The girls were out on the lake very frequently as the cold weather continued; but Ruth never saw again the strange girl whom she and Helen had interviewed at night on Bliss Island.
Hearing from Aunt Alvirah as she did with more or less frequency, the girl of the Red Mill was assured that Maggie seemed content and was proving a great help to the crippled old housekeeper. Maggie seemed quite settled in her situation.
"Just because that queer girl looked like Maggie doesn't prove that Maggie knows her," Ruth told herself. "Still—it's odd."
Stormy weather kept the college girls indoors a good deal; and the general sitting-room on Ruth's corridor became the most social spot in the whole college.
The girls whose dormitory rooms were there, irrespective of class, all shared in the furnishing of the sitting-room. Second-hand furniture is always to be had of dealers near an institution like Ardmore. Besides, the girls all owned little things they could spare for the general comfort, like Rebecca Frayne's alcohol lamp.
Helen had a tea set; somebody else furnished trays. In fact, all the "comforts of home" were supplied to that sitting-room; and the girls were considered very fortunate by their mates in other parts of the hall, and, indeed, in the other three dormitory buildings.
But during the holiday recess something happened that bade fair to deprive Ruth and her friends of their special perquisite. Dr. McCurdy's wife's sister came to Ardmore. The McCurdys did not keep house, preferring to board. They could find no room for Mrs. Jaynes, until it was remembered that there was an unassigned dormitory room at Dare Hall.
Many of the girls had gone home over the brief holidays; but our three friends from Briarwood had remained at Ardmore.
So Ruth and Helen and Jennie Stone chanced to be among the girls present when the housekeeper of Dare Hall came into the sitting-room and, to quote Jennie, informed them that they must "vamoose the ranch."
"That is what Ann Hicks would call it," Jennie said, defending her language when taken to task for it. "We've just got to get out—and it's a mean shame."