Tommy Finnemore, though he might be plotting secret mischief, was the same odd, lovable, frank comrade as always. As a matter of fact, however, Tommy was sailing before the wind. On the Wednesday following that upon which the girls had been detected, the boy was amazed to see Betty and Rose leave the building again instead of going into class. It was a venturesome act, truly, and Tommy realized that the necessity must be imperative, indeed. They were facing real peril, and Tommy was too loyal to Betty to allow them to face it alone. He couldn’t serve them further by remaining. And though he couldn’t share their secret, he would in any event share their peril. Accordingly, he, too, left school instead of going into recitation with his class.
Miss Cummings didn’t miss him, but she noticed to-day that the girls weren’t in class. She decided that they were not taking the course this year and that Mr. Meadowcroft now understood the fact. Their names weren’t down and she didn’t take the names of the class for permanent record until after the first test which came in another week and which would be likely to weed out a goodly number of students and reduce the class to more suitable size. As for Meadowcroft, the last thing he would have expected was a repetition of a twice-forbidden act, and he took it for granted the girls were where they belonged during school hours thenceforward. The greater his amazement, therefore, when two weeks after the first occurrence, he discovered by chance that the girls had run away again.
CHAPTER XXVIII
ON the first Wednesday that Tommy Finnemore abandoned Latin Composition he made his way to the book-store, passed the time agreeably in looking over the small stock of books on magic, and walked home with the girls as usual. On the second Wednesday, he went to the railway station and watched the engines switching. Then just before he decided to leave there to avoid the South Paulding crowd and stroll along the turnpike until the girls should overtake him, he recollected an errand his father had bidden him do at one of the shops. Fearful of losing time, he ran from the platform all the way to the main street.
Forgetting the need of caution, he struck into a lane that could be seen from the school-house windows. Unhappily he wore a conspicuous red knitted wool cap. One ear had been nipped by the frost a week earlier and he had worn the cap since. And when Meadowcroft, glancing out the window five minutes before the close of school, caught sight of a tuft of scarlet at the top of a long, awkward figure loping along like a kangaroo, he couldn’t do otherwise than recognize him. He was taking his turn at breaking rules, it would appear.
To avoid any chance of error, he went into the classroom to make sure Tommy wasn’t there. He discovered more—or less—than he had expected. For not only was Tommy a truant, but neither Rose nor Betty, who had left the main room with the others forty minutes earlier, was anywhere to be seen. As he returned to his desk to dismiss the school, it seemed to the man as if an avalanche had fallen.
It was certainly like an avalanche next day to the three concerned when they were called to an accounting—almost like an avalanche falling upon those who are unaware of the existence in nature of such forces. They had had no inkling of the fact that their absence had been detected. Even if any of the South Paulding children had realized the significance of Mr. Meadowcroft’s standing at the door of the recitation room for less than half a minute, the three companions had no chance to be warned by them. The walking was not good, and as they ran the greater part of the way home, they were all thoroughly tired. Even Tommy did not leave the house that night.
Meadowcroft spent the night at the hotel in Paulding, having remained at school deep in thought until after the last train had gone. He had learned from Miss Cummings that the girls hadn’t been in the Latin Composition class for a number of weeks and that Tommy had been absent twice. He tried to look at the matter dispassionately—tried to consider it as a manifestation of the high spirits of healthy children in winter weather. But he couldn’t see it in that light. Neither Tommy nor Betty was irresponsible. Both stood to him in a relationship different from that between himself and the rest of the school; and he couldn’t but feel that such conduct amounted to a sort of conspiracy against him, a deliberate attempt upon the part of those two (for he didn’t count Rose) to discredit his incumbency of the position of school-master, to make it a sorry failure. It was a stiff indictment, he acknowledged, to make against those of their tender years; but he was ready and eager to be set right. They should have ample opportunity to clear their skirts.
Again, on another Thursday morning, he held back the classes after the opening exercises. But on this occasion he rather icily requested Miss Pogany and Finnemore to take seats on a bench directly in front of the desk. The meaning was plain, but the fact itself was so startling that he had to repeat the order before it was obeyed.
It was truly an awful journey thither. Betty could scarcely drag herself across the room and Tommy’s knees trembled so that he expected to hear the windows rattle. But Rose Harrow sprang to her feet unabashed and followed blithely after. She hadn’t been summoned, but she didn’t mean to be left out. And Meadowcroft, who didn’t fancy her taking it upon herself thus indirectly to criticize him, was ready to order her back, when a little uncertain groping about for the bench on her part reminded him of her blindness and dissipated his indignation. Towards the real culprits, however, his wrath held.