CHAPTER VIII

THE GREATEST TOY-SHOP ON EARTH

"No," said Betty, "I haven't found it, and now I'm almost sure I shan't, because Nita's lost hers."

"What has Nita lost?" asked Madeline from her nest of pillows. It was the evening after the play, and the Belden House felt justified in taking life easily. "She lost her head last night," chuckled Madeline, without waiting for Betty's answer. "Did you hear her imploring the organ-man in her most cla.s.sic English not to let me take the monkey out in front to show to the President? As if I really would!"

"You've done just as crazy things in your time, dear," retorted Katherine Kittredge, who had come over to borrow one of Betty's notebooks and had found the atmosphere of elegant leisure that pervaded the room irresistible.

"Do you really think so?" asked Madeline amiably. "Well, before we go into that I want to know what else Nita has lost."

"Why, a pin," explained Betty,--"that lovely one with the amethyst in the centre and the ring of little pearls in a quaint old setting. It used to be her great-grandmother's. Mine wasn't much to lose, and I felt sure until to-day that it would turn up, but it hasn't, and now I'm afraid it was really stolen."

"Have you looked all through that?" asked Madeline, pointing to the miscellaneous a.s.sortment of books, papers, dance-cards and bric-a-brac that littered Betty's small desk to the point of positive inundation.

Betty a.s.sented with dignity. "And I haven't had time since to put it back in the pigeon-holes. When Nita told me about her pin, I got worried about mine--mother gave it to me and I couldn't bear to lose it for good--so I went through my desk and all my drawers and it was sweeping-day, so I asked Belden House Annie to look too. It's not here."

"Is Nita sure hers was stolen?" asked Katherine.

Betty nodded. "As sure as she can be without actually seeing it taken.

She left it on her cushion yesterday when she came down to luncheon, and when she got back from physics lab, it was gone."

"What a shame!" said Madeline. "She ought to tell Mrs. Kent right away.

I should strongly suspect the new table-girl."

"Oh, but she's a cousin of Belden House Annie's," explained Betty, "and I'm sure Annie would look after her. We all know that she's as honest as the day herself, and all the other maids have been here for years and years."

"It's queer," said Katherine, "if it was an outsider--a more or less professional thief, I mean--that he or she should come to this house twice, several weeks apart, and each time take so little. If it was a college girl now----"

"Oh, don't, Katherine," begged Betty. "I can't bear to think that any Harding girl would do such a thing. I'd ten times rather never know who it was than to find it was that way."

Just then the B's appeared airily attired in kimonos concealed under rain-coats, and laden with a huge pan of marshmallow fudge, which they had made, they explained, in honor of Roberta's successful debut.

"What are you all looking so solemn about?" demanded Bob, when Babbie had gone in search of Roberta.

Betty told her, and Babe and Bob exchanged glances.

"It's not necessarily any one in this house who's responsible, I guess,"

said Babe. "Babbie's lost a valuable pin too, and Geraldine Burdett has lost a ring. Oh, about two weeks ago Gerry's was taken, and Babbie's before that. They've been keeping dark and trying to get up a clue, but they can't. They'll be all off when they hear about these other robberies."

"There was one awfully queer thing about Babbie's thief," put in Bob.

"Her little gold-linked purse was on the chiffonier right beside her pin and it wasn't touched, though it was just stuffed with bills. That makes them afraid it was some girl who's awfully fond of jewelry and can't afford any."

"It isn't right to leave our lovely things around so, is it?" said Betty seriously. "It's just putting temptation in the way of poor girls."

"Exactly," agreed Madeline. "We go off for hours, never locking up anything, leaving our money and other valuables in plain sight, and if we do miss anything we can't be sure it's stolen and we don't have time to investigate for weeks after. It's a positive invitation to dishonesty."

"But it's such a nuisance to lock up," complained Babe, "and if I hide things I can't ever find them again, so I might as well not bother."

"I haven't any golden baubles," said Bob, "but I'm going to keep my money in 'Love's Labor Lost.' You'll find it there if you ever want to borrow."

"'Much Ado about Nothing' would be the most appropriate place for mine,"

laughed Katherine, "so I choose that. You probably won't find any if you want to borrow."

"But seriously, girls, let's all be more careful," advised Betty, "and let's ask other people to be. Think how perfectly awful it is to make chances for girls to forget themselves. But I shan't believe it's a Harding girl," she added decisively. "It would be perfectly easy for any dishonest young woman to go through the houses without being questioned. Perhaps she got frightened and didn't notice Babbie's money on that account or didn't have time to s.n.a.t.c.h up anything but the pin."

Just then Babbie appeared, bringing Roberta and Rachel Morrison who had met them in the hall, and in the general attack upon the fudge pan more serious issues were forgotten.

It was now the busiest, gayest part of the long fall term. Flying fast on the heels of the house play came Thanksgiving Day.

"And just to think of it!" wailed Bob. "Only two days vacation this year, and Miss Stuart and the president dropping the most awful hints about what will happen if you cut over. n.o.body can go home. I hope the faculty will all eat too much and have horrible attacks of indigestion."

"Well, we may as well have as much fun as we can out of it," said Babbie philosophically. "I've written home for a spread; so we shan't die of hunger."

"Mrs. Kent says she's going to give us the best Thanksgiving dinner we ever ate," announced Betty cheerfully.

"I hope our matron will be seized with the same lofty ambition," said Katherine. "If she is, and if the skating holds, I shan't mind staying here."

"Weren't you going to stay anyway?" asked Helen Adams.

"Being a resident of the remote village of Kankakee, Illinois, and not having been urged to visit any of my Eastern friends, I was," admitted Katherine, solemnly, "but that doesn't make it any the nicer to have to work all day Sat.u.r.day."

The skating did last, and the man at the rink, being taken in hand by the B's, sympathized heartily with their wrongs, and promised them a three days' ice carnival, which meant search-lights, bonfires and a big band on the ice every evening. There is nothing in the world more exhilarating than skating to good music. The rink was thronged with Harding girls and Winsted men, and the proprietor could not easily regard himself as a bona fide philanthropist.

The paper-chase, to get up an appet.i.te on Thanksgiving morning, was Katherine Kittredge's idea and the basket-ball game in the afternoon between the Thanksgiving Dinners and the Training Tables was too fantastic to have originated with any one but Madeline Ayres.

Georgia Ames, dressed as a huge turkey gobbler, captained the Thanksgiving Dinners, who were gotten up as bunches of celery and mounds of cranberry jelly. The captain of the Training Table simulated a big bottle labeled "Pure Spring Water," and the members of her team were tastefully trimmed with slices of dry bread. Being somewhat less spectacular than their rivals, they were a little more agile and they won the game, which was so funny that it sent two of the faculty into hysterics.

"And that's almost as bad as indigestion," said Babe, who was a bunch of celery. At least she had been one until she came into collision with the water bottle and lost most of her tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs.

It was really the Thanksgiving game that precipitated the plans for the senior entertainment for the library fund. The fire the year before had not only damaged the library considerably, but it had brought its shortcomings and the absurdly small number of its volumes, compared with the rapidly increasing number of the girls who used them, to the attention of the public. Somebody had offered fifty thousand dollars for a library fund provided the college raised an equal amount. The alumnae were trying to get the money, and because they had helped the undergraduates with their beloved Students' Building, they wanted the undergraduates to help them now.

On the very evening of the game Marie Howard, the senior president, caught Madeline on the way to Babbie's spread and laid the matter before her.

"The alums want us to subscribe to the fund," she explained, "and then they think each cla.s.s ought to give an entertainment. Not a bit nervy, are they? Well, of course 19-- has got to take the lead, and I've fairly racked my brains to think what we can do. Now it's no trouble to you to have lovely, comical ideas, and if you'll only help me out with this entertainment, I'll be your friend for life."

"Why don't you appoint a committee to take charge of it?" inquired Madeline, serenely.

Marie gave her a mournful look. "I suppose you think I haven't tried.

The girls are all willing to help, but they insist upon having the idea to start with. I know you hate committees, Madeline, and I'm not asking you to be on one--"

"You'd better not," interpolated Madeline, darkly, remembering the drudgery she had submitted to to make the Belden House play a success.

"Just think up the idea," Marie went on, persuasively, "and I'll make a committee do the rest. I don't care what we have, so long as it's new and taking--the sort of thing that you always seem to have in your head.