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Updated: May 7, 2025
"Ah-ha!" snarled the big man, looking evilly at Ruth. "So the little Mademoiselle betrayed me; did she?" "She has had nothing to do with it save to have had the misfortune of losing the letter you gave her to deliver to Miss Picolet," Mrs. Tellingham said, briefly. "I had her here to identify you, had Miss Picolet not come out to meet you. Now, Tony!"
Tellingham and the teachers, of course; not for the mild breaking of the school rules entailed, but because the girls' stomachs were apt to suffer. In the West Dormitory, too, Miss Picolet was known to be very sharp-eyed and sharp-eared for such occasions.
Miss Picolet was always known to light her candle when she was disturbed by any sound, or suspicion; then she would come to her door and listen. She never moved about her room without a light, that was one good thing! The girl on watch had warning the instant the French teacher opened her door. But of the sixteen girls Nettie Parsons had chosen, not one wanted to play sentinel.
"I will take it providing you do not come there again," exclaimed Ruth. "Come where?" he demanded. "To the school. To the campus where the fountain is." "Ha! you know that, my pretty bird?" he returned. "Well! this will perhaps relieve the good Picolet of my presence who knows?" "Then I will take it," Ruth said, hastily, her hand closing on the billet.
"Those who enter Briarwood Hall must show themselves worthy of the high honor. It takes courage to come under the eye of Mrs. Tellingham; it takes supernatural courage to come under the eye of Picolet!" "If she wasn't out of the house to-night you may believe we wouldn't be out of bed," murmured another of the midnight visitors, whom Ruth was quite sure was Belle Tingley.
The cool way in which she conducted the conversation, commenting upon the school system, the teachers, and all other matters discussed, without the least reference to Miss Picolet, made Ruth, at least, feel unhappy. It was so plain that Mary Cox ignored and slighted the little foreign lady by intention. "I tell you what we will do," said Mary Cox, finally.
Besides, she was very doubtful about the propriety of joining in these forbidden pleasures. All the girls broke that retiring rule more or less or so it seemed. But Miss Picolet could give such offenders black marks if she wished, and Ruth craved a clean sheet in deportment at the end of the half. She wondered how and when Helen proposed to hold the "supper sub-rosa"; but she would not ask.
And they revolved until the girl fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and they troubled her sleep all through the remainder of the night. For that the man with the harp and Miss Picolet had a rendezvous behind the marble figure on the campus fountain was the sum and substance of the conclusion which Ruth had come to.
"If Miss Picolet gets up out of her warm nest, he won't know it." "Yes, he will," said Ruth, nodding. The Fox began to laugh. "Don't let her hear you say that, Fielding. Picolet is an awful old maid. She would be horrified, if she thought a male person even imagined her in bed!" "But how will he know?" demanded Ann. "That's easy," laughed Ruth. "He will stand where he can watch her window.
To tell the truth the young ladies of the West Dormitory who attended Helen's sub-rosa supper looked pretty blue when the rest of the school filed out of chapel and left them sticking, like limpets, to their seats. Mrs. Tellingham looked just as stern as Helen imagined she could look, when she ended a whispered conference with Miss Picolet, and stood before the culprits.
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