Kitabı oku: «The Girls of Central High on the Stage: or, The Play That Took The Prize», sayfa 2

CHAPTER IV – WHAT MRS. PRENTICE NEEDED

“Here it is! here’s the umbrella!” squeaked the officious Mr. Chumley, coming out from behind the entry door, where he had been listening.

All three of them – Jess, Griff, and the excited loser of the purse – reached for the umbrella; but Griff was the first.

“Hold on!” said he to the landlord. “Let me have that, sir. The purse was lost in our store. We’re just as much interested in the matter as anybody.”

“I fail to see that, young man,” said Mrs. Prentice, tartly.

She was not naturally of a mean disposition; but she was excited, and the explanation Griff had given her of the loss of the purse had seemed to her unimaginative mind “far-fetched,” to say the least.

The boy half opened the umbrella and turned it over. Crash to the floor fell the purse, and it snapped open as it landed. Out upon the linoleum rolled the glistening coins – several of them gold pieces – that Jess had noted so greedily in the egg store.

“What did I tell you?” cried Griff, looking at Mrs. Prentice.

That lady only exclaimed “Oh!” very loudly and looked aghast at the rolling coins. Jess half stooped to gather up the scattered money. Then she thought better of it and straightened up, looking straight into the face of the owner of the purse.

But old Mr. Chumley could not stand the lack of interest the others seemed to show in what – to him – was the phase of particular importance in the whole affair. There was real money rolling all over the Widow Morse’s kitchen. He went down on his rheumatic old knees and scrambled for it. Mr. Chumley worshipped money, anyway, and this was a worshipper’s rightful attitude.

“My, my, my!” he kept repeating. “How careless!”

But Mrs. Prentice’s expression of countenance was swiftly changing. She flushed deeply – much more deeply than had Jess; then she paled. She picked up Mr. Chumley’s phrase, although she allowed the old man to pick up the money.

“I certainly have been careless,” she said. “I – I must have nudged that purse off the counter with my elbow. I – I – My dear girl! will you forgive me?”

She stepped forward and opened her arms to Jess. She was not only a well dressed lady, but she was a handsome one, and her smile, when she chose to allow it to appear, was winning. The anger and indignation Jess had felt began to melt before this apology and the lady’s frank manner.

“I – I suppose it was a natural mistake,” stammered Jess.

“Not if she’d known you, Miss Jess,” Griff said, quite sharply for him. “Nobody who knew you or your mother would have accused you of taking a penny’s worth that didn’t rightfully belong to you.”

Jess, whose heart was still sore from the blow she had received at Mr. Closewick’s grocery, thought this was very kind of Griff. And they owed his father, too! If there were tears standing in her eyes they were tears of gratitude.

“You see, my dear,” said the lady, her voice very pleasant indeed now, “I did not know you as well as young Mr. Vandergriff seems to.”

“We – we go to school together,” explained Jess, weakly, and found herself drawn into the arms of the lady.

Mr. Chumley rose up with a grunt and a groan; he had the purse and all the coins.

“Very careless! very careless!” he repeated. “And here is nearly a hundred dollars, madam. Think of carelessly carrying a hundred dollars in a silly purse like that! It is astonishing – ”

Mrs. Prentice had implanted a soft little kiss on Jess’s forehead and shaken her a little playfully by both shoulders.

“Don’t you bear malice, my dear,” she whispered. Then she turned briefly to the old man.

“You’re very kind, I’m sure,” she said, taking the purse into which Mr. Chumley had crammed the money. “Thank you.”

“Money comes too hard for folks to scatter it around,” complained the landlord.

Mrs. Prentice seemed to be much amused. “I should be more careful, I suppose. I presume, now, I ought to count it to see if – if you gathered it all up, sir?” she added, her eyes dancing.

A little breath of red crept into the withered cheeks of the miserly old man. “Well, well!” he ejaculated. “One can’t be too careful.”

“I presume not,” said the lady.

“And if the gal had known the money was there she might have been tempted, ye see.”

Jess flushed again and Griff looked angry; but Mrs. Prentice said, coolly:

“Were you tempted, sir? Perhaps I had better count my money, after all?”

“Ahem! ahem!” coughed the old gentleman. “Perhaps you don’t know who I am? There is a vast difference between me – my condition, I mean – and the gal and her mother.”

“Ah! Do you think so?” asked Mrs. Prentice, and then turned her back upon him. “I should like to know you better, my dear – and your mother. I hope you will show me that I am really forgiven by allowing me to call some day – Oh! I couldn’t face your mother now. I know just how I would feel myself if I had a daughter who had been accused as I accused you. I certainly need to take care – as our friend here says.”

“I am sure mother would be pleased to meet you,” stammered Jess.

“You know, I am Mrs. Prentice. My brother-in-law, Patrick Sarsfield Prentice, is editor and proprietor of the Centerport Courier.”

Jess’s interest was doubly aroused now. So this was the rich Mrs. Prentice, whom they said really backed Centerport’s newest venture in the newspaper field?

“My mother has met Mr. Prentice – your brother-in-law,” she said, diffidently. “You know, mother writes. She is Mary Morse.”

“Ah, yes,” said the lady, preparing to follow Griff out. “I am really glad to have known you – but I am sorry we began our acquaintance so unfortunately.”

“That – that is all right, Mrs. Prentice,” returned the girl.

Griff called back goodnight to her over his shoulder. And at the gate he parted from the lady whose carelessness had made all the trouble.

“That’s just what I told you, Mrs. Prentice,” he said. “They’re all right folks, those Morses. Yes, Mrs. Prentice, I’ll remember to send all those things you ordered over in the morning – first delivery,” and he went off, whistling.

CHAPTER V – THERE IS A GENERAL NEED

Mrs Prentice would have turned away from the gate of the Morse cottage and gone her homeward way, too, had she not heard a cackling little “ahem!” behind her. There was the wizened Mr. Chumley right on her heels.

“Very fortunate escape – very fortunate escape, indeed,” said the landlord.

“It was,” agreed the repentant lady. “I might have gone farther and done much worse in my excitement.”

“Oh, no,” said he. “I mean it was fortunate for the girl – and her mother. Of course, they’ve got nothing, and had the money really been missing it would have looked bad.”

Mrs. Prentice eyed him in a way that would have made a person with a thinner skin writhe a little. But Mr. Chumley’s feelings were not easily hurt.

“You evidently know all about those people?” said the lady, brusquely.

“Oh, yes. They’ve been my tenants for some years. But rents are going up in this neighborhood and – Well, I can get a much more satisfactory tenant.”

“You have been warning them out of the cottage?” asked Mrs. Prentice, quickly.

“Not just that,” said the old man, rubbing his hands together as though he had an imaginary cake of soap between them and was busily washing the Morse affair from his palms. “You see, I’ve told them I shall be obliged to increase their rent at New Year’s.”

“What do they pay you now?”

Mr. Chumley told her frankly. He wasn’t ashamed of what he took for the renting of that particular piece of property. In a business way, he was doing very well, and business was all that mattered with Mr. Chumley.

“But that’s better than I can get for the same sort of a cottage in this very vicinity,” exclaimed Mrs. Prentice.

“Ah! these agents!” groaned Mr. Chumley, shaking his head. “They never will do as well as they should for an owner. I found that out long ago. If I was a younger man, Mrs. Prentice, I would take hold of your property and get you twenty-five per cent. more out of it.”

“Perhaps,” commented the lady. “And you intend to raise the rent on these people?”

“I have done so. Three dollars. I can get it. Besides, a woman alone ain’t good pay,” said Chumley. “And they’re likely to fall behind any time in the rent. Most uncertain income – ”

“Is it true that Mrs. Morse writes for a living?”

“I don’t know what sort of a livin’ she makes. Foolish business. She’d better take in washing, or go out to day’s work – that’s what she’d better do,” snarled the old man. “This messin’ with pen, ink, an’ a typewriter an’ thinkin’ she can buy pork an’ pertaters on the proceeds – ”

“Perhaps she doesn’t care for pork and potatoes, my friend,” laughed the lady, eyeing Mr. Chumley whimsically.

But a flush had crept into the old man’s withered cheek again. He was on his hobby and he rode it hard.

“Poor folks ain’t no business to have finicky idees, or tastes,” he declared. “They gotter work. That’s what they was put in the world for – to work. There’s too many of ’em trying to keep their hands clean, an’ livin’ above their means. Mary Morse is a good, strong, hearty woman. She’d ought to do something useful with her hands instead of doing silly things with her mind.”

“So she writes silly things?”

“Stories! Not a word of truth in ’em, I vum! I read one of ’em once,” declared Mr. Chumley. “Widder Morse wants to ape these well-to-do folks that live ’tother end o’ Whiffle Street. Keeps her gal in high school when she’d ought to be in a store or a factory, earnin’ her keep. She’s big enough.”

“Do you think that’s a good way to bring up girls – letting them go to work so early in life?”

“Why not?” asked the old man, in wonder. “They kin work cheap and it helps trade. Too much schoolin’ is bad for gals. They don’t need it, anyway. And all the fal-lals and di-does they l’arn ’em in high school now doesn’t amount to a row of pins in practical life. No, ma’am!”

“But do these Morses have such a hard time getting along?” asked Mrs. Prentice, trying to bring the gossipy old gentleman back to the main subject.

“They don’t meet their bills prompt,” snapped the landlord. “Now! here I was in the house to-night. I suggested that the gal pay the rent for December; it’ll be due in a day or two. And she didn’t have it. They’re often late with it. I have to come two or three times before I get it, some months. And I hear they owe the tradesmen a good deal.”

“They are really in need of sympathy and help, then?”

“How’s that?” demanded Mr. Chumley, with his cupped hand to his ear as though he could not believe his own hearing.

The lady repeated her remark.

“There you go! You’re another of them folks that waste their substance. I could see that by your keerless handlin’ of money,” croaked Mr. Chumley. “The Widder Morse don’t need help – she needs sense, I tell ye.”

“And do you know what you need, Mr. Chumley?” asked the lady, suddenly, and with some asperity.

“Heh?”

“You need charity! We all need it. And we’ve gossiped enough about our neighbors, I declare! Good night, Mr. Chumley,” she added, and turned off through the side street toward her own home, leaving the old man to wend his own way homeward, wagging his head and muttering discourteous comments upon “all fool women.”

Mrs. Prentice was a widow herself. But she had no mawkish sentimentality. She had lived in the world too many years for that. She was not given to charities of any kind. But the thought of Jess Morse and her widowed mother clung to her mind like a limpet to a rock – even after she had dismissed her maid that night and retired.

“Just think!” she muttered, with her head on the pillow. “If that purse had been really lost I might have made that young girl a lot of trouble – and her mother. And she is such a frank, courageous little thing!

“We do need more charity – the right kind. Somehow – yes – I must do something to help that girl.”

CHAPTER VI – IT ALL COMES OUT

Before morning old Jack Frost snapped his fingers and the whole world was encased in ice. The sidewalks were a glare, the trees, and bushes, to their tiniest twig, were as brittle as icicles, and a thin white blanket had been laid upon the lawns along Whiffle Street.

It was the first really cold snap of winter. Chet Belding came clumping down to breakfast that Saturday morning.

“Skating shoes!” exclaimed his sister, Laura. “What for, Sir Knight?”

“I bet a feller can skate in the street – on the sidewalk – almost anywhere this morning,” declared Chet, with enthusiasm.

“You don’t mean to try it?” cried Laura.

“I’ll eat my honorable grandmother’s hat if I don’t – ”

“Chetwood!”

The horrified ejaculation came from behind the coffee percolator. Mrs. Belding had been perusing her morning mail. Mr. Chetwood chuckled, but graduated it into a pronounced cough.

“Yes, ma’am!” said Chet, meekly.

“What kind of language is this that you bring to our table? Your grandmother certainly was honorable – ”

“That’s an imitation of the stilted expressions of the Japs and Chinks,” interrupted Chetwood. “Thought you’d like it. It’s formal, abounds in flowery expressions, and may not be hastened. Quotation from Old Dimple,” he added, sotto voce.

“Please leave your grandmother out of it,” said Mrs. Belding, severely. “And if you mean Professor Dimp, your teacher at Central High, do not call him ‘Old Dimple’ in my presence,” which showed that Mother Belding’s hearing was pretty acute.

“Anyhow,” said Chet, “I’m going to try the ice after breakfast. Going to get Lance and we’ll have some fun. Better get your skates, Laura.”

“No. I’m going to the store with father – if we don’t both tumble down and roll to the bottom of the hill at Market Street, like Jack and Jill,” laughed his sister.

“Teams can’t get over the asphalt this morning,” said her brother. “We can coast clear to the elbow, I bet you.”

He hurried through his breakfast and some time after Laura and her father started for the jewelry store, in which the girl had certain Saturday morning tasks to perform, the voices of Chet and his friends awoke the echoes of the street as they skated on the asphalt.

Whiffle Street was an easy slope toward the elbow, where Jess Morse and her mother lived. Although the keen wind blew pretty strongly right up the hill, when Laura and her father started for the store the boys were holding hands and in a line that swept the street from curb to curb, sailed gaily down the hill upon their skates.

“That’s fun!” exclaimed Laura, her cheeks rosy with the wind, and her eyes sparkling.

“It’s just like life,” said her father, “It’s easy going down hill; but see what a pull it is to get up again,” for Chet and his comrades had then begun the homeward skate.

Lance Darby, a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked lad, who was Chet’s particular chum, was ahead and he came, puffingly, to a stop just before Laura.

“This is great – if it wasn’t for the ‘getting back again.’ Good-morning, Mr. Belding.”

“Why don’t you boys rig something to tow you up the hill?” asked Laura, laughing, and half hiding her face in her muff.

“Huh!” ejaculated her brother, coming up, too. “How’d we rig it, Sis?”

“Come on, Mother Wit!” laughed Lance. “You tell us.”

“Why – I declare, Chet’s got just the thing standing behind the door in his den,” cried Laura, her eyes twinkling.

“What?” cried Chet “You’re fooling us, Laura. My snowshoes – ”

“Not them,” laughed Laura, preparing to go on with her father.

“I know!” shouted Lance, slapping his chum suddenly on the back. He was as familiar with Chet’s room as was Chet himself.

“Out with it, then!” demanded Chet.

“That big kite of yours. Wind’s directly up the hill. We’ll get it and try the scheme. Oh, you Mother Wit!” shouted Lance, after Laura. “We’re going after the kite.”

And that suggestion of Laura’s was the beginning of Chet and Lance Darby’s “mile-a-minute iceboat” – but more of that wonderful invention later.

Laura was halted again before she reached Market Street, and her father went on without her, for it was now half-past eight. Jess Morse waved to her from a window, and in a moment came running out in a voluminous checked apron and a gay sweater-coat, hastily “shrugged” on.

“Where were you last night?” cried Laura. “We missed you dreadfully at the M. O. R. house.”

“I – I really couldn’t come,” said her chum, hesitating just a little, for it was hard not to be perfectly frank with Laura, who was always so open and confidential with her. “Mother is so busy – she worked half the night – ”

“Genius burns the midnight oil, eh?” laughed Laura.

“Yes, indeed. And now I’m about to make her toast and brew her tea, and she will take it, propped up in bed, and read over the work she did last night. Saturdays, when I am home, is mother’s ‘lazy day.’ She says she feels quite like a lady of leisure then.”

“But you should have come to the first big reception of the winter,” complained her chum.

“Couldn’t. But I heard that there was something very wonderful going to happen, just the same,” cried Jess.

“What do you mean?”

“About the prize.”

“My goodness me! Somebody is a telltale,” cried Laura, laughing. “We were not going to spread the news until Monday morning.”

Jess told her how the rumor of the prize had come to her ears.

“No use – it’s all out, and all over town, if Bobby Hargrew got hold of it.”

“But what’s Mrs. Mabel Kerrick going to give the two hundred dollars for?”

“Oh, Jess! it’s a great scheme, I believe – and it’s mine,” said Laura, proudly.

“But you don’t tell me what it is,” cried her chum, impatiently.

“It’s to be given for the best play written by a Central High girl, between now and the first of January. Any girl can compete – even the freshies. And then we’ll produce it, and get money for the M. O. R. building fund.”

“A play!” gasped Jess, her face flushing.

“That’s it. And the Lockwood girls are going to try for it – and so’s Nell Agnew. Will you, Jess? Just think of two hundred dollars!”

“I am thinking of it,” replied her chum. “Oh, Laura! I’m thinking of it all the time.”

She said it so earnestly that Laura stared at her in amazement.

“My dear child!” she cried. “Does two hundred dollars mean so much to you?”

“I – I can’t tell you how hard I want to win it,” gasped Jess.

“Well! I’m going to try for it, too,” laughed Laura, suddenly, seizing her friend’s arm and giving it an affectionate squeeze. “But I do hope, if I can’t win it, that you do!”

“Thank you, Laura!” replied her friend, gravely.

“And your mother’s a writer – you must have talent, too, for writing, Jess.”

“That doesn’t follow, I guess,” laughed Jess. “You know that Si Jones talks like a streak of greased lightning – so Chet says, anyway – but his son, Phil, is a deaf-mute. Talent for writing runs in families the same as wooden legs.”

“So you do not believe that even a little reflected glory bathes your path through life?” chuckled Laura.

“I am not sure that I would want to be a professional writer like mother,” sighed Jess, her mind dwelling on the trouble they were in. “There is a whole lot to it besides ‘glory.’”

“Well, if I can’t write the winning play, I hope you do, Jess,” repeated Laura, going on after her father.

Jess returned to her work indoors. From the window, after a little, she caught sight of a whole string of boys sliding up the hill of Whiffle Street on their skates, the big kite which Chet and Lance had raised supplying the motive power.

Chet beckoned her out to have a part in the fun; but much more serious matters filled Jess Morse’s mind. When her mother finally arose, and folded and sealed and addressed the packet containing her night’s work, Jess had to go out and mail it.

“I really believe that is a good story, Jess,” said her mother, who was sanguine of temperament. She had a childish faith in the success of every manuscript she sent out; and usually when her chickens “came home to roost” her spirits withstood the shock admirably.

“Now, don’t forget the list of things you were to get at Mr. Closewick’s,” added Mrs. Morse. Jess had kept her evening’s troubles strictly to herself. “I believe he sent in a bill, but you tell him how it is; we’ll have money in a day or two.”

“But, Mother, we owe other stores, too,” murmured Jess.

“I know it, child. But don’t remind me – ”

“And the rent will be due. Mr. Chumley was here last night – ”

“Not for his rent so soon?” cried the irresponsible lady.

“But he is going to raise our rent – three dollars more after January first.”

“Oh, how mean of him!” exclaimed Mrs. Morse.

“I don’t see how we are going to get it, Mother,” said Jess, worriedly.

“Well, that’s true. But we’ve got another month before we need to cross that bridge.”

That was Mrs. Morse’s way. Perhaps it was as well that she allowed such responsibilities to slip past her like water running off the feathers of a duck.

“And if Mr. Closewick shouldn’t want to – to trust us any longer, Mother?” suggested Jess. That was as near as she could get to telling the good lady what had really happened the night before.

“Why! that would be most mortifying. He won’t do it, though. But if he does, we’ll immediately begin trading elsewhere, I don’t really think Mr. Closewick always gives us good weight, at that!”

Jess could only sigh. It was always the way. Mrs. Morse saw things from a most surprising angle. She was just as honest – intentionally – as she could be, but the ethics of business dealing were not quite straight in her mind.

And something must be done this very day to put food in the larder. What little Jess had brought in from Mr. Vandergriff’s store would not last them over Sunday. And her mother seemed to think that everybody else would be just as sanguine of her getting a check as she was herself.

“I do wish you had been able to get steady work with the Courier,” spoke Jess, as she prepared to go out.

“That would have been nice,” admitted her mother. “And I am in a position to know a good deal of what goes on socially on the Hill. I am welcome in the homes of the very best people, for your father’s sake, Jess. He was a very fine man, indeed.”

“And for your own sake, too, Mamma!” cried Jess, who was really, after all, very proud of her mother’s talent.

“It would have been nice,” repeated Mrs. Morse. “And certainly the Courier is not covering the Hill as well as might be. I pointed that out to Mr. Prentice; but he is limited in expenditures, I suppose, the paper being a new venture.”

It was on the tip of the girl’s tongue to tell her mother of the visit of Mr. Prentice’s sister-in-law the evening before. But why disturb her mother’s mind with all that trouble? So she said nothing, kissed her fondly, and sallied forth to beard in their lairs “the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.” And, truly, there were few girls in Centerport that day with greater lions in their way than those in the path of Jess Morse.