CHAPTER XI
A NEW EXCITEMENT
The unhappy taking-off of Georgia Ames supplied Harding College with conversation for a good deal more than the proverbial nine days. Campus dinner-tables buzzed with anecdotes about her, a good many of which “The Merry Hearts” themselves had never heard before. People who knew the “English Essayists” chapter of her experiences had not heard the Yale chapter. Girls who had laughed over the discomfiture of the Westcott House senior, who had eventually paid a high price for her readiness in running off with Bob’s violets, listened eagerly to the story of Babe’s lace handkerchief. And some of them went forthwith to interview the janitor, thereby adding a new episode. For the janitor was a firm believer in ghosts and other apparitions and saw no reason why Madeline Ayres, whose interest in Irish fairy-tales had gained his worshipful admiration, should not possess a shadowy double if she chose to. He had a well-grounded distrust of the B’s and vehemently pooh-poohed their matter-of-fact explanations of Georgia’s movements.
“It’s all very well to talk, Miss Babe,” he declared, “but I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and if Miss Madeline says she has a double I’ll believe her. And if you’d be so kind as to return me that handkerchief, I’ll—I’ll take you up in the clock-tower to-night at nine, and tell you an’ your friends a few little yarns of old Erin.”
This was a great bribe, for the B’s had wanted to make an evening visit to the clock-tower ever since the first evening of their freshman year, when, wandering forlornly around the campus, they had noticed how tall and spectral it looked by night; and Babe sacrificed her precious handkerchief without a murmur.
The janitor’s stories were very creepy indeed, and Babe and Babbie went home shivering and clinging tight to Bob, who marched along bold as a lion. The two timid ones were sitting on the edge of Babbie’s couch, discussing a gruesome tale of a girl who, gagged and tied to the bedpost by ghostly bonds, had watched her lover walk unsuspectingly upon an open trap-door and fall shrieking to his fate, when to their horror the door-handle moved and the door slid slowly open. At sight of the towering white-robed figure which entered with a queer, gliding motion, the two on the bed shrieked wildly.
“Sh! It’s me—I,” announced Bob’s familiar voice. “I only wanted to test my make-up on you two. I’m going out to scare the night-watchman. I’m going to tell him that I’m Georgia Ames.”
Bob’s make-up was doubtless excellent, but much experience with Harding Hallowe’en parties had made the night-watchman extremely sceptical. He walked boldly up to the ghost, explained to her that Georgia Ames “wan’t nothin’ but them girls’ fool doin’s,” turned a deaf ear to her pleadings to be let into the Belden to see Madeline, and finally grasped her wrist so tightly that Bob abandoned her ghostly falsetto and howled for mercy.
“I knew it,” said the night-watchman wrathfully. “You’re Miss Parker, and this is the last time this term that I shall let you in and not report it.” And most ungallantly did he spread the story of Bob’s adventure among her friends, who teased her unmercifully until no one could say “ghost” in Bob’s hearing without paying dear for the liberty.
Dr. Eaton, when he received notice of his unanimous election to honorary membership in “The Merry Hearts,” responded with a note that even Madeline had to admit was creditable. In it he expressed the deepest appreciation of the honor done him. He had not, he said, been told all the aims and objects of the organization, but one seemed to be the booming of Georgia Ames. And so, unless the rest of the club disapproved, he would do his best for her by handing in her report to Miss Stuart.