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

CHAPTER XII – COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENSE

“Come to order!” commanded Miss Carrington, rapping on her desk with a hard knuckle.

She quickly gave the class in general a task and sent Jess to her seat.

“I will speak with you later, young lady,” she said, in her most scornful way.

Jess’s eyes were almost blinded by tears when she went back to her seat. But they were angry tears. The unkind suspicion and accusation of the teacher cut deeply into the girl’s soul. She could see some of the girls looking at her askance – girls like Hester Grimes and Lily Pendleton, and their set. Of course, they had not heard all that Miss Carrington said; but they could easily suspect. And the whole class knew that the trouble was over the disappearance of the papers for the review.

Bobby wickedly whispered to her neighbor that she hoped the papers wouldn’t ever be found. But that would not help Jess Morse out of trouble.

To Jess herself, hiding her face behind an open book, the printed page of which was a mere blur before her eyes, it seemed as though this trouble would overwhelm her. It was worse than the poverty she and her mother had to face. It was worse than having no party dress fit to be seen in. It was worse than being refused credit at Mr. Closewick’s grocery store. It was worse than having old Mr. Chumley hound them for the rent

Reviewing the whole affair more calmly, Jess could understand that Miss Carrington would consider her guilty – if she could bring herself to think any girl of Central High would do such a thing.

Jess sat there, dumb, unable to work, unable to concentrate her mind on anything but the horribly unjust accusation of her teacher. How she disliked Gee Gee!

The other girls were not particularly devoted to the task set them for the moment, either. Laura did not sit very near her chum in this room. She asked permission to speak with Jess and Miss Carrington said:

“No, Miss Belding; sit down!” and she said it in her very grimmest way. Usually the teacher was very lenient with Mother Wit, for of all her pupils Laura gave her the least trouble.

A feeling of expectancy controlled the whole roomful of girls. It came to a crisis – every girl jumped! – when the door opened and Mr. Sharp walked in.

The principal of Central High seldom troubled the girls’ class rooms with his presence. When he addressed the young ladies it was usually en masse. He trusted Miss Carrington, almost entirely, in the management of the girls.

His rosy cheeks shone and his eyes twinkled through his glasses as he walked quickly to the platform and sat down beside Gee Gee at her table, which faced the girls, whereas her roll-top desk was at the rear of the platform, against the wall of the room.

Principal and teacher talked in low voices for some moments. Mr. Sharp cast no confusing glances about the room. He ignored the girls, as though his entire business was with their teacher.

At length he looked around, smiling as usual, Mr. Sharp was a pleasant and fair-minded man and the girls all liked him. He had their undivided attention in a moment, without the rapping of Miss Carrington’s hard knuckle on the table top. Bobby said that that knuckle of Gee Gee’s middle finger had been abnormally developed by continued bringing the class to order.

“Young ladies!” said Gee Gee, snappily. “Mr. Sharp will speak to you.”

The principal looked just a little annoyed – just a little; and for only the moment while he was rising to speak. He never liked to hear his pupils treated like culprits. He usually treated them at assembly with elaborate politeness if he had to criticise, and with perfect good-fellowship if praise was in order. This little scene staged by Miss Carrington grated on him.

“Our good Miss Carrington,” said he, softly, “has sustained a loss. Important papers have been mislaid, we will say.”

He raised his hand quickly when Miss Carrington would have spoken, and she was wise enough to let him go on in his own way.

“Now, the question is: How have the papers been lost, and where are they at the present moment? It is a problem – in deduction, we will say. We must all partake of the character of some famous detective. It used to be a rule in our family when I was a boy that, if a thing were lost, it was wisest to look for it in the most unlikely places first. I can remember once, when father lost a horse, that mother insisted in shaking out all the hens’ nests and giving them new nests. But father never did find that horse.”

The girls had begun to smile now; and some of them giggled. Miss Carrington looked as she usually did when Mr. Sharp joked – it pained her and set her teeth on edge. Bobby declared she looked as though she had bitten into a green persimmon.

“Joking aside, however,” continued the principal. “This loss is a serious matter. Suppose you young ladies suggest how the question papers to be used in this mid-term examination have been whisked out of this drawer of Miss Carrington’s desk, and hidden elsewhere? Can it be possible that it is the prank of a pixy? Of course, all of you young ladies are too serious-minded to do such a thing yourselves.”

There was a general laugh, then, and the strain of the last few minutes began to be relieved. Somehow, even Jess Morse felt better.

“To suggest that anybody in this class – the Junior class of Central High – would deliberately misappropriate these questions is beyond imagination,” declared Mr. Sharp, with sudden gravity. “It is a mistake. The mistake is explainable. Has anyone a suggestion to make?”

It was Laura Belding who broke the silence. She asked her question very modestly, but her cheeks were flushed, and she was evidently indignant.

“Is – is it positive that the papers were put in that top drawer that Miss Carrington now has open?”

“Ask Miss Morse!” snapped the teacher, before Mr. Sharp could reply.

“We will. Nothing like corroboration,” said the principal, with a bow and smile. “Miss Morse?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jess, in a low voice, rising. “I saw her put them there. She tied them into a bundle by themselves.”

“You are observant, Miss Morse,” said the principal, smiling again. “Thank you. Now, Miss Belding?” for Laura was still standing.

“I notice that the drawer is very full,” said Laura, quietly. “May I come upon the platform and look at it?”

“Certainly,” responded Mr. Sharp; but Miss Carrington flushed again, and exclaimed:

“I have searched that drawer thoroughly. The papers are not there.”

Again Mr. Sharp made a little deprecatory gesture, “Come forward, Miss Belding,” he said.

Mother Wit gave her chum a single reassuring glance. Somehow, without reason, that look comforted Jess. She still stood beside her desk, too anxious to sit down again, while Laura walked quietly forward.

“That drawer is very full, Mr. Sharp,” she said, composedly enough. “May I take it out?”

“Oh, I’ve had it out and felt behind it,” urged Miss Carrington, all of a flutter now.

“Maybe Miss Belding can show us something we did not know,” said the principal, in his bantering way. It had been he who gave Laura her nickname, and he thought a great deal of the girl. He knew that she had some serious intention or she would not have come forward.

Laura pulled out the over-full drawer and set it down upon the carpet.

“Oh, it isn’t there,” said Miss Carrington. “The packet was tied with a mauve ribbon – a narrow ribbon – ”

Laura pulled out the next drawer.

“Oh, that’s quite useless,” exclaimed the lady teacher. “And to have everything disarranged in this way – ”

“We must give the counsel for the defense every opportunity, Miss Carrington,” said the principal softly.

Laura drew out the third drawer – just glancing at the top layer of papers – and then the fourth and last. No bundle tied with a mauve ribbon appeared.

“Not there!” exclaimed Gee Gee, and was there a spice of satisfaction in her voice?

But Laura dropped upon her knees, ran her arm to the shoulder into the aperture where the last drawer came out, and drew forth the missing packet of papers, which lay crowded back upon the carpet.

“There!” said Mr. Sharp, quite in a matter-of-fact tone, “I have suggested to the Board of Education more than once that all these old unsanitary desks should be done away with. The only roll-top desk fit to use in the schools are those which stand upon feet, the bottom of the lower drawer being a few inches from the floor. Thank you, Miss Belding! We will now go on with the afternoon session.”

But he rested his hand for a moment upon Laura’s shoulder, as she was about to step down after returning the drawers to their places in the desk.

“The counsel for the defense did very well,” he whispered, and then left the room as quietly as he had entered it.

Mr. Sharp had relieved Miss Carrington of the embarrassment of his presence; but she certainly was troubled by the untoward incident. Laura returned to her seat by the way of Jess’s and boldly squeezed her hand. And Jess thanked her, in her heart. The rebound from being suspected of the loss of the papers gave her such relief that the coming examination seemed much less terrible. Or perhaps, Miss Carrington was, after all, a little easy on her that afternoon; for Jess Morse came through the grilling with surprisingly high marks.

CHAPTER XIII – A WAY IS OPENED

But Jess had had ample warning. There would be something important heard from Gee Gee if she neglected the regular work of her classes to devote time and thought to that wonderful play.

It was hard to keep her mind off a task that had so gripped her heart and mind. “The Spring Road” was in her thought almost continually. She even dreamed about it at night. And it was a veritable wrench to get her mind off the idyl of youth she was writing to set it upon the grim realities of Latin, English, the higher mathematics, and other school tasks.

It seemed to Jess Morse as though no other piece of writing could ever be so enthralling as this she had undertaken. When she had begun it it was with fear and trembling. The two hundred dollar prize was what spurred her to the task. But now, she fairly loved it!

“The Spring Road” was a fantasy – a comedy – a love story; it was all three in one, and she was writing it with the limitations of those who would probably play it, in mind.

Many of the contestants for Mrs. Kerrick’s prize thought not at all about the players; but already in Jess’s mind was fixed who, of her schoolmates, would best fit into the parts. There was a character who could not gain much sympathy from the audience, but who could wear beautiful clothes – that would just suit Lily Pendleton.

And for the Spring Spirits, in the allegory, Budding Tree and Laughing Brook, who could be better fitted than Dora and Dorothy Lockwood? While the heroine of the story must be beautiful Kate Protest, of the Senior class, and the Truant Lover the sparkling Launcelot Darby.

At home matters were not going as smoothly as Jess had hoped, after her mother obtained regular work upon the Centerport Courier. It was nice to get the money regularly for that work; but somehow Mrs. Morse could not see the wisdom of “paying as you go.” Jess could not always take cash with her when she went to the stores; and if her mother chanced to be out herself and saw something particularly nice that Jess was likely to fancy, she ordered it in without regard to how it was to be paid for.

But that had always been Mrs. Morse’s way. She was over-generous with Jess while she, herself, went with shabby gloves and mended shoes. But any sensible plan of retrenchment in their household expenses had never been evolved in her mind.

How they were to meet the added burden of the January rent never seemed to trouble her. Jess only spoke of it once during that first fortnight in December; then it disturbed her mother so much that the lamp of genius refused to burn for a whole day, and, with a sigh, the girl gave over discussing the point.

Checks for her mother’s stories came few and far between these days, Jess feared that they would soon owe Mr. Hargrew as large a bill as they had at Mr. Closewick’s store. And as for a new dress – well, the idea of that was as far in the offing as ever.

All the girls she knew well were so busy scribbling away at their prize plays that, had Jess been free herself out of school hours, she would have been unable to find any of her usual companions at leisure.

Even Chet Belding, who was always at her beck and call, was terribly busy these days. He and Lance Darby were hard at work upon some wonderful sort of ice craft they were building down in Monson’s old boathouse, near the Girls’ Branch Athletic League field and boathouse.

Each day saw the wintry winds grow colder, and soon the ice upon Lake Luna was thick enough to bear. Some of the more reckless boys had skated out to the steamboat channel, which had been sawed from the open water in the middle of the lake, so that the freight boats from Lumberport and Keyport could get to their docks.

Ice of such thickness on Lake Luna at this early date, however, surprised even that apocryphal person, “the oldest inhabitant.” And Jess Morse would have been glad of a new coat, or the set of furs that her mother had talked about. When she started for school some mornings, the first blast of keen air off the lake seemed to cut through her like a knife. She wouldn’t have had her mother know how really thin her apparel seemed for anything in the world.

And, very wisely, she kept up her gym. work faithfully. A few minutes’ vigorous exercise after the regular day’s work at school was finished put her in a glow, made her breathe more deeply and “put a shine in her eyes,” as Bobby expressed it.

“There isn’t a girl in the class who doesn’t need brisking up in the gym. this weather – unless it’s Eve Sitz,” confided Bobby to Laura and Jess as they left the gymnasium building together one afternoon. “Girls are just like cats; they all like to mope around the register or the steam radiator in cold weather. Why, Lil Pendleton wears a lace shawl over her shoulders in the house, and hangs over the gas-log like an old woman. We all ought to get back into basketball – and at the rowing machines – again. Once a week on the court isn’t enough to keep us alive.”

“If you knew the number of things Eve Sitz does, in and out of doors, before she comes to school in the morning, and after she gets home again, you wouldn’t wonder that she keeps her color, and is so brisk and strong,” laughed Laura.

“I expect she is a busy little bee,” admitted Bobby.

“She helps milk the cows night and morning – ”

“There!” interrupted the irrepressible Bobby. “That’s what I’ve always intended to ask Eve; but I forget it.”

“What’s that?” asked Jess.

“Why, when you have finished milking a cow, how do you turn the milk off?”

“Isn’t she the ridiculous girl?” chuckled Laura, as Bobby ran up the side street toward her own door. Then Mother Wit turned on her chum, with her brisk, bird-like way: “How’s the play going, Jess?”

“I’m – I’m afraid it’s finished,” said her chum, slowly.

“‘Afraid!’” repeated Laura, in amazement.

“Yes. As far as I can finish it.”

“But you’re not going to give it up in the middle?” cried Laura.

“No. It is complete. Only it doesn’t satisfy me,” returned Jess, shaking her head. “And it never will.”

“Ah! there speaks real genius!” declared Laura, smiling.

“Don’t you believe it,” was her friend’s hasty reply. “I just don’t know enough to write it well enough to suit me.”

“Modesty!”

“Sense,” corrected Jess, laughing a little dolefully. “How are you getting along?”

“Just as Mr. Sharp said, I am no female Shakespeare,” said Laura. “But I have hopes that maybe my play isn’t so bad.”

Jess was not sanguine about “The Spring Road,” however. She knew that it might be written so much better, if one only knew how!

And while they discussed the play Jess heard somebody calling her by name. Laura grabbed her arm and pointed.

“Isn’t that Mrs. Prentice – the very rich Mrs. Prentice – in her electric runabout? And, I declare, Jess! she’s calling to you.”

“Yes. I know her; she wants me,” said Jess breathlessly, and she ran across the street to where the electric car was standing beside the curb.

“I want you, child,” said the lady, with decision. “Can you excuse yourself to your friend?”

Jess waved her hand to Laura, and called:

“I’ll be up after supper, dear.”

Laura nodded, and smiled, and went on; but she was evidently puzzled as she turned to gaze after the runabout as it moved off swiftly with her chum beside the lady in the magnificent furs.

“And how are you and your mother getting along?” asked Mrs. Prentice, as soon as the car had started.

“Why – why about as usual, Mrs. Prentice,” stammered Jess, who was much puzzled as to why the lady should want her to take this ride. “Only mother is regularly employed by Mr. Prentice, and is very grateful for the work – as you must know, ma’am.”

“Oh, don’t speak of that,” said Mrs. Prentice, laughing. “I fancy that Pat is getting full measure for his money; he usually does. But tell me, child, are you going to remain in that cottage of Mr. Chumley’s?”

“Why – I really don’t know, Mrs. Prentice. There seems no other place to go – ”

“He is horribly overcharging you, child,” said the lady, quickly.

“I know. But there are so few small places in decent neighborhoods – mother says she doesn’t know what to do about it.”

“I fancy, Jessica – Is that your name?”

“Josephine, Mrs. Prentice; only they all call me Jess.”

“Very well – Jess. Sounds a good practical name – and you are a practical girl; I can see that. Now, Jess, I fancy you have to do something yourself toward moving, to get your mother started, eh?”

“Oh! but I don’t know where to go – ”

The car began to slow down. Mrs. Prentice had run into a quiet side street, not two blocks from the cottage at the foot of Whiffle Street.

“See here,” said the lady, stopping the motor and preparing to alight. “I want you to see this little dove-cote – that’s what I have always called it. It is set behind a grassy front yard and there is a little garden at the back. You’ll love it in spring and summer.”

“Oh, but Mrs. Prentice, is it empty?”

“It’s too empty. That’s the trouble. The tenant I had left unexpectedly.” She neglected to say that she had paid the tenant a certain sum to leave the cottage and move into another house. “I don’t want the house empty during the cold weather. I have paid to have a fire kept up in the furnace for a week so that the pipes would not freeze. Come in.”

It was a dear little cottage; Jess Morse was delighted with it. And so much more convenient than Mr. Chumley’s. Besides, there was a good reason why the owner paid to have the fires kept up all this week of cold weather. Every room was fresh with paint and paper – the smell of varnish was still plain. It was really a delightful little place and the furniture at home would fit into the several rooms so nicely!

Jess Morse saw all this at once. She was delighted – And two dollars less a month than the cottage in which they had lived so long!

“It is a way opened, Mrs. Prentice!” she murmured. “Better than we could ever expect. I thank you from the very bottom of my heart!”

CHAPTER XIV – IN SUSPENSE

But when Jess got home – and Mrs. Prentice took her there in the car, but would not come in herself – she had hard work to satisfy her mother that such a change as this opportunity suggested was a good one for them to make. In short, Mrs. Morse did not enthuse.

“Just think of the trouble of it all,” she sighed. “My dear Jess, we have been here so long – ”

“But Mr. Chumley doesn’t want us any longer,” interposed Jess.

“Tut, tut! that is only the old gentleman’s way. He really will not raise our rent, do you think?”

“Why, Mother!” expostulated the girl, “he has already raised it and threatened to put us out if we don’t find the increased three dollars on the first.”

“I am afraid you were not politic enough,” said her mother.

“One cannot be politic with Mr. Chumley. He wants his house for another tenant; he has as good as said so. And do come and see Mrs. Prentice’s little cottage. It is a love.”

Even after she had seen it, however, Mrs. Morse was doubtful. She shrank from the change.

“And think of the expense of moving,” she declared.

“But the two dollars less we pay a month will soon pay for that,” said Jess, eagerly.

“Well – er – perhaps,” admitted her mother, doubtfully.

Jess had to do it all, however. She had to attend to every detail of the change. Fortunately her mother received a check of some size and the daughter obtained a part of it for current expenses. She hired a truckman, packed most of their possessions after school hours, and saw to the setting up of their goods and chattels in the new home.

There were several tons of furnace coal in the cellar of the new home. In the old cottage there had been no heater. Mrs. Prentice told Jess that she could pay for the coal a little at a time, and the girl gladly availed herself of this advantage.

For the winter promised to be a severe one. Since frost had set in in earnest there had been no let-up. Jess and her mother moved during the short holiday vacation. The day school closed; the contestants for the prize offered by Mrs. Kerrick handed in their plays. The announcement of the successful one would be after the intermission – on the first Monday of the New Year.

When the Morses really came to remove their goods from the house in which they had lived so long, old Mr. Chumley would have liked to get out an injunction against their doing so.

“I never thought you’d do it, Widder!” he croaked, having hurried over the minute he heard the moving man was at the door. “Why – why mebbe we could have split the difference. P’r’aps three dollars a month more was a leetle steep.”

“Oh, dear me!” sighed Mrs. Morse. “Really, Mr. Chumley, this is Jess’s doings. She thinks the change will be better for us – ”

“Now then! I wouldn’t let no young’un snap me like I was the end of a whip!” cried the old man. “You bundle your things back into the house, and we’ll call it only a one-fifty raise.”

But here Jess interfered. “Are you prepared to take two dollars off the rent, instead of adding any, and will you make the repairs we have been asking for all this year, Mr. Chumley?” she demanded, briskly.

“My goodness me! I can’t. It ain’t possible. The property don’t bring me enough as it is.”

“Then there’s no use talking to us,” said Jess, drawing her arm through her mother’s. “Mrs. Prentice’s house is all freshly done over, and has a heater, which this house hasn’t, and everything is in spick and span order.”

“That Mrs. Prentice! I might ha’ knowed it!” cackled Mr. Chumley. “And she was for having you arrested for stealing once.”

This was the very first Mrs. Morse had heard about the night Jess had had her queer experience, and she had to be told all about it now. She saw at once that her own regular work for the Courier arose out of her daughter’s acquaintance with the wealthy Mrs. Prentice.

“And she is one of the leaders in our Hill society!” gasped the poor lady. “I declare! I shall never be able to face her again – although I have only a bowing acquaintance with her. She will very well know who is putting all the society items into the paper.”

“Well, it’s honest,” said Jess, stubbornly.

“My goodness me! How practical you are, Jess,” exclaimed her mother. “Isn’t anything but bread-and-butter, and such things, appealing to you in life, child?”

Jess did not answer. She was naturally as frivolous of mind as any other girl of her age, only the happenings in their domestic life of the last few weeks had made her far more thoughtful.

And really, the little dove-cote, as Mrs. Prentice had called their new home, was a veritable love of a place! Mrs. Morse had to admit herself that it was a great improvement over the house where they had lived so long.

As it was vacation week, she let Jess go right ahead to settle things while she stuck to the typewriter. And Jess was glad to have plenty to occupy her mind. The suspense of waiting for the committee to decide upon the winner of the prize was hard to endure indeed.

One evening, however, Chet came after her, for there was a big moonlight skating party on Lake Luna. By this time people who had horses and sleighs had made quite a trotting course from Centerport to Keyport in one direction, and from Centerport to Lumberport at the other end of the lake.

There were certain motor enthusiasts, too, who had rigged their cars so that they would travel on the ice; but Chet Belding and Lance Darby had beaten them all. The trotting course hugged the shore, the skaters followed the same course, but farther out on the ice, and beyond, toward the middle of the lake, the iceboats had free swing. And there were several very fast “scooters” and the like upon Lake Luna.

But Laura’s brother and his chum declared that “they’d got ’em all beat to a stiff froth!” And on this night they produced the finished product of their joint work for the last several weeks.

“What do we call it? The Blue Streak!” declared Chet. “And that’s the way she travels. We tried her out this morning and – Well, you girls will admit that you never traveled fast before.”

“My goodness me, Laura! Do you think it is safe for us to venture with them?” demanded Jess.

“If Chet brings me home in pieces he knows what mother will do to him,” returned her chum, laughing.

The novel boat certainly attracted considerable attention when the boys ran it out of the old boathouse and pushed it far away from the skating course. It combined the principles of an aircraft with runners of the familiar iceboat.

“Just call it an aero-iceyacht, and let it go at that,” said Chet. “That hits it near enough.”

“And it really can sail in the air or on the ice – like a hydroplane?” demanded Jess.

“You’ll think so,” Chet assured her.

The boat was driven by a propeller similar to those on aeroplanes; and this propeller was fastened to the crossbeam on which were the two forward runners – somewhat similar to the mast on the ordinary lake iceboat. The body and rudder plank, at right angles to this crossbeam, supported the two-cylinder gasoline engine, which Chet bought at the motor repair shop of Mr. Purcell.

It was a fourteen-horse-power engine, water-cooled, and geared with a chain to the propeller.

“We tried a belt first,” said Lance; “but the blamed thing slipped so that old Chet evolved the chain-gear idea. Great, eh?”

“How can we tell till we see it work?” demanded Laura.

“And you don’t have to lie down for ‘low bridge’ when the boom goes over on this iceyacht!” cried Jess, enthusiastically. “We can sit up.”

“All the time,” agreed Lance.

“I think it’s simply great!” declared Laura.

“All because you, Mother Wit, suggested using the kite for motive power that day,” said her brother, admiringly. “That gave us the idea. If a kite would give motive power to a man skating, why not use a more up-to-date air-power scheme on the ice?”

“And it worked!” shouted Lance.

“Oh, hurry!” cried Jess. “I’m crazy to see how it sails.”

The boys placed the girls amidships, and showed them how to cling to the straps on either side. Lance took his place on the crossbeam – to act as weight on either end if such balance was needed; Chet took the tiller.

“Open her up!” the latter commanded his chum. “Only quarter round with the switch when the engine gets her stroke. Now, careful! Hang on, girls!”

The next moment the engine began to throb regularly, and the blades of the propeller whirled. In half a minute they had gained such momentum that the eye could not distinguish the blades themselves – they simply made a blur in the moonlight.

The craft lunged ahead.