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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 assembling 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 brass button, 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 passing. "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 class, 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 associate 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! Cassie found her class-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. Cassie 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 Saturday 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.

Even Betty failed for the time to remember the "Road of the Loving Heart" she was trying to leave behind her in every one's memory; and, if the little talisman on her finger pricked her tender conscience once or twice, she silenced it with the reflection that it was her duty to help punish the doer of such a contemptible deed. The name of the club finally suggested the means.

"She told all the secrets of the Shadow Club, and spoiled it," said Katie. "Now we just ought to shadow her. Haunt her, you know, like the Ku Klux Klan, or the White Caps, so she'll leave school and be afraid to listen again as long as she lives."

"Yes," agreed Kitty. "We'll hoodoo her. That is the way."

Such a plan never would have been thought of in a Northern school. Even in this little Kentucky seminary it is doubtful if it could have been carried out had not previous events paved the way. There was scarcely a pupil in the school whose earliest impressions had not been tinged in some degree by the superstitions of some old coloured nurse or family servant. Even Lloyd had not escaped them entirely, in spite of all her mother's watchful care. Mom Beck knew better than to talk of such things openly before her, but she had hinted of them to the other servants in her presence, till Lloyd had a vague uneasiness when she dreamed of muddy water, or spilled the salt, or saw a bird flying against a window. From babyhood such happenings had been associated in her mind with Mom Beck's portents of ill-luck.

There was not a coloured person in the neighbourhood who could have explained why so many graves in the negro cemetery had bottles or fruit-jars placed upon them, inside of which were carefully sealed the whitest of chicken feathers. Undoubtedly they were the relic of some old African fetish, and a reverence for them had been handed down from grizzled grandsire to little pickaninny since the beginning of the slave-trade. In the same way had come all those other superstitions at which white people laughed, but which influenced many of them also to some extent. For many a man who scoffed most, felt more comfortable when he saw the new moon in an open sky than when he caught first sight of it through the trees; and more than one, having once started on a journey, would not have turned back, no matter what important thing was left behind, preferring to do without at any cost or inconvenience rather than risk the ill-luck the turning back would bring.

Lloyd knew more than one housekeeper in the neighbourhood who, for the same reason, would not allow the ashes emptied after sundown, or an umbrella to be raised in the house; and who would turn pale if a mirror was broken or a picture fell from the wall or a dog howled in the night.

Probably not a pupil in the school would have admitted that she believed in ghosts, yet few would have been brave enough to venture into the cellar at night after Mary Phillips' encounter with the spirit of the "veiled lady" on Hallowe'en. That had been a frequent topic of conversation since that night, and had done much to prepare the way for the plot the club concocted.

So Kitty's proposition was received with enthusiasm. The performance began next day when she slipped up behind Mittie in the cloak-room, and solemnly touched her three times in quick succession on the left ear with something she held in her hand. It felt soft and furry, and Mittie, who had a horror of caterpillars, gave a little shriek as she put up her handkerchief to brush it away.

Kitty had already disappeared into the chapel, but Katie was waiting, ready to begin her part of the performance.

"Did you see that?" she said to Janie Clung, in an awed tone, just loud enough for Mittie to hear, and yet low enough to seem confidential.

"I know people who would go stark, raving crazy if that was done to them. What for? I thought everybody knew what for. My old nurse used to say that to be touched three times on the ear by the left hind foot of a rabbit that had been killed in a graveyard in the dark of the moon by a cross-eyed person, was the worst luck anybody could have." She lowered her voice a trifle. "It's a hoodoo-mark! You're marked for the haunts to follow you!"

"The what?" asked another girl who stood near.

"The haunts – ghosts – you know. Jim Briddle calls them 'ha'nts.' Nobody could be more cross-eyed than he is, and he's the one who gave that rabbit's foot to Ranald Walton, and Ranald gave it to Kitty. I should think that Mittie Dupong would feel mighty creepy if she knew what's ahead of her."

Mittie heard and did feel creepy, although she shrugged her shoulders and tried hard to appear unconcerned. The fact that the club seemed to place so much reliance in the hoodoo made a strong impression on Janie Clung, and gave it a weight it would not have possessed otherwise when the occurrence was repeated to the other girls. Before the week was over it was whispered around the school that the charm was really working.

CHAPTER XI
A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

Every day since the first of November there had been a letter for Ida in the Sherman's post-office box, under cover of Lloyd's address. Lloyd had grown to dread the afternoon walks with the school, for she was in a flutter of nervousness from the moment they came in sight of the post-office until the letter was safe in Ida's possession. There was always the fear that Betty might get to the window first, or that she might catch sight of the envelope, addressed with many flourishes in a big, bold hand; or that that letter might be the only one, as it often was, and Betty might wonder why Lloyd's face should grow so red when she answered, "No, nothing for us this time."

It was easier to manage after the weather turned cold enough to furnish an excuse for carrying a muff, but even then she fancied that Miss Mattie looked at her curiously sometimes, when she thrust the daily letter hastily out of sight without a second glance. She never went through the performance without wishing that it might be the last time that she should be placed in such an uncomfortable position; but afterward she always reproached herself for making such a wish. It seemed a very poor friendship that could not stand a little test like that. It was such a small thing to do when the happiness of her friend's whole life was at stake.

Then she had her reward in the evenings, when Ida, with her arms around her, whispered her undying gratitude, or read her extracts from her letters, which gave her glimpses into a romance far more beautiful than the "Fortunes of Daisy Dale," or the "Heiress of Dorn," or any of the others they had read since.

A sort of circulating library had started since the rainy night the Shadow Club read its first volume. Ida had a pile of paper-covered books in her closet which she pronounced fully as interesting as the one she had read aloud; so "Elsie's Wooing," "Fair but False," and the "Heiress of Dorn" began passing in turn from the covers of Katie's geography to Kitty's, and from Lloyd's history to Betty's and Allison's. They read at recess, they read before school, and more than once some exciting chapter proved too interesting to be laid aside in study time for the work of the hour.

After a few volumes of such tales, Betty became fired with an ambition to write one herself, and soon became so absorbed in her pastime that she could think of little else. Eugene was the name of her hero, and Gladys was the maiden who combined all the beauty and virtues possible for one mundane creature to possess. The whole club was consulted as to the colour of her eyes and hair, and many points about which the little author was undecided. They came in time to regard Eugene and Gladys as real personages, in whom they had a family interest. Lloyd had bits of the story read to her sometimes when they were getting ready for bed. Betty lost interest in everything to such an extent that she ceased to be sociable, and spent most of her time alone, dreaming out different scenes in the story, which filled her mind to the exclusion of even her lessons.

One afternoon, near the middle of November, Lloyd, hurrying through the lower hall with an open letter in her hand, met the president.

"Oh, Doctah Wells!" she exclaimed. "I was just going to yoah room. Heah is a note mothah sent you in the lettah that came to-day. She has written for some things she needs, and wants Betty and me to walk up to Locust aftah school with a message to the servants about packing them, if you'll excuse us from the regulah promenade."

"Certainly," he answered, glancing over Mrs. Sherman's gracefully written request.

"But Betty has such a bad cold," continued Lloyd, "that the matron thinks she oughtn't to go out to walk to-day, and it's lonely going back home by myself, when it's all shut up. May I take Ida Shane with me instead? She's nevah seen Locust from the inside, and I'd love to show it to her. You know," a little smile dimpling her face as she spoke, "I can't help being proud of the old place."

"You have good reason," said the professor, smiling back at her kindly. "It is certainly a beautiful old homestead. Yes, I have no objection to Ida's going with you."

"Oh, thank you!" cried Lloyd. She hurried up the stairs to Ida's room, calling excitedly as she reached the door, "Yes, he says you may go. Hurry and put on your things so that we can have as long time as possible up there."

Betty had gone into the matron's room in her absence. It took Lloyd only a moment to slip into her hat and coat. Then catching up her muff and thrusting it under her arm, she started back to Ida's room, buttoning her gloves as she went. Ida had taken down her hair and was deliberately rearranging it before the mirror.

"Oh, what did you do that for?" cried Lloyd, half-impatiently. "It looked all right as it was. We're not going to see any one but the servants. There's no use wearing your best hat." She glanced at the mass of velvet and plumes lying on the bed. "Just pin your hair up any fashion and stick on your mortar-board. That'll do."

"Shut the door, please," said Ida, in a low tone. "I have something to tell you." She bent nearer the mirror, drawing the comb through the fluffy pompadour. "We are going to see some one this afternoon. Edwardo is in the Valley."

Lloyd dropped her muff at this surprising announcement, but Ida went on, calmly. "I've been expecting him for several days. He comes to Lloydsboro sometimes to visit his cousin. I've lain awake nights trying to arrange some way to see him. This is a thousand times better than any way I could think of. I'm the luckiest girl that ever lived to have such a friend as you to plan for me, Princess."

"I don't know what you mean," exclaimed Lloyd. "I haven't planned anything."

"No, not intentionally, but look how easy you have made it for me to have an interview. He'll be on the watch for the seminary girls to pass by the store, for I was to manage to leave a note there for him, telling him where I can see him. All I have to do now is to signal him to follow, and we can have a good long talk at Locust while you are giving the servants their orders. You don't mind, do you?" she asked, as Lloyd continued to stare at her without saying anything.

"No. Oh, no! Of co'se not," answered Lloyd, with a confused laugh. "Only it makes me feel so que'ah to think that I'm really going to see him. It's just as if Lord Rokeby or the squire's son had stepped out of the book. I feel as if I were in a book myself since you told me that. This is the way it would be on the page, if we could stand off and read about ourselves: 'And Violet's little friend led the way down the long avenue, and there on the threshold of her home, after months of cruel separation, the reunited lovers kept their tryst.'"

Ida laughed happily. "You'll have a book written before Betty is half-started if you go on at that rate. Now tell me. Do I look all right?"

She was settling the big picture-hat in place over her soft hair as she anxiously asked the question. Lloyd regarded her critically, tipping her head a trifle to one side as she looked.

"Put your hat a hairbreadth farther over your face," she exclaimed. "There! That's lovely. Oh, Violet, that shade of velvet is so becoming to you. It's just the colah of yoah eyes. I nevah saw you look so beautiful."

A becoming pink flushed Ida's cheeks. She bent her head over the bunch of violets pinned on the lapel of her coat. "It's dear of you to think so," she said, "and it's dear of you to send me these violets every week. These are unusually sweet. I'm so glad I have a fresh bunch for to-day – this happy day."

Lloyd took the keenest delight in watching the graceful girl sweep down the hall ahead of her. From the plumes of the picture-hat to the hem of her stylish gown she thoroughly satisfied Lloyd's artistic instinct for the beautiful. She gave her arm an adoring little squeeze as they passed down the stairs together.

Out on the road she glanced up at Ida again. Happiness had not made her radiant, as it did Daisy Dale, but there was a soft light in the violet eyes which made Lloyd think of a picture she had seen of a vestal maiden on her way to guard the holy altar fires.

Lloyd's heart began to beat faster as she realized that every step was taking them nearer to Edwardo. She pictured him again in her imagination, as she had done so many times before. She would know that pale, serious face with its flashing eyes anywhere she might meet him, she was sure.

Neither of them spoke as they hurried along the path through the lower part of Clovercroft and pushed open the woodland gate. But as they stepped up on the platform in front of the depot, Lloyd said, "Let's cross the track heah, and go up on the othah side of the road. Then we'll not have to pass the waiting-rooms. There's always so many people loafing around the window of the telegraph-office."

Instinctively she felt that while a little girl like herself would attract no attention, Ida in her long sweeping dress that she held up so gracefully, and the big hat drooping over her pretty face, and the stylish fur collar, and the violets on her coat, made a picture that any one would turn to look at twice. She could not bear to think of the bold glances that might be cast after her by the loafers around the depot. It seemed to her little short of sacrilege, although she could not have put the feeling into words, for any eyes but Edwardo's to rest upon her as she went on her way to this meeting with that vestal-maiden look upon her face.

"Very well," assented Ida. "You know we want to stop at the store. I want to get some chocolate creams if they have any fresh ones."

Lloyd's heart gave a frightened thump as she remembered that it was in the store that Edwardo would be watching presently for the seminary girls to go by. It was half an hour earlier than they usually passed, but there was a possibility that he might be there. In less than a minute she might be face to face with the live hero of a real romance. It was with an odd feeling of mingled relief and disappointment that she glanced around the store and saw only familiar faces. A young man whom she knew by sight was perched on the bookkeeper's high stool at the back of the store, so absorbed in the Louisville evening paper which the last mail-train had brought out that he did not look up. A small coloured boy stood patiently by the stove waiting for his coal-oil can to be filled. One of the clerks was tying up a package of groceries for Frazer to carry over to Clovercroft, and the other was showing ginghams to Mrs. Walton's Barbry.

"Be with you in a moment, please," called the first clerk as the girls entered. Lloyd stopped in front of the show-case near the door, and began idly examining the various styles of jewelry and letter-paper displayed within. She had almost decided to invest in a certain little enamelled pin which she knew would delight Mom Beck, and take it up to her as a surprise, when Barbry stepped beside her with a polite greeting and an inquiry about her grandfather's health.

While she was still talking with Barbry, Ida came up flushed and excited. She thrust her bag of chocolates into her muff, and, catching up her skirts, said, hurriedly, "Come on, I'm ready."

Lloyd started at once to follow her to the door, but looked back to nod assent to Barbry's last remark, and in turning again almost ran into the young fellow who had been reading at the bookkeeper's desk. He was hurrying after Ida to open the door for her. He held it aside for them both to pass through, and a flush of displeasure dyed Lloyd's face as she saw the admiring glance he cast boldly at Ida.

"He needn't have gone so far out of his way to have done that," exclaimed Lloyd, as they started up the road toward Locust. "It was the clerk's place to open the doah, and he nearly knocked him down, trying to get there first."

"Who?" inquired Ida, innocently. She was several steps in advance, and could not see Lloyd's face.

"That horrid Mistah Ned Bannon. I can't bea'h him. Papa Jack told mothah she must nevah invite him to the house, undah any circumstances, because he wasn't fit for Betty and me to know, and – "

She stopped abruptly, for Ida turned with a white, pained face.

"Oh, Lloyd!" she cried. "How can you hurt me so? Don't believe any of those dreadful things you hear about him!" Then, seeing from Lloyd's amazed expression that she failed to understand the situation, she added, in a distressed tone, "He is Edwardo."

If Ida had struck her on the face she could not have been more amazed. She stood staring at her helplessly, unable to say a word.

"I must be dreaming all this," she thought. "After awhile I'll surely wake up and find I've had a horrible nightmare."

But the distress in Ida's voice was too real to be a dream. She was biting her lips to keep back the tears. After one look into Lloyd's dismayed face she turned away and began moving slowly on toward Locust. Lloyd walked beside her, mechanically. She could not shake off the feeling that she must be in a dream. From time to time she cast a half-frightened glance toward Ida. She felt that she had wounded her so deeply that nothing she might say could ever make amends. When she saw a tear course slowly down her cheek and splash down on the bunch of flowers on her coat, she clasped her arm impulsively, saying, "Oh, Violet, deah, don't cry! I wouldn't have hurt you for worlds. I didn't have the faintest idea that he was the one."

"It isn't so much what you said," answered Ida, controlling her voice with an effort, "but I'd counted so much on your friendship for him. And now to know that people have prejudiced you against him before you've had a chance to meet him and find out for yourself that they're mistaken – " She stopped with a sob. "Under all his wild ways he's good and noble and true at heart, and it isn't fair for everybody to condemn him for what he has done, and stand in his way when he's trying so hard to do better."

One little hand in the muff was bare, and Lloyd saw the gleam of the pearl on it as Ida took out her handkerchief and dabbed it hastily across her eyes. It brought back all that scene in the moonlighted orchard, and Ida's blushing confession: "He says that is what my life means to him – a pearl. That if it wasn't for my love and prayers he wouldn't care what became of him or what he did. Do you blame me for disregarding aunt's wishes?" And again as on that night the Little Colonel's heart swelled with an indignant "No!" Again she arrayed herself beside her friend, ready to do battle for her against the whole world if necessary.