The Girls of Central High on the Stage: or, The Play That Took The Prize

CHAPTER IX – A SKATING PARTY

The girls of the Junior class in modern history were filing out on Friday.

“What do you know about that?” hissed Bobby Hargrew, in the ears of her chums. “Gee Gee is getting meaner and meaner every day she lives.”

“What did she do to you now?” demanded Dora Lockwood, one of the twins.

“Didn’t you notice? She sent Postscript to hunt up Moscow on the map of Russia. Now! you know very well that Moscow was burned in 1812!”

“You ridiculous child!” exclaimed Nellie Agnew. “You will never do anything in school but make jokes and try the patience of your teachers.”

“I am no friend to teachers, I admit,” confided Bobby to Dora and Dorothy. “Don’t you think they ought to be made to earn their money?”

“Any teacher who is so unfortunate as to have you in his, or her, class, is bound to earn all the salary coming to them,” declared Dorothy.

“Bad grammar – but you don’t know any better,” declared the harum-scarum. “You’re just as bad as Freddie Atkinson. Dimple asked him who compiled the dictionary, and Freddie said, ‘Daniel Webster.’

“‘No, sir! Noah!’ snapped Dimple.

“‘Oh, Professor!’ exclaimed Fred. ‘I thought Noah compiled the Ark?’”

As the girls were laughing over this story of Bobby Hargrew’s, Eve Sitz came up briskly. Laura and Jess were near at hand, and in a moment a group of the Juniors who always “trained together” were in animated discussion.

“Yes. It’s frozen hard. Otto was on it with a pair of horses and our pung,” declared Eve, who came in every morning from the country on the train, and whose father owned a big farm over beyond Robinson’s Woods.

“What’s frozen?” demanded Dora.

“Peveril Pond. It’s as smooth as glass. I want you to all come over on Saturday afternoon; we’ll have a lot of fun,” declared Eve.

“You’re always inviting us to the farm, Evangeline,” said Nellie Agnew; “I should think your father and mother would be tired of having us overrun the place.”

“Never you mind about them,” declared Evangeline, smiling. “They love to have young folks around. Now, remember! Saturday at noon the autos will start from the Beldings’ front door – if it doesn’t snow.”

“Oh, snow!” cried Bobby. “I hope not yet.”

 
“‘Beautiful snow! he may sing whom it suits —
I object to the stuff, ‘cause it soaks through my boots!’”
 

“It’s too bad,” said Jess, “that Mrs. Kerrick didn’t offer a prize for verse. Bobby would win it, sure!”

“Never you mind,” said Bobby, with mock solemnity. “I may surprise you all yet. I am capable of turning out tragic stuff – you bet your boots!”

“Mercy, Bobby! how slangy you are getting,” murmured Nell Agnew, the doctor’s daughter.

“You think I cannot be serious?” demanded Bobby, very gravely. “Listen here. Here is what I call ‘The Lay of the Last Minorca’ – not the ‘Last Minstrel!’

“‘She laid the still white form beside those that had gone before,’” quoth Bobby, in sepulchral tone.

“‘No sob, no sigh, forced its way from her heart, throbbing as though it would burst.

“‘Suddenly a cry broke the stillness of the place – a single heartbreaking shriek, which seemed to well up from her very soul, as she left the place:

“‘“Cut, cut, cut-ah-out!”

“‘She would lay another egg to-morrow.’”

“You ridiculous girl!” exclaimed Laura. “Aren’t you ever serious at all?”

“My light manner hides a breaking hear-r-r-t,” croaked Bobby. “You don’t know me, Laura, as I really are!”

“Don’t want to,” declared Laura Belding, briskly. “It must be awful to be a humorist. All right, Eve. We’ll come on Saturday. Chet will see Mr. Purcell about the big car. Lake Luna is frozen only at the edges, and is unsafe. But we will have a good time at Peveril Pond.”

Fortunately Mrs. Morse received payment for a story in a magazine that week or Jess would never have had the heart to join the skating party. But the sum realized was sufficient to settle with Mr. Closewick, pay the month’s rent of the cottage, and pay a part of each bill at Mr. Heuffler’s and Mr. Vandergriff’s shops.

These payments left Jess and her mother almost as badly off as they were before. And there was the new account started at Mr. Hargrew’s. But Chet Belding urged Jess very strongly to be his guest on Saturday, and there was really no reason why Jess should not go. Her mother had seen Mr. Prentice and begun furnishing items to the Courier from day to day; and the girl felt that, with care, they might be able to keep from getting so deeply into debt again.

No snow had fallen up to Saturday noon; but it was cold, and the clouds threatened a feathery fall before many hours. The young folk who gathered in the big hall of the Belding house thought little of the cold, however. There were warm robes and blankets in the Belding auto and in the sightseeing machine that Mr. Purcell had sent. Chet, in his bearskin coat, looked like the original owner of the garment – especially when he pulled the goggles down from the visor of his cap, and prepared to go out to the car.

“My dear fellow,” drawled Prettyman Sweet, the dandy of Central High, who was of the party, “you look howwidly fewocious, doncher know! I wouldn’t dwess in such execrable taste for any sum you could mention – no, sir!”

“Beauty’s only skin deep, they say, Pretty,” responded Chet “So, if you were flayed, you might look quite human yourself.”

“Purt” was gorgeous in a Canadian skating suit – or so the tailor who sold it to him had called it. It was all crimson and white, with a fur-edged velvet cap that it really took courage to wear, and fur-topped boots. And his gloves! they were marvels. One of them lying on the floor of the Beldings’ hall gave Topsy, Mrs. Belding’s pet terrier, such a fright that she pretty nearly barked her head off.

She made so much noise that Lance grabbed at her and tried to put her out of the room, Topsy still barking furiously.

“You look out!” drawled Bobby Hargrew. “One end of that dog bites, Lance!”

They turned Purt around and around to get the beauties of his costume at every angle. And they “rigged” him sorely. But the exquisite was used to it; he would only have felt badly if they had ignored his new “get-up.”

“It’s quite the thing, I assure you,” he declared. “And, weally, one should pay some attention to the styles. You fellows, weally, dress in execrable taste.”

When the party was complete they bundled into their wraps again and piled into the machines. Mrs. Belding had retired to her own room until the “devastation of the barbarians,” as she called it, was past; but Mammy Jinny straightened up the hall and dining room after the young folk with great cheerfulness.

“Yo’ know how yo’ was yo’self, Miss Annie, w’en yo’ was oberflowin’ wid de sperits ob youth,” she said, soothingly.

“I am sure I never overflowed quite so boisterously,” sighed Mrs. Belding.

“No. Yo’ warn’t one ob de oberflowin’ kind, Miss Annie,” admitted the old black woman. “But Mars’ Chet an’ Miss Laura, and dem friends ob theirs, sartain sure kin kick up a mighty combobberation – yaas’m!”

The wintry wind blew sharply past the crowd of Central High Juniors as the Belding auto and the bigger machine struck a fast pace when once they had cleared the city. There was lots of fun in the autos on the way to the Sitz farm; but they were all glad to tumble out there and crowd into the big kitchen “for a warm.”

The Swiss family were the most hospitable people in the world. Eve’s mother had a great heap of hot cakes ready for them, and there was coffee, too, to drive out the cold.

“We’re going to take Patrick down to the pond with us to keep up the fires while we’re skating,” Eve told Laura. Eve looked very pretty in her skating rig, and she was a splendid skater, too. “Father and Otto are somewhere down in the woods already. This cold weather coming on marks the time for hog killing, and some of the porkers have been running in the woods, fattening on the mast. There is an old mother hog that has gotten quite wild, and has a litter of young ones with her that are hard to catch. They may have to shoot her. So if you hear a gun go off, don’t be alarmed.”

The hired man, who stayed with the Sitzes all the year around, was a comical genius and the boys knew him well. As they started on the walk to the pond, Chet asked him:

“Do you skate yourself, Pat?”

“Sure, and it’s an illegant skater I used to be when I was young,” declared Pat; “barrin’ that I niver had thim murderin’ knives on me feet, but used ter skate on a bit of board down Donnegan’s Hill.”

“He’ll never own up that he doesn’t know a thing,” whispered Eve to Laura and Jess, as the boys laughed over this statement of the Irishman. “He was planting potatoes in the upper field, and all by himself, last spring, and a man drove along the road, and stopped and asked him what kind of potatoes they were.

“‘Sure, I know,’ says Patrick.

“‘Then what kind are they?’ repeated the neighbor.

“‘Sure, they’re raw ones, Mr. Hurley,’ says he, and Hurley came to the house roaring with laughter over it. Nothing feazes Patrick.”

The long, sloping hill, under the chestnuts and oaks, would have made a splendid coasting place; only there was no snow on the ground.

“But when the snow does come,” cried Dora Lockwood, “if the pond is still frozen over, won’t it be a great course?”

“The ice is all right now, at any rate,” Eve reassured them. “And there isn’t a spring hole in the entire pond, Otto says.”

Patrick had brought an axe and, with the help of some of the boys, soon had a big bonfire burning on the edge of the pond. Meanwhile the other boys helped the girls with their skate-straps, and then got on their own skates.

The ice hadn’t a scratch on it. It was like a great plate of glass, and so clear in places that they could see to the bottom of the pond – where the bottom was sandy.

All the young folk were soon on the ice, the boys starting a hockey game at the far end, and the girls circling around in pairs at the end nearest to the fire.

“That’s what Mrs. Case, our physical instructor, says we ought to learn,” said Laura, watching the boys.

“And it’s jolly good fun, too,” cried Bobby.

“But suppose you turned your ankle, or fell down and tore your dress?” suggested Nellie. “I believe hockey on the ice is too rough.”

“No game needs to be rough,” declared Laura. “That isn’t the spirit of athletics. Didn’t we learn how to play basketball without being rough?”

“Even Hessie Grimes learned that,” chuckled Bobby.

At that moment a gun was fired back in the thicker woods, and then out of the brush the girls saw an animal charging directly for the pond. Patrick saw it, too, and leaped up from before the fire and ran toward the beast.

“It’s a big hog!” cried Bobby.

“That’s the one they want to catch,” said Eve. “She is ugly, too, I believe.” Then she raised her voice in warning to Patrick; “Look out, Patrick! She is real cross.”

“Faith!” returned the Irishman, half squatting down in the path of the charging sow. “It’s not afraid I be of the likes of a pig. ’Tis too many of their tails I’ve twisted in ould Ireland, to run from wan in Ameriky – ”

Just then the animal spied him and went for Patrick, full tilt. There wasn’t time for the Irishman to dodge; but he did spread his legs, and the angry mother-hog ran between them.

CHAPTER X – THE MID-TERM EXAMINATION

The girls, who were nearest the end of the lake, watched Patrick and the old hog in amazement. The boys came down from the far end with a chorus of yells and laughter.

For the Irishman, leaping up with his feet apart, descended on the back of the charging animal, with his face toward her tail!

The porker grunted her displeasure, and Patrick did some grunting, too; but he was not easily scared – nor would he be shaken off. He locked his arms tightly around the animal’s body and hugged her neck with his legs, so that she could not bite him.

The creature kept up a deafening squealing, while out of the bush rushed Dandy, the farmer’s dog. The boys came sweeping in from the lake to join in the sport – sport to everybody but the pig and Patrick! But Dandy got into the scrimmage first.

True to his instinct, the dog attempted to seize the hog by the ear, but miscalculated and caught Patrick by the calf of the leg!

“Moses and all the children of Israel!” bawled the Irishman. “’Tis not fair to set two bastes onto wan! Call off yer dawg, Otto, or it’s the death of him I’ll be when I git rid of the hog.”

But just then the poor hog got rid of him. She lay down and Patrick tumbled off, kicking at the dog. Dandy seemed much surprised to discover that he had locked his teeth on the wrong individual!

The boys were convulsed with laughter; but the girls were afraid that the Irishman had been seriously hurt. And, from the squealing of the hog, they were positive that she was suffering.

However, Mr. Sitz and Otto appeared, and tied the legs of the struggling beast, and so bore her away. They had already trapped her litter of young ones, and Patrick limped after his master and Otto, vowing vengeance against both the hog and the dog.

So the boys took turns in keeping up the fire on the shore, for although it was a clear day, the wind continued cold and blew hard. They were all glad to hover around the blaze, now and then; and especially so when they ate their luncheons.

Eve had prepared a great can of chocolate and the girls had all brought well-filled lunch boxes. Bobby was hovering about Laura’s as soon as it was opened.

“Mammy Jinny’s made you something nice, I know,” she said. “Dear me, I’m so hungry! I wish I was like the Mississippi River.”

“What’s that for?” demanded Prettyman Sweet, who overheard her. “Like the Mississippi? Fawncy!”

“Then I’d have three mouths,” exclaimed Bobby, immediately filling the mouth she did possess.

“My word! that wouldn’t be so bad an idea, would it?” proclaimed Purt, who was a good deal of a gourmand himself.

“I don’t think much of this jam pie,” complained Chet, holding up a wedge that he had taken from his sister’s basket.

“That’s not jam pie!” exclaimed Laura. “Whoever heard of jam pie?”

“Yep. This is it,” declared Chet. “The crusts are jammed right together. There ain’t enough filling.”

The wind increased toward the end of the day and it was hard to skate against it; but the young folk had a lot of fun sailing down the length of the pond with their coats spread for sails.

“That was a great scheme you suggested about the kite the other day, Laura,” declared Lance Darby. “It was as good as an aeroplane.”

“What would be the matter with hitching the kite to our scooter?” suggested Chet, who overheard him.

The two chums owned a small iceboat which went, on Lake Luna, by the name of “scooter.”

“Say, old man! I’ve got a better scheme than that!” cried Lance, suddenly.

“What say?”

“Let’s combine a flying machine with an iceboat and beat out everybody on the lake this winter!”

“Wow!” shouted his chum. “Now, you’ve been skating with Mother Wit and have caught her inventive genius – it’s contagious. Gee! what an idea!”

“That’s all right. Wait till you hear my scheme,” said Lance, wagging his head.

“It ought to work fine,” said Bobby Hargrew, with serious face. “All you will have to do when you are sailing along the ice and come to open water will be to turn a switch and jump right into the air. Save getting your feet wet.”

“Laugh all you want to,” said Lance, threateningly. “When we get it done you girls will be glad enough to ride in it.”

“Not I!” cried Nellie Agnew. “I wouldn’t ride on your old scooter as it is. And to combine a flying machine and iceboat – whew! I guess not.”

The boys became enthusiastic, however, and they talked about it all the way home. Lance, however, kept the important idea regarding the new invention for Chet Belding’s private ear.

Jess Morse enjoyed the outing that Saturday, as she always enjoyed such fun when with the Beldings; but, after all her mind was on her play. She almost lived that play nowadays!

And, to tell the truth, she began to neglect some of her studies in her concentration of mind upon “The Spring Road.” Her mother praised it warmly.

“To think that I should have a daughter who may turn out to be a real genius!” cried Mrs. Morse. “Although it is so hard to get a play accepted by a first-class producer.”

“No. I don’t want to be a genius,” said Jess shaking her head. “But I do want awfully to win that prize.”

“Such a sordid child,” said her mother, playfully. “I cannot imagine one’s putting such emphasis on mere money. It isn’t genius, after all, I fear. Our friends would call you eminently practical, I suppose,” and the irresponsible lady sighed.

But if Jess had no impractical thoughts regarding why she wished to win the prize, she made the mistake, just the same, of letting Miss Carrington catch her two or three times in recitation hour. Gee Gee was down on her like a hawk.

“Miss Morse, what does this mean?” demanded the stern teacher, eyeing Jess with particular grimness through her thick spectacles.

She had called the culprit to her desk just before the noon recess and now showed her the enormity of her offenses.

“You are falling back. There is something on your mind beside your textbooks, that is very sure, Miss Morse. I cannot lay it to athletics at present, I suppose, for there seems to be a slight let-up in the activities of you young ladies in that direction,” and she smiled her very scornfullest smile. Miss Carrington abhorred athletics.

“But we have another matter interfering with the placid current of our school life. Are you, Miss Morse, one of the young ladies who are attempting to write a play?”

“Ye – yes, ma’am,” stammered Jess, blushing to her ears.

“Ah! so I thought. I believe I can pick out all these playwrights by a reference to their recitation papers. And this afternoon comes our mid-term examination. Let me tell you, Miss Morse, that you must do better this afternoon, or I shall take your case up with Mr. Sharp.”

She was folding and tying with a narrow ribbon some papers as she spoke, and her eyes snapped behind her glasses.

“These are the questions in my hands now, Miss Morse,” said Gee. “And let me tell you, they are searching ones. Be prepared, Miss – be prepared!”

And she popped them into the top drawer on the right-hand side of her desk. But before she could shut down the roll top and so lock the desk, Miss Gould appeared at the door of the room and beckoned to Miss Carrington. The latter rose hurriedly and departed, leaving her desk open. And likewise leaving Jess Morse, her hungry eyes fixed upon that drawer in which the examination questions lay!

Just a peep at those papers might have helped Jess a whole lot in the coming hour of trial.

CHAPTER XI – MISSING

Alice Long, who was Short and Long’s sister, was entertaining some of the girls when Jess Morse came into the recreation hall with something her little brother Tommy had said.

“Tommy’s just going to school, you know, and he’s beginning to ask questions. I guess he stumps his teachers in the primary grade. He heard the arithmetic class reciting and learned that only things of the same denomination can be subtracted from each other.

“‘Now, you know that ain’t so, Alice,’ says he to me. ‘For, can’t you take four quarts of milk from three cows?’”

Jess didn’t feel like laughing; what was coming after recess troubled her. She felt a certainty that she would fail, and she could not get over it.

“Besides,” she said to herself, “Gee Gee will put the hardest questions on the list to me – I just know she will.”

“What’s the matter, Jess?” asked Laura, coming up to her and squeezing her arm. “Something is troubling you, honey.”

“And it will trouble you after recess,” replied Jess, mournfully.

“The old exams?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Afraid, are you?” laughed Mother Wit.

“I’m just scared to death. And Gee Gee knows I’m not prepared and she will be down on me like a hawk.”

“Maybe not.”

“She knows I am weak. She just told me so, and she showed me the papers and said there were awfully hard questions in them. She just delights in catching us girls. And she says all of us who are trying for the prize are neglecting our regular work.”

“I expect we are, Jess,” admitted Laura. “Oh, dear! it’s not easy to write a play, is it?”

“I don’t know,” said Jess, hesitatingly. “I’m not sure that I am writing a regular play. But I’m writing something!”

“What does your mother say about it?”

“Oh, of course she praises it. She would.”

“I bet you win the prize, Jess!” exclaimed Laura.

“No such luck. And, anyway, I will take no prize this afternoon. Gee Gee threatens to take my standing up with Mr. Sharp if I don’t do well, too.”

“Oh, don’t worry, dear. Perhaps you will come out all right.”

Bobby came swinging along and bumped into them. “Oh, hullo!” exclaimed she. “Say! how do you pronounce ‘s-t-i-n-g-y’? Heh?”

“Man or wasp?” returned Mother Wit, quickly.

Jess laughed. “You can’t catch Laura with your stale jokes, Bobby,” she gibed.

“That’s all right; I asked for information. But you girls don’t know anything. You’re writing plays. That’s enough to give you softening of the brain. The folks that know it all are the squabs,” chuckled Bobby, referring to the freshman class. “What do you suppose one of them sprang this morning?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” spoke Laura.

“Why, she was asked to define the difference between instinct and intelligence, and she said: ‘Instinct knows everything needed without learning it; but human beings have reason, so we have to study ourselves half blind to keep from being perfect fools!’ Now, what do you know about that?”

“I believe that child was right,” sighed Jess. “If I only had instinct I wouldn’t have to worry about the questions Gee Gee is going to give us this afternoon.”

“Oh, say not so!” gasped Bobby, rolling her eyes and putting up both hands. “I am trying to forget about those exams – There’s the bell! Back to the mines!” she groaned, and rushed to take her place in the line.

The Junior class crowded into Miss Carrington’s room and took their seats. The examination covered several of the more important studies. The teacher took her place, adjusted the thick glasses she always wore, and looked sternly over the room.

“Young ladies,” she said, in her most severe manner, “I hope you are all prepared for the review. But I doubt it – I seriously doubt it. Some of you have been falling behind of late in a most astonishing manner, and I fear for your standing – I fear for it.”

This manner of approaching the exam, was, of course, very soothing to the nervous girls; but it was Gee Gee’s way and they should all have been used to it by this time. She had opened the drawer of her desk – the top right-hand drawer – and was fumbling in it.

Pretty soon she gave her entire attention to sorting the papers in this drawer, which seemed to be pretty full. As the moments passed, her manner betrayed the fact that the teacher was much disturbed.

“Oh! I hope she’s lost ’em!” exclaimed the wicked Bobby Hargrew.

“I don’t,” returned the girl she spoke to. “We’d suffer for it.”

“Well, I got my fingers crossed!” chuckled Bobby. “She can’t accuse me. I wasn’t near her old desk.”

“Wasn’t it locked?” whispered another of the waiting girls.

Miss Carrington heard the bustle in the class, so she sat up and looked out over the room with asperity.

“I want to know what this means, girls,” she said, snappily. “My desk was left open by chance while I was out of the room for perhaps ten minutes. The examination papers were in this drawer. Now I cannot find them. Has somebody done this for a joke?” and she looked hard in Bobby’s direction.

“Look out, Bob,” warned one of her mates; “crossing your fingers isn’t going to save you.”

But suddenly, even while she was speaking, Miss Carrington seemed to be stabbed by a thought. She started to her feet and turned her gaze upon the part of the room in which Josephine Morse sat. And Jess’s face was aflame!

“Miss Morse!”

Gee Gee’s voice was never of a pleasing quality. Now it startled every girl in the room. Jess slowly arose, and she clung to the corner of her desk a moment for support.

“Do you remember seeing me put those question papers into this drawer? Do you?” demanded the teacher.

“Ye – yes, ma’am,” replied Jess.

“You were standing right here at my desk?”

Jess nodded, while the whole class watched her now paling face. Many of the girls looked amazed; some few looked angry. Laura Belding’s eyes fairly blazed and she half rose from her seat.

“Sit down, young ladies!” commanded Miss Carrington, who was quick to see these suggestive actions on the part of the class. “Come here to me, Miss Morse.”

Jess walked up the aisle. After that first moment her strength came back and she held her head up and stared straight into the face of the teacher. The tears that had sprung to her eyes she winked back.

“I had called you to my desk, Miss Morse,” said Gee Gee, in a low voice, and staring hard at the girl, “and had pointed out to you that this particular examination would be a trying one. Is that not a fact?”

“Yes, ma’am,” admitted Jess.

“Miss Gould called me and I hastily thrust the papers, which I particularly told you were the question papers, into this drawer. Did I not?”

“You did.”

“And then I hurried out of the room without locking the drawer – without pulling down the roll top of the desk, indeed. Is that not so, Miss Morse?”

“It is,” said Jess, getting better control of her voice now.

“And you were left standing here. The other girls were gone. Now, Miss Morse, I freely admit that I am culpable in leaving such important papers in the way. I should have locked them up. I presume the temptation was great – ”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Carrington!” exclaimed the girl, more indignant than frightened now. “You are accusing me without reason. I would not do such a thing – ”

“Not ordinarily, perhaps,” interposed Miss Carrington. “But it all came to you in a moment, I presume. And you did not have time to put them back.”

This she had said in a low voice, so that nobody but Jess heard her. But the girl’s voice rose higher as she grew hysterical.

“Miss Carrington, you are unfair! I never touched them!”

“You must admit, Miss Morse, that circumstances are very much against you,” declared the teacher.

“I admit nothing of the kind. A dozen people might have been in the room while you were out and the desk was open. Ten minutes is a long time.”

“You seem to have thought out your defense very well, Miss Morse,” said Gee Gee, sternly. “But it will not do. It is too serious a matter to overlook. I shall send for Mr. Sharp,” and she touched the button which rang the bell in the principal’s office.