LITMIR.BIZ

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seashore cottage with them now, I suppose?” said The Fox, still watching Helen curiously.

      “Why, of course! I intended to before,” returned the younger girl. “We all agreed about that last winter when we were at Snow Camp.”

      “Oh, you did, eh?” laughed the other. “Well, if you hadn’t joined the Soft Babies you wouldn’t have been ‘axed,’ when it came time to go. This is going to be an S. B. frolic. Your nice little Ruth Fielding says she won’t go if Heavy invites any but her precious Sweetbriars to be of the party.”

      “I don’t believe it, Mary Cox!” cried Helen. “I mean, that you must be misinformed. Somebody has maligned Ruth.”

      “Humph! Maybe, but it doesn’t look like it. Who is going to Lighthouse Point?” demanded The Fox, carelessly. “Madge Steele, for although she is president of the Fussy Curls, she is likewise honorary member of the S. B.’s.”

      “That is so,” admitted Helen.

      “Heavy, herself,” pursued Mary Cox, “Belle and Lluella, who have all backslid from the Upedes, and yourself.”

      “But you’ve been invited,” said Helen, quickly.

      “Not much. I tell you, if you and Belle and Lluella had not joined her S. B.’s you wouldn’t have been numbered among Heavy’s house party. Don’t fool yourself on that score,” and with another unpleasant laugh, the older girl walked on and left Helen in a much perturbed state of mind.

      CHAPTER II

      THE FOX AT WORK

      Ruth Fielding, after the death of her parents, when she was quite a young girl, had come from Darrowtown to live with her mother’s uncle at the Red Mill, on the Lumano River near Cheslow, as was related in the first volume of this series, entitled, “Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill; Or, Jasper Parloe’s Secret.” Ruth had found Uncle Jabez very hard to get along with at first, for he was a miser, and his kinder nature seemed to have been crusted over by years of hoarding and selfishness.

      But through a happy turn of circumstances Ruth was enabled to get at the heart of her crotchety uncle, and when Ruth’s very dear friend, Helen Cameron, planned to go to boarding school, Uncle Jabez was won over to sending Ruth with her. The fun and work of that first half at school are related in the second volume of the series, entitled “Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall; Or, Solving the Campus Mystery.”

      In the third volume of the series, “Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp; Or, Lost in the Backwoods,” Ruth and some of her school friends spend a part of the mid-winter vacation at Mr. Cameron’s hunting lodge in the Big Woods, where they enjoy many winter sports and have adventures galore.

      Ruth and Helen occupied a “duo” room on the second floor of the West Dormitory; but when Mercy Curtis, the lame girl, had come to Briarwood in the middle of the first term, the chums had taken her in with them, the occupants of that particular study being known thereafter among the girls of Briarwood as the Triumvirate.

      Helen, when deserted by The Fox, who, from that first day at Briarwood Hall, had shown herself to be jealous of Ruth Fielding, for some reason, went slowly up to her room and found Ruth and Mercy there before her. There was likewise a stout, doll-faced, jolly girl with them, known to the other girls as “Heavy,” but rightly owning the name of Jennie Stone.

      “Here she is now!” cried this latter, on Helen’s appearance. “‘The candidate will now advance and say her a-b-abs!’ You looked scared to death when they shot you with the lime-light. I was chewing a caramel when they initiated me, and I swallowed it whole, and pretty near choked, when the spot-light was turned on.”

      Mercy, who was a very sharp girl indeed, was looking at Helen slily. She saw that something had occasioned their friend annoyance.

      “What’s happened to you since we came from the supper, Helen?” she asked.

      “Indigestion!” gasped Heavy. “I’ve some pepsin tablets in my room. Want one, Nell?”

      “No. I am all right,” declared Helen.

      “Well, we were just waiting for you to come in,” the stout girl said. “Maybe we’ll all be so busy to-morrow that we won’t have time to talk about it. So we must plan for the Lighthouse Point campaign now.”

      “Oh!” said Helen, slowly. “So you can make up your party now?”

      “Of course! Why, we really made it up last winter; didn’t we?” laughed Heavy.

      “But we didn’t know whether we could go or not then,” Ruth Fielding said.

      “You didn’t know whether I could go, I suppose you mean?” suggested Helen.

      “Why–not particularly,” responded Ruth, in some wonder at her chum’s tone. “I supposed you and Tom would go. Your father so seldom refuses you anything.”

      “Oh!”

      “I didn’t know how Uncle Jabez would look at it,” pursued Ruth. “But I wrote him a while ago and told him you and Mercy were going to accept Jennie’s invite, and he said I could go to Lighthouse Point, too.”

      “Oh!” said Helen again. “You didn’t wait until I joined the S. B.’s, then, to decide whether you would accept Heavy’s invitation, or not?”

      “Of course not!”

      “How ridiculous!” cried Heavy.

      “Well, it’s to be a Sweetbriar frolic; isn’t it, Heavy?” asked Helen, calmly.

      “No. Madge and Bob Steele are going. And your brother Tom,” chuckled the stout girl. “And perhaps that Isadore Phelps. You wouldn’t call Busy Izzy a Sweetbriar; would you?”

      “I don’t mean the boys,” returned Helen, with some coolness.

      Suddenly Mercy Curtis, her head on one side and her thin little face twisted into a most knowing grimace, interrupted. “I know what this means!” she exclaimed.

      “What do you mean, Goody Two-Sticks?” demanded Ruth, kindly.

      “Our Helen has a grouch.”

      “Nonsense!” muttered Helen, flushing again.

      “I thought something didn’t fit her when she came in,” said Heavy, calmly. “But I thought it was indigestion.”

      “What is the matter, Helen?” asked Ruth Fielding in wonder.

      “‘Fee, fi, fo fum! I see the negro run!’–into the woodpile!” ejaculated the lame girl, in her biting way. “I know what is the matter with Queen Helen of Troy. She’s been with The Fox.”

      Ruth and Heavy stared at Mercy in surprise; but Helen turned her head aside.

      “That’s the answer!” chuckled the shrewd little creature. “I saw them walk off together after supper. And The Fox has been trying to make trouble–same as usual.”

      “Mary Cox! Why, that’s impossible,” said Heavy, good-naturedly. “She wouldn’t say anything to make Helen feel bad.”

      Mercy darted an accusing fore-finger at Helen, and still kept her eyes screwed up. “I dare you to tell! I dare you to tell!” she cried in a singsong voice.

      Helen had to laugh at last.

      “Well, Mary Cox said you had decided to have none but Sweetbriars at the cottage on the beach, Heavy.”

      “Lot she knows about it,” grunted the stout girl.

      “Why, Heavy asked her to go; didn’t she?” cried Ruth.

      “Well, that was last Winter. I didn’t press her,” admitted the stout girl.

      “But she’s your roommate, like Belle and Lluella,” said Ruth, in some heat. “Of course you’ve got to ask her.”

      “Don’t you do it. She’s a spoil-sport,” declared Mercy Curtis, in her sharp way. “The Fox will keep us all in hot water.”

      “Do

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