Chapter 6 A MORAL OBLIGATION

Katherine's entry into High School life was a complete success-one of those rare, astonishing successes that happen about once in a decade. The regular members of the class, who have been together since the beginning, will by constant effort have attained a fair measure of popularity by the fourth year, when suddenly a personality will appear out of the vast and seize and hold the center of the stage. Katherine's spectacular exploit at the Sandebago Circus was heralded far and wide, and when she entered school the following Monday morning she found herself already famous.

Everywhere she was pointed out as "the girl who had ridden the donkey," "the girl with the funny voice," "the girl who made the screaming speeches." Teachers agreed unanimously that she was the most erratically brilliant student they had ever had in their classes-when she could remember to turn her work in. Her compositions were read out in class and brought down the house. When she rose to recite you could hear a pin drop. It was an open secret that the two English teachers had drawn lots to see who would get her, and not a few pupils suddenly discovered conflicts in their recitations and got themselves changed into the class where Katherine was.

Her absent-mindedness soon became proverbial. Odd shoes-gloves of two different colors-hat on hind side before, or somebody else's hat altogether-these were everyday occurrences. Her friends told with chuckles how she had climbed one flight of stairs too many on her way to Math class and walked into a Freshman English class, her mind busy working out the solution of a problem in geometry. When some other Katherine was called upon to recite she rose solemnly and, going to the board, gave a masterly demonstration of a knotty theorem in solid geometry, and then marched out with the class, serenely unconscious of her mistake, oblivious to the laughter of the class and the amusement of the teacher, who let her go on without interruption to see how far she would go. Her bewilderment when asked by the regular geometry teacher to explain why she had cut class that morning was comical.

Possessing neither beauty, style, pretty clothes, nor all the dozen other things that make the ordinary girl popular, her very unusualness gave her a distinction, and inside of two weeks she was the best-known girl in the whole school. To be counted as one of her friends was an honor, and to be able to say, "Katherine told me this," or, "Katherine did this up at our house," was to incite the envy of less favored ones. The Uranians, the most exclusive and select girl's society in the school, voted her in as a member because they must have all the prominent girls, although they generally scorned both worth and brains, if clothed in poor garments, and great was their chagrin to find that their disdained rivals, the clever and democratic Dramatic Club, had held a special meeting and taken her in the afternoon before. Urania had not noticed that Katherine had been wearing the Dramatic Club pin a whole day because she had stuck it over a hole in her stocking which she did not have time to mend.

How the Winnebagos exulted because Hinpoha had been polite enough to invite her to the circus and she had consequently landed in their bosom the first thing! No other group of girls would ever know her as intimately as they would. The Camp Fire idea appealed to her from the start. The Open Door Lodge was a paradise for her. The ladder stairs were a constant source of delight.

"One would think you had never climbed a ladder before," said Hinpoha, watching curiously as Katherine climbed up and down and up again just for the fun of the thing. Katherine draped her feet around a rung to support herself and sat on the top bar.

"I never did," she said simply.

"Never climbed a ladder!" said Hinpoha incredulously. "Why, where did you live?"

"In Arkansas," answered Katherine significantly. "Do you know," she went on, "that until I came east I had never seen a flight of stairs? I had never seen a flight of stairs!" she repeated, as Hinpoha and the other girls in the Lodge gasped unbelievingly. "We lived in a one-story house, the floor level with the ground, so you just walked in from the outside without going up steps. The house was in the middle of a big farm, as level and flat as this floor. I rode ten miles to school and that was built just like our house. Oh, of course I knew there were such things as stairs, because I had seen them in pictures, but until I came here I had never seen any."

"But didn't you see any when you went traveling?" asked Hinpoha, still incredulous.

"Never went traveling," returned Katherine. "It took considerable hustling to stay right where we were. One year the locusts ate up everything, down to the clothes on the line, and we couldn't get enough feed to fatten the stock; the next year there were prairie fires that licked the earth as clean as a plate; one year the cattle all died of disease, and so on. It wasn't until this year that we came out ahead enough to send me here to school."

And when the girls heard what a hard time she had had they adored her more than ever because she could be so funny when she had had so little to be funny about.

Another thing that charmed her beyond measure was the color of the autumn leaves. The Winnebagos could hardly pull her past a tree. "There was only one tree in sight on our farm," she would tell them, "and that wasn't green like the trees are in the east; it was just a dusty, greenish gray. And the leaves didn't turn colors in the fall; they just withered up and dropped off. Oh-h-h, look at that one over there-isn't it just too gorgeous for words?"

When we said that both teachers and pupils regarded Katherine as too good to be true, we should have made one exception. That exception was Miss Snively, the Senior Oratory teacher. Most of the teachers were liked by some scholars and disliked by some, according to disposition or circumstance; but all pupils agreed heartily that they did not like Miss Snively. She was neither old nor bad looking; in fact, she was rather handsome when you saw her for the first time, but she was so bitingly sarcastic that her classes stood in fear and trembling of being singled out for some poisoned shaft. Sarcasm and ridicule are the most deadly weapons to use against boys and girls of the high school age. They are not old enough to know how to come back, and can only nurse the smart and writhe impotently. And of all classes to have a sarcastic teacher, Senior Oratory is the worst. It is bad enough to stand up and make a speech with appropriate gestures before a sympathetic teacher who corrects diplomatically and never, never laughs, but to have one who eyes you coldly all the while and then gets up and does it the way you did, only ten times worse-more buckets of tears had been shed over Senior Oratory than all other subjects put together.

When Katherine entered the class Miss Snively took immediate exception to her voice. Miss Snively's particular hobby was Woman's Voice. Hers was high and artificially sweet-it fairly oozed syrup-and she did her level best to make her girl pupils imitate it. So when Katherine began reading in her husky nasal drawl, Miss Snively promptly read the piece after her, imitating her voice as best she could, and then looked around the room for the laughter of the pupils which would complete Katherine's mortification. But nobody laughed. They all sympathized with Katherine. They had been in her shoes themselves. The blood mounted to Katherine's temples when she realized that Miss Snively was deliberately making fun of her, and a hurt look came into her eyes. She was sensitive about her voice, even if she did get endless fun out of it. When Miss Snively handed her the book again and bade her in sarcastic tones to read further for the edification of the class, Katherine sat silent. To her horror she found there was a lump in her throat and she would most likely break down utterly if she tried to say a word. She did not mean to be stubborn-she was only waiting for control of her voice, for she was too proud to let Miss Snively see how badly she felt. So she sat silent, miserably twisting her handkerchief in her hands.

"Go back to your session room," said Miss Snively sharply, who boasted of her summary measures with her scholars. So Katherine left the room in disgrace. From that time on there was a marked antagonism between those two. Miss Snively lost no chance to make Katherine ridiculous in class, and, while Katherine had too much respect for teachers to openly defy her, she "took off" her affected manners to delighted audiences outside of class, and Miss Snively knew it and was powerless to stop it. But, outside of her skirmishes with Miss Snively, Katherine's progress through school was a triumphal march.

In every school, and Washington High was no exception, there will be found various elements-some good and some bad. Color rushes, which had given an annual vent to the mysterious feeling of hostility which always exists between junior and senior classes, had been abolished. But the feeling still existed, and manifested itself in various skirmishes. The year before, when the juniors gave their annual dance, the seniors carried away the refreshments. On the night of the senior dance the lights refused to work, and, of course, the juniors were at the bottom of the mystery. The principal, thinking rightly that pranks of this kind reflected little credit on his school, wrathfully declared that if any of the seniors attempted to spoil the juniors' party this year there would be trouble. But there were certain lawless spirits in the senior class who still thought pranks of that nature funny, and it was not long before plans were hatching as merrily as before. It was all very vague, what was going to be done and who was going to do it, but it was in the air, and everybody who was up on school affairs knew there was a storm brewing.

The first definite news came to the Winnebagos through Katherine. "I've been asked to a select party," she announced one night up in the Open Door Lodge, spreading her bony hands out before the blazing log on the hearth. "It's something like the Boston Tea Party," she went on.

"Must be going to be quite an affair," said Gladys, who was stirring fudge over the fire. "May we inquire where?"

"Oh, girls," said Katherine, with a serious face, "do you know what's in the wind? The Seniors are to put a lot of live mice through the windows in the middle of the Junior dance."

"The Seniors?" exclaimed Hinpoha and Gladys in one breath. "What Seniors?"

"Oh, Charlie Hughes and Eddie Myers and that bunch. You know the half dozen that go around together and call themselves the Clan? Well, those. They were mixed up in the business last year." Although Katherine was a newcomer in the school she was already well versed in its history.

"How did you find it out?" asked Hinpoha.

"Cora Burton told me." Cora was one of Katherine's devoted admirers and tried hard to be chummy with her, although Katherine did not care for her in the least. "Cora's a particular friend of Charlie Hughes, and she and some other girls are going along to see the fun. But she couldn't keep it secret and told me today and asked if I wanted to go along."

"Oh, Katherine, you're not going?" said Sahwah anxiously.

The disgusted expression on Katherine's face was answer enough.

"Hadn't we better tell some of the teachers?" asked Gladys, pausing in her stirring. "I wish Nyoda were here." Miss Kent had been called out of town on account of the death of an aunt and would be away until after the party.

"We ought to, I think," said Hinpoha.

Katherine stood up beside the fireplace, and resting one elbow on the shelf humped her shoulders in her favorite attitude and began to speak. "Girls," she said, "this Junior-Senior business is going to be an awful mess, and the result will be that somebody will be expelled or not permitted to graduate. Students are going to take sides in the affair and there will be no end of hard feelings. I for one don't care to play the r?le of informer. So far we Winnebagos have kept entirely out of anything of this kind and wish we could get along without having any connection with this."

"But the teachers would never tell who told them," said Hinpoha.

"The teachers wouldn't," answered Katherine, "but Cora Burton would. And then maybe someone would say that I had been in the thing to start with and then grew afraid and told on the others. You know how those stories grow. Stay out of it altogether, say I, and avoid publicity."

"But don't you think it's our duty to try and stop such horrid pranks?" asked Hinpoha doubtfully.

"I certainly do," said Katherine, "and if we were the only ones who suspected anything it would be different. But all the teachers know that something is going to happen and they will be on the lookout. And the Juniors know it also, and they will be on their guard. I doubt very much if those mice ever get into the room, even if we keep silent."

And the Winnebagos, remembering Hinpoha's sad experience the year before, decided that it was perhaps better after all to keep out of the affair altogether.

"I thought you'd see it my way after you'd considered all sides," said Katherine, reaching out her long fingers and taking three pieces of fudge off the plate where it was cooling, "but that isn't what I wanted to talk about tonight. It's Cora Burton that bothers me. She isn't a bad sort of girl, and I can't see why she should want to get mixed up in that sort of thing, especially when there's bound to be trouble later. If she were to be seen with those boys Friday night it would go hard with her. I suppose she thinks she's right in the swim being connected with a prank, because she isn't very popular otherwise. The other girls that are in it aren't ladylike and it's not much use getting after them, but Cora's different, somehow. I wish something could be done about it." And she crunched a piece of fudge between her teeth with violence.

"We might get up a show that night and each one bring a friend, and you could invite Cora," suggested Sahwah. "Counter attraction, you know."

The suggestion was voted a good one and promptly acted upon. But Cora declined Katherine's cordial invitation. "What's to be done now?" asked Katherine of the hastily called meeting of the Winnebagos. "Our counter attraction didn't work."

"Girls," said Gladys solemnly, "I believe it's our duty to keep Cora away from that business somehow. If we were smart enough we'd find a way. I don't believe we ought to let the matter drop and say if she wants to get into trouble let her do it, it's none of our affair. It is our affair, because we're pledged to Give Service, and it would be doing Cora a great service to keep her out of this. If she's weak and we're strong we must hold her out of water. You remember what Dr. Harper said at the lecture about saving people from themselves. Well, I think we ought to save Cora from herself."

The phrase, "Save Cora from herself," sounded very fine to the ears of the Winnebagos, and they decided that Cora must be saved from herself at all costs. But how?

"I think I can manage it," said Katherine, who had been buried deep in thought all the while the last discussion was going on. "It'll be quite an undertaking, but the end justifies the means."

"Tell us," begged the girls.

"Why, it's this," said Katherine. "I shall tell Cora that I've changed my mind and want to go with her Friday night and will meet her on the corner of her street at eight o'clock. When I've met her I'll tell her that I left my purse up here and ask her to come along till I get it. You know she doesn't live very far from here. Once up here we'll keep her safely all evening. Oh, I know that holding people against their will isn't one of the rules of polite society, but in her case I think we're justified. She'll thank us for it before very long. And we'll try to make it pleasant for her. We'll give the show just as we intended and have a spread and her captivity won't seem long."

As there seemed no other way out of the difficulty, Katherine's plan was accepted.

"It's working fine," she confided to the Winnebagos the next day. "Cora was tickled to pieces because I wanted to go with her. She agreed to meet me on the corner, as I suggested, and we're both going to wear green veils so we won't be recognized so easily. Hoop la!" and she did a double shuffle with her toes turned in down the aisle of the empty class room where the girls had gathered.

On Friday night the Winnebagos met early in the House of the Open Door. Mrs. Evans, Gladys' mother, was acting as leader tonight in the absence of Nyoda. She had been let into the secret about Cora and under the circumstances thought that their action was right. Cora lived with an old uncle, who was stone deaf and didn't care a rap what she did, so there was no use talking to her folks about it. Several girl friends of the Winnebagos were present, all having raptures over the decorations of the Lodge, and watching with interest the waving curtain in the corner, behind which Sahwah was making herself up as a Topsy for their entertainment later on. Gladys was making sandwiches in another corner and lamenting because the bread knife was broken half off, and was accusing Sahwah of prying bricks apart with it, when stealthy footsteps sounded on the walk below, together with the noise of the door being pushed back quietly. Gladys heard it and started nervously. She was beginning to feel rather embarrassed at the thought of meeting Cora Burton, and wondered just how it would come out, anyway. She wished it were safely over.

Katherine and her prisoner seemed a long time in reaching the foot of the ladder. Did Cora suspect something, perhaps, and was refusing to mount? Gladys strained her ears to listen and thought she heard a smothered giggle from below, but she could not be sure. The next minute the lights flashed below and the patent signal knock of the Sandwiches sounded on the wall.

"Here come the boys!" cried Hinpoha, hastening to answer the signal with a series of mystic thumps on the wall with the poker.

Then the Captain's voice sounded at the foot of the ladder. "How many of you are up there?"

"Five," answered Hinpoha, "and three guests."

"Is Miss Kent there?"

"No."

"What are you doing?"

"We're going to have a show. Want to come up?"

"Well, maybe, later," answered the Captain. "Won't you come down a minute? We've got something to show you." And again Gladys thought she heard a smothered giggle from below stairs.

The girls trooped down the ladder, Sahwah running out with her face blackened and her hair in tiny pigtails, to see what the excitement was about. All seven of the Sandwiches stood there with sparkling eyes and prenaturally solemn faces. On the floor stood a good-sized box.

"What's in the box?" asked Sahwah.

"Oh, nothing," answered the Captain, trying to speak indifferently.

"There is too, something," said Sahwah, looking critically at the express tags fastened to it. "Oh, I know what is is," she cried, suddenly jumping up and clapping her hands in glee. "Your uncle in Boston has sent you the electric motor he promised you!"

The Captain tried to look indifferent and failed utterly. His lips would twitch into a smile in spite of all he could do.

"Do open it and let us see it," said Hinpoha, and all the girls crowded closely around.

"You may have the honor, Miss Brewster," said the Captain, bowing formally to Sahwah. The nails had been drawn and all Sahwah had to do was lift off the cover of the box, which she did with a great flourish. The next moment the girls sprang back in dismay and scattered wildly. The box was full of live mice, which jumped out and ran in all directions. Screaming at the tops of their voices the girls fled toward the ladder and crowded up as fast as they could go. Sahwah jumped for the swinging rings, which hung from the ceiling of the barn, and dangled safely in mid-air, making horrible faces at the Captain, at which he laughed uproariously. Sahwah and the Captain were always playing tricks on each other and this time she had to admit that he had scored heavily. So the Captain jeered and Sahwah vowed vengeance and the other Sandwiches stood around and laughed until their sides ached, for Sahwah, with blackened face and Topsy braids, hanging in the rings and sputtering, was the funniest sight imaginable.

"Joke's over now, boys," said the Captain, when the mice had run around the barn for several minutes. "We've had enough of a good thing. Let's catch them and put them back into the box."

The girls above sat around the ladder opening and watched the proceedings.

"Wherever did you get so many mice, boys?" asked Mrs. Evans.

"We found them," said the Captain, "all boxed up, just like this, They were right out in the middle of that field over there. We were on the way over here and saw the box and looked in. When we saw what it was we thought we could play a joke on the girls. So we brought them along. Looks as though someone had fixed them that way for a joke. Probably were going to send them by express. They were in an express box, although it was not nailed shut."

The girls began to look at one another significantly. The same thought came into all their minds at once. Were not these the mice that were to attend the Junior party?

"The joke is on the Seniors, after all," said Hinpoha.

"What do you mean?" asked the boys. "The joke is on the Seniors?"

"Shall we tell them?" asked Hinpoha.

"I don't see any harm now," said Gladys. "The scheme has collapsed like a pricked balloon."

And they told the Sandwiches what they knew about the plot of the Senior boys to interrupt the Junior party.

"Wasn't such a bad idea to try to play a joke on you girls after all, was it?" said the Captain. "Because if we hadn't done it we wouldn't have nipped their little scheme in the bud. We'll play lots more jokes on them, won't we, Slim? Don't you girls think you ought to invite us up to supper to celebrate?"

"Not until the last mouse is back in the box," said Gladys firmly.

The boys worked hard to catch them again and the girls sat above and cheered their efforts, and in the middle of it in came Katherine and her companion, swathed in green veils. There was such an uproar in the barn that Cora never noticed that Katherine locked the door and put the key in her pocket. Cora gave a great start at the sight of the mice, which was not all from fright, and the girls could not help enjoying the situation. What must be her thoughts by this time? But Cora, obeying the natural impulse of women at the sight of mice, fled up the ladder with Katherine. If she thought it odd that the barn was full of girls and boys when she had gained the impression that it was empty and dark, she made no sign, but stood still with her veil over her face. With all those horrible creatures running around the floor downstairs she made no move to escape.

"Won't you take off your things?" asked Katherine, beginning gently to break the news to Cora that she was to stay for the evening. Without demur Cora unfastened her coat and slid it off and then took off her hat and veil. The girls stood as if turned to stone. The person who stood before them was not Cora Burton. It was Miss Snively. It was Miss Snively!

She looked around her with a sneering smile and a snapping light in her eyes. "You may think it was a master stroke on your part to lure me here and lock me in so I could not join the conspirators and thus find out who they were," she said with biting emphasis. "But you shall pay dearly for this, my young friends. I know who you all are-you needn't try to hide behinds the others, Gladys Evans-and the information I shall be able to give Mr. Jackson tonight is what he has been trying to find out for a long time. Katherine Adams, you are the ringleader of this affair, as we might have expected. I know all about the plan to put the mice into the dance hall, and while the boys downstairs who are getting them ready are not the ones I should have expected to be doing it, it is just like you to get strange boys to do it for you, hoping to get away unsuspected. But it didn't work, I am happy to say. You are very clever, Miss Adams, but not clever enough. I overheard you asking Cora Burton to meet you on the corner this evening. I took the liberty of being there first. I thought I had deceived you perfectly, not knowing that you were bringing me right into the mouse's nest, so to speak."

She paused for breath and looked around her with an expression of relish at the consternation visible on the faces before her. For Katherine was staring at her with startled, unbelieving eyes; Gladys was clutching her mother's arm in a frightened manner; Hinpoha had sunk weakly down on the bearskin bed, and Sahwah stood with her mouth open and the perspiration running down her face in black streaks, and the others were dumb with astonishment. The boys, not knowing just what was going on, but guessing that something was the matter, stood by the ladder opening, silently taking in the scene. The girls looked helplessly into each other's eyes. Somebody must speak and explain. They all looked at Katherine.

"But we aren't mixed up in the House Party at all, Miss Snively," she said earnestly. "We heard about it, and I found out that Cora Burton was going to be in it and I tried to make her stay home and she refused, so we girls decided we would take action to take her out of it by luring her up here and keeping her until the thing was over. That's why I asked Cora to meet me on the corner, and I really thought you were Cora all the while. You imitated her squeaky voice to perfection."

As Katherine was telling her perfectly truthful story she had a dreadful feeling that it didn't sound plausible at all. Under Miss Snively's cold eye nothing seemed real.

"Likely story!" said Miss Snively sneeringly. "And how does it happen that if you wanted to bring Cora out of temptation you should take her to the place where the mice were being boxed up ready to be taken to the party?" All the girls looked so disconcerted. Those dreadful mice did complicate matters so! They would have given anything if Nyoda had been there then.

The Captain was beginning to take in the situation. He came forward frankly. "It's our fault about the mice," he said, looking Miss Snively straight in the eye. "We found them in a field near here all boxed up and thought it would be a good joke on the girls to bring them over here and let them out. We don't know anything about your squabbles at Washington High, except what little the girls here have told us; we're all from Carnegie Mechanic. And we know the girls didn't have a hand in it, because they were giving a show here to-night."

His story was backed up by all the other boys, and then Mrs. Evans got in a word and declared that Katherine was telling the whole truth about Cora, and Miss Snively was forced, however ungraciously, to admit that she had been mistaken in her suspicions.

"If she'd been a man I'd have made her eat her words," declared Slim wrathfully, after Miss Snively had departed from the scene.

Mrs. Evans and Gladys, with perfect courtesy, offered to drive her home in their car, and for the present oil was poured on the troubled waters.

Katherine sat hunched gloomily before the fire and held-forth to the Winnebagos. "I don't know whether the joke's on her or on us," she said pessimistically; "but one thing I'm sure of, and that is, that never, never, as long as I live, will I ever again try to save a girl from herself."

And the Winnebagos wearily agreed with her.