“When I went to your closet to get that red—well, that red garment,” replied Maude, “I noticed that the top of your dresser was perfectly neat and tidy. But I didn’t see any cardcase. It might have been there but I didn’t notice it. I certainly didn’t take it.”
“Very well,” said Miss Woodruff. “You may now be seated. Classes please.”
Mabel, the other culprit, was now behaving very well indeed. She was learning her lessons, and, under the patient tuition of Miss Emily Rhodes, was improving her naturally untidy penmanship. She was also meekly, conscientiously and courageously going without dessert; and never—it seemed to always hungry Mabel—had there been so very many entrancing varieties of pie, so many choice puddings; and, of all weeks of the year, that was the one that the fat cook chose for the introduction of a brand new custardy affair that every one of the girls declared “simply scrumptious.”
Usually, there was much swapping of food at meal time. Grace Allen didn’t like butter but Ruth Dennis did; and was glad to give her tapioca pudding to Grace in exchange for Grace’s daily butter. Augusta disliked celery but adored pickles so she and Cora carried on an equally gratifying exchange. Mabel always traded her lima beans for Alice Bailey’s cocoanut pie—Alice hated cocoanut—and of course, during that dessertless week Mabel was obliged to refuse not only her own pie but Alice’s. But everybody liked the new custard.
“Taste mine,” tempted little Jane Pool. “It’s just licking good. Come on, nobody’s looking.”
“No,” sighed Mabel, “it wouldn’t be honest. I said I’d go without so I’ll go all the way—one week can’t last forever.”
“Never mind, Mabel,” comforted Maude, “I’ll ask Nora to make this kind often next week and I’ll give you my share just once so you can catch up. Besides, I owe you that much—I led you into this scrape, you know.”
Going without dessert, however, was a small trouble compared with mysteriously losing two full grown parents. Mabel’s were still missing. As she had no address except Berlin, she wasn’t at all sure that her own letters were reaching them. She and each of the other Lakeville girls had had several brief, boyish letters from their friend and fellow-camper, Laddie Lombard, the shipwrecked boy they had rescued at Pete’s Patch; but from her parents, not a word for so many weeks that it made Mabel shiver to count them.
Her thoughts, nowadays, were gloomy ones. What if she had to stay at Highland Hall until she was faded and forty like poor old Abbie. What if her skirts kept getting shorter and shorter (or what was more likely, narrower and narrower) like Cora’s. What if her middy blouses faded and frayed like Sallie’s, with no prospects of new ones. And what if she never saw her dear parents again—that was the worst thought of all. Her plump easy-going mother, her kind, pleasant father.
Yes, that was the worst thought of all. It weighed Mabel down. No matter what else she might be doing at the moment, Mabel couldn’t quite escape from the steadily increasing weight of that puzzling trouble.