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CAPS AND CAPERS

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[Illustration: _Frontispiece--Caps and Capers_.
"NOW, GIRLS, COME ON! LET'S EAT OUR CREAM." See p. 92.]

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CAPS and CAPERS
A Story of Boarding-School Life

by
GABRIELLE E. JACKSON

Author of "Pretty Polly Perkins,"
"Denise and Ned Toodles," "By Love's
Sweet Rule," "The Colburn Prize,"
etc., etc.

With illustrations
by C. M. Relyea

PHILADELPHIA
HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY

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Copyright, 1901, by Henry Altemus

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To
the dear girls of "Dwight School,"
who, by their sweet friendship, have unconsciously helped to make
this winter one of the happiest she has ever known, this little
story is most affectionately inscribed by the AUTHOR.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                                PAGE
     I.  Which Shall It Be?                              13
    II.  "A Touch Can Make or a Touch Can Mar"           21
   III.  "A Feeling of Sadness and Longing"              29
    IV.  New Experiences                                 41
     V.  Two Sides of a Question                         53
    VI.  Dull and Prosy                                  63
   VII.  The P. U. L.                                    71
  VIII.  Caps and Capers                                 81
    IX.  A Modern Diogenes                               89
     X.  "They Could Never Deceive Me"                   97
    XI.  "La Somnambula"                                107
   XII.  "Have You Not Been Deceived This Time?"        119
  XIII.  English as She is Spelled                      127
   XIV.  "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells"                   135
    XV.  "Pride Goeth Before a Fall"                    143
   XVI.  Letters                                        153
  XVII.  "Haf Anybody Seen My Umbrel?"                  161
 XVIII.  The Little Hinge                               169
   XIX.  "Fatal or Fated are Moments"                   179
    XX.  "Now Tread We a Measure."                      187
   XXI.  Conspirators                                   197
  XXII.  "We've Got 'em! We've Got 'em!"                205
 XXIII.  A Camera's Capers.                             213
  XXIV.  Whispers                                       225
   XXV.  "What Are You Doing Up this Time of Night?"    233
  XXVI.  "Love (and Schoolgirls) Laugh at Locksmiths"   243
 XXVII.  Ariadne's Clue                                 253
XXVIII.  "When Buds And Blossoms Burst"                 261
  XXIX.  Commencement                                   271
   XXX.  "O Fortunate, O Happy Day"                     279

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ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                              PAGE
"Now, girls, come on! let's eat our cream."           Frontispiece
"You could have popped me over from ambush."                    37
"Do you wish to join the P. U. L.?"                             71
"Go, tell Mrs. Stone she isn't up to snuff."                   109
"Sthick to yer horses, Moik."                                  141
"Let us begin a brand new leaf to-day."                        165
"I feel so sort of grown up and grand."                        181
"An' have ye been in there all this time?"                     207
"Away went Marie, vanishing bit by bit."                       231
"Her hand resting lightly on the arm of her friend."           267

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CHAPTER I

WHICH SHALL IT BE?


"And now that I have them, how am I to decide? That is the question?"

The speaker was a fine-looking man about thirty-five years of age, seated
before a large writing-table in a handsomely appointed library. It was
littered with catalogues, pamphlets, letters and papers sent from dozens
of schools, and from the quantity of them one would fancy that every
school in the country was represented. This was the result of an
advertisement in the "Times" for a school in which young children are
received, carefully trained, thoroughly taught, and which can furnish
unquestionable references regarding its social standing and other
qualifications.

It was a handsome, but seriously perplexed, face which bent over the
letters, and more than once the shapely hand was raised to the puckered
forehead and the fingers thrust impatiently through the golden brown hair,
setting it on end and causing its owner to look more distracted than
ever.

"Poor, wee lassie, you little realize what a problem you are to me. Would
to God the one best qualified to solve it could have been spared to you,"
and the handsome head fell forward upon the hands, as tears of bitter
anguish flooded the brown eyes.

Can anything be more pathetic than a strong man's tears? And Clayton
Reeve's were wrung from an almost despairing heart.

