Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures Part 8

The thought of graduating from the school they loved so much was one of mingled pleasure and pain. Old Briarwood! where they had had so much fun--so many girlish sorrows--friends, enemies, struggles, triumphs, failures and successes! Neither chum could contemplate graduation lightly.

"If we go to college together, it will never seem like Briarwood Hall,"

Helen sighed. "College will be so _big_. We shall be lost among so many girls--some of them grown women!"

"Goodness!" laughed Ruth, suddenly, "we'll be almost 'grown women'

ourselves before we get through college."

"Oh, don't!" exclaimed Helen. "I don't want to think of _that_."

What was ahead of the chums did trouble them. Their future school life was a mystery. There was no prophet to tell them of the exciting and really wonderful things that were to happen to them at Briarwood during the coming term.

CHAPTER VII

"SWEETBRIARS ALL"

"Oh, dear me!" complained Nettie Parsons, "I never can do it."

"'In the bright Lexicon of Youth, there is no such word as "fail,"'"

quoted Mercy Curtis, grandiloquently.

"That must be a pretty poor reference book to have in one's library, then," said Helen, making fun of the old saying which the lame girl had repeated. "How do we know--perhaps there are other important words left out--_A bas le_ Lexicon of Youth!"

"Perseverence is the winning game, Nettie," Ruth said to the Southern girl, cheerfully. "Stick to it."

"And if _then_ you can't make the sum come right, come to Aunt Ruthie and _ask_. That's what _I_ do," confessed Ann Hicks, the ranch girl.

"Perseverence wins," quoth Helen.

"Oh, it does, does it?" cried Jennie Stone, called by the girls "Heavy,"

in a smothered tone, for her mouth was full of caramels. "Let me tell you that old 'saw' is a joke. My little kid cousin proved that the other day.

She came to grandfather--who is just as full of maxims and bits of wisdom as Helen seems to be to-day, and the kid said:

"'Grandpa, that's a joke about "If at first you don't succeed," isn't it?'

"And her grandfather answered, 'Certainly not. "Try, try again." That's right.'

"'Huh!' said the kid, who is one of these Cynthia-of-the-minute'

youngsters, 'you're wrong, Grandpa. I've been working for an hour blowing soapbubbles and trying to pin them on a clothes line in the nursery to dry!' Perseverence didn't cut much of a figure in her case, did it?"

finished Heavy, with a chuckle.

The crowd of girls was in the big "quartette" room in the West Dormitory of Briarwood Hall. The school had reopened only a week before, but all the friends were hard at work. All but Ann Hicks and Nettie Parsons hoped to graduate the coming June.

In the group, besides Ruth and Helen, were their room-mates, Mercy Curtis and Ann Hicks; Jennie Stone; Mary c.o.x, the red-haired girl usually called "The Fox;" and Nettie Parsons, "the sugar king's daughter," as she was known to the school. She was the one really rich girl at Briarwood--and one of the simplest in both manner and dress.

Nettie was backward in her studies, as was Ann Hicks. Nettie was a lovable, sweet-tempered girl, who had several reasons for being very fond of Ruth Fielding. Indeed, if the truth were told, not a girl in the quartette that afternoon but had some particular reason for loving Ruth.

Ruth's life at the school had been a very active one; yet she had never thrust herself forward. Although she had been the originator of the most popular--now the only sorority in the school, the Sweetbriars, she had refused to be its president for more than one term. All the older girls were "Sweetbriars" now.

Mercy Curtis, who had a sweet voice, now commenced to sing the marching song of the school, which had been adopted by the Sweetbriars and made over into a special sorority song. Sitting on her bed, with her arms clasped around her knees, the lame girl weaved back and forth as she sang:

"'At Briarwood Hall we have many a lark-- But one wide river to cross!

The River of Knowledge--its current dark-- Is the one wide river to cross!

Sweetbriars all-l!

One wide River of Knowledge!

Sweetbriars all-l!

One wide river to cross!

"'Sweetbriars come here, one by one-- But one wide river to cross!

There's lots of work, but plenty of fun, With one wide river to cross!'"

"Altogether!" cried Heavy. "All join in!"

"The dear old chant!" said Helen, with a happy sigh.

Ruth had already taken up the chorus again, and her rich, full-throated tones filled the room:

"'Sweetbriars all-l!

One wide River of Knowledge!

Sweetbriars all-l!

One wide river to cross!'"

"Once more!" exclaimed the girl from Montana, who could not herself sing a note in harmony, but liked to hear the others. The chant continued:

"'Sweetbriars joining, two by two-- There's one wide river to cross!

Some so scared they daren't say 'Booh!'

To the one wide river to cross!"

"That was _us_, Ruthie!" broke off Helen, laughing. "Remember how scared we were when we walked up the old Cedar Walk with The Fox, here, and didn't know whether we were going to be met with a bra.s.s band or a ticket to the guillotine?"

The Fox, otherwise Mary c.o.x, suddenly turned red. Ruth hastened to smooth over her chum's rather tactless speech, for Mary had been a different girl at that time from what she was now, and the memory of the hazing she had visited on Ruth and Helen annoyed her.

"And what did meet us?" cried Ruth, dramatically. "Why, a poor, emaciated creature standing at the steps of this old West Dormitory, complaining that she would starve before supper if the bell did not sound soon. You remember, Heavy?"

"And I feel that way now," said Jennie Stone in a hollow tone. "I don't know what makes me so, but I am continually hungry at least three times a day--and at regular intervals. I must see a physician about it."

"Aren't you afraid of the effect of eating so much, Jennie?" asked Helen, gently.

"What's that? Is there a new disease?" asked the fleshy girl, trying to express fear--which she never could do successfully in any such case.

Jennie had probably never been ill in her life save as the immediate result of over-indulgence in eating.

"No, my dear," said Ruth Fielding's chum. "But they do tell me that eating _too_ much may make one _fat_."

"Horrors!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jennie. "I can't believe you. Then that is what is the matter with me! I thought I looked funny in the mirror. I must be getting a wee bit plump."