Chapter XVI: A Prank

MARGERY resumed her place in the household, falling into her housewifely ways with only a brief time allowance for getting out of the holiday spirit and into domestic harness. Indeed, she was more care-taking and pervading than ever, which proved that the growing-up process, which was going on so fast as to dismay her mother and Happie, was going on in the right way.

Margery's coming left Happie more free to enjoy herself, and she threw herself into the outdoor life with all the zest of the season. Long walks in the glory of wind and color of early autumn, chestnutting, wild grape gathering, these were the pleasures offered by the mountains now, and the children were half wild with this first taste of them. Happie yielded herself to the delight of them, as if the mountain winds were sweeping her through the weeks on their strong pinions. Lessons at home were begun, but Mrs. Scollard did not insist on much yet, reflecting that if they were to spend the winter in the Ark, close housed by snow and cold, the children would have enough of being shut up.

Margery did not often join the others on their rambles; she preferred solitary walks, and loved to sit with her mother sewing and talking in that sweet intimacy which dawns between a good mother and her daughter when the latter is growing up into a friend.

It somewhat reconciled Happie to the lack of Margery that Gretta had more time to go about with her than earlier in the season, when gardening and farming claimed her. Everything in her home was getting so unbearable to Gretta that she was thankful to escape to study and to roam with Happie. It was so apparent that her affairs were reaching a climax that was bound to end in a complete change, that there was less risk in taking comfort, since nothing could make her cousins more unkind to her.

"Eunice's cousin is going to teach the school this winter," said Gretta one afternoon. She spoke out of a long silence, and straightened herself painfully. She had been bending over a rock upon which she was cracking chestnuts with a smaller stone, she and Happie being alone out on the side of a hill upon which stood three noble chestnut trees, dropping their treasures lavishly for who would come to gather them.

"Eunice's cousin?" repeated Happie. Gretta and she always omitted Reba from allusions to home affairs, she being but Eunice's reflection. "What relation is she to you?"

"She isn't any relation to me; she's Eunice's second cousin on the other side--her mother's side," said Gretta. "Here are some big chestnuts! She's a young girl no older than we are, and if they don't have a poor school this winter it'll be queer! Why, she can't keep order any more!"

"Is she graduated as a teacher?" asked Happie, wondering.

"Mercy, no! She went to the Normal for one term down at Schultzburg, and she got a certificate, but she was there only one term. Why, she yet wears dresses only down to her insteps!" said Gretta.

"Is that the way they make teachers?" cried Happie. "Why, I never heard of such a thing!"

"That's the way," said Gretta nodding. "Sometimes we have a good school--we had a fine teacher three winters while I went--but we're more than likely to get some one who can't teach. This is a real nice girl--Hattie Franz is her name--but she isn't fit to teach school. You see, when she applied, the directors hired her because her father lives around here, and they all know him. There was a young man applied at the same time who really was a normal graduate, but Hattie got it because the directors wanted to favor her father."

"Well, of all things!" cried Happie with the scorn of her age for anything like personal favors, or political "pulls." "I don't consider that fair; the directors ought to do their duty and get the very best teacher they can. As if the children's education wasn't more important than pleasing some man who happened to be a neighbor! What makes the people stand such directors?"

"I guess because they're used to this way of doing things, partly, and partly because they want their children made teachers the same way when their turn comes," said Gretta, laughing at Happie's disgusted face. "You don't seem to know as much about meanness and folks' ways as I do; you must all be good and unselfish in New York."

"I suppose we aren't," began Happie slowly. And Gretta laughed again.

"But I'll tell you," Happie went on, rallying to her own defense. "We don't see the mean and wrong things as plainly as you do in the country. Our friends are nice and high-minded, and all that, and the other side doesn't get turned around. Here you know every single thing that people do wrong--almost what they think. Maybe this Hattie Franz will teach better than you think she will."

"Oh, I like her lots," said Gretta shaking her head positively, "but she won't do that. She's good-natured, and she's bright enough, but she's easy-going and sort of lazy-minded, and she couldn't make children behave, not one bit! They'll do just as they please; the little ones because she will hate to scold them, and the big ones because they are too much for her, and then the little ones will be worse than ever. I can see just how it will go!"

"What a pity----" began Happie, but Gretta interrupted her with an exclamation, turning to Happie with laughter flashing over all her face.

"Suppose we do see it, Happie!" she cried.

"See what? The school; visit it?" asked Happie.

Gretta nodded hard, and Happie began to protest that she would never dare do such a thing when Gretta cut her short.

"You don't know what I mean," she said. "I mean go just for fun, and all dressed up. We'll get the queerest clothes we can find, long skirts, bonnets, old-fashioned jackets, and thick veils. Then we'll go down to the schoolhouse and knock at the door. One of the children will open it, and we'll walk in. Hattie won't know you anyway, and I'll risk her finding out who I am till I'm ready to have her. I can imitate almost any voice I ever heard, and I'll talk Dutch so she won't ever guess who it is--you never heard me talk Dutch, did you? I can do it as well as any old woman in the county, and Hattie never'll guess until I slip out of the Pennsylvania Dutch into English and my own voice. I like Hattie and she likes me; she's full of fun, and she'll laugh herself nearly sick over us; she won't be one bit mad! Oh, come on, Happie; will you do it?"

"You don't think there would be any harm in it?" Happie hesitated, greatly tempted to say yes on the spot, for she dearly loved a frolic, and it had been long since she had had one.

"Of course it's no harm," said Gretta eagerly. "Nobody could object. Any one dare--no, any one _may_ visit school; you say I must not say dare for may! We'll have a good laugh all around, and nobody be the worse for it. We'll go late, just before she closes, and I believe Hattie will be much obliged to us for cheering things up once! Why, what harm can a little frolic do?"

"I don't see, I'm sure," said Happie slowly. Then she dimpled and laughed, picturing to herself the funny effects she and Gretta would make in their costumes, sailing up the aisle of the little schoolhouse. "All right; I'll do it. When shall we go?" she added.

"Just as soon as we can get the things ready," cried Gretta gleefully. "The sooner the better. Eunice's attic is full of the queerest trash! You needn't bother to hunt up anything; I'll find enough for us both. To-morrow afternoon meet me over behind the mill at half-past two. You might bring some veils, and a looking-glass, but I know I can get everything else. Oh, say, Happie! Suppose we carry handbags, satchels, and fill them full of little bottles and jars, and tell Hattie we are selling stuff for the complexion! Paints and powders, and balm, and lotions, and hair dyes, and try to make her buy some! She's got about the reddest cheeks and nicest skin of any girl around here, and she isn't a minute over sixteen; don't you think it would be funny?"

"Perfectly beautiful!" cried Happie with a jump up and down, to and from the rock on which the chestnuts grew. "I'll bring the satchels, Gretta. It's going to be great!"

The two girls immediately set off for their homes full of this delightful plan. Happie poured forth the outlines of it the instant she got into the house. Bob petitioned to be allowed to see the girls after they were dressed, and Laura and Polly and Penny begged to accompany them. Mrs. Scollard was half afraid that they were going to make trouble, and she hesitated about letting Happie have the queer satchel which she meant to borrow from Rosie, but Happie assured her that Gretta knew, and Gretta said there could be no harm to the school in the visit, at the end of the day and that the young teacher would enjoy it as much as they did. Her mother was always in sympathy with innocent fun, so she consented to Happie's going, and having consented, looked as if she would like very much to join her.

"You see," Happie explained, "this is a girl of our own age, or about that, whom Gretta knows; it isn't like a stranger, or a full grown teacher! And won't it be funny to see us so solemn and dignified, and Gretta talking Dutch 'yet,' as they say up here, and the girl teacher not knowing her? And then to see her face when she finds us out?"

"It certainly will be very funny, and I really don't believe there can any harm come of it; it is only a prank," said Mrs. Scollard.

"That's all, you clear-sighted motherums!" cried Happie joyously. "And I may ask Rosie for her satchel?"

"I have another for Gretta, a queer-shaped affair that looks as if it came out of the original ark," said Miss Bradbury, whose pleasure in this proposed visit was refreshing to behold.

The next day Happie and Gretta met at the appointed place, each laden with the fantastic fruits of their gleaning. They began to dress with ecstatic giggles, each helping the other to assume incongruous garments of various sizes and dates. It was not long before the giggles gave place to peals of laughter until both girls got quite weak from mirth, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the toilets were completed.

Gretta wore a skirt of ante-bellum days. Its fulness hung many-folded around her tall figure, for lack of the hoops originally intended to set it out. Over this she wore a remarkably short bolero jacket of a not-much-more recent period; its rounding front and very abbreviated back revealed a striped waist of bulging fulness, fastened by black china buttons fully an inch and a half in diameter, decorated with bright pink roses and blue morning glories. Her thick dark hair Happie made into an immense knot half way up her head, twisted so tight that it stuck out "like a chopping block," Gretta herself said. This resolute-looking coiffure was surmounted by a broad-brimmed hat, trimmed with green ribbons and a band of black velvet, both much the worse for wear, while a discouraged feather drooped, guiltless of curl, over the brim on the left side.

Happie's costume expressed a more chastened spirit than Gretta's. Her skirt was as scant as Gretta's was full, and went off in a long train with narrow ruffles curving themselves into waves around the bottom. Its color was a faded brown. Over this hung a coat, apparently intended to go with the immense fulness of Gretta's skirt. It went out into deep plaits from each seam, and its sleeves might almost have made a jacket as large as Gretta's; full at the top were they, standing out in great plaits after the fashion of the time of its present wearer's birth. It had been a dark blue; it was still blue, in spots, but yellowish streaks ran down the folds of its many plaited skirt and sleeves, and its velvet collar was white along its edges. Happie's hat was a bonnet. It was straw, broad in the crown and narrow in the brim. Its trimming was a ribbon originally black, but now greenish; however, its bows drooped in a manner more mournful than any mere blackness could have made them. A bunch of perfectly straight thin ostrich feathers adorned this bonnet's front, while on the left a bouquet of faded violets, ranging from soiled white to dubious purple in color hung disconsolately by their untwisted green cambric stems. As a last touch, and in case they should remove the thick brown and dark blue veils which were to disguise them, the girls had wet red ribbon in ammonia and daubed their cheeks with it. The vivid crimson gave a lurid effect to their faces in spite of the fact that Happie's rippling hair had been forced into severe smoothness over each temple, and knotted low in her neck under her travesty of a bonnet, as near to the manner of a decorous old woman as such hair could be made to go.

As soon as they could tie the veils over their remarkable headgear, pull on their wrinkling gloves, and control their laughter sufficiently to walk straight, the girls started out across the fields and down the road towards the schoolhouse. It was encouraging that Jake Shale passed them with his slow team without recognizing them; they saw him turning around on his seat to look after them as long as they were in sight, wonder and speculation written on his usually impassive countenance--as well they might be.

Arrived at the schoolhouse they pulled themselves together, brought their satchels to the fore, and Gretta, saying with a sharp indrawing of her breath: "Now for it!" knocked on the door. It was opened by an exceedingly small boy in knickerbockers that had the effect of scallops, the legs were so short.

"Dare we see the teacher?" asked Gretta with so good a Pennsylvania Dutch accent that Happie's shoulders shook under their manifold plaits, and she nearly betrayed herself by an audible giggle.

The diminutive boy was not equal to meeting this demand upon him. He held the door and his mouth proportionately wide open and the two strange--and stranger--ladies stalked past him upon the startled vision of the girl teacher.

"Miss Franz, we come together to see your school once. This is my friend; I am myself. My friend, you dare sit down. Der teacher don't seem to know you dare, say not? But she is young yet; she will learn," said Gretta serenely, as she placed a chair for Happie, who dropped into it, while Gretta seated herself with much spreading of her voluminous skirts, and with many airs. The young teacher stood clutching her own chair by its back, turning fiery red and deadly pale by turns as her amazement and terror wrote themselves on her chubby face. It never occurred to her that she was the victim of a joke; she felt perfectly sure that these women were insane. She made up her mind on the spot that they had escaped from the distant insane asylum, and she found much comfort in remembering that her unruly eldest scholars were boys, and were far bigger and stronger than her callers.

"I sought you would like some zings for your face, teacher," said Gretta, opening her satchel. "We sells zings to make you pretty. Here is a bottle yet makes you lose all what sun does to you--freckles, und such a tan. Here is a little pot of stuff what makes you red in your cheeks; you like to be red und pretty, say not? What you want to buy, teacher?"

"Nothing at all," said Hattie Franz, feebly.

"Nosing!" exclaimed Gretta. "You wait once und see how pretty the girls gits yet, und you'll be sorry, I guess. You know that girl down to Neumanns'? She takes all I give her. Down in the city, folks uses such a stuff, and you'd ought to look nice like them city girls. Say not? No? Well, then! You go on mit your school, my good girl, und we'll wait a little to sell you zings." Gretta smoothed her ridiculously long-fingered gloves complacently, and bridled. Happie had not looked for such clever acting from quiet Gretta. "Leave me hear what you teaches deze little folks," she added.

Hattie Franz faced her pupils. "The third reader class may read," she said faintly. Six children came forward reluctantly, eyeing fearfully the veiled figures before them. "Read up loud once!" commanded Gretta sternly to the wavering line. "My friend is deeve!"

The "deeve" lady seemed to be variously afflicted, it struck the poor little teacher. In addition to her deafness she appeared to be subject to a nervous twitching; her shoulders shook, and the veil over her face trembled.

The third class in reading made a sorry showing. It is next to impossible to read when one is staring straight ahead, and this class could not get their eyes away from their visitors.

The visitor who did all the talking shook her head. "Does the directors know how bad they can't read?" demanded Gretta, varying the dialect for her own amusement. "When we was to school we could read more good when we was littler, say not?" she called loudly to her supposedly deaf companion. "Can they read Dutch yet?"

Hattie Franz shook her head. "We teach only English in the schools," she said, her voice shaking. "I guess they're scared."

"I guess," assented Gretta emphatically. "Und you too, you seem scared too yet! What fur a person do you guess I am? We won't eat you, little teacher!"

Hattie seemed less sure of that than she would like to be. She went down the aisle and whispered to one of the older girls.

"Yes, I'll go right off," the visitors heard her reply, and they guessed that frightened Hattie was dispatching her for aid.

"Sing for us once, little dears," said Gretta, having no mind to allow the aid to come. "Und you, you big girl gitting up dere, you sit down und sing mit der littlest ones. School ain't out yet!"

The big girl obediently dropped back into her seat, and Hattie quaveringly began the air of "Bring Back My Bonnie to Me," though she could not remember a word. The children joined in a very slender chorus. The girls on the platform were so uncomfortable that they decided to reveal themselves; with the thick veils over their faces and their rising laughter, they felt nearly on the verge of suffocation.

"Teacher, would you mind going down to the door once, and find my handkerchief for me? Maybe I dropped it coming up," said Gretta.

"Teacher" was only too glad of the chance to get away from the immediate neighborhood of her grotesque callers, of whose lunacy she became more convinced every moment. She hastened down the aisle, and nearly fainted as she heard the wild whoop which arose behind her, accompanied by thumpings and poundings on desks and floor. Apparently insanity was contagious, and the children were as mad as the visitors, from whom her one idea was to escape.

Seizing the last desk for support the little teacher forced herself to turn and face the danger, to discover the cause of this sudden pandemonium. Turning she rubbed her eyes to make sure that she saw aright. Or was it she, after all, who was crazy? There, still in their places on the platform, were the two women, still in their singular garb. But they had thrown back their veils, and poor little Hattie Franz saw, instead of the glaring eyes of the pair of lunatics which she felt sure had invaded her domain, the familiar dark eyes of Gretta Engel, flashing with mirth, and the laughing ones of the girl from New York, both dancing and sparkling at her above the crimson streaks which the ammonia-dipped ribbon had left upon their cheeks!

The older boys were shouting, pounding, cheering; the older girls shrieking with laughter, and the little children were pulling and pounding one another, screaming at the tops of their voices in the general excitement.

The relief of the reaction from her fright, the irresistible fun of the situation was too much for the pedagogic dignity of the sixteen-years-old teacher. She ran up the aisle as fast as her feet would carry her, seized Gretta by the shoulders and shook her as hard as a girl of five feet one can shake a girl of five feet six.

"Gretta Engel, you mean, mean, dreadful girl!" she cried vehemently. "I thought, of course, you were a lunatic, and I think so now more than ever!"

Gretta caught her breath, half choked between laughter and her shaking, and the school applauded, highly appreciating their teacher's energy, as well as her being fooled. "To think that you hadn't the least idea! You hadn't any idea, had you?" gasped Gretta.

Hattie Franz gave limp Gretta a few parting shakes, herself weak from laughter. "How could I have an idea?" she demanded. "My, but I was frightened! I'll pay you back for this trick, Gretta, if I have to wait till we are ninety-nine years old! How shall I ever get the school dismissed and these children in order?" she sighed.

Gretta turned to the pupils. "Young ladies and gentlemen," she began, and the shouting ceased; the children waited to see what more fun was coming. "You will please sing 'Marching Through Georgia,' and then all march yourselves home. Who locks up, Hattie?"

"Aaron Shale; he keeps the key and makes the fire," said Hattie.

"Then you let Aaron stay here, and slip away with us," said Gretta. "He'll close up." But she reckoned without her host--the host of children. The older ones stampeded after the teacher and her visitors, and formed into line, ready to escort them through the village. Up the road Gretta and Happie spied Bob and Laura, with Polly and Penny, waiting to see them pass.

The last thing that the girls wanted was to be turned into a sort of Antique and Horrible parade, like the children who masquerade in New York on Thanksgiving day. There was but one thing to be done, and that was to run for it, up the backwoods road, and across the fields. Hastily bidding Hattie good night, Gretta and Happie gathered their fantastic garb about them and fled with all their might. The last vestige of that afternoon's frolic to be seen was two veiled ladies in marvelous costume, fleeing at top speed towards the old grist mill.