Back at School with the Tucker Twins Part 3

"The very next time she calls me Caroline, I'm going to call her Plumpton," declared Dum. "I don't mean that Dee ain't as good as I am and a heap better, but I'm me----"

"Yes, and in the same vernacular Dee's her," I teased. We had a compact to correct the grammar of our roommates.

"I stand corrected about ain't but I still stick to 'I'm me.' It is more forceful and means more than 'I'm I.' Of course I'm I, but in Miss Plumpton's mind there seems to be strong doubt whether I'm me. I is a kind of ladylike, sissy outside of a person, but me is the inmost, inward, soul self--I'm me--me--me!"

"Well, you certainly are and there is no one quite like you. I don't see why Miss Plympton can't see it, too."

"I know why! It's because she doesn't understand people. She thinks of us as being human beings of the female s.e.x, who weigh a certain amount, are just so tall and so wide, have lived a certain time and come from such and such a city. Why, the only difference she sees between you and Mary Flannagan is that you are in 117 and Mary is in 115, and you have brown hair and Mary has red, and Mary is better on dates than you are.

The real true Page Allison is a closed book to that fat head. I believe Miss Peyton knew our souls as well as she did our bodies."

We missed Miss Peyton every hour of the day. Her reign had been wise and gentle and always just. We never forgot her kindness to us the time Dee kept the kitten in her room all night. She won us over for life then and there. Miss Plympton had retained all of Miss Peyton's rules and added to them. She fenced us around with so many rules that the honour system was abolished.

Study hall was a very different place from what it had been in Miss Peyton's time. Then order had ruled because we were on our honour not to communicate with one another by word or sign. Of course some girls do not regard honour as a very precious thing and they broke their word, but most girls, I am glad to say, have as keen a sense of honour as the best of men. Miss Plympton's att.i.tude toward us was one of doubt and suspicion and, the honour system being abolished, we naturally felt that the most serious fault we could commit would be breaking the eleventh commandment: "Thou shalt not be found out." We developed astonis.h.i.+ng agility in evading the authorities and getting out of sc.r.a.pes. From having been five law-abiding citizens, we turned into extremely slick outlaws. Even Annie Pore would sometimes suggest escapades that no one would dream could find harbour behind that calm, sweet brow.

The same unrest pervaded the whole school. A day never pa.s.sed that some group of girls was not called to the office to have a serious reprimand.

We got so hardened that it meant no more to us than the ordinary routine of the day, while the year before to be called to the office to have Miss Peyton censure you about something was a calamity that every one earnestly prayed to avoid. Miss Peyton never talked to you like a Dutch Uncle unless you needed it, while Miss Plympton never talked to you any other way.

"She makes me feel like an inmate of a detention home or some place where the criminally insane are sent," stormed Dee. "She makes out I have done things I never even thought of doing and has not got sense enough to know I never lie."

"What was it this time?" I asked.

"She said I changed the record on the Victrola Sunday night from 'Lead, Kindly Light,' sung by Louise Homer, to 'A-Roaming in the Gloaming,' by Harry Lauder. You see all that bunch of preachers was here, and, of course, only sacred music was permissible under the circ.u.mstances."

"Why, I did that!" exclaimed Dum, "and didn't the preachers like it, though! Well, I reckon it is up to me to go 'fess up."

"Not a bit of it!" declared Dee. "She never asked who did it--that's not her way. She works with a spy system, so let her work that way. I bet we can outwit any spy she can get."

It seems strange when I look back on it that this spirit of mischief had entered into our crowd to such an extent, but we were not the same girls we had been the year before, all because of this head of the school who did not understand girls. If she had trusted us, we would have been trustworthy, I am sure.

There was a printed list of don'ts a yard long tacked up in every available spot, and I can safely declare that during the year we did every single thing we were told not to do. If we missed one of them it was an accident. They were such silly don'ts. "No food must be kept in the rooms." Now, what school girl is going to keep such a rule as that?

"No talking in the halls or corridors." That would be impossible except in a deaf and dumb inst.i.tution. "No was.h.i.+ng of clothes of any sort in the rooms or bath rooms." Then what is the use of having little crepe de chine handkerchiefs and waists if they must be sent in the laundry and come back starched and all the nice crinkle ironed out of them? Who would put her best silk stockings in wash to have them come back minus a foot? "No ink to be taken to rooms." We would just as soon have written with pencils except that the rule made us long to break it. Of course, break it we did. "No talking after lights are out." Now what nonsense was that? When lights are out is the very time to talk to your roommate.

I verily believe that there was not one single rule on that list that was necessary. There were lots more of them and all of them equally silly. The worst one of all was: "Absolutely no visiting in rooms."

That meant no social life at all.

We had looked forward to having Annie and Mary next to us, but if there was to be no visiting it would not do us much good. Annie thought up a scheme that surprised and delighted us.

"Let's have telephonic communication. Our closets adjoin."

"Good! So they do," tweedled the Tuckers. "We'll get Zebedee to send us the things to make it." Of course Zebedee sent them the required things as he always aided and abetted us in every scheme to have a good time.

He bought one of the toy telephones that has a tiny battery attached and is really excellent as a house telephone. We installed it quite easily with the aid of an auger that Zebedee had the forethought to send with the toy. The things came disguised as shoes. That telephone was a great source of pleasure to us and at times proved to be a real friend. It was concealed behind Dum's Sunday dress and it would have been a clever detective who could have discovered it.

"Let's not tell a soul about it," said Mary, "because you know how things spread. You know," holding up one finger, "and I know," holding up another, "and that makes eleven."

We kept our secret faithfully and often mystified the other girls by communicating things to our neighbours when they knew we had not been to their room and had not spoken to them in the halls. Of course we did not have a bell as that would have been a dangerous method of attracting attention, but three knocks on the wall was a signal that you were wanted at the phone.

Annie was the originator of another scheme that saved us many a demerit.

Every one of us had a dummy that could be made in a few moments, and these we always carefully put in our beds when we went off on the spreads or what not that took us out of our rooms when we were supposed to be in them.

"How on earth did you ever think of such a thing, Annie?" asked the admiring Mary.

"I am ashamed to say the Katzenjammer Kids in the comic supplement put it in my head," blushed Annie. "I know it is not very refined but I always read it."

It was rather incongruous to think of Annie Pore, the timid, shy, very ladylike English girl, who a little more than a year ago looked as though she had not a friend in the world and had never read anything more recent than Tennyson's "Maud," not only reading the funny paper but learning mischief from it and imparting the same to the Tucker Twins, past masters in the art of getting into sc.r.a.pes. These dummies were topped by boudoir caps with combings carefully saved and st.i.tched in the edge of the caps, giving a most life like look when stuffed out with anything that came to hand. A sofa cus.h.i.+on dressed up in a night gown, tucked carefully under the cover with the boudoir cap reposing on the pillow, would fool any teacher who came creeping into our room after lights out to see if we were in any mischief.

Mary's hair, being that strong healthy kind of red hair, never came out, so she had no combings, never had had any. We ravelled out Dum's old red sweater sleeve and made a wonderful wig, some redder than Mary's, but in the subdued light in which it was to be viewed it did very well.

"Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care," Mary would quote as she tucked her counterfeit self up in her warm bed preparatory to some midnight escapade.

CHAPTER V.

SOME LETTERS.

From Virginia Tucker to Mr. Jeffry Tucker.

Gresham, Oct. 15, 19--

Dearest Zebedee:

It gets worse and worse--We've had a whole month of it now and my demerits are much more numerous than my merits. I see no way of getting out of the hole I am in. Everything I do or don't do means just another black mark for me. Now who can help sneezing when a sneeze is crying out to be sneezed? And who can help making a face when a sneeze is imminent? Not a Tucker! You know yourself what a terrific noise you make when you sneeze and how you jump up and crack your heels together just as you explode. If you were in church and a sneeze came you could not contain yourself within yourself without the risk of breaking yourself up into infinitesimal bits. I inherit my sneeze as directly from my paternal parent as I do my chin and my so-called stubbornness (we call it character, don't we, Zebedeedlums?). I do think it is hard to be kept in bounds a week for an inherited weakness--or shall we say strength? Our Tucker sneeze certainly should not be put down as a weakness.

Another thing about this new princ.i.p.al is that she can't tell me from Dee or Dee from me. She seems to think both of us are me, lately, although at first she thought both of us were Dee. I kicked over the first condition, but Heaven knows the last is much more trying, as I get all of Dee's demerits; not that Dee does not behave like a perfect gentleman and insist on her share of blame and even more than her share. There is no use in arguing with Miss Plympton. She won't believe you if you say you didn't do a thing, and she won't believe you when you say you did. She just sits there and marks in her book and has the expression of:

"The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it."

The other day I sneezed, in fact I out-sneezed all the dead and gone Tuckers. I couldn't help it. I don't like to sew on hooks any more than Miss Plympton herself would and that sneeze popped off two. She looked up from the chronological page of dates she had been hammering into us and said sternly: "Caro-ginia Tucker, that unseemly noise must stop." "Yessum!" I gasped, holding my nose about as Dee does Brindle when he tries to get away from her to eat some little dog up. I held on with all my might, but every one knows that sneezes never come singly. The other one is as sure to come out as murder. When the next one came, it was worse than the first because of my efforts to hold it in, just as it makes more noise to shoot down a well than to shoot up in the air.

(Don't you think my language sounds rather Homeric? I do.) Well, when the second report sounded, Miss Plympton put down her pencil and sat looking at me. She said nothing, but kept on making chins. As fast as she made one, another one disappeared, but nothing daunted, she just made another. I kept thinking: "I wish every time she made a chin something would go bang! and then maybe she would sympathize with me. I certainly can't help making sneezes any more than she can making chins." What do you think happened at this psychological moment? Why, Dee sneezed! As a rule, Dee is not quite so eruptive as you and I are; in fact, sometimes she irritates me by giving cat sneezes, but this time, whew! The Great Sneezeeks himself would have envied her. And do you know what that old stick-in-the-mud did? She looked square at me and said: "Viroline, ten demerits, a page of dictionary and two hymns." That isn't as bad as it sounds, as I know so many hymns I can get one up in no time, and I got even with her by saying the page of the dictionary beginning with chin. It goes Chin, China, Chinaman, Chincapin, Chinch, Chinchilla, Chin-cough, Chine, Chinese, c.h.i.n.k, etc. I took especial pains to accent the first syllable too. Of course Dee stood up and clamored to be heard and to claim the sneeze. It was certainly one to be proud of. Miss Plympton changed her expression from the Moving Finger to

"That inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die, Lift not your hands to _It_ for help--for It As impotently moves as you or I."

You know yourself, Zebedee, how hard it is to keep in the straight and narrow path when you are blamed whether you are there or not. I feel that I might as well be "killed for an old sheep as a lamb," so I do get into lots of sc.r.a.pes. The school is not the same with Miss Peyton ill and Miss c.o.x married. Dee and Page and I are real blue sometimes, but not all the time. We do have lots of fun breaking rules and keeping the eleventh commandment. Now don't get preachy! You would stand Miss Plympton just about one minute and then you would pack your doll rags and go home.

We like the new teacher in English a lot. She is much more interesting than last year's and seems to have some outlook. Miss Ball is her name.

Zebedee, since Miss Plympton seems to have such a feeling against me, don't you think it would be well for me to stop history and take up china painting? I don't think much of the art course here, but it would be real fun to do china painting and I could paint you a cup and saucer to drink your coffee out of when we get to housekeeping. I am crazy to do some modelling and think another year you better let me go to New York and study at the art school. Dee and Page think so, too, and they want to specialize in something.

We are nearly dead to see you. What say you to coming up here for Thanksgiving? You would miss the football game in Richmond, but we are certainly honing for you, honey. Dee will write soon. Page is just the same. She cheers us up a lot. She is awfully game--there is no prank going that she stays out of, but she kind of holds us down if our idea of a good time is too wild.

Thanks for the little 'phone. It works splendidly.

Good by,

Your own DUMDEEDLEDUMS.

From Page Allison to Dr. James Allison.