The Girls of Central High: or, Rivals for All Honors

CHAPTER I – A BLOW AT THE HIGH COST OF LIVING

“Hey, Laura!”

The side window of James Belding’s jewelry store was open behind the grillwork of strong steel bars. Laura had just finished dusting the inside of the last show case in the row on that side of the wide shop, and had replaced the trays. This was Laura Belding’s usual Saturday morning task; her father would not trust Chet to do it, although the lad often waited on customers.

Just now Mr. Belding was at the front of the store, showing a tray of his most valuable rings to a customer. The shopper was a stranger to both the jeweler and his daughter, who were alone in the place; therefore Mr. Belding’s eyes did not leave the tray before him.

“Hey, Laura!”

The call was repeated in a loud “stage whisper”; the sound came from the open window. Laura started and turned to look. She could see a fly-away mop of flaxen hair, a line of forehead, and two sparkling brown eyes.

“Bobby Hargrew!” she cried, and went to the window.

“Oh, Laura! I want something,” whispered her friend, fairly dancing up and down outside the window. “I’ve got such a scheme!”

“What is it now?” asked Laura, sedately. “Bobby” Hargrew’s schemes were often very crack-brained indeed. Everybody – except her grandmother – called her “Bobby” instead of “Clara.” There were no boys in the Hargrew family; but her father, Tom Hargrew, declared that Clara was just as much fun as any boy. And she certainly was a “fly-away.”

“Get your father to let you have that big magnifying glass we were looking at last week, and bring it along to the store,” whispered Bobby, chuckling while she preferred the request.

“What for?”

“Never mind! I’ll show you when we get to the store. Dad’s about to shut up. Hurry, now!”

Tom Hargrew’s grocery store was on the block just beyond the Belding shop.

“I – don’t – know,” murmured Laura, glancing at her father and his customer. “Pa’s busy.”

“Oh, come on!” cried the harum-scarum Bobby. “I won’t hurt the old glass.”

Thus adjured, Laura put on her hat and walked slowly to the front of the store with the magnifying glass in her hand.

“Father,” she said softly, touching his arm, “I want to borrow this for a little while. I will bring it back.”

He nodded. He could not leave his customer then. So Laura walked out of the store and joined her school friend in Market Street. The girls were sophomores in Central High School of the city and they had always lived in adjoining streets, so were very good friends. Bobby was so full of mischief that it was hard to keep her out of trouble; but sometimes the more quiet daughter of the jeweler had a restraining influence over the younger girl.

“Oh, I’ve got the greatest scheme!” gasped Bobby, choked with laughter. “Hurry up before Daddy closes.”

“What have you been doing now?” asked her friend, admonishingly.

“Just dressing one of the store windows – honest to goodness! that’s all I’ve been doing.”

“But why the magnifying glass?”

“That’s it. You’ll see the joke. Hurry,” urged Bobby, pulling Laura along the walk.

They came to Mr. Hargrew’s grocery store and Bobby halted her friend before the first window. It was tastefully arranged with canned goods and package products; but in the center, in a bed of different colored tissue paper, was an ordinary loaf of bread of small size. Above it was a freshly lettered card bearing the legend:

Why Worry About

THE HIGH COST OF LIVING?

ONLY 5 CENTS

“But I don’t see the joke,” murmured Laura, turning to her giggling friend, curiously.

“Wait!” cried Bobby. “You’ll see. Give me that glass.”

She snatched the magnifying glass from her friend’s hand and whisked into the store. In a moment she had set the glass in such a way before the loaf of bread that anybody passing the window must look at the bread through it – and the loaf certainly looked to be a huge one for the stated price on the card above.

Laura had to laugh. And she knew it would make many other people laugh before Monday morning. Such little jokes attracted trade, too, and Bobby Hargrew was full of novel ideas. Her father came outside and viewed the advertising display admiringly.

“Hasn’t that young one got a great head?” he said. Bobby’s capers usually “tickled” her father. Having no son, he made her his companion as though she were a boy.

Already pedestrians had begun to stop before the window and laugh over the joke. Laura turned to go back to her father’s store.

“You’re coming up to the school this afternoon, Bobby?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” returned her friend, slowly. “I wanted to see the East High boys beat the West High boys. First baseball game of the season, you know; I just hope Central will win the pennant.”

“So do I,” murmured Laura. “But I think we girls should have some interest in athletics besides our loyalty to the boys’ baseball and football teams. I want the girls of Central High to organize for our own improvement and pleasure. Don’t you?”

“Do you suppose anything will come of the meeting this afternoon?” queried Bobby, doubtfully. “Old ‘Gee Gee’ is opposed to it.”

“How do you know Miss Carrington doesn’t like the idea?” asked Laura, quickly.

“She told us if we did not stand well in deportment, as well as in our studies, we could not belong to the new association – if it was formed.”

“Well, why should we? We’ve got to play the game, Bobby. It’s only honest in us to do our work well if we want the fun of playing basket-ball, and learning to dance, and row, and swim, and all the rest of it.”

“Well, it’s little fun I’ll get out of it,” sighed Bobby. “Gee Gee is forever putting black tally-marks down against me.”

“Miss Grace G. Carrington, whom you so impolitely term ‘Gee Gee,’” laughed Laura, “is thoroughly familiar with you, Miss Bobby Hargrew. You cannot fool her for one little minute – that’s why you don’t like her.”

The grocer’s daughter flushed; but she laughed, too.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she admitted. “She always does catch me at things.”

“Then don’t do ‘things,’” advised Laura Belding, with a smile.

“Can’t all be ‘Miss Prims,’ like you, Laura,” cried Bobby saucily.

“You’ll come to the meeting, just the same?” urged her friend.

“Oh, yes; I’ll come. I hope we’ll get a girls’ athletic association formed, too. The boys won’t let us play with them if we want to, and I’d like to learn how to play some game beside Puss in the Corner and Drop the Handkerchief. We’re all getting so dreadfully lady-like and grown up. I hate to grow up. If I’ve got to be all stiff and starched all the time, I’d rather be a boy. Why! Nellie Agnew looks so much like her mother, back to, when she’s dressed up, that last Sunday I asked after her rheumatism in my best-bred voice before I saw ’twas Nell!” and again Bobby broke into one of her jolly laughs.

“You come to the meeting. Mr. Sharp approves, and maybe he’ll be there; so will Mrs. Case, our gymnastic teacher.”

“I’ll come, Laura,” promised the harum-scarum, as the jeweler’s daughter went on to her father’s shop. The customer had gone when she arrived and Mr. Belding was putting up the grating at the door. The more valuable articles of the stock had been put into the huge safe at the back of the room, and the safe locked.

“We’ll go to Mostyn’s to lunch in a minute, Laura,” said her father. “Your dusting is done, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Laura, smiling.

It was a regular Saturday treat to accompany her father to the fashionable restaurant for luncheon. Laura did not begrudge the time she spent helping in the store during that forenoon, when the treat followed.

Most of the stores on Market Street closed for the Saturday half holiday, even if, like Mr. Belding’s jewelry store, they opened again for the evening trade. For the town was interested in athletics, and Saturday afternoon in pleasant weather the year around was given up to field sports of some kind.

Centerport was advantageously located for both land and water sports, being situated on the level shore of a beautiful lake, many miles in extent, with a range of low hills behind it to shelter the city from the north.

The boys of the three High Schools of the city – East, West and Central – were rivals in baseball, football, rowing, and track athletics; and on this particular Saturday the first baseball game of the season was to be played between East and West High School nines. Central High, which Laura Belding and Bobby Hargrew attended, had a good team, too, and the girls – loyal to their boy friends – would have “rooted” for the home team had the Central club been playing.

However, the girls of Central High – especially the Sophomores and Juniors – had a particular reason for attending no baseball game on this afternoon. As soon as her luncheon was finished, Laura excused herself and hurried away from Mostyn’s restaurant toward the schoolhouse.

Her route lay past Mr. Hargrew’s grocery – one window of which was the scene of Bobby Hargrew’s latest practical joke. The sun was very hot for so early in the year, and the grocery was on the sunny side of the street. It was long enough past noon for the sun’s rays to pour into the wide window.

Just before Laura reached Mr. Hargrew’s store she saw a tow-headed boy, with a baseball cap stuck on the very back of his head, coming whistling along the hot walk with his hands in his pockets.

“Billy Long might just as well not have any hat on at all,” thought Laura, smiling as she beheld the freckled, good-natured face of the towhead.

And then, quite suddenly, Billy Long’s actions amazed Laura Belding.

He halted, as though struck motionless by the sight of Bobby’s joke in the store window. Then he leaped to the window, leaped back, turned to look up and down the almost deserted street (there was nobody in sight but Laura for two or three blocks) and then dashed toward the corner which the girl had but a few seconds before passed.

“What’s the matter with you, Billy Long?” cried Laura.

“Fire!” bawled the boy. “Mr. Hargrew’s store’s afire! Fire!”

“Nonsense!” cried Laura, and ran forward. “Are you fooling me, Short and Long?”

But in a moment she saw smoke rising from the very middle of the show window – in the heart of the bed of tissue paper.

CHAPTER II – ATHLETICS – PRO AND CON

Billy Long (called “Short and Long” because of his diminutive stature) galloped on to the street corner, shouting “Fire! Fire!” in an astonishingly weak voice. Billy was so excited that it choked him!

On the corner was one of the city fire-alarm boxes. There was no place of deposit of the key indicated upon the box; but it had a glass front. Billy looked wildly about for a stick, or stone, with which to break the glass. There appeared to be nothing of the kind at hand.

Down the side street, not half a block away, was the fire station; but that fact never crossed Master Billy’s mind. Besides, the importance of having a legitimate reason for sending in an alarm was the prominent idea in Short and Long’s mind at that moment.

He glanced back once and saw the spiral of smoke rising behind the broad plate glass window of the grocery store. Laura Belding stood before it unable, as he had been for the moment when he first sighted it, to do a thing. Indeed, what was there to do but turn in the alarm for the department?

The loaf of bread nestling in its bed of tissue paper was already burned to a cinder; the paper would soon be in flames.

Billy hesitated only a moment when he reached the box and found no weapon with which to break the glass. He pulled out his handkerchief, wrapped it about his knuckles, and splintered the glass with one blow. At that he cut his hand a little; but he scarcely noticed this in his eagerness.

Standing on his tiptoes he was just able to pull down the hook inside. He could hear the alarm bell sound in the station half a block away at almost the instant he set the telegraph to working.

By this time several citizens had run to the store front. They were all quite as excited as Billy Long, the short boy.

“Tom’s locked up and gone!” cried one, shaking the latch of the store door.

“Of course he has – gone to the ball game!” said another.

“This door’ll have to be smashed in.”

“No! break the window pane!”

“Lock will cost less than the glass,” cried another man.

“That burning glass is what did it,” said one more reflective man. “Fool trick – that was.”

“That young one of his did it,” declared the first speaker. “Always up to some trick or other.”

“Say! where’s the fire department? They must have all gone to the ball game, too.”

“I’m going to break the glass in this door!” shouted the first man to arrive.

“What good will that do?” cried his friend, mopping his brow. “There’s the wire screen behind it. You can’t bust that with your fist.”

“Break the big window, then!”

“No! Smash the lock of the door.”

But they had no tools with which to do this. Had there been a loose paving block in the street the urgent man would surely have burst in the big plate glass. Just then a man with a helmet on his head and an axe in his hand rushed around the corner – the first fireman on the scene.

“Where is it, boy?” he demanded of Billy Long. “You rang in the alarm, didn’t you?”

“Here it is, Ned!” yelled one of the men in front of the grocery store. “You’ve got to break down this door to git to it.”

“You got to break the window – that’s quickest!” declared the insistent man.

The fireman ran to the door. He poised his axe for a blow as the others stood back. But suddenly Laura Belding halted the whole proceedings.

“Wait! wait a moment!” she cried, darting to the side of the window.

The fireman looked over his shoulder at her. The girl, with nimble fingers, released the awning ropes. In half a minute the heavy awning dropped over the walk and shut out the hot rays of the sun. The cinder of bread stopped smoking. The fire was out!

“Well! don’t that beat all?” cackled one of the men.

The fireman grinned sheepishly and walked to the middle of the show-window to make sure that the danger was really over.

“You’ve got a head on you – that’s what you’ve got!” he said to Laura.

“She’s Belding’s daughter – a smart little girl,” declared another of the men.

The engine and hose carriage came tearing around the corner just then. From up the street thundered the ladder-truck, three huge horses abreast. A crowd came running to the scene.

Laura slipped away, and found Short and Long at her side.

“Huh!” he said, with a grimace. “I thought I was going to be a hero. You’ve got me beat, Laura. You stole my laurel wreath right off my head!”

“You ought to have used what’s in your head a little better, Billy,” returned the girl, laughing. “What is your gray matter for? – as Professor Dimple would say.”

“Huh! Old Dimple! That’s exactly what he would say. He certainly does stick the gaff into us,” grumbled the short boy. “I’ve got a page of Virgil extra to translate between now and Monday morning. He’s a mean old hunks.”

“Such language!” sighed Laura. “I should think you needed extra work in English, not Latin, Billy.”

“I don’t need extra work at all,” proclaimed Master Billy, with scorn. “I’ve got too much work as it is. And he and Mr. Sharp between them threaten to cut me out of the ball team altogether this season if I don’t catch up. And what’s the team going to do for a short stop?”

“Well, Miss Carrington tells us girls that if we are going in for athletics we have all got to have good marks, too. Only the girls who stand high can join the new athletic association. Some of the lazy girls will be disappointed, I fear.”

“Are you girls really going in for athletics?” demanded Billy.

“We are. Why shouldn’t we? It isn’t fair for you boys to have all the fun.”

“And they say they are going to start girls’ branches in East and West High, too?”

“Yes. We want to have inter-school matches. Inter-class matches are forbidden right at the start. The doctor says there must be no rivalry among classes.”

“Yah! but there will be,” said Billy. “There always is. Purt Sweet pretty near broke up the ball team this season because he couldn’t play.”

“Now we girls will show you how much nicer we can conduct affairs,” laughed Laura. “We sha’n’t squabble.”

“Oh, no!” scoffed Billy. “What do you s’pose Hessie Grimes will do if she isn’t allowed to boss everything? Didn’t she and that chum of hers, Lil Pendleton, break up the class supper last year – when we were freshmen? Oh, no!”

“Well, that won’t happen again,” said Laura, firmly.

“Why not?”

“Because the rest of us girls will not agree to follow her,” declared Laura, confidently.

“You know she won’t play if she can’t be ‘it,’” grinned Billy.

“Now you see,” returned Laura, good naturedly, and a moment later she parted from the short boy.

She had not walked another block toward the schoolhouse when she heard a voice calling her name:

“Laura! Laura Belding!”

“Why, Jess!” exclaimed Laura, eagerly. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

Josephine, or “Jess,” Morse was a taller girl than her friend, with bright gray eyes, and hair of that “fly-away” variety that never will look smooth. Despite Miss Morse’s bright eyes she often did the most ridiculous things quite thoughtlessly. Her mind was of the “wandering” variety. And almost always one could find an ink stain on her finger. This marked her among her girl friends, at least, as being “literary.” And, as the old folk say, “she came by it naturally.” Her mother, Mrs. Mary Morse, had some little reputation as a writer for the magazines.

“Yes,” said Miss Morse, putting her arm around her chum’s waist as they walked on together. “I just had to come. If you are going in for athletics, Laura, of course I’ve got to.”

“Too bad,” laughed her friend. “You’re just whipped into it, I suppose?”

“I just am.”

“Why, it will be fun, Jess!”

“Who says so? I’d lots rather go to the theater – or to a party – or even go shopping. And you can’t dress up and play those horrid games the gym. teacher tells about.”

“But you like to play tennis.”

“Er – well – Yes, I play tennis. I like it because there aren’t many of the girls – nor the boys, either – who can beat me at that. I’ve got such a long reach, you see,” said the tall girl, with satisfaction.

“Then you’d like any athletic game in which you could excel?”

“Why – I suppose so,” admitted Miss Morse.

“That’s a poor attitude in which to approach school athletics,” said Laura with a sigh.

“Why is it?”

“Because, as I understand it, we should play for the sport’s sake, not so much to win every time. That’s the way to play the game. And that is what Mrs. Case will tell us to-day, I know.”

“She will be at the meeting, I suppose?”

“And Miss Carrington.”

“Oh – Gee Gee! Of course. To keep us up in our deportment,” said Jess, making a face.

“You all find her so strict,” observed Laura, seriously. “She treats me nicely.”

“Why, you know very well, Laura, that you never in your life did anything to get a teacher mad.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that. We don’t go to school to play tricks on the teachers. I want them to respect me. And father and mother would be disappointed if I brought home a bad report, especially in deportment.”

“Oh, I know!” said Jess. “For a girl who likes fun as you do, you do manage to keep concealed all your superabundance of spirits – in school, at least. But some of us have just got to slop over.”

“‘Slop over!’”

“Yes, Miss Nancy. Don’t be a prude in your English, too,” laughed Jess. “Say! did you hear how Bobby got Gee Gee going yesterday in chemistry class?”

Laura shook her head, seeing that it would be useless to take her chum to task further on the topic of slang.

“Why, Gee Gee had been expatiating at great length on the impossibility of really creating, or annihilating, anything – the indestructibility of matter, you know.”

“I see,” said Laura, nodding.

“Oh, she brought up the illustrations in ranks and platoons, and regiments. I guess she thought she had got the fact hammered home at last, for she said: ‘You absolutely cannot make anything.’ And then Bobby speaks up, just as innocent, and says: ‘But, Miss Carrington, can’t we make a noise that didn’t exist before?’

“And what do you think?” cried Jess, giggling, “Poor Bobby got a black mark for it. Gee Gee said she did it to make the class laugh.”

“And Bobby did, didn’t she?” said Laura, but laughing, too.

“Oh, we laughed all right. But the lesson was practically over. Gee Gee ought to be glad if we can leave her class room in anything but a flood of tears!” completed Jess, as they came to Central High School.