CHAPTER XI

“THERE NEVER WAS KNIGHT LIKE THE YOUNG LOCHINVAR”

The days that followed Gladys’s downfall were far from pleasant at school. Gladys was miserable, Gwen and Jan indignant, and their classmates divided into two camps, of which the larger was strongly partisan of the Grahams, but the second sided against them or “didn’t know.” The play, recast and with an incompetent girl in Gwen’s place, went badly at its rehearsals, and the Misses Larned were as cool to Gwen, who was responsible--or whom they chose to consider responsible--for its disaster as they dared be to one of two valuable pupils who had two more sisters at home growing up to scholar’s estate. Gladys had been with difficulty persuaded by Gwen and Jan to keep the story of her wrongs a secret at home until later. These would-be detectives hoped to discover the cause of Miss Larned’s injustice, and they knew that if Mrs. Graham learned of her daughter’s treatment she would demand instant reparation or take her from school, and the mystery would remain a mystery to the end. But at the close of the third day Gwen and Jan were no nearer its solution, and Gladys was passionately declaring that she couldn’t and wouldn’t keep the secret any longer. She knew, she said, that her mother “would take her away from the horrid old Hydra if she heard how she had been treated, and for her part she did not think any one with any self-respect ought to be willing to have her stay--much less try to keep her there.”

Just as Gladys was on the eve of becoming utterly unmanageable, chance put the clue to the affair into Jan’s hands, or perhaps it was good fairies, approving her unselfish desire to help her cousin, forgetful of Gladys’s many unkindnesses to her.

Three of the teachers were standing in the hall at noon as Jan came down it. She had no thought of approaching unseen or unheard, but it happened that the day was dark and the hall badly lighted at that point, and Jan had on her rubbers, deadening her footfall.

She heard the name “Gladys Graham,” and stopped short. There was no time in which to debate her action. She despised listening, but she wanted--no, that did not express it--she felt that she _must_ hear what was being said. Before she had more than grasped the temptation before her, and had not had time to yield to it or resist it, she heard in the brief pause she made at the turn of the hall words which gave her quick wits the clue for which she longed. The English teacher’s voice, clear and resonant, reached her. She was saying: “There can not be the least possible doubt of the child’s guilt. It was an abominable letter, begging Daisy to join her in a plot to bring discredit on the entire class and school, written in Gladys’s hand, on that very peculiar foreign paper she has, and which there is none like in the school, if there is in the city. And Daisy, whom you never liked, Miss Esterbrook, had written across the bottom of the page: ‘I would not do such a thing for the world.’ The paper fell into Miss Larned’s hands accidentally--it had got in with some composition papers I had to correct. Gladys deserves much more severe treatment than being deprived of her part in the play, but policy, as well as kindness, makes Miss Larned hush the matter up. It is very fine of Daisy Hammond, and shows that she really loves Gladys, that she does not tell the other girls, for of course she must guess what is wrong.”

“I could not have believed such a thing like that of Gladys,” said the German teacher. “She is wain and not so much a student as her sister, but I have never a bad child found her.”

Jan turned back and went quietly up the hall in the direction whence she had come. No one had seen or heard her, and she wanted to make certain that she was able to speak naturally before she encountered the group of teachers.

So this was the trouble! Daisy Hammond had evidently written a letter, purporting to come from Gladys, containing a proposal to do something wrong, a proposal which she--writing then in her own person--had indignantly refused. Daisy then had contrived that the letter should fall into the teachers’ hands, knowing or hoping that the result of her plot would be to give her Gladys’s coveted part in the play. Jan’s hands clinched as she realized what a contemptible trick had been played, and she resolved to expose it if it took the rest of her life to do so--Jan was inclined to be dramatic under strong excitement.

And the idea, she thought contemptuously, of Miss Arnold saying that the paper was written in Gladys’s hand, when all the first class and second class wrote so nearly alike, that, with the exception of Gwen, to whom much writing had given an individual hand, one could never be certain whose writing one was reading. But the peculiar paper? This was a difficulty, and Jan longed to get Gwen to herself safe at home and begin investigations with her help. But Gwen was out when Jan reached the house, and on second thought it struck “Miss Lochinvar” that it would be delightful if she could ferret out Gladys’s wrongs alone. What happiness it would be to know that she--the unwelcome cousin, of whom Gladys had always been ashamed--should be able to set her right in the eyes of the school where her present disgrace far exceeded that of having a cousin who did not mind confessing to poverty!

As a preliminary step, this dawning Sherlock Holmes went to work on paper dolls’ dresses for Viva, little as they seemed to bear on the case. She was anxious not to arouse Gladys’s suspicion, and she wanted an excuse for obtaining some of “that very peculiar foreign paper” of which Miss Arnold had spoken as belonging to Gladys.

“Have you any sort of odd letter-paper, Gladys, that you would let me have to make a doll’s dress?” asked artful Jan. “I want something stiffer than the paper we have, and something out of the common.”

Gladys received the request graciously. She had been pleasanter to Jan since she had stood by her in the matter of the play and had refused to take Gwen’s part when it was offered her--a fact that Gwen was careful that her sister should know, not failing to point out the contrast of this loyalty to her own treatment of Jan.

“I had the very thing,” said Gladys, “but there isn’t a scrap left. Wait--I’ll look--maybe there is just a scrap.” She tossed over the papers in her desk and produced a half sheet of a peculiar greenish-gray paper with a tulip design in one corner. “Would this be any good?” she asked. “I had lots of it, but I gave half to Daisy, and mine is all used up. It came from Holland, and now I’m sorry I didn’t keep all of it, for nobody has any like it.”

“I can’t tell whether it will be useful or not,” said Jan truthfully, for she had not seen the paper on which the incriminating letter of which the teachers had been talking was written. Her heart gave a leap as she heard Gladys say so unconsciously that she had divided her paper with Daisy. “I’ll take it, if you don’t want it, and see if I can use it.”

“All right. I don’t want it. Half a sheet is no good, but isn’t it nice, with those tulips in memory of Holland in the corner?” said Gladys, looking regretfully at the solitary remainder of her too great generosity.

“It’s just as pretty as it can be, and it’s nice for a New York girl to have, because the Dutch brought their tulip bulbs over here. Thanks, Gladys. I’ll do as much for you, if I can.” And Jan laughed nervously.

“You needn’t mind about doing anything, if you can’t do more than give me half a sheet of letter-paper,” said Gladys. And Jan ran away thinking how much nicer Gladys was now that misfortune had made her less airy.

Viva did not get her doll’s dress made from Gladys’s contribution. Jan cut out a dress from half of the half-sheet, but carefully preserved the upper part with the tulips in the corner. The next day at school she carried her deep-laid plan further. Daisy Hammond, as well as Gladys, had been more civil to her since the trouble, though from some other cause. Jan could not quite see what this cause could be, but she decided that, in spite of her efforts to control her voice and eyes, something of the suspicion she felt toward Daisy had been betrayed, and that Gladys’s false friend feared “Miss Lochinvar’s” possible discoveries.

Counting on Daisy’s evident desire to propitiate her, Jan went to her at recess. “Daisy,” she said, “Gladys gave me a stray half-sheet of paper to make a doll’s dress for Viva. She said she hadn’t any more to give me, and I want some badly. Gladys didn’t say I might ask you, but she did say she had given some of her paper to you. Have you the least little sheet, or even half a sheet, that I might have to finish with?” And Jan held up the quarter-sheet of paper which she had kept.

Daisy could not repress a start as she saw it, and she glanced sharply at Jan’s rosy face. But “Miss Lochinvar” had her wits about her, and, though she noted the look of fear that passed swiftly across Daisy’s face, she met that young lady’s eyes with her own brown ones smiling steadily, and Daisy saw no sign of a latent motive behind the innocent request.

“Oh, I don’t believe I have a bit like that,” she said. “Gladys only gave me two or three sheets, ever so long ago. I’ll give you any other I have.”

“Gladys said she had given her half,” thought Jan, keenly alive to Daisy’s words and actions. But she said aloud: “Let me go with you while you look. I wouldn’t mind for myself. I could get on without the paper, but I’d like to finish what I have begun for my cousin.” It really was good sport to say this, knowing what a different significance from her own Daisy would attach to her words.

Daisy dared not refuse Jan for fear of arousing her suspicions, so she went down-stairs with very bad grace, Jan following close at her heels.

At Daisy’s desk Jan kept right at her back so that she could see its contents plainly. Daisy could hardly restrain her annoyance as she tossed her paper about with movements that were so unnatural that Jan knew she was on the track of what she sought.

“There isn’t a bit here,” said Daisy, hastily throwing a copy-book to one side. “Take this pinkish shade. It’s nicer for dolls, anyway.”

But Jan was too quick for her. “Pink wouldn’t go with the dress I began,” she said, reaching over quickly and raising the copy-book. “Why, there are several sheets of this Dutch paper! You covered it up and didn’t see it, Daisy.”

Daisy flushed crimson, even up into the roots of her hair. “What right have you to touch my desk, Janet Howe?” she cried angrily. “I never allow any one to do that.”

“Oh, very well. You needn’t get so mad. I didn’t know you objected,” said Jan quietly. “And if you didn’t want to give me the paper you weren’t obliged to. Why didn’t you say so when I asked you?”

Daisy saw that she had made a mistake. Perhaps it was only her guilty conscience that made her fear Jan. Surely that troublesome young person looked as calm and innocent as the new moon, not at all eager for the paper. Perhaps she really did want it for the doll’s dress and nothing else. In any case, it would not do for her to act guilty.

She laughed affectedly, and said: “How absurd you are, Jan. Of course I’m willing you should have the paper. You startled me, that’s all, and it does make me furious to have any one touch my things. Take all the paper, if you want it--I am sure I’m willing.”

“No, indeed; but if you can spare one sheet I’d be glad,” said Gwen. Then with a sudden realization of the value of witnesses, she turned to Dorothy Schuyler, who had just entered the schoolroom. “See this paper Daisy has given me. Gladys gave it to her. It came from Holland. Did you ever see any like it?” she said.

“Never. Isn’t it pretty?” said Dorothy, feeling the texture as she paused on her way to her own desk. And Jan knew that, if she needed it, there was some one who could prove that she had received the paper from Daisy and not from Gladys.

At this point in her plotting Jan stopped for two days, keeping Gladys quiet in the meantime by a hint of hope which set her agog with eager impatience.

Then, without giving any reason for her request, she asked Cena North to borrow Daisy’s blotter and forget to return it; instead, to give it to her--Jan--after school.

Cena was ready to do anything that Jan asked of her. She admired fearless “Miss Lochinvar” with all the might of her own quiet nature.

Not for nothing had Jan read stories in which looking-glasses had disclosed the secrets of blotters. Locking her door on her arrival in her own room, putting a chair before it in case the impossible should happen and some one should open it, pulling down the shade to the extreme annoyance of Tommy Traddles, sitting on the window-sill, and lighting the gas, this solitary conspirator held the blotter before her mirror.

She nearly fell over in the joyful shock of the revelations thus obtained. Only a word here and there, but they were enough. Though Jan knew nothing of the contents of the letter which had fallen by deliberate apparent chance into Miss Larned’s hands, she saw that these words must be part of it, preserved by the faithful blotter to incriminate the girl who had betrayed her friend, and fought her, not fairly, but treacherously, for precedence.

With the blotter and the sheet of paper she held in her hands the proofs which should reinstate Gladys on the morrow. Now it was time to take Gwen into her confidence, and she turned down the gas, drew up the shade, removed her superfluous barrier, and thrust an excited, flushed face out of the door.

“Gwen, Gwen, come here!” she called, and Gwen flew out of her room, knowing from the tremulous voice, strained and unnatural in tone, that something had happened.