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CHAPTER XII
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH
“Never mind,” whispered Amy Drew quickly, quite understanding her chum’s feelings regarding Belle and her group. “I’ll ask them. It’s my fault, anyway. And I only meant it for a joke–”
“A pretty poor joke, Amy,” Jessie said, with some sharpness. “And I don’t want you to borrow of them. I’ll run back to the church.”
She started to leave the Dainties Shop. Sally Moon, who was just behind Belle Ringold, halted Jessie with a firm grasp on her sleeve.
“Don’t run away just because we came in, Jess,” she said.
“I’m coming right back,” Jessie Norwood explained. “Don’t keep me.”
“Where you going, Jess?” drawled another of the group.
“I’ve got to run back to the church to speak to mother for a moment.”
“Your mother’s not there,” broke in Belle. “She was leaving in her flivver when we came away. The committee’s broken up and the parish house door is locked.”
“Oh, no!” murmured Jessie, a good deal appalled.
“Don’t I tell you yes?” snapped Belle. “Don’t you believe me?”
“Of course I believe what you say, Belle,” Jessie rejoined politely. “I only said ‘Oh, no!’ because I was startled.”
“What scared you?” demanded Belle, curiously.
“Why, I – I’m not scared–”
“It is none of your business, Belle Ringold,” put in Amy. “Don’t annoy her. Here, Jessie, I’ll–”
The clerk who waited on them had come to the table and placed a punched ticket for the sundaes on it. He evidently expected to be paid by the two girls. The other four were noisily grouping themselves about another table. Belle Ringold said:
“Give Nick your orders, girls. This is on me. I want a banana royal, Nick. Hurry up.”
The young fellow with the “patent leather” hair still lingered by the table where Jessie and Amy had sat. Belle turned around to stare at the two guilty-looking chums. She sneered.
“What’s the matter with you and Jess, Amy Drew? Were you trying to slip out without paying Nick? I shouldn’t wonder!”
“Oh!” gasped Jessie, flushing and then paling.
But Amy burst out laughing. It was a fact that Amy Drew often saw humor where her chum could not spy anything in the least laughable. With the clerk waiting and these four girls, more than a little unfriendly, ready to make unkind remarks if they but knew the truth–
What should she do? Jessie looked around wildly. Amy clung to a chair and laughed, and laughed. Her chum desired greatly to have the floor of the New Melford Dainties Shop open at her feet and swallow her!
“What’s the matter with you, Amy Drew? You crazy?” demanded Belle.
“I – I–” Amy could get no farther. She weaved back and forth, utterly hysterical.
“If you young ladies will pay me, please,” stammered the clerk, wondering. “I’d like to wait on these other customers.”
“I want my banana royal, Nick,” cried Belle.
The other three girls gave their orders. The clerk looked from the laughing Amy to the trembling Jessie. He was about to reiterate his demand for payment.
And just then Heaven sent an angel! Two, in very truth! At least, so it seemed to Jessie Norwood.
“Darry!” she almost squealed. “And Burd Alling! We – we thought you were at Atlantic Highlands.”
The two young fellows came hurrying into the shop. They had evidently seen the girls from outside. Darry grabbed his sister and sat her down at a table. He grinned widely, bowing to Belle and her crowd.
“Come on, Jessie!” he commanded. “No matter how many George Washington sundaes you kids have eaten–”
“‘Kids’! Indeed! I like that!” exploded Amy.
But her brother swept on, ignoring her objection: “No matter how many you have eaten, there is always room for one more. You and Amy, Jessie, must have another sundae on me.”
“Darry!” exclaimed Jessie Norwood. “I thought you and Burd went to his aunt’s.”
“And we came back. That is an awful place. There’s an uncle, too – a second crop uncle. And both uncle and auntie are vegetarians, or something. Maybe it’s their religion. Anyway, they eat like horses – oats, and barley, and chopped straw. We were there for two meals. Shall we ever catch up on our regular rations, Burd?”
“I’ve my doubts,” said his friend. “Say, Nick, bring me a plate of the fillingest thing there is on your bill of fare.”
“In just a minute,” replied the clerk, hopping around the other table to have Belle Ringold and her friends repeat their orders.
Belle had immediately begun preening when Darry and Burd came in. That the two college youths were so much older, and that they merely considered Amy and Jessie “kids,” made no difference to Belle. She really thought that she was quite grown up and that college men should be interested in her.
“We had just finished, boys,” Jessie managed to say in a low tone. “We had not even paid for our sundaes.”
Darry and Burd just then caught sight of the punched check lying on the table and they both reached for it. There was some little rivalry over who should pay the score, but Darry won.
“Leave it to me,” he said cheerfully. “Girls shouldn’t be trusted with money anyway.”
“Oh! Oh!” gurgled Amy, choked with laughter again.
“What’s the matter with you, Sis?” demanded her brother.
Jessie forbade her chum to tell, by a hard stare and a determined shake of her head. It was all right to have Darry pay the check – it was really a relief – but it did not seem to Jessie as though she could endure having the matter made an open joke of.
The four settled about the little table. But the Ringold crowd was too near. Belle turned sideways in her chair, even before they were served, and, being at Darry’s elbow, insisted upon talking to him.
“Talk about my aunt!” said Burd Alling, grinning. “I’ll tell the world that somebody has a crush on Sir Galahad that’s as plain to be seen as a wart on the nose of Venus.”
“Of all the metaphors!” exclaimed Amy.
Jessie feared that Belle would overhear the comments of Burd and her chum, and she hurried the eating of her second sundae.
“I must get home, Darry,” she explained. “Momsy has gone without me in her car and will be surprised not to find me there.”
“Sure,” agreed Burd quickly. “We’ll gobble and hobble. Can’t you tear yourself away, Darry?” he added, with a wicked grin.
Amy’s brother tried politely to turn away from Belle. But the latter caught him by the coat sleeve and held on while she chattered like a magpie to the young college man. She smiled and shook her bobbed curls and altogether acted in a rather ridiculous way.
Darry looked foolish, then annoyed. His sister was in an ecstasy of delight. She enjoyed her big brother’s annoyance. She and Jessie and Burd had finished their cream.
“Come on, Darry,” Burd drawled, taking a hint from the girls. “Sorry you are off your feed and can’t finish George Washington’s finest product. I’ll eat it for you, if you say so, and then we’ll beat it.”
He reached casually for Darry’s plate; but the latter would not yield it without a struggle. The incident, however, gave Darry a chance to break away from the insistent Belle. The latter stared at the two girls at Darry’s table, sniffed, and tossed her head.
“Yes, Mr. Drew,” she said in her high-pitched voice, “I suppose you have to take the children home in good season, or they would be chastised.”
“Ouch!” exclaimed Burd. “I bet that hurt you, Amy.”
Darry had picked up both checks from the table. Belle smiled up at him and moved her check to the edge of her table as Darry rather grimly bade her good-night. He refused to see that check, but strode over to the desk to pay the others.
“That girl ought to get a job at a broadcasting station,” growled out Darry, as they went out upon the street. “I never knew before she was such a chatterbox. Don’t need any radio rigging at all where she is.”
“Oh, wouldn’t it be fun to get a chance to work at a broadcasting station?” Amy cried. “We could sing, Jess. You know we sing well together. ‘The Dartmoor Boy’ and ‘Bobolink, Bobolink, Spink-spank-spink’ and–”
“And ‘My Old Kentucky Blues,’” broke in Burd Alling. “If you are going to broadcast anything like that, give us something up to date.”
“You hush,” Amy said. “If Jess and I ever get the chance we shall be an honor to the program. You’ll see.”
That the two young fellows had returned so much earlier than had been expected was a very fortunate thing, Jessie and Amy thought. For their assistance was positively needed in the work of making ready for the Fourth of July bazaar on the Norwood place, they declared.
There were only three days in which to do everything. “And believe me,” groaned Burd before the first day was ended, “we’re doing everything. Talk about being in training for the scrub team!”
“It will do you good, Burdie,” cooed Amy, knowing that the diminutive of Burd Alling’s name would fret him. “You are getting awfully plump, you know you are.”
“I feel it peeling off,” he grumbled. “Don’t fear. No fellow will ever get too fat around you two girls. Never were two such young Simon Legrees before since the world began!”
But the four accomplished wonders. Of course the committee and their assistants and some of the other young people came to help with the decorations. But the two girls and Amy’s older brother and his friend set up the marquees and strung the Japanese lanterns, in each of which was a tiny electric light.
“No candle-power fire-traps for us,” Jessie said. “And then, candles are always blowing out.”
About all the relaxation they had during the time until the eve of the Fourth was in Jessie’s room, listening to the radio concerts. Mr. Norwood brought out from the city a two-step amplifier and a horn and they were attached to the instrument.
The third of the month, with the help of the men servants on the Norwood place, the tent for the radio concert was set up between the house and the driveway, and chairs were brought from the parish house to seat a hundred people. It was a good tent, and there were hangings which had been used in some church entertainment in the past to help make it sound proof.
They strung through it a few electric bulbs, which would give light enough. And the lead wire from the aerials, well grounded, was brought directly in from overhead and connected with the radio set.
“I hope that people will patronize the tent generously,” Jessie said. “We can give a show every hour while the crowd is here.”
“What are you going to charge for admission?” Amy asked.
“Momsy says we ought to get a quarter. But ten cents–”
“Ten cents for children, grown folks a quarter,” suggested Amy. “The kids will keep coming back, but the grown folks will come only once.”
“That is an idea,” agreed Jessie. “But what bothers me is the fact that there are only concerts at certain times. We ought to begin giving the shows early in the afternoon. Of course, the radio is just as wonderful when it brings weather reports and agricultural prices as when Toscanini sings or Volburg plays the violin,” and she laughed. “But–”
“I’ve got it!” cried her chum, with sudden animation. “Give lectures.”
“What! You, Amy Drew, suggesting such a horrid thing? And who will give the lecture?”
“Oh, this is a different sort of lecture. Tell a little story about the radio, what has already been done with it, and what is expected of it in the future. I believe you could do it nicely, Jess. That sort of lecture I would stand for myself.”
“I suppose somebody has got to attend to the radio and talk about it. I had not thought of that,” agreed Jessie. “I’ll see what the committee say. But me lecture? I never did think of doing that!” she proclaimed, in no little anxiety.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BAZAAR
When she had talked it over with Momsy and Miss Seymour, however, Jessie Norwood took up the thought of the radio lecture quite seriously. Somebody must explain and manage the entertainment in the radio tent, and who better than Jessie?
“It is quite wonderful how much you young people have learned about radio – so much more than I had any idea,” said the school teacher. “Of course you can write a little prose essay, Jessie, get it by heart, and repeat it at each session in the tent, if you feel timid about giving an off-hand talk on the subject.”
“You can do it if you only think you can, Jessie,” said her mother, smiling. “I am sure I have a very smart daughter.”
“Oh, now, Momsy! If they should laugh at me–”
“Don’t give them a chance to laugh, dear. Make your talk so interesting and informative that they can’t laugh.”
Thus encouraged, Jessie spent all the forenoon of the Fourth shut up in her own room making ready for the afternoon and evening. She had already made a careful schedule of the broadcasting done by all the stations within reach of her fine radio set, and found that it was possible, by tuning her instrument to the wave lengths of different stations, to get something interesting into every hour from two o’clock on until eleven.
Naturally, some of the entertainments would be more interesting or amusing than others; but as New Melford people for the most part were as yet unfamiliar with radio, almost anything out of the air would seem curious and entertaining.
“Besides,” Burd Alling said in comment on this, “for a good cause we are all ready and willing to be bunkoed a little.”
“Let me tell you, Mr. Smarty,” said Amy, “that Jessie’s lecture is well worth the price of admission alone. Never mind the radio entertainment.”
“I’ll come to hear it every time,” agreed Burd. “You can’t scare me!”
The radio had been carefully tried out in the tent the evening before. The boys had got the market reports and the early baseball scores out of the air on Fourth of July morning, before the bazaar opened. When Jessie came out after luncheon to take charge of the radio tent, she felt that she was letter perfect in the “talk” she had arranged to introduce each session of the wireless entertainment.
No admission was charged to the Norwood grounds; but several of the older boys had been instructed to keep an oversight of the entire place that careless and possibly rough youngsters should do no harm. The Norwoods’, like the Drews’ was one of the show places of the Roselawn section of New Melford. Boys and girls might do considerable harm around the place if they were not under discipline.
The girls and boys belonging to the congregation of Dr. Stanley’s church were on hand as flower sellers, booth attendants, and waitresses. Ice-creams and sherbets were served from the garage; sandwiches and cake from the house kitchen, where Mrs. Norwood’s cook herself presided proudly over the goodies.
In several booths were orangeade, lemonade, and other soft drinks. The fancy costumes and the funny masks the girls and boys wore certainly were “fetching.” That the masks were the result of a joke on Chip Truro’s part made them none the less effective.
Amy was flying about, as busy as a bee. Darry and Burd were at the head of the “police.” Miss Seymour took tickets for the radio tent, and after the first entertainment, beginning at two o’clock, she complimented Jessie warmly on the success of her talk on radio with which the girl introduced the show.
The lawns of the Norwood place began to be crowded before two o’clock. Cars were parked for several blocks in both directions. Special policemen had been sent out from town to patrol the vicinity. Dr. Stanley’s smile, as he walked about welcoming the guests, expanded to an almost unbelievable breadth.
The noisy and explosive Fourth as it used to be is now scarcely known. Our forefathers did not realize that freedom could be celebrated without guns and firecrackers and the more or less smelly and dangerous burning of powder.
“Now,” stated Burd Alling pompously, “we celebrate the name of the Father of his Country with a dish of fruit ice-cream. How are the mighty fallen! A George Washington sundae, please, with plenty of ‘sundae’ on it. Thank you!”
Then he gave up twice the price that he would have had to pay at the Dainties Shop down town for the same concoction to the young lady in the Columbine skirt and the mask.
“Young Truro had it right,” grumbled Darry. “It’s a hold-up.”
“But you know you like to be robbed for a good cause,” chuckled Amy, who chanced to hear these comments. “And remember that Doctor Stanley is going to get his share out of this.”
“Right-o,” agreed Burd. “The doctor is all right.”
“But we ought to pony up the money for his support like good sports,” said Darry, continuing to growl.
“You’d better ask him about that,” cried Amy. “Do you know what the dear doctor says? He is glad, he says, to know that so many people who never would by any chance come to hear him preach give something to the support of the church. They are in touch with the church and with him on an occasion like this, when by no other means could they be made to interest themselves in our church save to look at the clock face in the tower as they go past.”
“Guess he’s right there,” said Burd. “I reckon there are some men on the boulevard whose only religious act is to set their watches by the church clock as they ride by to town in their automobiles.”
However and whatever (to quote Amy again), the intentions were that brought the crowd, the Norwood place was comfortably filled. The goodies were bought, the sale of fancy goods added much to the treasury, and a bigger thing than any other source of income was the admission to the radio shows.
The children were not the most interested part of the audience in the tent. From two o’clock until closing time Jessie Norwood presided at eight shows. She sometimes faced almost the same audience twice. Not only did some of the children pay their way in more than once, but grown people did the same. Curiosity regarding radio science was rife.
Doctor Stanley came more than once himself to listen. And the minister’s boys wanted to take the radio set all apart between shows to “see how it went.”
“I bet we could build one our own selves,” declared Bob Stanley.
“I betcha!” agreed Fred.
“Only, it will cost a lot of money,” groaned the minister’s oldest son.
“You can do it for about ten dollars – if you are ingenious,” said Jessie encouragingly.
“Gee whiz! That’s a lot of money,” said Fred.
The girl knew better than to suggest lending them or giving them the money. But she told them all the helpful things she could about setting up the radio paraphernalia and rigging the wires.
“I guess Nell would help us,” Bob remarked. “She’s pretty good, you know, for a girl.”
“I like that!” exclaimed Jessie.
Bob Stanley grinned at her impishly.
In the evening when the electric lights were ablaze the Norwood lawns were a pretty sight indeed. People came in cars from miles away. It was surprising how many came, it seemed, for the purpose of listening to the radio. That feature had been well advertised, and it came at a time when the popular curiosity was afire through reading so much about radio in the newspapers.
Among the hundreds of cars parked near by were those of several of the more prosperous farmers of the county. One ancient, baldheaded, bewhiskered agriculturist sat through three of the radio shows, and commented freely upon this new wonder of the world.
“The telegraph was just in its infancy when I was born,” he told Jessie. “And then came the telephone, and these here automobiles, and flying machines, and wireless telegraph, and now this. Why, ma’am, this radio beats the world! It does, plumb, for sure!”
The surprise and the comments of the audience did not so much interest Jessie Norwood as the fact that the money taken in by the tent show would add vastly to the profit of the bazaar.
“You sure have beaten any other individual concession on the lot,” Amy told her at the end of the evening. “You know, Belle Ringold bragged that she was going to take in the most money at the orangeade stand, because it was a hot night. But wait till we count up! I am sure you have beaten her with the radio tent, Jess.”
CHAPTER XIV
JEALOUSY
Jessie Norwood had not much personal desire to “beat” either Belle Ringold or any other worker for the bazaar; but she confessed to a hope that the radio show had helped largely to make up the deficit in church income for which the bazaar had been intended.
Miss Seymour had added up after each show the amount taken in at the door of the tent. Before the lights were put out and the booths were dismantled she was ready to announce to the committee the sum total of the radio tent’s earnings.
“Goody! That will beat Belle, sure as you live,” Amy cried when she heard it, and dragged Jessie away across the lawn to hear the report of the sum taken from the cash-drawer under the orangeade counter. Groups of young people milled around the “concession” which served the delicious cooling drinks.
“Walk right up, ladies and gentlemen – and anybody else that’s with you – and buy the last of the chilled nectar served by these masked goddesses. In other words, buy us out so we can all go home.” It was Darry Drew up on a stool ballyhooing for the soft drink booth.
“Did you ever?” gasped the young collegian’s sister. “He is helping that Belle Ringold. I am amazed at Darry!”
“He is helping the church society,” said Jessie, composedly.
But she could easily believe that Belle had deliberately entangled Darry in this thing. He never would have chosen to help Belle in closing out her supply of orangeade.
There she stood behind her counter, scarcely helping wait on the trade herself, but aided by three of her most intimate girl friends. Belle gave her attention to Darry Drew. She seemed to consider it necessary to steady him upon the stool while he acted as “barker.”
“Come away, do!” sniffed Amy to Jessie. “That brother of mine is as weak as water. Any girl, if she wants to, can wind him right around her finger.”
But Jessie did not wholly believe that. She knew Darry’s character pretty well, perhaps better than Amy did. He would be altogether too easy-going to refuse to help Belle, especially in a good cause. Belle Ringold was very shrewd, young as she was, in the arts of gaining and holding the attention of young men.
But Darry saw his sister coming and knew that Amy disapproved. He flushed and jumped down from the stool.
“Oh, Mr. Drew! Darrington!” cried Belle, languishingly, “you won’t leave us?” Then she, too, saw Amy and Jessie approaching. “Oh, well,” Belle sneered, “if the children need you, I suppose you have to go.”
Burd, who stood by, developed a spasm of laughter when he saw Amy’s expression of countenance, but Jessie got her chum away before there came any further explosion.
“Never you mind!” muttered Amy. “I know you’ve got her beaten with your radio show. You see!”
It proved to be true – this prophecy of Amy’s. The committee, adding up the intake of the various booths, reported that the radio tent had been by far the most profitable of any of the various money-making schemes. By that time the booths were entirely dismantled and almost everybody had gone home.
Belle and her friends had lingered on the Norwood veranda, however, to hear the report. It seemed that Belle had not achieved all that she had desired, although with the restaurant department, her stand had won a splendid profit. Of course, the money taken in at the radio tent was almost all profit.
“She just thought of that wireless thing so as to make the rest of us look cheap,” Belle was heard to say to her friends. “Isn’t that always the way when we come up here to the Norwoods’? Jess skims the cream of everything. I’ll never break my back working for a church entertainment again if the Norwoods have anything to do with it!”
Unfortunately Jessie heard this. It really spoiled the satisfaction she had taken in the fact that her idea, and her radio set, had made much money for a good cause. She stole away from her chum and the other young people and went rather tearfully to bed.
Of course, she should not have minded so keenly the foolish talk of an impertinent and unkind girl. But she could not help wondering if other people felt as Belle said she felt about the Norwoods. Jessie had really thought that she and Daddy and Momsy were very popular people, and she had innocently congratulated herself upon that fact.
The morning brought to Jessie Norwood more contentment. When Momsy told her how the ladies of the bazaar committee had praised Jessie’s thoughtfulness and ingenuity in supplying the radio entertainment, she forgot Belle Ringold’s jealousy and went cheerfully to work to help clear up the grounds and the house. Her radio set was moved back to her room and she restrung the wires and connected up the receiver without help from anybody.
When Mr. Norwood came home that evening both she and Momsy noticed at once that he was grave and apparently much troubled. Perhaps, if their thought had not been given so entirely to the bazaar during the last few days, the lawyer’s wife and daughter would before this have noticed his worriment of mind.
“Is it that Ellison case, Robert?” Mrs. Norwood asked, at the dinner table.
“It is the bane of my existence,” declared the lawyer, with exasperation. “Those women are determined to obtain a much greater share of the estate than belongs to them or than the testator ever intended. Their testimony, I believe, is false. But as the apportionment of the property of the deceased Mr. Ellison must be decided by verbal rather than written evidence, the story those women tell – and stick to – bears weight with the Surrogate.”
“Your clients are likely to lose their share, then?” his wife asked.
“Unless we can get at the truth. I fear that neither of those women knows what the truth means. Ha! If we could find the one witness, the one who was present when the old man dictated his will at the last! Well!”
“Can’t you find her?” asked Momsy, who had, it seemed, known something about the puzzling case before.
“Not a trace. The old man, Abel Ellison, died suddenly in Martha Poole’s house. She and the other woman are cousins and were distantly related to Ellison. He had a shock or a stroke, or something, while he was calling on Mrs. Poole. It did not affect his brain at all. The physicians are sure of that. Their testimony is clear.
“But neither of them heard what the old man said to the lawyer that Mrs. Poole sent for. McCracken is a scaly practitioner. He has been bought over, body and soul, by the two women. You see, they are a sporty crowd – race track habitues, and all that. The other woman – her name is Bothwell – has driven automobiles in races. She is a regular speed fiend, they tell me.
“Anyhow, they are all of a kind, the two women and McCracken. As Ellison had never made a will that anybody knows of, and this affidavit regarding his dictated wishes is the only instrument brought into court, the Surrogate is inclined to give the thing weight.
“Here comes in our missing witness, a young girl who worked for Mrs. Poole. She was examined by my chief clerk and admitted she heard all that was said in the room where Ellison died. Her testimony diametrically opposes several items which McCracken has written into the unsigned testament of the deceased.
“You see what we are up against when I tell you that the young girl has disappeared. Martha Poole says she has run away and that she does not know where she went to. The girl seems to have no relatives or friends. But I have my doubts about her having run away. I think she has been hidden away in some place by the two women or by the lawyer.”
“Oh, Daddy!” exclaimed Jessie, who had been listening with interest. “That is just like the girl I tried to tell you about the other night – little Henrietta’s cousin. She was carried off by two women in an automobile. What do you think, Daddy? Could Bertha be the girl you are looking for?”
