The Orchard Secret Part 7

They gave a momentary glance toward the orchard, with its quaint gnarled trees. The morning sun was glinting on red, dark-green, and golden russet apples which the gardener and his men had not yet started to gather.

Arden, especially, gazed searchingly at the orchard. Apple trees grow in such strange shapes and huddle so closely to themselves, as if each one guarded a secret. There was a puzzled look in Arden's blue eyes as she tried to guess what might be hidden by those trees and the tall hedge surrounding them.

Sim was gazing rather sorrowfully at the pool building, but Terry was smiling, perhaps because everything seemed, for the moment, at least, to be so filled with good and pleasant life.

"Go on in, kids!" Sim urged her two chums. "I'll be along in a minute or two. I just want to take a look at--I just want to--oh, well, go on.

Don't wait for me."

"But won't you be late?" objected Arden.

"No, I have some time to my credit."

As her surprised friends watched, Sim left them and hurried down across a stretch of smooth lawn toward the disused swimming pool.

"Too bad," murmured Arden.

"What is?" asked Terry.

"I really think Sim feels more keenly than we realize about the pool. But she's such a good sport. Look at her! Going to view the ashes of her hopes or the collapse of her dreams or something equally tragic."

"Don't let's say anything about this," proposed Terry. "If Sim cares so much, I'm sure she'd rather not talk about this little visit."

Arden agreed and, taking Terry's arm, they hurried into the hall.

Sim reached the pool building and tried to get some idea of the wreck within by peering through a window. But the sill was too high to afford a view, even if the window had not been made of heavily frosted gla.s.s, quite opaque.

Then she stepped back and gazed up at the copper and gla.s.s domed roof.

Around the top of the building were set at intervals glazed tiles depicting nautical scenes. Dolphins were diving merrily as if to tantalize sea horses with necks proudly arched, and mermaids flicked their tails disdainfully at Father Neptune.

"I may as well try the door," Sim murmured. "I'd like to see what it's like inside, though it will probably break my heart!"

After several hard pushes to the extent of her strength, she succeeded in swinging back the door. She found herself in a sort of vestibule, but the inner door of this opened easily, and then Sim stood almost on the edge of the abandoned pool.

A peculiar smell a.s.sailed her, as of a place long shut up, but at the same time it had something of out-of-doors about it, the odor of clean earth and ripe vegetables.

"It isn't as bad as Toots said," mused Sim. "At least, it looks as though there isn't so very much the matter. It isn't filled with vegetables, either; just a few bags as yet, though they probably will bring in more when they pick the apples. This must have been a beautiful pool once."

The bottom of the pool was tiled a pea green, a color which must have given the water a most cooling tone on a hot day. But the white tile sides no longer gleamed, and in more than one place jagged dark cracks ran crazily down the walls like streaks of black lightning. Sim looked at the cracked tile and concrete edge at her feet. The depth was still indicated, though there was no water in the pool--5 feet.

"This is the shallow end, of course," Sim thought, and she walked slowly around the edge and toward the melancholy spring-boards to which some strips of cocoa-fiber matting still clung.

"How quiet it is in here," Sim murmured. "Like a museum after hours--or an Egyptian tomb." She s.h.i.+vered a little, though it was warm in the natatorium.

In the deep end several filled burlap bags were piled up, and in each corner were barrels of cabbages leaning against the walls.

"I thought, from what Toots said, the whole place would be filled to the brim with cabbages and turnips," Sim said to herself, smiling a little ruefully. "I wonder how long this pool is, or should I say _was_?"

She began to measure the length with her eyes, mentally swimming with long, smooth strokes while her feet churned up and down.

"About seventy-five yards long, I guess," she went on. "And about twenty-five across. A lovely size. I could do three lengths a day here and really enjoy it. Let's see how deep it is from the end of the board."

She walked gingerly out on the diving plank, choosing the center one for there were three at the deep end, tiered at different heights. It was difficult to estimate, without water in the pool and with the barrels and bags of vegetables scattered about, how close the different boards came to the surface of the filled s.p.a.ce. Sim decided that the plank she was standing on was the lowest.

She permitted herself a little pre-diving, teetery bounce on the very end, half fearful lest the dried wood should crack beneath even her light weight. But it held, and Sim gave a bolder jump.

"A straight dive--cutting the water about there!" With her eyes Sim indicated to herself just the spot where her finger tips should enter the water--had there been any water there.

She jumped again and came down safely, with no warning cracking of the dried plank. Then she balanced herself on the very tip of the board before, mentally, springing into the air. Now she performed a most ambitious jump, but this time the stiffened wood snapped back suddenly.

Sim was thrown to one side, and she swung her arms around and around like a child on its first roller skates, trying desperately not to topple backward.

But her motions only caused the board to quiver more violently, and in a split second Sim slipped off and clung, with her finger tips only, to the edge of the plank, while the hard-tiled bottom of the pool, seemingly miles below, waited to receive her.

"Oh, gos.h.!.+ What'll I do?" poor Sim thought. "Those tiles don't look very soft, and I'll drop in a minute!"

Her fingers ached from their stiff clinging grip, and her arms were quickly tiring. She decided she must soon let go for after a futile attempt to sling one leg up over the side edge of the board it bent so alarmingly that she feared it would snap. She began to swing to and fro like a pendulum, hoping she might cast herself upon a bag of vegetables which would serve to break her fall, when, suddenly, she felt her wrists firmly gripped by two hands, and she looked up to see Tom Scott, the porter-gardener, smiling down at her. He was kneeling on the end of the plank.

"Don't jump!" he warned. "I'll pull you up. It's rather the reverse of 'don't shoot, I'll come down,' isn't it?" he said lightly. He could not have taken better means to quiet Sim's excited nerves than with Mr.

Crockett's little c.o.o.n banter.

With what seemed no effort at all, Tom Scott lifted her up and held her clear of the end of the board so her legs did not sc.r.a.pe against it. Then he carefully walked back with her toward the middle of the plank, where there was no danger of its breaking, set her down, and stood grinning at her. A nice grin it was, too, Sim thought later.

She managed to produce a weak, embarra.s.sed smile.

"Thank you so much!" she said a bit stiffly. The man must think her crazy. "I--I slipped! I--er--I was--that is, I was trying----" To cover her confusion she looked at her red finger tips.

"Hurt?" he inquired.

"Broke two or three nails," Sim responded ruefully. "I'm very glad you came along. I might have sprained an ankle if I had let go, for this end must be nine feet deep."

"The water, when there is any, is over nine feet deep nearest this wall,"

said Tom Scott. "You certainly would have been jarred a bit, to say the least."

"Then I must thank you again. But please don't mention to anyone that you found me in such a silly fix, will you?" Sim begged. She was quickly regaining her lost composure. "I just wanted to get a look at the pool and foolishly walked out on the board. I imagined myself poising for a dive and I slipped off. You won't tell?"

"Of course I won't," Tom agreed, somewhat gayly, it seemed. "I came in to get a few of the early apples we have stored here. One of the cooks asked me to. I imagine there are going to be pies. But, honestly, I won't tell a soul."

"Thank you," Sim murmured.

The young gardener walked up to the middle of the pool and with athletic ease jumped down in it near several bags of vegetables. He picked up one containing apples, heaved it up on the edge and jumped up himself. Then, slinging the sack up on his shoulder, he walked toward the door, giving Sim a friendly backward glance as he went out.

"What a nice young man!" said Sim to herself. "He doesn't seem like a gardener at all. No brogue and no accent of any kind. I wish I could tell Arden and Terry, but I'd rather die than have them know of this dizzy adventure. I must have looked perfectly stupid hanging there on the end of the plank!"

The clanging of a distant bell brought Sim back to reality, and as she looked at her wrist watch she left all thoughts of pools and good-looking rescuing gardeners behind her. For it would need a swift dash to get her to Bordmust Hall before she would be late for her cla.s.s.

CHAPTER VI Apple Hazing