CHAPTER XIII
BROKEN FAITH
Following the directions given in her little printed slip cut from the "Help Wanted" column in the Leader, Tessie had no trouble in finding the place offered in such glowing terms. Every sort of inducement was held out in the printed lines, for obtaining help was a problem affording the most original methods of advertising, and each month wages seemed to climb another round in the ladder of higher salaries. The term "wages" went by the boards when the fifty-dollar-a-month notch was knocked in prosperity's payroll.
The position, it was not the old time "situation," demanded little of the applicant in the way of reference, and Tessie, already wise in her new craft-knew well a telephone call from Mrs. Elmwood to Mrs. Appleton would be sufficient guarantee of her honesty. She had been strictly honest even to the point of picking up a few scattered dimes, ostensibly dropped accidently, but really set down as "bait" to test her honesty. She was also very wise for so inexperienced a girl.
So with affirmative smiles the erstwhile employer engaged the nice-looking, bright-looking young girl, whose olive skin and dark eyes made her pretty, if a bit foreign and rather saucy.
"If Dagmar could see me now!" she mocked, patting the lace butterfly cap on her neat hair and smoothing the lace sample of an apron in the most approved screen world style. "This dress must have been made for me, it fits so well," she commented, twirling around in front of the modern mirror furnished in the second maid's room, "and this house suits me very well," with a glance at the fine fixings all about her. "Now for the china and silver. I'll bet I'll surprise this shebang with my knowledge of right and left, and my juggling with the forks and spoons. A new place is all right while it's new, but it gets old awful quick after—well, after pay day."
The black dress was stylishly short and gave Tessie a very chic appearance, in fact although she was seventeen years she looked much younger in the uniform, and she knew it.
Inevitably among the members of that household were two young girls from the scout troop she had seen drilling that afternoon, and quite as inevitably the table talk was entirely of the drill and other scout activities.
It was all so simple after that. There in the sisters' rooms were scout manuals, and these little blue books gave Tessie all the information she needed. Each day while arranging the rooms she was able to learn a lesson, and just when her statement was sure to make the best effect she treated the girls to a story of her "girl scout work." It was just like real fiction to Tessie, while Marcia and Phillis Osborne could hardly believe their pretty puff-hidden ears that they should have right in their own home a real girl scout who had won a merit badge! Tessie positively declined to discuss the "brave deed" she had consummated to obtain that badge, also she refused just as positively to take any part in the scout work of Elmhurst. It was delectable to have the girls beg her to come to drill, and assure her no one need know she was employed as a waitress.
But Tessie "adored the pose" as she learned to think herself, and she had no idea of being caught in the official net of a scout meeting, where all sorts of questions might be asked, the answers to which could not even be hinted at in a scout manual.
Alma Benitz was the name she chose that night when Frank Apgar escorted her from his "ark" to his mother's hospitality, and that means of identification was serving her beautifully in the home of Mrs. J. Bennington Osborne, Terrace End, Elmhurst.
It was all perfectly thrilling and Tessie felt each day she mingled her "better days' smile" with a sob or a grin, for the benefit of her sympathetic spectators, she would have given a week's pay to have Dagmar seen the "hit" she was making.
"They'll be giving me French lessons if I don't watch out," she told her looking-glass one night, and the confidential mirror noticed the new girl actually sounded her "gs." Tessie was an apt pupil, but brains more than hands need training to execute exact science of "putting things over" all the time.
Also a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weakest link in this adventurer's chain was the fact that she had no means of communicating with her own folks or Dagmar, and receiving any reply from them. She knew her own father too well to risk letting him know anything of her whereabouts, and her two letters to Dagmar could not be answered for lack of address. Now Tessie had new clothes, and she would soon have more money—if only she could get hold of Dagmar, and start off again on that trip to the big city.
"Maybe the poor kid's in jail," she reflected. "She's just the kind to get sent up to one of those dumps where they train girls! Train them!" she repeated mockingly. "Swell training a girl gets behind bars!
"But it would cost twenty-five dollars for both of us, and I'll never live through earning that here," she followed. This general summing up of the situation took place in her room, the night before her first "afternoon off" and suppose—just suppose she took a bunch of those scout tickets, and went out to the next town and sold them! She might use that money to send to Dagmar and replace it with her next week's pay!
So there was the temptation.
And she did not realize its dangers.
Nothing had ever been easier. Everyone wanted tickets for the Violet Shut-in Benefit and every ticket brought fifty cents to the attractive girl wearing the scout badge of merit.
"I call this luck, the kind that grows on bushes," she was thinking, as in that strange town she hurried from door to door with the violet bits of pasteboard that were printed to bring cheer to the Shut Ins.
"Of course I'll replace this at once," she also decided. "I wouldn't really touch a cent of this, even for one day, only I must get Daggie out of her trouble wherever she is. It isn't fair to leave her all alone to face the music."
Then came the thought of the possible joy she might experience if she could but surprise Phyllis and Marcia with the sale of all their tickets!
Still another consideration. Each girl was obliged to sell in a certain territory and she was covering enough ground for the whole troop.
"I guess I'm out of luck," she decided, "but this isn't so bad. I believe I'd make a hit as a first rate book agent. Maybe I'll try that next."
It was important that all her ground should be covered before the public school would be dismissed, hence she quickened her steps, and she had but two more tickets to dispose of when the rumbling of a jitney attracted her attention.
It was Frank Apgar on the high front seat of his Ark.
"Without thought of danger, and only the prospect of a pleasant chat with someone she knew, Tessie hailed Frank and climbed to the seat beside him.
"Oh, I'm so glad to see you, Frank! How's the good old lady who saved my life? I'll always remember her as my guardian angel. And boy, those flap-jacks!"
"Mother's fine and she always asks if I see you. Now I'll have a report to make," and he stared so at Tessie she felt uncomfortable.
"What are you looking at?" she asked, her tone of voice condoning the rudeness of her words.
"I'm just thinkin' you look a lot like some one I've been asked to watch for. Did you light in from Flosston the night you crawled on this Ark without botherin' the gong or brakes?"
For a single second Tessie felt her fright would betray her. Then recovering her poise, with the keen necessity so obvious, she laughed a merry laugh empty in ring, but full enough in volume.
"Flosston!" she repeated. "Say, when I get enough money I'm going on an excursion there. I've always had a feeling it must be the original rest cure. But say, Frank, if you want to know more than I can tell you about my history, I have a little book with all the facts in, and even a few baby pictures, I'd like to show you. I have a swell place living out down in Como (opposite direction to the Elmhurst address) and if you tell me what time you're due here tomorrow I'll fetch along my illustrated pedigree!"
"Say, Sis, do you think you're funny, or is it some disease you've got?"
"No, really, Frank, I'm not fooling. I have an album with my name and all that in it, and when I come out for an airing to-morrow I'll just bring it along."
How glad she was she had hidden the scout badge and the two unsold tickets! The velvet bag rather heavy with silver, the proceeds of ticket sales, Tessie handled carefully to avoid jingling.
Here was real danger! If Frank should decide she was the girl from
Flosston—runaway Tessie Wartliz!
"Well, all the same," Frank added, turning on the gas after a slow-down for an old lady with a small boy and a large bundle, "I have some regard for a girl who wants to cut loose and make good. Can't see why a boy always gets away with it, and a girl is slammed behind the shutters if she happens to disagree with the opinions of the town council on the sort of toothbrush best for grown girls! Now, Alma, I promised Jim Cosgrove I'd keep a lookout, and sure thing you do tally with his illustrated funny page he's been handin' out every trip I made since that stowaway ride. I'm durned glad I didn't mention the stowaway. He'd be apt to tear the gears apart to make sure you're not distributed in the lubricating oil. He is sure set on findin' the girl who gave him the slip. Can't stand a little thing like that against his golden record."
Tessie determined to slip off the car at the next side street, and make a detour to hide the route she must take to return to the Osborne home.
"Well, so long, Frank. Here's where I detrain. Maybe I'll see you to-morrow. Give my love to your mother, and I hope you find the runaway girl," and she waved a merry good-bye that seemed to burn the tips of the fingers she shook it from. Tessie was frightened, she was panic stricken! The whole situation was becoming more and more dangerous! She was using an assumed name, she had run away from home, she had deceived the girl scouts, had sold their tickets and—oh, what would she do now if Frank should tell that officer!
Just in time to don her black dress and white cap, Tessie reached the Osborne home. She was so nervous the silver rattled and the china clicked, but the color in her cheeks was ascribed to the "long walk" she had taken "away out Pembroke way."
During dinner Marcia and Phyllis talked continuously about the benefit, and made all their plans for ticket selling. It would be a notable benefit.
Later that evening Mrs. Osborne paid Tessie her first week's wages and complimented her on her "splendid service." She was a woman imbued with the wisdom of a keen appreciation of values, and she knew well the value of encouragement to a young girl like Tessie, but the latter was very miserable, and could scarcely hide the fact.
Now why did the ghost of a small mistake have to haunt her just when everything looked so rosy?
If only her mother and father could be counted on for a reasonable understanding of the whole matter, but the loss of their daughter's wages for so long would surely enrage the avaricious father and anger the unreasonable mother. Not much hope crept into poor Tessie's heart as late that night she packed her little bag, and with many misgivings, overcome only by the strongest resolutions to pay back the money, did she put the ticket proceeds beside her week's wages in the well-worn purse.
The scout badge fairly begged her to reconsider. Its little wreath and clover emblem, the meaning of which Tessie had learned from Marcia's manual, mutely pleaded the cause of honor, and urged her to sacrifice instead of deceit.
But Tessie was frightened and untrained, so that the new reverence, with which she folded that badge in her best ironed handkerchief, was not yet strong enough to call louder than the voice of mockery which hissed of dangers and threatened disgrace.
It was very early next morning that the dew on the hedge was shocked by a passing form making a rude getaway through the hawthorne blossoms, and not even the gardener saw the girl who jumped across the little creek instead of passing over the rustic bridge.
"Something has happened to that girl," insisted Mrs. Osborne. "I am not often mistaken, and I know she is not a common thief. Marcia and Phyllis, you may refund the ticket money privately, and I will consult with father about following up the child." This was the verdict in the Osborne home upon the complex discovery of stolen tickets and missing maid; but in spite of the mother's warning, some one must have trusted some one else with the story, for a brief account was used in the LEADER that night.
So this was the story that surprised the Girl Scouts of Flosston and shocked Rose Dixon.
Surely the strings of our mythical May-pole are winding in a circle of promise and surprise, for Tessie is gone and Rose is going!
Coincidently, out in Flosston our own little girl scouts, Cleo, Grace and Madaline, are worrying their pretty little heads over the mystery of the woodsman who wrote the queer letter.
Would they risk writing and awaiting a reply from the hiding place in the dark little cave of the hollow stone?