she related what Mignon had said to her. "I shouldn't have listened to Mignon," she apologized. "I tried to leave her, but she kept on talking."

Patent vexation held Marjorie speechless for an instant. When she spoke it was in a firm, almost stern manner. "I have only one thing to say, Lucy. You must not allow Mignon to make you feel that I am not your friend. Please remember that I am and hope always to be. I haven't the least idea what she meant by saying that she knew me to be deceitful. She evidently meant me though she didn't mention my name. I despise deceit, and I have always been straightforward with you."

"I believe you," Lucy earnestly assured her. "Hereafter I shall have nothing whatever to say to Mignon."

"You must do as you think best about that. I am glad you came to me frankly. If you are in doubt at any time about me, please come to me and say so. Misunderstandings are dreadful." Marjorie's mind had harked back to the memory of the cloud that had once shadowed hers and Mary Raymond's friendship.

On the way home to luncheon that day, in company with Jerry, Irma and Constance, she was unusually quiet. Her thoughts reverted gloomily to the conversation between herself and Lucy Warner. It had shown her plainly that no amount of club ethics could stop Mignon's spiteful tongue. Her crafty attack on Lucy was merely a beginning. Into what sort of tangle her mischief-making proclivities might yet involve the Lookouts was a question which time alone would answer.

The pleasant excitement of the afternoon went far toward banishing Marjorie's dark forebodings. The house warming was a signal success, thanks to the grateful eagerness with which the residents of the mill district received the kindly effort made in their behalf. Altogether thirty youngsters were enrolled as members of the day nursery, and their mothers showed a shy, pathetic pride and pleasure in the new movement which greatly touched their young hostesses. They did hungry justice to the dainty luncheon prepared for them, and, their diffidence gradually vanishing under the hospitable treatment they were receiving, they talked and laughed in friendly fashion with the patronesses and the Lookouts.

Greatly to the surprise of her fellow members, Mignon deigned to lend her elaborately-dressed self to the house warming. It was well into the afternoon when she appeared, haughty and supercilious. As the majority of the humble guests knew her by sight, her arrival had a somewhat dampening effect upon them. The knowledge that she was the daughter of one of Sanford's wealthiest residents rather over-awed them, and her grandiose manner served to deepen the effect. Although she was fairly affable to her schoolmates, a hint of scorn lurked in her roving black eyes, which told its own story to those who best understood her ways. No one of the band of earnest workers honestly regretted her departure which occurred not more than half an hour after her arrival.

Before five o'clock the humble guests had departed with much handshaking and friendly bobbing of heads, leaving the house to the Lookouts. The patronesses left shortly afterward and the bevy of girls turned to with commendable energy to spend a merry hour setting the nursery to rights.

"Let's sit down at the table in these cunning little chairs and have a consultation," proposed Muriel. "I am really tired out. This has been a strenuous afternoon, not to mention last night."

"Not for me," was Jerry's discouraged comment. "One of those playhouse affairs would last about ten seconds if I attempted to sit in it."

"We'd better be moving toward home," suggested Daisy Griggs. "It's almost six o'clock. I am going to a musicale this evening and I mustn't be late for it." Daisy made a determined march for the stairs, and disappeared in search of hat and coat.

"Daisy is a very energetic person," laughed Irma. "I am going home, eat my dinner and go straight to bed. I've been sleepy all day."

"So have I," complained Rita Talbot. "I am glad I don't have to be a spook the year round. Spooks must lose a lot of sleep."

"I suppose they must. I never interviewed a real one, so I can't say positively," giggled Susan.

Following Daisy's example the Lookouts trooped upstairs in search of their various belongings, exchanging light nonsense as they went. Soon afterward they descended ready for the street. Marjorie, Jerry and Constance lingered while Jerry locked the door, depositing the key in a secret refuge of its own, the location of which was known to the woman who had been engaged to come early Monday morning in order to receive her small charges.

"I wish you and Connie would come over to our house to-night," invited Jerry. "Hal, Laurie and Dan will be on the job, I mean on the scene. Hal has a brilliant idea that he thinks might interest the Lookouts. He won't tell me what it is, either. Unless you two are kindly disposed enough to come over, I'll have to take my curiosity out in guessing."

"I'll have to ask my superior officer," demurred Marjorie. "Captain may think that I ought to stay at home this evening. I'll do some expert coaxing just to please you, Jerry."

"My aunt may also be of the same mind about me," said Constance. "Still, I think I can come."

"Saved!" Jerry clasped her fat hands in exaggerated thankfulness. "I see I stand some chance of having my curiosity satisfied."

"Can't you telephone your aunt and stay to dinner with me, Connie?" begged Marjorie.

"Of course she can. That's a good idea. If your aunt says 'yes' then so will Mrs. Dean," calculated crafty Jerry. "As Professor Fontaine beautifully puts it, 'We weel conseedaire the mattaire as settled.'"

Mention of the little professor reminded Constance and Marjorie of an unusually long translation for Monday recitation, at which neither of them had looked. The talk immediately drifted into school channels to continue in that strain until Jerry left them.

After saying good-bye to her, Marjorie and Constance strolled silently along for a little.

"Marjorie," Constance's clear enunciation startled her chum from brief reverie. "I am afraid we can never be of much help to Mignon."

Marjorie flashed a half-startled glance toward Constance. She wondered what new quirk in Mignon's behavior had occasioned this observation. "Why?" was all she said.

"I've been waiting for a chance to tell you something I heard this afternoon. It was Gertrude Aldine who mentioned it. She said that Mignon told her last night that Jerry had hired Veronica to come to the party and do that shadow dance."

"_Hired_ Veronica?" Marjorie cried out in nettled amazement. "That is perfectly ridiculous and not true. But how did Mignon happen to know that it was Veronica who danced? Only Jerry, Hal, Laurie, you and I knew it. Even I didn't recognize her on the screen. I don't see how Mignon could have."

"She must have, or else----" Constance paused significantly.

"Or else what?"

"I hate to say it, but Mignon must somehow have overheard you and Jerry when you were talking to Veronica in the back parlor. I saw her leave the ball room soon after you girls did. I saw her come back again after you had returned. I didn't pay any particular heed to it then. You see I didn't know about Veronica until you told me last night after the dance. Even then I didn't connect her with you girls, although I guessed from what the La Salles' chauffeur said to Mignon that she must have gone downstairs and telephoned her home." A tiny smile played about Constance's lips as she recalled Mignon's defeat. "When Gertrude mentioned what Mignon had said about Veronica, the whole thing flashed across me in a twinkling. Gertrude promised not to tell anyone else. I know _she_ won't. But Mignon will circulate it throughout the school. Of course she won't mention, though, how she came by the information."

"It was contemptible in her if she really did spy upon us," was Marjorie's indignant outburst. "I don't see how she could have managed to, though. I didn't see a soul downstairs while we were there. If she does gossip it in school, Veronica won't care. She will only laugh."

"But Jerry will care," reminded Constance gravely. "As soon as she hears it she will go to Mignon and make a fuss about it. You know what she said that day at Sargent's. She meant it, too. We can't allow our president to resign from the club."

"We will tell Jerry about it tonight," decreed Marjorie. "It is better for her to hear it from us than from someone else. She will be cross, of course, but she won't resign. Something will have to be done about Mignon, though. She's not keeping her word of honor to the club. This is not the first offense. I can't explain what I mean by that because I promised a certain person I wouldn't tell what she told me. Someone will have to go to her and remind her of her duty to the club. If she keeps on saying such hateful things about others, outsiders will form a bad opinion of us all."

"As president, it's Jerry's duty to tell her," asserted Constance. "No doubt she will wish to do it. That's just where the trouble lies. She will be apt to tell Mignon very bluntly that she must either stop gossiping or resign from the club. Mignon will simply snap her fingers at Jerry and Jerry herself will resign rather than be in the same club with Mignon."

"Very likely," nodded Marjorie. Constance's theory entirely coincided with her own. "If we talk things over with Jerry beforehand it may make a good deal of difference. Although I wouldn't say it to anyone but you or Captain, I've lately come to the conclusion that trying to help Mignon is a waste of time, energy and peace of mind. It's like building a sand castle on the beach. Before one has time to finish it the sea washes over it and sweeps it away. If it hadn't been for that affair at Riverview last year, I would never have troubled myself about her again. Do you realize, Connie, that this is the fourth year that we have had to contend with that girl's mischief-making?" Marjorie's question quivered with righteous resentment.

"Yes, but she has never been really successful in a single piece of mischief she has planned," reminded Constance. "She's caused us a good deal of unhappiness, but in the end she has been the one to suffer defeat. It generally happens that way with persons like her. They may seem to succeed for a while, but always there comes a day when they have to pay for the trouble they make others. As I have said to you before, I am sorry for Mignon. Honestly, I don't think we can ever help her much, but she might better be in the club than out of it."

"Then you think that no matter what she may do we ought still to be patient with her and make allowances?" Marjorie's query indicated profound respect for Constance's broad-minded opinion. It made her feel as though her brief flash of resentment of Mignon had been unworthy of herself.

"Yes;" came the unhesitating reply. "What else is there to do? You and I, in particular, made ourselves responsible when we insisted that Mignon should be asked to join the Lookouts. As good soldiers we have no right to shirk that responsibility."

"I am not going to shirk it." Marjorie squared her shoulders with an energy that bespoke fresh purpose. "After all I said to the girls about Mignon joining the club, it was cowardly in me to complain so bitterly about her. You've made me realize all over again that we ought to look out for Mignon, because it's the right thing to do, not because of our promise to her father."

"I'll stand by you." Stopping in the middle of the walk, Constance offered her hand to Marjorie in pledge of her offer to stand by.

Both girls laughed as they went through with the little ceremony of shaking hands, little realizing that their compact would, later, turn out to be no laughing matter.