Back at School with the Tucker Twins
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The spread was wonderful. The little dabs of ice cream and cake we had been served at the party had only whetted our appetites and in no way diminished them. We ate in silence broken by whispers and giggles. We hoped the teachers and Miss Plympton were safe in their downies and we trusted in Mr. Ryan's superstitious nature to keep him out of the Gym.
The ghost dance began later and was kept up buoyantly, without music except a weird rhythmic whistling that the dancers themselves furnished. This whistling is done by sucking in and never blowing out and the effect is most uncanny. It is very hard on your wind to whistle this way, but when your breath gives out, your partner picks up the tune where you leave off and keeps the ball rolling.
The last candle burned down to its socket and guttered out, and then the spectres flitted back to their rooms. It was pitch black in the corridors and Annie was afraid to go alone, so we formed a cordon by catching hold of hands and crept along, keeping close to the walls. I was in front and once when we were quite near our rooms I came bang against a human hand groping along the wall towards me. I stopped dead still! It was all I could do to keep from squealing right out, but a sound of scurrying down the hall reassured me. It was just a student as afraid of being caught as I was.
"Who goes there?" I demanded in stern and grown-up tones.
No answer but more scurrying and in a moment the sound of a door cautiously closed.
"Some poor girl scared to death," I thought. We found our rooms in the dark and with the help of an electric search light, the pride of Dee's heart, we snatched our poor dummies out of their warm beds and were soon snuggled down in their places.
"How do you reckon it happened there were no lights in the halls?" whispered Dum.
"Nancy Blair told me she had turned them out on purpose," said Dee. "She said she knew we would get caught if there was any light."
"Good for Nance!" I murmured, and knew no more until morning. I can't believe we had done anything so very wrong or we could not have slept so soundly.
The rising gong found us dead to the world and only the telephone call, three knocks on the wall, aroused us.
"Trouble ahead!" whispered Mary Flannagan, "there was some one snooping around last night after we were all in bed."
"Well, we can prove an alibi. Who was it?" I chattered through the 'phone. I had jumped out of bed and was huddled in the closet behind Dum's dress. The window was still up and the heat turned off.
"You sound scared! Do you think they will catch us?"
"Scared! Not a bit of it! I am just cold. Of course, they won't catch us, – thanks to having abolished the honour system," and I hung up the receiver and commenced the Herculean task of getting Tweedles out of bed.
"Get up!" I urged, pulling the cover off of first one then the other. "I don't see what you would have done without a roommate. I'd like to know who would wake you up."
Dee put her head under the pillow like an ostrich trying to evade pursuit and Dum curled up in a little ball like a big caterpillar when you tickle him with a piece of grass.
"Girls! Get up! I tell you Mary says there is some mischief brewing. We had better get up and be down to breakfast in time with smiling morning faces or Miss Plympton will know who was up late feasting. Me for a cold bath!"
"Me, too!" tweedled the twins, coming to life very rapidly.
A cold plunge and vigorous rubbing took off all traces of the night's dissipations, and as a finishing touch we all of us let our hair hang down our backs in plaits. Since the summer we had with one accord turned up our hair. We felt that it added dignity to our years; but now was no time for dignity but for great simplicity and innocence.
As the breakfast gong sounded, I am sure in all Virginia there could not be found five more demure maidens than tripped punctually into the dining room. Miss Plympton looked sharply up as we came in, but we felt we had disarmed her with the very sweet bows we gave her and the gentle "good mornings."
There was an air of repressed excitement running through the school. We were dying to ask what it was but felt that silence on our part was the only course for us to pursue. Certainly there were fifteen very shiny-eyed Juniors and ten very smug-looking ones. I whispered to Nancy Blair as I passed her table on the way out:
"What's up?"
"I am not sure, but I do not believe they are on to our frolic."
"There is something else," declared Jean Rice, who sat next to her chum, Nancy. "The servants are in a great state of excitement over something. I have had an oatmeal spoon and a butter knife spilled down my neck already and I see Miss Plympton's private cream pitcher has found its way to our table."
"Well, we will find out what is the matter in Chapel," I sighed, as I hurried up to my room to put it to some kind of rights. I wanted to get our dummies pulled to pieces, leaving no semblance of human beings. We had twenty minutes between breakfast and Chapel to make our beds and do what cleaning to our rooms we considered necessary to pass inspection. I tell you we cleaned that room with what Mammy Susan called "a lick and a promise." Our dummies we pulled to pieces and scattered their members to the four winds, like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, when the winged monkeys got him. The telephone we concealed even more carefully than usual, draping a sweater over it and smoothing out Dum's dress so no suspicious wrinkle remained.
"We weren't in our beds very long, so let's spread 'em," said Dee, suiting the action to the word and pulling up her sheets in the most approved unhygienic manner. We swept the dirt under the rugs and with a few slaps of a dust rag on bureau, chairs and tables, and a careful lowering of the shade so the light came in sufficiently softened not to show the dust, we betook ourselves to Chapel as the gong sounded, quaking inwardly but with that "butter won't melt in my mouth" expression we considered suitable for the occasion.
Miss Plympton was on the platform waiting for the teachers and pupils to assemble. She had on a stiff, new, dark gray suit that fitted her like the paper on the wall and she was making chins so fast there was no keeping up with them.
"Looks like tin armor and I tell you she is ready for a joust, too!" exclaimed Dum.
Without any warning at all, Miss Plympton opened the Bible at the tenth chapter of Nehemiah and began to read:
"'Now those that sealed were Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, the son of Hachaliah, and Zidkijah, Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur, Amariah, Malchijah, Hattush, Shebaniah, Malluch, Harim, Meremoth, Obadiah, Daniel, Ginnethon, Baruch, Meshullam, Abijah, Mijamin, Maaziah, Bilgai, Shemaiah: these were the priests.'"
I heard a sharply intaken breath from Dee. I also noticed the shoulders of a girl a few seats ahead of me shaking ominously.
Miss Plympton proceeded: "'And the Levites: both Jeshua, the son of Azaniah, Binnui of the sons of Henadad, Kadmiel; And their brethren Shebaniah, Hodijah, Kelita, Pelaiah, Hanan, Micha, Rehob, Hashabiah, Zaccur, Sherebiah, Shebaniah, Hodijah, Bani, Beninu,' – "
Other shoulders were shaking and Dee buried her face in her hands. There was an unmistakable snort from a dignified Senior. One of the tiny little girls giggled outright and suddenly without any one knowing how it started, the whole school was in a roar.
Now it is not so difficult to come down on a few offenders, but when a whole school goes to pieces what is the one in command to do? It wasn't that there was anything so very humorous in the tenth chapter of Nehemiah, but the way Miss Plympton read it; the way she rattled off those impossible names with as much ease as she would have shown in calling the roll, the way she looked in her tight new suit, – just the way the whole school felt, anyhow – a kind of tense feeling that something was going to happen, made our risibles get the better of us. Everything in the room rocked with laughter except Miss Plympton. She just made chins.
The teachers on the platform were as bad as the students. Miss Ball was completely overcome and the very dried-up instructor in mathematics had to be led off the platform in the last stages of hysterics. Margaret Sayre told me afterwards that she was very glad to do the leading as she herself was at the bursting point.
Miss Plympton looked at the giggling and roaring mass of girls and quietly went on reading in her hard even tones, her voice slightly raised, however: "'The chief of the people: Parosh, Pahath-moab, Elam, Zatthu, Bani, Bunni; Azgad, Bebai, Adonijah, Bigvai, Adin, Ater' – "
The laughter of some of the girls changed to weeping and about half the school had hysterics. Miss Plympton did not understand girls at all, but she understood them well enough to know that when once hysterics gets started in a crowd of girls there is no more stopping it than a stampede of wild cattle.
I hate sacrilege, but for the life of me I can't see why any one should think that any human being could get any good or spiritual strength for the day from listening to the tenth chapter of Nehemiah. I never heard of a school breaking out into hysterics over the twenty-third Psalm or the Sermon on the Mount. Why should not a suitable thing be chosen to read to young people?
Miss Plympton was furious, but whatever she said to the pupils, she would have to say to the teachers, so she held her peace and after making some hundred or so chins she had prayers and then a mild hymn. The storm had subsided except for an occasional sniff. Some of the most hysterically inclined had been forced to leave the assembly room and these came sneaking back during the singing of the hymn. The Math teacher had to go to bed and we all with one accord blessed Sheribiah, Shebiniah, Hodijah, Bani, and Beninu.
CHAPTER VIII
INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE
"Keep your seats, young – ladies, I suppose I must call you. I have something to say to you." We thought it was coming and were glad to have it over with. "Something has occurred, very grave in its nature."
"Pshaw!" I thought. "Having a feast in the Gym is not so terribly grave." I had for the moment forgot entirely about the boys' escapade.
"Last night, Mr. Ryan, our night watchman, who faithfully keeps watch over the building while you are sleeping, was coming to his duties from the village where he lives when he was startled by an apparition. Three figures, garbed in white, came suddenly upon him out of the darkness. This was just outside the school grounds and about five minutes after nine o'clock – immediately after your unmasking, I take it. Mr. Ryan was very startled, so much so that he turned and ran all the way back to the village and he declares that these figures ran after him. He says that he was able to note that two of them were tall and one quite short. The poor old man is very superstitious and thinks they were ghosts, but we are too enlightened to believe such a thing. In fact, we have reason to believe we know the girls who perpetrated what, no doubt, they consider a joke, but to our minds it is nothing more than a cruel prank that none but unlady-like, ill-bred hoydens could be capable of." Here she paused and grasping firmly the last few superfluous chins that had formed above her collar, she resolutely pushed them back and resumed her discourse. "I need hardly say on whom my suspicions have fallen – the fact of its having been two tall figures and one short one can mean only Mary Flannagan and the Tucker twins."
We sat electrified! Why Mary and the Tuckers any more than any other three girls in the school? Mary was certainly not the shortest girl in the school and the Tuckers were certainly not the tallest. It was so silly that I would have laughed aloud if I had not been too indignant. Tweedles sat up very straight and sniffed the air like war horses ready for battle, while Mary Flannagan looked for all the world like a little Boston bull dog straining at his leash to get at the throat of some antagonist.
Now at this juncture a remarkable thing occurred when we consider Annie Pore's timidity. She stood up and with that clear wonderful voice, musical whether in speaking or singing, said:
"Miss Plympton, I am exactly the height of the Tuckers and Mary Flannagan is my intimate friend and roommate! I insist upon being held in exactly the same ridiculous suspicion that you have placed my three friends."
"I am a little shorter but will walk on my tip toes the rest of my life if it is necessary to prove that I was with the Tuckers and Mary Flannagan from the time of unmasking last night until we went to our room at ten!" I blurted out, springing to my feet.
I was very angry with the boys for getting us into this scrape, but since we were there, I was determined to stay with my friends. Of course it was Harvie and Wink and Shorty who had met old Mr. Ryan. They had left the building just before nine, and he, poor old thing, being of a naturally superstitious turn of mind had come to the school earlier than usual, as he knew it was Hallowe'en and feared something might catch him. The boys saw he was scared and, boy-like, had given chase.
"What have you to say for yourself, Miss Flannagan?" said Miss Plympton, ignoring Annie and me as though we had never existed.
"Nothing but this: 'I deny the allegation and defy the alligator,'" said Mary, quoting Mrs. Malaprop with as much composure as she could muster.
"And you, Miss Caro – ginia Tucker?" she demanded, looking first at Dum and then at Dee and finally striking a medium course and looking between them.
"I – " tweedled the twins and then both stopped. "I – " still tweedling.
"One at a time!" snapped our principal.
"I don't know what you accuse us of exactly," said Dum, taking the lead. "If you accuse me of being the same height as my twin and of being much with her, I plead guilty. If you accuse us both of being much taller than our esteemed contemporary, Mary Flannagan, we both will plead guilty. As for running out in the night and scaring poor old Mr. Ryan to death, – why, that is absurd. We can prove as many alibis as necessary. Remember, though, we are merely twins and not triplets, nor yet quartettes. One alibi apiece is all we mean to furnish."
"And I," said Dee, as Dum paused for breath, "I! I don't mean for one instant to furnish an alibi or anything else. I was not out of the Gym after we unmasked at nine until ten when we went to our rooms. I am accustomed to having my word believed and I do not intend to prove anything one way or the other. A criminal is innocent until he is proven guilty, anyhow, and I will leave the matter entirely in your hands." Dee sat down with a crash and opened a book. Miss Plympton looked somewhat taken aback, but she continued in her hard and even tones:
"Do you mean to tell me then, Miss Vir – oline Tucker, – I mean the one who has just sat down, – do you mean to tell me you have no idea who the masked figures were who ran after Mr. Ryan?"
"No, I did not mean to tell you that," said Dee, shutting her book very deliberately and rising again. "You did not ask me that question. But since you intimate that you did, rather than befoul my mouth with even the semblance of a lie, I will tell you that I have a very strong idea who the masked figures were, but that I have not the slightest idea of informing you or any one else on whom my suspicions rest."
As Dee bumped down into her seat there was a murmur of admiration and wonder from the assembled school. Even Annie's bravery sank into insignificance by the side of this daring deed of Dee's.
The Juniors who had been implicated in the feast of the night before were greatly astonished and somewhat relieved at the turn of affairs. They had felt that something was in the wind and certainly thought it was their feast at midnight. It seems that old Mr. Ryan had run all the way home and when he reached there was so out of breath that it took him many minutes to tell his wife what was the matter. He had refused to go to the school to keep watch on such a night, when graves give up their dead. The wife had come in the early morning to resign for her timid spouse. The tale had grown greatly in the telling and now the negro servants had it that sparks of fire flew from the eyes of the ghostly trio. No doubt that was Wink's cigarette, for he had threatened to light it before he was well out of the building.
No wonder we had been able to pull off our midnight party without detection since the school had been minus a night watchman! We were all of us glad we were in trouble over something we had not done instead of something we had done.
When Dee sat down with such a vicious bump, we wondered what next, but Miss Plympton soon put our minds at rest. She made about half a dozen new chins and then spoke, her voice not quite so even as before.
"It is not my intention to bandy words with mere school girls, but I feel that in justice to myself, I must say that it is not merely the fact of the contrasting heights of these malefactors, but it is also evidence of a very convincing character that has been brought to light." We were all ears, waiting for the disclosure. "It is a well-known fact that the Misses Tucker use large handkerchiefs, gentlemen's handkerchiefs. This has been brought to my attention through mistakes that have occurred in the laundry, – ahem – using a similar kind myself, – " Here a smile went over the listening school. "This morning a handkerchief was picked up on exactly the spot where Mr. Ryan began his race with the supposed ghosts." Exhibit No. 1 was then produced and held up for inspection. It was a large and very shady-looking handkerchief with a great red T in the corner. We knew it in a moment for the property of Thomas Hawkins (alias Shorty). "See the initial!" pointing to the red T.
We had joked Shorty the summer before about his very large and gaudy handkerchiefs. He had a varied assortment of H's and T's in all colours of the rainbow. Now Dum arose in her might. Her attitude was dignified and quiet and she held up her hand for permission to speak.
"What is it, Caro – ginia?"
"I wish to say, Miss Plympton, that up to this juncture I have felt that you have been making a mistake, the kind any one might make in a case of mistaken identity, that you have jumped to a conclusion, feeling as you do that my sister and I and our friends are rather wild, – but now let me say, Miss Plympton, that you have overstepped the possibility of being merely mistaken and I consider your remarks and accusations nothing short of insulting. It is bad enough to think we would go out in the night and deliberately scare a poor superstitious old man, but to think," and here Dum's voice took on that oratorical ring that I have heard Zebedee's take when he was very much in earnest about proving a point, "to think that my sister and I would own such a terribly inartistic looking handkerchief as the one you are holding, a great thick, cotton rag with a red initial on it, – and furthermore openly to accuse either one of us of carrying about our persons anything so filthy, so unspeakably dirty, – I wonder you can touch it!" This she said with such a vigorous intonation that Miss Plympton actually dropped the despised handkerchief. "And now, Miss Plympton, my sister and I will with your permission withdraw and will await an apology from you in our room, 117 Carter Hall."
Before the amazed eyes of Miss Plympton and the whole school, those intrepid twins actually got up and with the greatest composure marched out of the assembly hall.
Instead of having to prove their innocence, they had completely turned the tables on Miss Plympton and were demanding an apology from her about something that was entirely foreign to the matter in hand.
Miss Plympton made some more chins and then quite like a good sport accepted her defeat and dismissed us to our classes, and as far as I know, to this day Mr. Ryan does not know what came so near getting him. He was persuaded to resume his duties, however.
We nearly died laughing at Mary Flannagan, who got quite huffy at Dum for being so scornful of Shorty's cotton handkerchief.
"It was a very appropriate, manly handkerchief and I don't think it was at all nice of Dum Tucker to say such mean things about it," fumed Mary, refusing to be comforted. "I hate a sissy boy who uses fine handkerchiefs. The kind Shorty has are good for so many things. He uses them to dust his shoes with and lots of other things."
"Never mind, Mary, it was a nice handkerchief and if you want it, I'll go sneak it off the stage where old Miss Plumpton dropped it," I said, teasing our funny friend. I did get it and had it nicely laundered and put it on the school Christmas tree for Mary, much to her confusion.
Tweedles told me they had hardly been in their room five minutes when Miss Ball came to see them as an emissary from Miss Plympton. She brought Miss Plympton's apology for the slur put upon them in regard to the handkerchief. It seems that their attitude in that matter had quite won over that strange woman, as she herself never used anything but the finest linen handkerchiefs and she quite appreciated their feelings.
"Miss Plympton hopes you will accept her apology," continued Miss Ball; "she also hopes you will assist her in every way to find out the offenders so she can bring them to justice."
"Now, Miss Ball, you know us well enough to feel that you are wasting your breath, don't you?" asked Dee.
"Well, yes, but you must remember I am merely an emissary."
"Well, as man to man, Miss Ball, is it up to us to tell all we suspect might possibly go on outside of the school grounds?"
"Oh! then it may not have been pupils from our school?"
"Possibly not! But don't quote me. I merely suggest that you suggest," and Dee shut up like a clam.
Miss Ball was not at all in love with her job as emissary and had no idea of trying to force a confession from Tweedles, so she left them no wiser than she came and the Tuckers resumed their classes as though nothing had occurred to interrupt the peace of the day.
Miss Plympton seemed to have more respect for our crowd than she had before that scene in the assembly hall. The biggest thing that came from that experience, though, was that Dum and Dee Tucker immediately sent to Richmond for ladies' handkerchiefs.
"We'll save the big ones for blowers but we must have some showers!" they tweedled.
CHAPTER IX
ECCLESIASTICAL POWER
"Girls! Girls! Zebedee has gone and done it!" yelled Dee, bursting in the door of 117 and waving a lettergram wildly over her head.
"Done what?" I gasped. Dee was so excited that I could not tell whether she was overcome with joy or grief. I had a terrible feeling way down in my bed-room slippers that maybe Zebedee had gone and got himself married.
It was quite early in the morning, at least ten minutes before breakfast, and we were just getting into our clothes when Dee, the last one coming from the bath, had run against the maid in the hall, bringing up this mysterious message from Zebedee.
"Oh, it is just like him!"
"What's just like him?" and Dum snatched the telegram from her sister, and read: "'By wire-pulling, leg-pulling and visits to the Bishop and other clergy, have obtained a special dispensation for Tweedles, Page, Annie and Mary to be in Richmond for Thanksgiving game. Am wiring spondulix to Miss Plympton. Pack duds and take first train you can catch. I am treating the crowd. Zebedee.'"
We performed a Lobster Quadrille then and there in honour of Zebedee and then we gave the mystic rap for Annie and Mary. Of course Annie did not think she should accept the railroad trip from Zebedee and wondered what her father would say, but we simply overrode her objections. All the time we were getting into our clothes as fast as we could, as there was an ominous sound below of breakfast on the way, and in a moment the gong boomed forth and we raced down stairs, I still in my bedroom slippers and Dum with her plait on the inside of her middy, hoping to conceal the fact that she had not combed her hair, only smoothed it over.
Miss Plympton was not very gracious over our going. It was not usual for pupils to leave the school on Thanksgiving. That feast comes so close to Christmas it is quite an interruption to the education of the young; but what was she to do but comply? A special delivery letter from the Bishop, a telegram from two preachers and one from the Board of Directors of Gresham were certainly compelling, and there was nothing for her to do but consent.