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CHAPTER VII – THE YELLOW KERCHIEF AGAIN

School opened the next Monday and the girls of Central High took up their tasks “for the last heat” of the year, as Jess Morse expressed it.

“And I’m glad,” she told her chum, Laura Belding, “Just think! next Fall we’ll be seniors.”

“Wishing your life away,” laughed Laura. “We were awfully glad to be juniors, I remember.”

“Sure. But we’ll boss the school next fall,” said Jess.

“We’ve done very well for juniors, especially in athletics,” observed Laura. “Why, practically, our bunch has dominated athletics for a year, now. We made the eight-oared shell in our sophomore year.”

“True. And the champion basketball team, too.”

“And Eve is going to qualify for the broad jump as well as the shot-put, I verily believe,” said Laura. “I’m glad I found that girl and got her to come to Central High instead of going to Keyport.”

“She was a lucky find,” admitted Jess. “And she wasn’t much afraid of those Gypsies last week – did you notice?”

“Of course she wasn’t. She told me this morning that the constable over there looked for the camp, but the Romany folk had moved on.”

“I wonder if they caught that girl in the yellow kerchief,” said Jess, thoughtfully.

“Don’t know. But they managed to scare Bobby pretty thoroughly,” said Laura. “I never did see Bobby Hargrew quite so impressed.”

Jess smiled. “She seemed to know something about you, too, Laura – that Gypsy queen. She knew you had a negro mammy at home.”

“I don’t know how she guessed that,” admitted Laura. “But I believe all that fortune telling is foolishness. If she came to the house and told Mammy Jinny half what she did us, Mammy would be scared to death. We had a good laugh on the dear old thing yesterday. She’s had a cold for several days and mother insisted upon calling Dr. Agnew in to see her. You know how Nellie’s father is – always joking and the like; and he enjoys puzzling Mammy Jinny. So when he had examined her he said:

“‘Mammy, the trouble is in your thorax, larynx and epiglottis.’

“‘Ma soul an’ body, Doctor!’ exclaimed Mammy, turning gray. ‘An’ I only t’ought I had a so’ t’roat.’”

“But Mammy does like to use long words herself,” chuckled Jess. “She will remember those words and spring them on you some time. Remember when her nephew had the rheumatism?”

“Of course,” Laura replied. “We asked her if it was the inflammatory kind and she said:

“‘Sho’ it’s exclamatory rheumatism. He yells all de time.’”

“But I do wonder,” said Jess, again, “if the Gypsies caught that girl. She must have wanted badly to get away from them to have run the risk of being chased by a bloodhound.”

“And she was smart, too,” Laura agreed. “Running on that wall and wading in the stream threw the dog off the scent.”

“If one of us had done such a thing as that when the water was so cold we would have got our ‘never-get-over,’” declared Jess.

“I believe you. And a lot of us girls are ‘tender-feet,’ as Chet says, at this time of year. We have been in the house too much. I tell you, Jess, we’ve got to get ’em out in the field just as soon as it’s dry enough. Bill Jackway is working on the track and Mrs. Case says she thinks we can start outdoor relay practice and quarter-mile running on Saturday – if it’s pleasant.”

“That’s what we have got to practice up on, too, if we want to win the points we need to put Central High at the top of the list,” agreed her chum.

“I should say!”

The moment they were freed from the regular lessons of the day Laura and Jess and their particular friends made for the handsome gym, building and athletic field that Colonel Richard Swayne had made possible for them. Bobby Hargrew was very much down in the mouth, for she had gone up against Miss Carrington at several points and the martinet had been very severe with the irrepressible.

“I tell you what,” growled Bobby, “I believe that little brother of Alice Long hit it off about right when it comes to teachers.”

“How is that?” asked Laura.

“Why, he came home after going to school a few days last Fall, and says he: ‘I don’t think teachers know much, anyway. They keep asking you questions all the time.’”

“I agree with you there,” Jess said. “And such useless questions! Why, if you answered them literally half the time you’d be swamped in demerits. For instance, did you notice that one to-day: ‘Why did Hannibal cross the Alps?’ I felt just like answering: ‘For the same reason the chicken crossed the road!’”

The girls got into their gym. suits in a hurry and then played passball for a while, and, when well warmed up, went out on the field. Mrs. Case appeared and tried some of the younger ones out in relay running, while several of the bigger ones, including Eve, tried the broad jump, and Laura, and Jess, and more of the juniors trotted around the cinder path.

Central High had to develop a first-class sprinter to win that event at the June tourney, and, as Laura said, “it was a question where the lightning would strike.” Every girl whowould run – even down to the freshies – was to be tried out. As for the relay races, that was a matter of general interest. To-day Mrs. Case’s whistle blew in half an hour, and every girl oh the field lined up for a “shuttle relay” – half of them on one line and half on the other, fifty yards apart.

At the sound of the whistle Number 1 girl shot off across the running space and touched Number 2, the latter dashing back to touch Number 3, and so on until the last girl crossed the line at the finish. This is a splendid form of relay-racing, for it keeps the girls on the alert, and the distance is not too great for any girl, who has a physician’s approval, to run.

Mrs. Case, however, was extremely careful – as was Dr. Agnew, the medical inspector – as to the condition of the girls before they entered upon any very serious training. The afternoons of this first week of school were spent in working out the girls gradually, the instructor learning what they really could do. Nor were any of the girls allowed to work on the track, or in the gym., two days in succession.

But Saturday afternoon was devoted to real work and the making up of the relay teams for practice during the spring. It chanced to be a glorious day, too, and the field was well attended. Bobby Hargrew was faithfully practicing for the quarter-mile sprint. She was as fast as anybody in the junior class, and for once was really putting her mind to the work.

“If Gee Gee doesn’t hamper me too much with conditions and extra work, maybe I can be of some help to the school,” spoke Miss Bobby. “But I can see plainly she’s got it in for me.”

“That’s what the Gypsy fortune-teller told you,” returned Jess. “Didn’t she warn you to beware of one of your teachers – and a woman?”

Bobby’s light-hearted chatter was stilled and she paled as Jess reminded her of the Gypsy woman.

“Pooh!” Laura quickly said. “There is nothing in that foolishness.” Bobby had utterly refused to tell them what Grace Varey, the Gypsy queen, had told her in the tent. “She could easily see that Bobby was full of good spirits and that she must always be in difficulties with her teachers – and of course it was safe to guess that she would have trouble with a female teacher. I wouldn’t give a minute’s thought to such foolishness.”

But Bobby would not be led to say anything farther, and was very quiet for a time.

She was with Laura and the other juniors, however, over by the gate, when Nell Agnew made her great discovery. The girls had been playing captain’s ball on one of the courts, and they were all warm and tired. Wrapped in their blanket coats, on which Mrs. Case insisted at this time of the year, they were resting on the bench which faced the gateway, and the gate was open.

“My goodness me!” gasped the doctor’s daughter, suddenly, “isn’t that the same girl?”

“Huh?” asked Bobby. “Isn’t what the same girl? You’re as lucid as mud, Nell.”

“Out there! Quick, Laura – don’t you see her?”

Laura Belding craned her neck to see outside the yard. Across the street a girl was passing slowly. They could not see her face, and she was wrapped in a long cloak – or waterproof garment.

“Look at that yellow handkerchief!” exclaimed Jess.

“I saw it – and I saw her face,” said Nellie.

“That’s like the girl we saw up there on the ridge,” admitted Laura, slowly.

“The Gypsy girl!” exclaimed Jess, in excitement.

“It was she. I saw her face,” repeated Nell.

“Now, what do you know about that?” cried Jess. “Why, she must have gotten away from those people, after all. I’m glad of it.”

Bobby said never a word, but she stared after the yellow kerchief, which showed plainly above the collar of the mantle the strange girl wore. And while her mates discussed with interest the appearance in town of the fugitive from the Gypsy camp, Bobby was only thoughtful.

CHAPTER VIII – THE GIRL IN THE STORM

Now, Bobby Hargrew was not naturally a secretive girl. Far from it. Her mates noted, however, that of late she had grown quieter. Ever since their adventure with the Gypsies she had seemed distraught at times, and not at all like her usual merry, light-hearted self.

“That horrid Gypsy woman told her something that scared her,” Jess Morse said to Laura Belding. “I didn’t think Bobby would be so easily gulled.”

“Those people know how to make things seem awful real, I expect,” returned her chum, thoughtfully. “If I had not been on my guard, and had the woman not tried to learn something from me, instead of attempting to mystify me, I expect I would have fallen under her spell.”

“Nonsense!” laughed Jess.

“Well, it seems Bobby was impressed,” said Laura.

“I should say she was. And whatever the woman told her, it is something that is supposed to happen in the future. Bobby is looking forward to it with terror.”

“I wish I knew what it was.”

“But Bobs won’t take you into her confidence,” sighed Jess.

“No. I’ve sounded her. And it is no mere trouble that she expects in school. It is something more serious than Miss Carrington’s severity,” Laura rejoined.

Clara Hargrew probably had more friends among the girls of Central High than any other girl on the Hill; yet she had not one “crush.” She was “hail-fellow-well-met” with all her schoolmates, and never paired off with any particular girl. She had nobody in whom she would naturally confide – not even at home.

For there had been no mother in the Hargrew home for several years. Mr. Hargrew idolized Bobby, who was the oldest of his three girls; but a father can never be like a mother to a girl. Her two sisters were small – the youngest only six years old. The housekeeper and nurse looked out for the little girls; but Bobby was answerable to nobody but her father, and he was a very easy-going man indeed. He was proud of Bobby, and of her smartness and whimsicality; and about everything she did was right in his eyes.

The fact that his oldest daughter had been a good deal of a tomboy never troubled the groceryman in the least. “She was as good as any boy,” he often laughingly said, and it was he who had nicknamed her “Bobby.”

But the girl was just now at the age and stage of growth when she needed a mother’s advice and companionship more than any other time in her life. And she felt woefully alone these days.

She was usually the life of the house when she was indoors, and the little girls, Elsie and Mabel, loved to have her as their playmate. In the evenings, too, she was used to being much with her father. But of late Mr. Hargrew had been going out one or two evenings each week – a new practice for him – and on these evenings when her father was absent, Bobby was so gloomy that it was not long before the little girls complained.

“You’re sick, child,” declared Mrs. Ballister, the old lady who had been with them since long before Mrs. Hargrew died.

“No, I’m not,” declared Bobby.

“Then you’ve done something that’s settin’ heavy on your conscience,” declared the old lady, nodding. “Nothing else would make you so quiet, Clara.”

And Bobby felt too miserable to “answer back,” and swallowed the accusation without comment.

It was early in the week following the Saturday on which the girls had seen the fugitive from the Gypsy camp passing the athletic field. Soon after the mid-day recess a sudden spring thunder storm came up, the sky darkened, the air grew thick, and sharp lightning played across the clouds before the threatened downpour.

Some of the girls were so frightened that they ran in from the recreation ground before the gong rang. The heavens were overcast and the trees before the schoolhouse began to writhe in the rising wind.

The first heavy drops were falling when Bobby, who had been excused by Miss Carrington to do an errand during the recess, turned the corner and faced the sudden blast. It swooped down upon her with surprising power, whirled her around, flung her against the fence, and then, in rebounding, she found herself in another person’s arms.

“Oh, dear me! Excuse me – do!” gasped Bobby, blinded for the moment and clinging to the person with whom she had collided. “I – I didn’t mean to run you down.”

At that instant there was a blinding flash followed by a roll of thunder that seemed to march clear across the sky. Bobby felt this girl whom she clung to shrink and tremble at the sound. Now, Bobby herself was not particularly afraid of thunder and lightning, and she immediately grew braver.

“Come on!” she said. “We’ll get wet here. Let’s run into the boys’ vestibule – that’s nearest.”

The boys’ yard was empty; indeed, the afternoon session had been called to order now in all the classrooms. Bobby and the strange girl ran, half blindly, into the graveled yard and up the steps.

Just as they entered the vestibule the downpour came. The flood descended and had they been out in it half a minute longer the fugitives would have been saturated.

“Just in time!” cried Bobby, attempting to open the inner door.

“Oh! I can’t go in there,” stammered the strange girl.

“Nor I guess I can’t, either,” said Bobby, half laughing, half breathless. “It’s locked – and the wind is blowing the rain right into this vestibule. Come on! Let’s shut this outside door.”

The half of the two-leaved door of the vestibule which had been open was heavy; but Bobby’s companion proved to be a strong and rugged girl, and together they managed to close it. Then, with the rain and wind shut out, although the roar of the elements was still loud in their ears, the two girls were able to examine each other.

And instantly Bobby Hargrew forgot all about the thunder, and lightning, and rain. She stared at the girl cowering in the corner, who winced every time the lightning played across the sky, and closed her eyes with her palms to the reverberation of the thunder.

The girl was perhaps a couple of years older Bobby herself. She was dark and had a tangle of black hair which was dressed indifferently. A woolen cap was drawn down almost to her ears. She was rather scrubbily dressed, and nothing that she wore looked very clean or very new. The waist she had on was cut low at the neck – so low that the girl had tied loosely around her throat a soft, yellow muffler.

Although the old brown cloak she wore hid her green skirt, Bobby knew that the girl before her was the one she and her friends had seen escaping from the Gypsy camp nearly a fortnight before. The girl who had been unafraid of pursuit by the bloodhound, and had run upon stone fences and waded in an ice-cold mountain brook to hide her trail, now cowered in the vestibule of the schoolhouse, in a nervous tremor because of the thunderstorm.

“My! but you are scared of lightning, aren’t you?” exclaimed Bobby, after a minute, and when the noise of the elements had somewhat ceased.

“I – I always am,” gasped the girl.

“The lightning won’t hurt you – at least, the lightning you see will never hurt you, my father says,” added Bobby. “The danger is all past by the time you see the flash of it.”

“But I can’t help being frightened,” replied the girl.

“No. I suppose not. And I guess you are brave enough about other things to make up, eh?”

The girl looked up at her, but was evidently puzzled. She glanced through the glass doors of the building into the corridor.

“Is this the school building?” she asked, quickly.

“Yes. But this is the boys’ entrance, so I don’t want to ring. I’d get scolded for coming here,” said Bobby.

“Oh, don’t ring!” exclaimed the girl, putting a timid hand upon Bobby’s arm. “This is the big school, isn’t it?”

“It’s the biggest in town. It’s Central High,” said Bobby, proudly.

“You go here to school, of course?” asked the girl, somewhat wistfully.

“Yes. I’m a junior.”

The other shook her head. The grading of the school was evidently not understood by the Gypsy girl.

“Say! do you have many teachers in this school?” she asked.

“Yes. There’s enough of them,” replied Bobby, grumblingly.

“Women, too?”

“Yes. Some women.”

“Who are they?” asked the girl, quickly. “What’s their names?”

The thunder was rolling away now, but the rain was still beating down in such volume that the girls could not venture forth. Bobby would have gotten wet in running around to the girls’ entrance.

“Why,” she said, studying the Gypsy’s face in a puzzled way. “There’s Miss Gould.”

“Gould? That’s not her whole name, is it?” asked this curious girl.

“Miss Marjorie Gould.”

“Say it slow – say the letters,” commanded the Gypsy girl.

Bobby, much amazed, began:

“M-a-r-j-o-r-i-e G-o-u-l-d.”

The strange girl shook her head. Bobby saw that she had been counting the letters of Miss Gould’s name on her fingers, and she asked:

“Don’t you read English?”

“No. I’m Austrian. I know some German. A woman taught me. But I never went to school – never to a school like this,” said the Gypsy girl, with a sigh.

“Who are you?” asked Bobby, deeply interested.

“You – you can call me Margit – Margit Salgo, from Austria.”

Now, this puzzled Bobby Hargrew more than ever, for she knew that the Gypsies the girl had been with were English. Yet she was afraid of frightening the girl by telling her what she already knew about her. And immediately the Gypsy girl asked her another question:

“Spell me some of their other names, will you?”

“Whose other names?”

“The lady teachers,” replied Margit, her black eyes flashing eagerly.

“Why – why, there’s Mrs. Case,” stammered Bobby.

“How do you spell the letters?”

“R-o-s-e C-a-s-e,” said Bobby, slowly.

“No! no!” exclaimed Margit. “Not enough. Too short.”

“But don’t you know the name of the woman you are looking for?”

“I didn’t say I was looking for anybody,” said Margit, with suspicion. “I am just curious.”

“And you can’t repeat the name?”

“I never heard it repeated. I only know how many letters there are. I saw it on a card. I counted the letters,” said the girl, with a shrewd light in her eyes. “Now! haven’t you any more lady teachers here?”

“There’s Gee Gee!” exclaimed Bobby, with half a chuckle, amused at the thought of Miss Carrington being mixed up in any manner with this half-wild Gypsy girl.

“Too short,” said the other, shaking her head decidedly.

“Oh, her real name is long enough. It’s Grace G. Carrington.”

“Spell it out,” commanded Margit Salgo, eagerly.

Bobby did so, but the girl shook her head. “Not enough letters,” she declared.

“Why – there are sixteen letters to Miss Carrington’s name,” said Bobby, wonderingly. “How many are there to the name you are hunting for?”

“Two more,” said Margit, promptly.

“Eighteen?”

“Yes. Now, don’t you tell anybody what I say. That’s a good girl,” urged the other.

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” asked Bobby, in wonder.

“I’m afraid of everybody,” muttered the girl.

“You’ve – you’ve run away from somebody?” ventured Bobby, fearing to startle the fugitive by telling her just how much she didknow.

“Never you mind about me. Thank you for what you’ve told me. I – I guess the worst of it’s over now, and I’ll go,” said Margit, and she tugged at the knob of the outer door.

The rain was still falling fast; but the thunder only muttered in the distance and the electric display had entirely passed.

“Wait!” cried Bobby, earnestly. “Maybe I can help you some more.”

“No. I don’t need anybody to help me. I can take care of myself,” replied the Gypsy girl, sullenly.

She mastered the door-latch, pulled the door open, and ran out into the rain. In half a minute she was flying up the street, and not until she was out of sight did Bobby remember something that might be of great importance in explaining the mystery.

“Why, Miss Carrington always writes her name ‘Grace Gee Carrington,’” exclaimed Bobby. “There’s the eighteen letters that the girl is looking for. I never thought of that!”