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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Girls of Central High on the Stage, by 
+Gertrude W. Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Girls of Central High on the Stage
+       The Play That Took The Prize
+
+Author: Gertrude W. Morrison
+
+Release Date: September 3, 2011 [EBook #37303]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from images made available by the HathiTrust
+Digital Library.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: AND SO JESS MORSE STEPPED FORWARD, BASHFULLY, AND FACED
+THE AUDIENCE--_Page_ 205]
+
+                               The Girls
+                            of Central High
+                              on the Stage
+
+                                   OR
+
+                      The Play That Took The Prize
+
+                                   BY
+
+                          GERTRUDE W. MORRISON
+
+                  Author of The Girls of Central High,
+                The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna,
+                                  Etc.
+
+                             _ILLUSTRATED_
+
+                   THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING CO.
+                           CLEVELAND--NEW YORK
+
+                            Made in U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+                          Copyright, 1914, by
+                            GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+                                Press of
+                     THE COMMERCIAL BOOKBINDING CO.
+                               Cleveland
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+         CHAPTER                                             PAGE
+               I What the M. O. R.'s Needed                     1
+              II What Josephine Morse Needed                    9
+             III What Mr. Chumley Needed                       18
+              IV What Mrs. Prentice Needed                     28
+               V There is a General Need                       34
+              VI It All Comes Out                              40
+             VII The Hand Held Out                             50
+            VIII The Race Is On                                60
+              IX A Skating Party                               70
+               X The Mid-Term Examination                      80
+              XI Missing                                       87
+             XII Counsel for the Defense                       95
+            XIII A Way is Opened                              104
+             XIV In Suspense                                  113
+              XV A Mile a Minute                              121
+             XVI "Just Like a Story Book"                     128
+            XVII Lily Pendleton Is Dissatisfied               139
+           XVIII The Ski Runners                              146
+             XIX The First Dress Rehearsal                    153
+              XX "Mr. Pizotti"                                160
+             XXI Mother Wit Puts Two and Two Together         170
+            XXII Mrs. Plornish                                178
+           XXIII "Caught on the Fly"                          187
+            XXIV The Great Night                              197
+             XXV Good News for Jess                           202
+
+
+
+
+THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH ON THE STAGE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--WHAT THE M. O. R.'S NEEDED
+
+
+The M. O. R. house was alight from cellar to garret. It was the first
+big reception of the winter and followed closely the end of the first
+basketball trophy series and the football game between the Central High
+team and that of West High.
+
+The M. O. R. was the only girls' secret society countenanced by Franklin
+Sharp, the principal of Central High. Until you belonged to it you never
+knew what the three initials stood for; after you were lucky enough to
+belong, the name of the society became such a deep and dark mystery that
+you never dared whisper it, even to your very closest "spoon."
+
+Therefore, in all probability, we shall never learn just what "M. O. R."
+stands for.
+
+Among the boys of Central High, their sisters and the other girls
+belonging to the secret society were spoken of as "Mothers of the
+Republic." But the boys were only jealous. They were entirely shut out
+of the doings of the M. O. R.'s, which long antedated the Girls' Branch
+Athletic League; the boys never were allowed within the sacred precincts
+of the "House" save on the occasion of the special reception at Easter.
+
+The house was a narrow slice of brownstone front in the middle of a
+block of similar dwellings, within sight of the schoolhouse, and in the
+Hill section of Centerport. The Hill was supposed to be very exclusive,
+and rents were high. And the rental of the thirteen-foot slice of
+brownstone had become a serious problem to the Board of Governors of the
+M. O. R.
+
+Some M. O. R.'s had gone to college, many of them had married, some had
+moved many, many miles away from Centerport. But most of them remembered
+tenderly the first school society of which they had been members. The
+alumnae were loyal to M. O. R.
+
+And some of the alumnae were on the present Board of Governors, and
+were--on this reception night--discussing seriously with the more active
+members of the board the financial state of the society. The owner of
+the house had notified them of a raise in rent for the coming year to an
+absolutely impossible figure. The M. O. R.'s must look for new quarters.
+
+"If we could only interest the pupils of Central High, as a whole,
+members and those who are not in the M. O. R.," sighed Mrs. Mabel
+Kerrick.
+
+The presence of this widowed lady, daughter of one of the wealthiest men
+in Centerport, and an alumna of the school, upon the Board of Governors
+of the M. O. R. needs an explanation that must be deferred.
+
+"I don't see how we can interest the boys--they only make fun," said a
+very bright looking girl sitting upon the other side of the room, and
+beside another very bright looking girl who looked so much like her
+(they were dressed just alike) that unless one had seen her lips move
+one could never have told whether Dora Lockwood, or Dorothy Lockwood,
+had spoken.
+
+"And how are you going to interest the girls who haven't been asked to
+join the M. O. R.--and are not likely to be asked?" demanded the other
+twin. "The very exclusiveness of the society makes it impossible for us
+to call upon the school in general for help."
+
+"Just raise the fees and we can pay the higher rent," remarked another
+girl, briskly.
+
+"And then, at the end of next year, Mr. Chumley will raise it again. He
+owns more rentable property than any other man on the Hill, and just as
+soon as he is sure his tenant is settled he begins to put up the rent on
+him," observed a fourth girl.
+
+"That is just it," Mrs. Kerrick responded, slowly. "The society should
+not pay rent. We should own our own house. We should build. We should
+raise a goodly sum of money this winter toward the building fund. But we
+must find some method of interesting everybody in our need.
+
+"A membership in the M. O. R. has always been a reward of merit.
+Freshmen cannot, of course, be 'touched' for the M. O. R., and few
+sophomores attain that enviable eminence. But by the time a girl has
+reached her senior year at Central High it is her own fault if she is
+not a member.
+
+"Therefore, the girls of the younger classes should be interested in the
+stability of the society, irrespective of whether they are members yet,
+or not. And naturally, if the girls are interested, they can interest
+their brothers and their parents."
+
+"Suppose, Mrs. Kerrick, a girl hasn't any brothers?" demurely asked a
+quiet girl in the corner.
+
+"Very well, then, Nellie Agnew!" said the lady, laughing. "You go and
+interest some other girl's brother. But we haven't heard from little
+Mother Wit," added Mrs. Kerrick, turning suddenly to a pretty, plump
+girl, all in brown and with shining hair and eyes, who sat by herself at
+the far end of the room. "Haven't you a thing to say, Laura Belding?"
+
+"Won't it be a little difficult," asked the girl addressed, diffidently,
+"to invent anything that will interest everybody in the building fund of
+the M. O. R.?"
+
+"That's what we're all saying, Laura," said one of the other members of
+the Board. "Now you invent something!"
+
+"You give me a hard task," laughed the brown girl. "Of course, all
+members--both active and graduate--will be interested for their
+membership's sake. The problem is, then, in addition, to interest,
+first, the girls who _may_ be members, and, second, the boys and general
+public who can never be members of the M. O. R."
+
+"Logically put, Laura," urged Mrs. Kerrick. "Then what?"
+
+"Why wouldn't a play fill the bill?" asked Laura. "Offer a prize for an
+original play written by a girl of Central High, irrespective of class
+or whether she is an M. O. R. or not--that will interest the girls in
+general. Have the play presented by boys and girls of the school--that
+will hold the boys. And the parents and general public can help by
+paying to see the performance."
+
+The younger members of the committee looked at one another doubtfully;
+but Mrs. Kerrick clapped her hands enthusiastically.
+
+"A play! The very thing! And Mr. Sharp will approve that, no doubt. We
+will appoint him chief of the committee to decide upon the play. And we
+will offer a prize big enough to make it worth while for every girl to
+try her best to produce a good one."
+
+"But that prize must be deducted from the profits of the performance,"
+objected the practical Nellie Agnew.
+
+"No," replied Mrs. Kerrick, promptly. "That will be my gift. _I_ will
+offer the prize--two hundred dollars--for the best play submitted before
+New Year's. How is that? Do you think it will 'take'? Come, Laura, does
+your inventive genius approve of that suggestion?"
+
+"I think it is very lovely of you, Mrs. Kerrick," cried Mother Wit. "Oh,
+my! Two hundred dollars! It is magnificent. Let us find Mr. Sharp at
+once and see if he approves. He is still in the house, I know," and at
+her suggestion somebody was sent to hunt for the principal of Central
+High, who was one of the guests of honor of the M. O. R. on this
+particular evening.
+
+Centerport was a lively, wealthy inland city situated on the shore of
+Lake Luna, and boasting three high schools within its precincts. The new
+building of Central High was much finer and larger than the East and
+West Highs, and there was considerable rivalry between the girls of the
+three schools, not only in athletic matters, but in all other affairs.
+Out of school hours, basketball and other athletics had pretty well
+filled the minds of the girls of Central High; and Laura Belding and her
+particular chums had been as active in these inter-school athletics as
+any.
+
+In fact, it was Mother Wit, as her friends and schoolmates called Laura,
+who interested Colonel Richard Swayne, Mrs. Kerrick's father, in the
+matter of girls' athletics and so made possible for the girls of Central
+High the finest athletic field and gymnasium in the State.
+
+Incidentally she had interested Mrs. Kerrick in the girls of Central
+High, too, and reminded the widowed lady that she was an alumna and a
+member of the M. O. R. In her renewed interest in the affairs of the
+secret society and in the Girls' Branch Athletic League, Mrs. Kerrick
+had become very different from the almost helpless invalid first
+introduced to the reader in the first volume of this series, entitled
+"The Girls of Central High; Or, Rivals for All Honors."
+
+In that first volume was related the establishment of athletics for
+girls at Central High, and introduced Laura Belding and her especial
+chums in their school trials and triumphs. In the second volume, "The
+Girls of Central High on Lake Luna; Or, The Crew That Won," were
+narrated the summer aquatic sports of the same group of girls and their
+boy friends.
+
+"The Girls of Central High at Basketball; Or, The Great Gymnasium
+Mystery," the third volume of the series, told of the girls when they
+had become juniors and related the struggle of the rival basketball
+teams of the three Centerport highs, and the high schools of Keyport and
+Lumberport, at either end of Lake Luna, for the trophy cup. That series
+of games had just been finished and Central High had won the trophy,
+when Laura and her friends, as members of the M. O. R., are again
+introduced to the reader's notice at the opening of this chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--WHAT JOSEPHINE MORSE NEEDED
+
+
+In spite of the bright lights illuminating the windows of the M. O. R.
+house--and many other larger and finer houses at that end of Whiffle
+Street--outside it was dark and dreary enough. Especially was this so at
+the "poverty-stricken end," as Josephine Morse called her section of the
+street. Jess and her widowed mother lived on the fringe of the wealthy
+Hill district, where Whiffle Street develops an elbow, suddenly becomes
+narrow, and debouches upon Market Street.
+
+It was raining, too. Not an honest, splashing downpour, but a drizzling,
+half-hearted rain that drifted about the streets as though ashamed of
+itself, leaving a deposit of slime on all the crosswalks, and making the
+corner street-lamps weep great tears. The gas-lamps, too, seemed in a
+fog and struggled feebly against the blackness of the evening.
+
+Under a huge umbrella which snuffed her almost like a candle, Jess had
+made her way into Market Street and to Mr. Closewick's grocery store
+near the corner. She carried a basket on her arm and she had given the
+clerk rather a long list of necessary things, although she had studied
+to make the quantities as modest as possible. The clerk had put them all
+up now and packed them into the basket and stood expectantly with the
+list checked off in his hand.
+
+"Two dollars and seven cents, Miss Jess," he said.
+
+"I'll have to ask you to add that to our bill," said the girl, flushing.
+"Mother is short of money just now."
+
+"Wait a moment, Miss Jess; I'll speak to Mr. Closewick," said the clerk,
+seemingly as much embarrassed as the girl herself, and he stepped
+hastily toward the glass-enclosed office at the rear of the store.
+
+But the pursy old man with the double chin and spectacles on his
+forehead, the height of which the wisp of reddish-gray hair could not
+hide, had observed it all. He got down ponderously from his stool and
+squeaked out behind the long counter in his shiny boots.
+
+"I sent my bill over to your mother this morning, Miss Jess," he said.
+"It is more than twenty dollars without this list of goods to-night,"
+and he shook the modest little paper in his hand, having taken it from
+the clerk.
+
+"Mother is short of money just now," repeated Jess.
+
+"So'm I. You tell her so. I can't let you increase your indebtedness,"
+and his pudgy hand lifted the basket and put it on the shelf behind him.
+
+"You pay me something on account, or pay for these goods you've ordered
+this evening. I'm needing money, too."
+
+"Mr. Closewick! I hope you won't do that," gasped Jess, paling under his
+stern glance. "We will pay you--we always have. Mother sometimes has to
+wait for her money--a long time. We spend many a twenty-dollar bill in
+your store during the year----"
+
+"That ain't neither here nor there," said the grocer, ponderously. "It's
+a rule I have. Never let a bill run more than twenty dollars. 'Specially
+where there's no man in the family. Hard to collect from a woman. Makes
+me bad friends if I press 'em. I can afford to risk losing twenty
+dollars; but no more!"
+
+"How can you!" cried Jess, under her breath, for there was somebody else
+entering the store. "We have bought of you for years----"
+
+"And if I hadn't stuck to the few business rules I have, I wouldn't have
+been here selling you goods for years," returned Mr. Closewick, grimly.
+"The sheriff would have sold me out. I'm sorry for your mother, and I
+don't want to lose her trade. But business is business."
+
+"And you cannot favor us for this single occasion?" choked Jess.
+
+"It would lead to others; I can't break a rule," said the grocer,
+stubbornly. "Come now, Miss Jess! You go home and tell your mother how
+it is. I'll keep this basket right here for you, and you come back with
+the two-seven, and it will be all right."
+
+"That would be useless," said Jess, clinging to the counter for support,
+and feeling for the moment as though she should sink, "We haven't any
+money--at present. If we had I should not have asked you for any
+extension of credit. Please give me back my basket."
+
+"So?" returned the grocer, frowning. "Very well," and he deliberately
+unpacked the parcels and handed her the basket--making a show of so
+doing in the presence of the newly arrived customer. "And what can I do
+for _you_, this evening, Mrs. Brown?" he asked, blandly, speaking to the
+new arrival while he handed Jess her basket without a word.
+
+"And that woman will tell about it all over town!" thought the girl, as
+she hurried into the street. "Oh, dear, dear! whatever shall I do?"
+
+For the cupboard at the Morse cottage was very bare indeed. Mrs. Mary
+Morse had some little standing as a contributor to the more popular
+magazines; but the returns from her pen-work being her entire means of
+income, there were sometimes weary waitings for checks. Jess had been
+used to these unpleasant occasions ever since she was a very little
+girl. Her mother was of a nervous temperament and easily disturbed; and
+as Jess had grown she had tried to shield her mother, at these times of
+famine, from its most unpleasant features.
+
+As witness her passage-at-arms with the grocer, Mr. Closewick. No money
+in the house, an empty pantry, their credit cut off at the store where
+they had always traded, and no credit established at any other grocer's
+shop! The situation looked desperate, indeed, to Jess Morse.
+
+Jess shrank from trying the butcher's and the dairy store, too. At each
+shop an unpaid bill would stare her in the face and to-night she felt as
+though each proprietor would demand a "payment on account." It was a
+black night indeed. November was going out in its very mournfullest and
+dismallest manner.
+
+And for Jess Morse there was an added burden of disappointment and
+trouble. She was not able to attend the M. O. R. reception, although she
+was a member. Laura Belding, her very dearest friend, would be there and
+would wonder why she, Jess, did not appear. And after the reception Chet
+Belding, Laura's brother, would be waiting to take Jess home--she hadn't
+had the heart to tell Chet that she would not need his escort from the
+reception.
+
+But, as Jess had told her mother, that blue party dress had become
+impossible. Let alone its being months behind the fashion, it was frayed
+around the bottom and the front breadth was sorely stained. And she
+hadn't another gown fit to put on in the evening. She did so long for
+something to wear at a party in which her friends would not know her two
+blocks away. So she had "cut" the reception at the M. O. R. house.
+
+All this was a heavy load on Jess Morse's mind as she approached, with
+hesitating steps, the butter and egg shop kept by Mr. Vandergriff.
+
+"Certainly," thought the troubled girl, "I either need a whole lot of
+courage, or a lot of money--either would come in very handy to-night."
+
+Just then Jess was aroused from her brown study by hearing somebody
+calling breathlessly after her.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Aren't you going to look around? Jess Morse!"
+
+A girl smaller than herself, and dressed from neck to heels in a
+glistening raincoat, ran under Jess's umbrella and seized her arm. She
+was a laughing, curly-haired girl with dancing black eyes and an
+altogether roguish look.
+
+"Jess Morse! don't you ever look back on the street--no matter what
+happens?" she demanded.
+
+"For what was Lot's wife turned to salt, Bobby?" returned Jess,
+solemnly.
+
+"For good! Now you know, don't you?" laughed Clara Hargrew, whose
+youthful friends knew her as "Bobby."
+
+"Why aren't you at the 'big doin's' to-night," demanded the harum-scarum
+Bobby. "You're a Mother of the Republic; what means this delinquency?"
+
+"Just supposing I had something else to do?" returned Jess, trying to
+speak lightly. "I'm on an errand now."
+
+She wished to shake Bobby off. She dared not take her into Mr.
+Vandergriff's store. Suppose the butter and egg man should treat her as
+the grocer had?
+
+"Say! you ought to be up there," cried the unconscious Bobby. "I just
+came past the house and it was all lit up like--like a hotel. And Mr.
+Sharp was just coming out with Mrs. Kerrick. Mrs. Kerrick is going to do
+something big for us girls of Central High."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Jess, only half interested in Bobby's gossip.
+
+"Going to give us a chance to win a prize, or something," pursued Bobby.
+
+"Oh! how do you know?" Jess showed more interest now.
+
+"Why, I heard Mr. Sharp say, as he was helping Mrs. Kerrick into Colonel
+Swayne's auto:
+
+"'The girls of Central High should be delighted, Mrs. Kerrick--and very
+grateful to you, indeed. Two hundred dollars! And a chance for any smart
+girl to win it!'--just like that. Now, Jess, you and I are both smart
+girls, aren't we?" demanded Bobby, roguishly.
+
+"We think we are, at any rate," returned Jess, more eagerly. "Two
+hundred dollars! Oh! wouldn't that be fine!"
+
+"It would buy a lot of candy and ice-cream sodas," chuckled Bobby.
+
+But to herself Jess Morse thought: "And it would mean the difference,
+for mother and me, between penury and independence! Oh, dear me! is it
+something that I can do to earn two hundred dollars?"
+
+And she listened to Bobby's surmises about the mysterious prize without
+taking in half what the younger girl was saying. Two hundred dollars!
+And she and her mother did not have a cent. She looked up and saw the
+lights of the butter and egg store just ahead, and sighed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--WHAT MR. CHUMLEY NEEDED
+
+
+"Well, old Molly-grubs, I've got to leave you here," said Bobby Hargrew,
+pinching the arm of Jess. "You're certainly down in the mouth to-night.
+I never saw you so before. I'd like to know what the matter is with
+you," complained Bobby, and ran off in the rain.
+
+Jess was heartily glad to get rid of her; and it was seldom that she
+ever felt that way about Bobby. Bobby was the double distilled essence
+of cheerfulness.
+
+But Jess felt as though nothing could cheer her to-night but the finding
+of a big, fat pocket-book on the street--one that "didn't belong to
+nobody!" There wasn't such an object in sight, however, along the
+glistening walk--the walk that glistened in the lamplight from Mr.
+Vandergriff's store.
+
+She positively _had_ to try her luck at the butter and egg shop. The man
+could do no more than refuse her, that was sure.
+
+But when Jess had lowered her umbrella and backed into the shop, she
+found several customers waiting at the counter. Mr. Vandergriff and his
+son, whom the boys called "Griff" and who played fullback on the Central
+High football team, were waiting upon these customers. Soon Griff was
+through with the man he was waiting on and came to Jess.
+
+"What's yours to-night, Miss Morse?" he asked, and was so cheerful about
+it that the girl's heart rose. They didn't owe Mr. Vandergriff such a
+large bill, anyway. The proprietor was waiting upon the lady who stood
+beside Jess as she gave her order to Griff. The lady was a very dressy
+person and she laid her silver-mesh purse on the counter between herself
+and Jess. The latter saw the glint of gold coins between the meshes of
+the purse and her heart throbbed. She moved quietly away from the lady.
+Wasn't it wicked--seemingly--that one should have so much money, while
+another needed the very necessities of life?
+
+"Thank you, Griff," Jess heard herself saying to the younger
+Vandergriff, as he packed her modest order in the basket. "I shall have
+to ask you to charge that."
+
+"All right, Miss Morse. Nothing more to-night?"
+
+"No," said Jess, and went back and unhooked her umbrella from the edge
+of the counter where she had hung it, and started for the door. A
+bright-eyed man in a long blue raincoat who had been waited upon by
+Griff already was just then going out, and he held open the door for
+her. As she stepped out the girl saw that the rain was no longer
+falling--merely a mist clung about the street lamps. She did not raise
+her umbrella, but hurried toward home.
+
+There was enough in her basket for breakfast, at least. She would wait
+until to-morrow--which was Saturday--before she went to the butcher's.
+Perhaps something would happen. Perhaps in the morning mail there would
+be a check for her mother instead of a returned manuscript.
+
+And all the time, while her feet flew homeward, she thought of the prize
+of two hundred dollars that Mrs. Mabel Kerrick was to offer for the
+girls of Central High to work for. What was the task? Could it be
+something that _she_ excelled in?
+
+Jess was almost tempted to wait up until the reception was over and then
+run to the Belding house and see her chum before Laura went to bed.
+Laura might know all about it.
+
+_Two hundred dollars!_
+
+Jess saw the words before her in dancing, rain-drop letters. They seemed
+to beckon her on, and in a few minutes she was at the cottage, just at
+the "elbow" of Whiffle Street, and came breathlessly into the kitchen.
+
+The room was empty, and the fire in the stove was but a spark. Jess
+tiptoed to the sitting-room door and peered in. Her mother, wearing an
+ink-stained jacket, was busy at her desk, the pen scratching on the big
+sheets of pad paper. The typewriter was open, too, and the girl could
+see that the title and opening paragraphs of a new story had already
+been written on the machine.
+
+"Genius burns again!" sighed Jess, and went back to remove her damp hat
+and jacket, and replenish the fire. Mother would want some tea by and
+by, if she worked late into the evening, and Jess drew the kettle
+forward.
+
+She stood her umbrella behind the entry door, and removed her overshoes
+and put them under the range to dry. She had scarcely done so when a
+stumbling foot sounded on the porch. She opened the door before the
+visitor could knock, so that Mrs. Morse would not be disturbed.
+
+"Why, Mr. Chumley!" she exclaimed, recognizing the withered little man
+who stood there.
+
+"Oh! you're home, are ye?" squeaked the landlord. "I was here a little
+while ago and nobody answered my knock, though I could hear that
+typewriter going _rat, tat, tat_ all the time."
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Chumley," said Jess, hastily. "But you know how mother
+is when she's busy. She hears nothing."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"Won't you come in?" hesitated Jess, still holding the door. The rent
+was not due for a day or two, and he usually gave them a few days' grace
+if they did not happen to have it right in the nick of time.
+
+"I guess I will," squeaked the landlord.
+
+He was a little whiffet of a man--"looked like a figure on a New Year's
+cake," Bobby Hargrew said. His mouth was a mere slit in his gray,
+wrinkled face, and his eyes were so close together that the sharp bridge
+of his nose scarcely parted them.
+
+Some landlords hire agents to attend to their property and to the
+collection of rents. Not so Mr. Chumley. He did not mind the trouble of
+collecting, and he could fight off repairs longer than any landlord in
+town. And the one-half of one per cent. collection fee was an item.
+
+"Think I've come ahead of time, eh?" he cackled, rubbing his blue
+hands--as blue as a turkey's foot, Jess thought--over the renewed fire.
+"It ain't many days before rent's due again. If ye have it handy ye can
+pay me now, Miss Josephine."
+
+"It isn't handy, Mr. Chumley. We are shorter than usual just now," said
+Jess, hating the phrase that comes so often to the lips of poverty.
+
+"Well! well! Can't expect money before it's due, I s'pose," said the old
+man, licking his thin lips. "And I'm afraid ye find it pretty hard to
+meet your bills at 'tis?" he added, his head on one side like a gray old
+stork.
+
+Jess flushed and then paled. What had _he_ heard? Had that Mrs. Brown,
+in the grocer's shop, told him already that Mr. Closewick had refused to
+let her increase the bill? The girl looked at him without speaking,
+schooling her features to betray nothing of the fear that gripped her
+heart.
+
+"Hey?" squeaked Mr. Chumley. "Don't ye hear well?"
+
+"I hear you, sir," said Jess, glancing quickly to make sure that she had
+closed the door tightly between the kitchen and the room in which her
+mother was at work.
+
+"Well, I'm willin' to help folks out--always," said Mr. Chumley, his
+withered cheek flushing. "If you're finding the rent of this house too
+much fer ye, why, there's cheaper tenements in town. I own some of 'em
+myself. Taxes is increased this year and I gotter go up on all
+rentals----"
+
+"But, Mr. Chumley! we've lived in this cottage of yours ever since I can
+remember. We've paid you a lot of rent. You surely are not going to
+increase it now?"
+
+"I am, after December, Miss Josephine," declared Mr. Chumley. "I gotter
+do it. Beginnin' with January first your mother will have to pay three
+dollars more each month. You kin tell her that. I'm giving you a month's
+warning."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Chumley! Surely you won't put us out----"
+
+"I ain't sayin' nothing about putting you out, though your mother ain't
+as sure pay as some others. She's slow. And she's a woman alone. Hard to
+git your money out of a widder woman. No. She can stay if she pays the
+three dollars increase. Otherwise, I got the cottage as good as rented
+right now to another party."
+
+He moved toward the door, without lifting his eyes again to Jess's face.
+
+"You'll tell her that," he said. "I'd like to do business with her
+instead of with a half-grown gal. Don't suppose you _could_ let me have
+the next month's rent to-night, eh?"
+
+"It isn't due yet, Mr. Chumley," Jess said, undecided whether to "get
+mad" or to cry!
+
+"Well----Hello! who's these?"
+
+There was another clatter of footsteps upon the porch as old Mr. Chumley
+opened the outer door. Jess looked past him and saw a female and a male
+figure crowding into the entry. For a moment she recognized neither.
+
+"That's the girl!" exclaimed the woman, and her voice was sharp and
+excited.
+
+"Hello!" muttered Mr. Chumley, and stood aside. "Here's young
+Vandergriff."
+
+Jess looked on, speechless with amazement. She now recognized Griff, and
+the woman with him was the fashionably attired lady who had stood beside
+Jess at the counter in the butter and egg store.
+
+"Miss Jess! Miss Jess!" exclaimed Griff, quickly. "Did you open your
+umbrella on the way home?"
+
+"I--I----"
+
+"Stupid!" exclaimed the woman.
+
+"Why, Griff, I didn't open it."
+
+"And you haven't opened it yet?"
+
+"Why--no," admitted the puzzled Jess.
+
+"Where is it?" cried the young man. "Now, you wait, Mrs. Prentice. I
+know it will be all right."
+
+"That's all very fine, young man. But it isn't your purse that is lost,"
+exclaimed the woman, tartly.
+
+At last Jess understood. She started forward and her face flamed.
+
+"Oh!" she cried. "Did you lose that silver mesh purse?"
+
+"You see! She remembers it well enough," said the woman.
+
+"I could scarcely forget it. You laid it on the counter between us. And
+it was heavy with money," said Jess.
+
+"Now, wait!" cried Griff, interposing, while old Chumley listened
+eagerly, his little eyes snapping. "Did you set your umbrella aside
+without opening it, Miss Morse?"
+
+"Yes, I did," repeated Jess.
+
+"And you had it hanging by the hooked handle on the edge of the counter
+right beside this lady, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+"I saw it. It's just like a story book!" laughed Griff. "Get the
+umbrella, Miss Morse. I knew it would be all right----"
+
+"I am not convinced that it is 'all right,' as you say, young man,"
+spoke Mrs. Prentice, eyeing Jess's flushed face, suspiciously.
+
+"Get it from behind the door there, Griff," said the girl, hurriedly.
+She, too, had heard of such an incident as this. Perhaps the purse had
+been knocked from the counter into her open umbrella. But suppose it was
+_not_ there?
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--THE HAND HELD OUT
+
+
+When Jess came out of the house there was a group of her
+schoolmates--and not all of them boys--at the foot of the Whiffle Street
+hill. Being towed by Chet's big kite had became a game that all hands
+wanted to try. But the sun was getting warmer and the icy street would
+soon be slushy and the skates would cut through.
+
+"I've had enough," said Bobby Hargrew, removing her skates when she
+spied Jess. "The policeman has warned us once, and he'll be mad next
+time he comes around if we're here still."
+
+"Better get your skates, Jess, and try it just once," urged Chet
+Belding, who was very partial to his sister's closet chum.
+
+"I can't, Chet," replied Jess. "I must do my Saturday's marketing."
+
+"Hullo! here's Short and Long!" cried Bobby, as a very short boy with
+very brisk legs came sliding down the hill with a big bundle under his
+arm.
+
+Billy Long was an industrious youngster who only allowed himself leisure
+to keep up in athletics after school hours, because he liked to earn
+something toward his family's support.
+
+"Stop and try a ride, Billy," urged Lance Darby, holding the cord of the
+tugging kite.
+
+"Can't. Going on an errand."
+
+"Hey, Billy! how's your dyspepsia?" demanded another of the boys.
+
+Billy grinned. Bobby exclaimed:
+
+"Now, don't tell me that Short and Long ever has trouble with his
+digestion--I won't believe it!"
+
+"He sure had a bad case of it yesterday," drawled Chet Belding. "At
+least, so Mr. Sharp said. Billy spelled it with an 'i'."
+
+"Let me use your knife a minute, please?" asked Bobby, who was still
+struggling with a refractory strap. "No! just toss it to me."
+
+"That's all right," returned the small boy, with a grin, as he walked
+over and carefully handed Bobby the knife. "I don't take any chances
+with girls in throwing, or catching. All my sister can do is to throw a
+fit, or catch a cold!"
+
+"Ow! isn't that a wicked statement?" cried Bobby. "You know it isn't so.
+But you're right down ignorant, Billy. You're just as bad as Postscript
+was in Gee Gee's class one day this week."
+
+"Who's 'Postscript'?" demanded Lance. "That's a new one on me."
+
+"Why," said Bobby, her black eyes twinkling, "I mean Adeline Moore.
+_That's_ a postscript, isn't it?"
+
+"What happened to Addie?" asked Jess, as the others laughed.
+
+"Why, she got befuddled in reciting something about an Indian uprising
+that came in our American History hour. It's all review stuff, you know.
+
+"'What is it that you call an Indian woman, Adeline?' Gee Gee asked,
+real sharp.
+
+"And Addie jumped, and stammered, and finally said:
+
+"'A squaw, please, Miss Carrington.'
+
+"'And what do you call her baby, then?' snapped Gee Gee.
+
+"'A--a squawker,' says Addie, and the poor thing got a black mark for
+it. Wasn't that mean?"
+
+"Miss Grace G. Carrington was in one of her moods," observed Chet, when
+the laugh had subsided.
+
+"She's subject to moods," Lance drawled.
+
+"No, she's not!" cried Bobby Hargrew. "She only had one mood--the
+imperative--and we girls are all subject to that," and she sighed, for
+Bobby was frequently in trouble with the very strict assistant principal
+of Central High whom she disrespectfully referred to as "Gee Gee."
+
+Jess and her friend had left the others now and were approaching Market
+Street. Like everybody else on the walks, they had to be careful how
+they stepped, and it was with many a laugh and gibe that Bobby Hargrew
+beguiled the way. Jess, however, was serious once more.
+
+"Are you really going in for that prize Mrs. Kerrick is going to put up
+for us?" demanded Bobby.
+
+"Do you know what it's for?"
+
+"No--I haven't heard that," said the younger girl. "But for two hundred
+dollars I'd learn tatting--or darn socks. Daddy says I ought to learn to
+darn his. What's it all about, anyway? I suppose Laura knows?"
+
+"Yes. It's a play. The girl who writes the best one, that can be acted
+by us boys and girls of Central High, is to get the prize."
+
+"Gee! won't that be nuts for Miss Gould?" cried Bobby. "You know, she
+tried us out in blank verse the other day, and I made a hit. My stately
+lines were spoken of with commendation. And when she told us to bring in
+a rhyme, or poetry--whichever we had the courage to call it--I wanted to
+read mine out loud. But she wouldn't let me. She said she had not
+intended to start a school for humorous poets."
+
+"What did you hand in?" asked Jess, smiling.
+
+"Want to hear it?" cried Bobby, eagerly, digging into her pocket
+which--like a boy's--was always filled with a conglomeration of
+articles. "Listen here!" she added, drawing forth a crumpled paper.
+"This is called 'Such is Life' and really, I was hurt that Miss Gould
+considered it so lightly," and she began to read at once:
+
+  "'William Wright was often wrong
+    And Thomas Goode was bad;
+  While Griffith Smiley, odd to state,
+    Was almost always sad.
+  Jedediah Rich was very poor,
+    While Ozias Poor was rich,
+  And Eliphalet Q. Carpenter
+    Earned his living digging ditch.
+  Tom White was black Jim Black was white,
+    And Jose Manuel Green was brown;
+  While Ching Ling Blu was yellow,
+    As was known all over town!'
+
+"I'd have made more of it," added Bobby, "only Miss Gould didn't seem to
+care for that kind of poetry. And I suppose if I tried my hand at a play
+that I would be unable to hit the popular taste," and she sighed.
+
+"I guess they won't demand verse from us in this play," giggled Jess.
+"And that is most atrocious, Bobby."
+
+"Think so?" returned her friend, her eyes twinkling. "And you'll do a
+whole lot better when it comes to writing your own play, I s'pose?"
+
+"It won't be in verse--blank, or otherwise," admitted Jess.
+
+"You really _are_ going to try for it?"
+
+"Why, Bobby, I'd love to win that two hundred dollars. I don't suppose I
+can. All the girls will try, I expect, and Laura, or Nell Agnew, will
+get it. But I want that two hundred dollars worse than I ever wanted
+anything in my life!"
+
+She spoke so earnestly that Bobby was impressed. The latter glanced at
+her sidewise and a shrewd little smile hovered about her lips for a
+moment, which Jess did not observe.
+
+"Where are you bound for, Jess?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"Marketing."
+
+"You trade at Heuffler's market, don't you? That's right around the
+corner from father's store. Why don't you ever patronize _our_ place for
+groceries. I'm drumming up trade," said Bobby, grinning.
+
+"I guess our trade wouldn't amount to much," said Jess, flushing a
+little.
+
+"'Every little bit added to what you've got makes just a little bit
+more,'" quoted Bobby. "And let me tell you, Mr. Thomas Hargrew keeps
+first-class goods and only asks a fair profit."
+
+Jess laughed; but she caught at the straw held out to her, too. She knew
+it would be useless to go to Mr. Closewick's, where they usually traded.
+Was it honest to try and obtain credit at another grocery?
+
+"I am afraid your father wouldn't welcome me as a customer," said Jess,
+gravely. "Ours isn't always a cash trade. Mother's money comes so very
+irregular that we have to run a bill at the grocery and the market and
+other places."
+
+"Come on and give us a sample order," urged Bobby. "Father will be glad
+to get another book account. Now, if _you_ were running a store I'd
+patronize it! We Central High girls ought to work together--just like a
+lodge. Come on."
+
+She fairly dragged Jess by the hand into the store on Market Street,
+over the door of which Mr. Hargrew's name was displayed. The clerks were
+busy at the moment, but Mr. Hargrew was at his desk in the corner. Bobby
+ran to him and whispered quickly:
+
+"Here she is, Father. You remember what that Mrs. Brown said last night
+about old Closewick refusing her credit after her mother had traded
+there so long. And I am sure Jess is in trouble and needs help. Do wait
+on her, Father."
+
+"If you say so, Bob," returned the big man, smiling down upon the girl
+who, he often said, "was as good as any boy." "You'll have to come into
+this store and share the business when you get older; and you might as
+well learn to judge customers now. And, if they _need_ help----"
+
+He came out to Jess Morse immediately, smiling and bowing like the suave
+storekeeper he was.
+
+"Glad to see you, Miss, What can we do for you this morning?"
+
+"Why--why," stammered Jess, "Bobby urged me to come in; but, really, Mr.
+Hargrew, it seems like asking a big favor of you, for we have never
+traded here much."
+
+"We are always glad to make a new connection," said the storekeeper,
+
+"But mother--we are obliged to ask for credit----"
+
+"And that is what I have to do very frequently myself," interposed Mr.
+Hargrew, still smiling. "What is it you wish, Miss Morse? Your credit is
+good here, I assure you. You have brought the very best of
+references--my daughter's. Now, what is the first article?"
+
+Jess could have cried with relief! Somehow she felt that Bobby and her
+father must know of her need, yet not a word or sign from either
+betrayed that fact. And one would scarcely suspect harum-scarum Bobby
+Hargrew of engineering such a delicate bit of business.
+
+Nevertheless, Jess was vastly encouraged by this incident. She went into
+the meat shop and purchased a small piece of lamb for over Sunday and
+Mr. Heuffler did not ask her for his bill. She hoped that "something
+would turn up" and watched the mails very eagerly, hoping that a
+fugitive check might come. But the postman never came near the little
+cottage at the elbow in Whiffle Street, all that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--THE RACE IS ON
+
+
+There was a rustle of expectancy--upon the girls' side, at least--at
+Assembly on Monday morning. Rumors of the prize offered for the best
+play written by a girl of Central High had aroused great interest and
+the school eagerly awaited Mr. Sharp's brief remarks regarding it.
+
+"It is not our wish," said the principal, in the course of his speech,
+"to restrict the contestants in their choice of subjects, or in methods
+of treatment. The play may be pure comedy, comedy-drama, tragedy--even
+farce--or melodrama. Miss Gould will confine her lectures this week in
+English to the discussion of plays and play-making. Candidates for
+fame--and for Mrs. Kerrick's very handsome prize--may learn much if they
+will faithfully attend Miss Gould's classes. And, of course, it is
+understood that there must be no neglect of the regular school work by
+those striving for the laurel of the playwright.
+
+"I doubt if we have any budding female Shakespeares among us, yet I
+realize that the youthful mind naturally slants towards tragedy and the
+redundant phrases of the Greek and Latin masters, as read in their
+translation; but let me advise all you young ladies who wish to compete
+for the prize, to select a simple subject and treat it simply.
+
+"Have your play display human nature as you know it, and realism without
+morbidness."
+
+The girls of Central High who had heretofore excelled in composition
+naturally were looked upon as favorites in this race for dramatic
+honors. Among the Juniors, Laura Belding and Nellie Agnew always
+received high marks for such work. They possessed the knack of
+composition and were what Bobby Hargrew called "fluid writers."
+
+"If it was a jingle or limerick, I'd stand a chance," sighed Bobby to
+herself. "But think of the sustained effort of writing a whole play!
+Gee! two hours and a half long. It would break my heart to sit still
+long enough to do it."
+
+Jess Morse had never tried to more than pass in English composition. For
+the very reason, perhaps, that she had seen the practical side of such a
+career at home, she had not, like so many girls of her age, contemplated
+seriously literary employment for herself.
+
+Lily Pendleton was known to have once essayed an erotic novel, and had
+read a few chapters to some of her closer friends. Bobby said it should
+have been written on yellow paper with an asbestos pad under it to save
+scorching Miss Pendleton's desk. Of course, Lily would attempt a play in
+the most romantic style.
+
+The boys began to hatch practical jokes anent the play-writing before
+the week was out; and one afternoon Chet Belding appeared in a group of
+his sister's friends, and with serious face declared he had with him the
+outline and introductory scene of Laura's play, its caption being:
+
+"The Poisoned Bathing-Suit; or, The Summer Boarder's Revenge."
+
+Some of the girls--and not alone the Juniors like Laura, Nellie and
+Jess--were very serious about this matter of the play. Mrs. Kerrick's
+prize spurred every girl who had the least ability in that direction to
+begin writing a dramatic piece. Some, of course, did not get far; but
+the main topic of discussion out of school hours among the girls of
+Central High was the play and the prize.
+
+Jess talked it over with her mother, and Mrs. Morse grew highly excited.
+
+"Why, Josephine, dear, if you could win that prize it would be splendid!
+Then you could have a new party dress--and a really nice one--and the
+furs I have been hoping to buy you for two seasons. Dear, dear! what a
+lot of things you really could get for that sum."
+
+"I guess it would help us out a whole lot," admitted the girl "We need
+so many things----"
+
+"Why, I shouldn't allow you to use a cent of it for the household--or
+for me," cried her mother. "No, indeed."
+
+"I haven't won it yet," sighed Jess. "But I guess if I did win it you'd
+have to take a part of it, Mother."
+
+"Nonsense, child!" cried Mrs. Morse. "We'll have some checks in shortly.
+And we sha'n't starve meanwhile. Now, let us look over this plot you
+have evolved and perhaps I can suggest some helpful points--and show you
+how to write brisk dialogue. That is something the editors always praise
+me for--although I have never dared try a play myself. It is so hard to
+get a hearing before a really responsible manager."
+
+Outside help for the girls was not debarred by the terms of the contest,
+so long as the main thread of plot in each play was original with the
+author, and she actually did the work. Jess listened to the practical
+suggestions of her mother in relation to her play; but all the time she
+had upon her mind, too, the domestic difficulties that seemed to have
+culminated just now in a single great billow of trouble.
+
+No money had come in. She had been obliged to go once more to Mr.
+Hargrew for groceries, and to the meat store and to Mr. Vandergriff's.
+Her mother could talk in her cheerful manner about what she could do
+with the two hundred dollar prize if she earned it. But Jess was very
+sure that she would not spend it for personal adornment--although no
+girl at Central High loved to be dressed in the mode more than Jess
+Morse.
+
+"If such a _darling_ thing should happen as my winning the prize, I'd
+put it all in the bank for a nest-egg," she thought. "Then, when checks
+do not come in, we would not have to ask for credit. We'd pay up all
+debts and start square with the world. And then--and then I'd be
+perfectly happy!"
+
+The first of the month arrived, and with it Mr. Chumley. Mrs. Morse was
+busy at her desk and said:
+
+"Just tell him, Josephine, that we will have it shortly. He needn't come
+again. I'll let you take it around to his house to him when I get it."
+
+But this did not suit the old man, and he pushed his way, for once, into
+the presence of the literary lady.
+
+"Now, see here! Now, see here!" he cackled. "This won't do at all,
+Widder--this won't do at all! I want my money, and I want it prompt. And
+if you can't pay your present rent prompt, how do you expect to pay it
+next month, when you must find three dollars more? Now, tell me that,
+Ma'am?"
+
+"Really, Mr. Chumley! You are too bad," complained Mrs. Morse. "I am so
+hard at work. You quite drive the ideas out of my head. I--I don't know
+what train of thought I was following."
+
+Mr. Chumley snorted. "You'd better be huntin' the advertisement columns
+of a newspaper for a job, Widder," he said. "Them 'trains of thought' of
+yours won't never carry you nowhere. I gotter have my money. How are you
+going to get it?"
+
+"I have never failed to pay you heretofore, have I?" asked the lady,
+bringing out her handkerchief now. "I think this is too bad----"
+
+"But I want money!"
+
+"And you shall have it, I have considerable owing to me--oh, yes! a good
+deal more than sufficient to pay your rent, Mr. Chumley. You will get
+it."
+
+That was a very unsatisfactory interview for the landlord, and
+particularly so for Mrs. Morse. She complained when he had gone to Jess:
+
+"Now, my day is just spoiled. I'm all at loose ends. It will cost me a
+day's work. Really, Josephine, if only people wouldn't nag me so for
+money!"
+
+And Jess strove to shield her all that she could from such interviews.
+Mrs. Morse needed to live alone in a world with her brain-children.
+Meanwhile her flesh-and-blood child had to fight her battles with the
+landlord and tradesmen.
+
+It was amid such sordid troubles that Jess evolved the idea for her
+play. The butterfly is born of the ugly chrysalis; out of this unlovely
+environment grew a pretty, idyllic comedy which, although crude in
+spots, and lacking the professional touch which makes a dramatic piece
+"easy acting," really showed such promise that Mrs. Morse acclaimed its
+value loudly.
+
+"Oh, Mother! don't praise me so much," begged Jess. "The theme is good,
+I know. But it scares me. How can I ever dress it up to make it sound
+like a real play? It sounds so jerky and imperfect--that part that I
+have written, I mean."
+
+"There is something a dramatic critic told me once that may be true,"
+replied her mother. "It was that the piece which reads smoothly seldom
+acts well; whereas a play that 'gets over the footlights' usually reads
+poorly. You see, action cannot be read aloud; and it is the action that
+accompanies the words of a dramatic piece that makes those words tell.
+
+"I am not sure that Mr. Sharp and his committee will consider your play
+the best written, from a literary standpoint; but I understand that they
+have invited Mr. Monterey, the manager of the Centerport Opera House, to
+read the plays, too. And you, Josephine, write for _him;_ for they will
+depend upon his judgment in the choice of the acting qualities of the
+piece."
+
+This was good advice, as Jess very well knew. And she could barely keep
+her mind sufficiently upon her school work to pass the eagle scrutiny of
+Miss Grace G. Carrington, so wrapped up was she in the play. Not even to
+Laura did she confide any facts regarding the piece. Some of the girls
+openly discussed what they had done, and what they hoped; but Jess kept
+still.
+
+Thursday came and in her mother's morning mail was a letter with the
+card of the Centerport _Courier_ in the corner.
+
+"Now, what can that be?" drawled Mrs. Morse, when Jess eagerly brought
+it to her. "They buy no fugitive matter, and I haven't sent them
+anything since having my interview with Mr. Prentice. I really would
+have been happier to see a letter like that from one of the New York
+magazines; it might have contained a check in that case," and she slowly
+slit the envelope.
+
+But Jess waited in the background with suppressed eagerness in her face
+and attitude. At once her thought had leaped to Mrs. Prentice. She had
+not told her mother a word about that lady's visit on Friday evening,
+nor her errand to the house. But if Mrs. Prentice was really "the power
+behind the throne" in the _Courier_ office, she might easily put some
+regular work in the way of Mrs. Morse.
+
+"Listen to this, child!" exclaimed her mother, having glanced hastily
+through the letter. "Perhaps I had better take this--for a time, at
+least. I don't like the idea of being tied down--it might interfere with
+my magazine work----"
+
+"Oh, Mother!" cried Jess. "What is it?"
+
+"Listen: Addressed to me, 'Dear Madam:--Will reconsider your suggestion
+of covering Hill section for society news. Can afford at least five
+dollars' worth of space through the week, and perhaps something extra on
+Sunday. Come and see me again. Respectfully, P. S. Prentice.' Well!"
+
+"Oh, Mother!" repeated Jess. "What a splendid chance!"
+
+"Why, Josephine, not so very splendid," said her mother, slowly. "He
+only guarantees me five dollars weekly. That is not much."
+
+"It will feed us--if we are careful," gasped Jess.
+
+"Goodness, Josephine! What a horribly practical child you are getting to
+be. I don't know what the girls of to-day are coming to. Now, that would
+never have appealed to me when I was your age. I never knew how papa and
+mamma got food for us."
+
+Jess might have told her that conditions had not changed much since her
+girlhood!
+
+"But five dollars regularly will help us a whole lot, Mother," she
+urged.
+
+"And it will necessitate my going out considerably--and appearing at
+receptions and places. Really--I have refused a number of invitations
+because of my wardrobe. My excuse of 'work' is not always strictly
+true," sighed Mrs. Morse.
+
+"But do, _do_ try it, Mother!" cried Jess.
+
+"Well," said the lady, "it may do no harm. And it may be an opening for
+something better. But, really, nobody must know that I am a mere society
+reporter on the Centerport _Courier_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--A SKATING PARTY
+
+
+The girls of the Junior class in modern history were filing out on
+Friday.
+
+"What do you know about that?" hissed Bobby Hargrew, in the ears of her
+chums. "Gee Gee is getting meaner and meaner every day she lives."
+
+"What did she do to you now?" demanded Dora Lockwood, one of the twins.
+
+"Didn't you notice? She sent Postscript to hunt up Moscow on the map of
+Russia. Now! you know very well that Moscow was burned in 1812!"
+
+"You ridiculous child!" exclaimed Nellie Agnew. "You will never do
+anything in school but make jokes and try the patience of your
+teachers."
+
+"I am no friend to teachers, I admit," confided Bobby to Dora and
+Dorothy. "Don't you think they ought to be made to earn their money?"
+
+"Any teacher who is so unfortunate as to have you in his, or her, class,
+is bound to earn all the salary coming to them," declared Dorothy.
+
+"Bad grammar--but you don't know any better," declared the harum-scarum.
+"You're just as bad as Freddie Atkinson. Dimple asked him who compiled
+the dictionary, and Freddie said, 'Daniel Webster.'
+
+"'No, sir! Noah!' snapped Dimple.
+
+"'Oh, Professor!' exclaimed Fred. 'I thought Noah compiled the Ark?'"
+
+As the girls were laughing over this story of Bobby Hargrew's, Eve Sitz
+came up briskly. Laura and Jess were near at hand, and in a moment a
+group of the Juniors who always "trained together" were in animated
+discussion.
+
+"Yes. It's frozen hard. Otto was on it with a pair of horses and our
+pung," declared Eve, who came in every morning from the country on the
+train, and whose father owned a big farm over beyond Robinson's Woods.
+
+"What's frozen?" demanded Dora.
+
+"Peveril Pond. It's as smooth as glass. I want you to all come over on
+Saturday afternoon; we'll have a lot of fun," declared Eve.
+
+"You're always inviting us to the farm, Evangeline," said Nellie Agnew;
+"I should think your father and mother would be tired of having us
+overrun the place."
+
+"Never you mind about them," declared Evangeline, smiling. "They love to
+have young folks around. Now, remember! Saturday at noon the autos will
+start from the Beldings' front door--if it doesn't snow."
+
+"Oh, snow!" cried Bobby. "I hope not yet."
+
+  "'Beautiful snow! he may sing whom it suits--
+  I object to the stuff, 'cause it soaks through my boots!'"
+
+"It's too bad," said Jess, "that Mrs. Kerrick didn't offer a prize for
+verse. Bobby would win it, sure!"
+
+"Never you mind," said Bobby, with mock solemnity. "I may surprise you
+all yet. I am capable of turning out tragic stuff--you bet your boots!"
+
+"Mercy, Bobby! how slangy you are getting," murmured Nell Agnew, the
+doctor's daughter.
+
+"You think I cannot be serious?" demanded Bobby, very gravely. "Listen
+here. Here is what I call 'The Lay of the Last Minorca'--not the 'Last
+Minstrel!'
+
+"'She laid the still white form beside those that had gone before,'"
+quoth Bobby, in sepulchral tone.
+
+"'No sob, no sigh, forced its way from her heart, throbbing as though it
+would burst.
+
+"'Suddenly a cry broke the stillness of the place--a single
+heartbreaking shriek, which seemed to well up from her very soul, as she
+left the place:
+
+"'"Cut, cut, cut-ah-out!"
+
+"'She would lay another egg to-morrow.'"
+
+"You ridiculous girl!" exclaimed Laura. "Aren't you ever serious at
+all?"
+
+"My light manner hides a breaking hear-r-r-t," croaked Bobby. "You don't
+know me, Laura, as I really _are!_"
+
+"Don't want to," declared Laura Belding, briskly. "It must be awful to
+be a humorist. All right, Eve. We'll come on Saturday. Chet will see Mr.
+Purcell about the big car. Lake Luna is frozen only at the edges, and is
+unsafe. But we will have a good time at Peveril Pond."
+
+Fortunately Mrs. Morse received payment for a story in a magazine that
+week or Jess would never have had the heart to join the skating party.
+But the sum realized was sufficient to settle with Mr. Closewick, pay
+the month's rent of the cottage, and pay a part of each bill at Mr.
+Heuffler's and Mr. Vandergriff's shops.
+
+These payments left Jess and her mother almost as badly off as they were
+before. And there was the new account started at Mr. Hargrew's. But Chet
+Belding urged Jess very strongly to be his guest on Saturday, and there
+was really no reason why Jess should not go. Her mother had seen Mr.
+Prentice and begun furnishing items to the _Courier_ from day to day;
+and the girl felt that, with care, they might be able to keep from
+getting so deeply into debt again.
+
+No snow had fallen up to Saturday noon; but it was cold, and the clouds
+threatened a feathery fall before many hours. The young folk who
+gathered in the big hall of the Belding house thought little of the
+cold, however. There were warm robes and blankets in the Belding auto
+and in the sightseeing machine that Mr. Purcell had sent. Chet, in his
+bearskin coat, looked like the original owner of the garment--especially
+when he pulled the goggles down from the visor of his cap, and prepared
+to go out to the car.
+
+"My dear fellow," drawled Prettyman Sweet, the dandy of Central High,
+who was of the party, "you look howwidly fewocious, doncher know! I
+wouldn't dwess in such execrable taste for any sum you could
+mention--no, sir!"
+
+"Beauty's only skin deep, they say, Pretty," responded Chet "So, if you
+were flayed, you might look quite human yourself."
+
+"Purt" was gorgeous in a Canadian skating suit--or so the tailor who
+sold it to him had called it. It was all crimson and white, with a
+fur-edged velvet cap that it really took courage to wear, and fur-topped
+boots. And his gloves! they were marvels. One of them lying on the floor
+of the Beldings' hall gave Topsy, Mrs. Belding's pet terrier, such a
+fright that she pretty nearly barked her head off.
+
+She made so much noise that Lance grabbed at her and tried to put her
+out of the room, Topsy still barking furiously.
+
+"You look out!" drawled Bobby Hargrew. "One end of that dog bites,
+Lance!"
+
+They turned Purt around and around to get the beauties of his costume at
+every angle. And they "rigged" him sorely. But the exquisite was used to
+it; he would only have felt badly if they had ignored his new "get-up."
+
+"It's quite the thing, I assure you," he declared. "And, weally, one
+should pay some attention to the styles. You fellows, weally, dress in
+execrable taste."
+
+When the party was complete they bundled into their wraps again and
+piled into the machines. Mrs. Belding had retired to her own room until
+the "devastation of the barbarians," as she called it, was past; but
+Mammy Jinny straightened up the hall and dining room after the young
+folk with great cheerfulness.
+
+"Yo' know how yo' was yo'self, Miss Annie, w'en yo' was oberflowin' wid
+de sperits ob youth," she said, soothingly.
+
+"I am sure I never overflowed quite so boisterously," sighed Mrs.
+Belding.
+
+"No. Yo' warn't one ob de oberflowin' kind, Miss Annie," admitted the
+old black woman. "But Mars' Chet an' Miss Laura, and dem friends ob
+theirs, sartain sure kin kick up a mighty combobberation--yaas'm!"
+
+The wintry wind blew sharply past the crowd of Central High Juniors as
+the Belding auto and the bigger machine struck a fast pace when once
+they had cleared the city. There was lots of fun in the autos on the way
+to the Sitz farm; but they were all glad to tumble out there and crowd
+into the big kitchen "for a warm."
+
+The Swiss family were the most hospitable people in the world. Eve's
+mother had a great heap of hot cakes ready for them, and there was
+coffee, too, to drive out the cold.
+
+"We're going to take Patrick down to the pond with us to keep up the
+fires while we're skating," Eve told Laura. Eve looked very pretty in
+her skating rig, and she was a splendid skater, too. "Father and Otto
+are somewhere down in the woods already. This cold weather coming on
+marks the time for hog killing, and some of the porkers have been
+running in the woods, fattening on the mast. There is an old mother hog
+that has gotten quite wild, and has a litter of young ones with her that
+are hard to catch. They may have to shoot her. So if you hear a gun go
+off, don't be alarmed."
+
+The hired man, who stayed with the Sitzes all the year around, was a
+comical genius and the boys knew him well. As they started on the walk
+to the pond, Chet asked him:
+
+"Do you skate yourself, Pat?"
+
+"Sure, and it's an illegant skater I used to be when I was young,"
+declared Pat; "barrin' that I niver had thim murderin' knives on me
+feet, but used ter skate on a bit of board down Donnegan's Hill."
+
+"He'll never own up that he doesn't know a thing," whispered Eve to
+Laura and Jess, as the boys laughed over this statement of the Irishman.
+"He was planting potatoes in the upper field, and all by himself, last
+spring, and a man drove along the road, and stopped and asked him what
+kind of potatoes they were.
+
+"'Sure, I know,' says Patrick.
+
+"'Then what kind are they?' repeated the neighbor.
+
+"'Sure, they're raw ones, Mr. Hurley,' says he, and Hurley came to the
+house roaring with laughter over it. Nothing feazes Patrick."
+
+The long, sloping hill, under the chestnuts and oaks, would have made a
+splendid coasting place; only there was no snow on the ground.
+
+"But when the snow _does_ come," cried Dora Lockwood, "if the pond is
+still frozen over, won't it be a great course?"
+
+"The ice is all right now, at any rate," Eve reassured them. "And there
+isn't a spring hole in the entire pond, Otto says."
+
+Patrick had brought an axe and, with the help of some of the boys, soon
+had a big bonfire burning on the edge of the pond. Meanwhile the other
+boys helped the girls with their skate-straps, and then got on their own
+skates.
+
+The ice hadn't a scratch on it. It was like a great plate of glass, and
+so clear in places that they could see to the bottom of the pond--where
+the bottom was sandy.
+
+All the young folk were soon on the ice, the boys starting a hockey game
+at the far end, and the girls circling around in pairs at the end
+nearest to the fire.
+
+"That's what Mrs. Case, our physical instructor, says we ought to
+learn," said Laura, watching the boys.
+
+"And it's jolly good fun, too," cried Bobby.
+
+"But suppose you turned your ankle, or fell down and tore your dress?"
+suggested Nellie. "I believe hockey on the ice is too rough."
+
+"No game needs to be rough," declared Laura. "That isn't the spirit of
+athletics. Didn't we learn how to play basketball without being rough?"
+
+"Even Hessie Grimes learned that," chuckled Bobby.
+
+At that moment a gun was fired back in the thicker woods, and then out
+of the brush the girls saw an animal charging directly for the pond.
+Patrick saw it, too, and leaped up from before the fire and ran toward
+the beast.
+
+"It's a big hog!" cried Bobby.
+
+"That's the one they want to catch," said Eve. "She is ugly, too, I
+believe." Then she raised her voice in warning to Patrick; "Look out,
+Patrick! She is real cross."
+
+"Faith!" returned the Irishman, half squatting down in the path of the
+charging sow. "It's not afraid I be of the likes of a pig. 'Tis too many
+of their tails I've twisted in ould Ireland, to run from wan in
+Ameriky----"
+
+Just then the animal spied him and went for Patrick, full tilt. There
+wasn't time for the Irishman to dodge; but he _did_ spread his legs, and
+the angry mother-hog ran between them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--THE MID-TERM EXAMINATION
+
+
+The girls, who were nearest the end of the lake, watched Patrick and the
+old hog in amazement. The boys came down from the far end with a chorus
+of yells and laughter.
+
+For the Irishman, leaping up with his feet apart, descended on the back
+of the charging animal, with his face toward her tail!
+
+The porker grunted her displeasure, and Patrick did some grunting, too;
+but he was not easily scared--nor would he be shaken off. He locked his
+arms tightly around the animal's body and hugged her neck with his legs,
+so that she could not bite him.
+
+The creature kept up a deafening squealing, while out of the bush rushed
+Dandy, the farmer's dog. The boys came sweeping in from the lake to join
+in the sport--sport to everybody but the pig and Patrick! But Dandy got
+into the scrimmage first.
+
+True to his instinct, the dog attempted to seize the hog by the ear, but
+miscalculated and caught Patrick by the calf of the leg!
+
+"Moses and all the children of Israel!" bawled the Irishman. "'Tis not
+fair to set two bastes onto wan! Call off yer dawg, Otto, or it's the
+death of him I'll be when I git rid of the hog."
+
+But just then the poor hog got rid of him. She lay down and Patrick
+tumbled off, kicking at the dog. Dandy seemed much surprised to discover
+that he had locked his teeth on the wrong individual!
+
+The boys were convulsed with laughter; but the girls were afraid that
+the Irishman had been seriously hurt. And, from the squealing of the
+hog, they were positive that _she_ was suffering.
+
+However, Mr. Sitz and Otto appeared, and tied the legs of the struggling
+beast, and so bore her away. They had already trapped her litter of
+young ones, and Patrick limped after his master and Otto, vowing
+vengeance against both the hog and the dog.
+
+So the boys took turns in keeping up the fire on the shore, for although
+it was a clear day, the wind continued cold and blew hard. They were all
+glad to hover around the blaze, now and then; and especially so when
+they ate their luncheons.
+
+Eve had prepared a great can of chocolate and the girls had all brought
+well-filled lunch boxes. Bobby was hovering about Laura's as soon as it
+was opened.
+
+"Mammy Jinny's made you something nice, I know," she said. "Dear me, I'm
+so hungry! I wish I was like the Mississippi River."
+
+"What's that for?" demanded Prettyman Sweet, who overheard her. "Like
+the Mississippi? Fawncy!"
+
+"Then I'd have three mouths," exclaimed Bobby, immediately filling the
+mouth she _did_ possess.
+
+"My word! that wouldn't be so bad an idea, would it?" proclaimed Purt,
+who was a good deal of a gourmand himself.
+
+"I don't think much of this jam pie," complained Chet, holding up a
+wedge that he had taken from his sister's basket.
+
+"That's not jam pie!" exclaimed Laura. "Whoever heard of jam pie?"
+
+"Yep. This is it," declared Chet. "The crusts are jammed right together.
+There ain't enough filling."
+
+The wind increased toward the end of the day and it was hard to skate
+against it; but the young folk had a lot of fun sailing down the length
+of the pond with their coats spread for sails.
+
+"That was a great scheme you suggested about the kite the other day,
+Laura," declared Lance Darby. "It was as good as an aeroplane."
+
+"What would be the matter with hitching the kite to our scooter?"
+suggested Chet, who overheard him.
+
+The two chums owned a small iceboat which went, on Lake Luna, by the
+name of "scooter."
+
+"Say, old man! I've got a better scheme than that!" cried Lance,
+suddenly.
+
+"What say?"
+
+"Let's combine a flying machine with an iceboat and beat out everybody
+on the lake this winter!"
+
+"Wow!" shouted his chum. "Now, you've been skating with Mother Wit and
+have caught her inventive genius--it's contagious. Gee! what an idea!"
+
+"That's all right. Wait till you hear my scheme," said Lance, wagging
+his head.
+
+"It ought to work fine," said Bobby Hargrew, with serious face. "All you
+will have to do when you are sailing along the ice and come to open
+water will be to turn a switch and jump right into the air. Save getting
+your feet wet."
+
+"Laugh all you want to," said Lance, threateningly. "When we get it done
+you girls will be glad enough to ride in it."
+
+"Not I!" cried Nellie Agnew. "I wouldn't ride on your old scooter as it
+is. And to combine a flying machine and iceboat--whew! I guess not."
+
+The boys became enthusiastic, however, and they talked about it all the
+way home. Lance, however, kept the important idea regarding the new
+invention for Chet Belding's private ear.
+
+Jess Morse enjoyed the outing that Saturday, as she always enjoyed such
+fun when with the Beldings; but, after all her mind was on her play. She
+almost lived that play nowadays!
+
+And, to tell the truth, she began to neglect some of her studies in her
+concentration of mind upon "The Spring Road." Her mother praised it
+warmly.
+
+"To think that I should have a daughter who may turn out to be a real
+genius!" cried Mrs. Morse. "Although it is _so_ hard to get a play
+accepted by a first-class producer."
+
+"No. I don't want to be a genius," said Jess shaking her head. "But I
+_do_ want awfully to win that prize."
+
+"Such a sordid child," said her mother, playfully. "I cannot imagine
+one's putting such emphasis on mere money. It isn't genius, after all, I
+fear. Our friends would call you eminently practical, I suppose," and
+the irresponsible lady sighed.
+
+But if Jess had no impractical thoughts regarding _why_ she wished to
+win the prize, she made the mistake, just the same, of letting Miss
+Carrington catch her two or three times in recitation hour. Gee Gee was
+down on her like a hawk.
+
+"Miss Morse, what does this mean?" demanded the stern teacher, eyeing
+Jess with particular grimness through her thick spectacles.
+
+She had called the culprit to her desk just before the noon recess and
+now showed her the enormity of her offenses.
+
+"You are falling back. There is something on your mind beside your
+textbooks, that is very sure, Miss Morse. I cannot lay it to athletics
+at present, I suppose, for there seems to be a slight let-up in the
+activities of you young ladies in that direction," and she smiled her
+very scornfullest smile. Miss Carrington abhorred athletics.
+
+"But we have another matter interfering with the placid current of our
+school life. Are _you_, Miss Morse, one of the young ladies who are
+attempting to write a play?"
+
+"Ye--yes, ma'am," stammered Jess, blushing to her ears.
+
+"Ah! so I thought. I believe I can pick out all these playwrights by a
+reference to their recitation papers. And this afternoon comes our
+mid-term examination. Let me tell you, Miss Morse, that you must do
+better this afternoon, or I shall take your case up with Mr. Sharp."
+
+She was folding and tying with a narrow ribbon some papers as she spoke,
+and her eyes snapped behind her glasses.
+
+"These are the questions in my hands now, Miss Morse," said Gee. "And
+let me tell you, they are searching ones. Be prepared, Miss--be
+prepared!"
+
+And she popped them into the top drawer on the right-hand side of her
+desk. But before she could shut down the roll top and so lock the desk,
+Miss Gould appeared at the door of the room and beckoned to Miss
+Carrington. The latter rose hurriedly and departed, leaving her desk
+open. And likewise leaving Jess Morse, her hungry eyes fixed upon that
+drawer in which the examination questions lay!
+
+Just a peep at those papers might have helped Jess a whole lot in the
+coming hour of trial.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--MISSING
+
+
+Alice Long, who was Short and Long's sister, was entertaining some of
+the girls when Jess Morse came into the recreation hall with something
+her little brother Tommy had said.
+
+"Tommy's just going to school, you know, and he's beginning to ask
+questions. I guess he stumps his teachers in the primary grade. He heard
+the arithmetic class reciting and learned that only things of the same
+denomination can be subtracted from each other.
+
+"'Now, you know that ain't so, Alice,' says he to me. 'For, can't you
+take four quarts of milk from three cows?'"
+
+Jess didn't feel like laughing; what was coming after recess troubled
+her. She felt a certainty that she would fail, and she could not get
+over it.
+
+"Besides," she said to herself, "Gee Gee will put the hardest questions
+on the list to me--I just know she will."
+
+"What's the matter, Jess?" asked Laura, coming up to her and squeezing
+her arm. "Something is troubling you, honey."
+
+"And it will trouble you after recess," replied Jess, mournfully.
+
+"The old exams?"
+
+"Uh-huh!"
+
+"Afraid, are you?" laughed Mother Wit.
+
+"I'm just scared to death. And Gee Gee knows I'm not prepared and she
+will be down on me like a hawk."
+
+"Maybe not."
+
+"She knows I am weak. She just told me so, and she showed me the papers
+and said there were awfully hard questions in them. She just delights in
+catching us girls. And she says all of us who are trying for the prize
+are neglecting our regular work."
+
+"I expect we are, Jess," admitted Laura. "Oh, dear! it's not easy to
+write a play, is it?"
+
+"I don't know," said Jess, hesitatingly. "I'm not sure that I am writing
+a regular play. But I'm writing something!"
+
+"What does your mother say about it?"
+
+"Oh, of course she praises it. She would."
+
+"I bet you win the prize, Jess!" exclaimed Laura.
+
+"No such luck. And, anyway, I will take no prize this afternoon. Gee Gee
+threatens to take my standing up with Mr. Sharp if I don't do well,
+too."
+
+"Oh, don't worry, dear. Perhaps you will come out all right."
+
+Bobby came swinging along and bumped into them. "Oh, hullo!" exclaimed
+she. "Say! how do you pronounce 's-t-i-n-g-y'? Heh?"
+
+"Man or wasp?" returned Mother Wit, quickly.
+
+Jess laughed. "You can't catch Laura with your stale jokes, Bobby," she
+gibed.
+
+"That's all right; I asked for information. But you girls don't know
+anything. You're writing plays. That's enough to give you softening of
+the brain. The folks that know it all are the squabs," chuckled Bobby,
+referring to the freshman class. "What do you suppose one of them sprang
+this morning?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea," spoke Laura.
+
+"Why, she was asked to define the difference between instinct and
+intelligence, and she said: 'Instinct knows everything needed without
+learning it; but human beings have reason, so we have to study ourselves
+half blind to keep from being perfect fools!' Now, what do you know
+about that?"
+
+"I believe that child was right," sighed Jess. "If I only had instinct I
+wouldn't have to worry about the questions Gee Gee is going to give us
+this afternoon."
+
+"Oh, say not so!" gasped Bobby, rolling her eyes and putting up both
+hands. "I am trying to forget about those exams----There's the bell!
+Back to the mines!" she groaned, and rushed to take her place in the
+line.
+
+The Junior class crowded into Miss Carrington's room and took their
+seats. The examination covered several of the more important studies.
+The teacher took her place, adjusted the thick glasses she always wore,
+and looked sternly over the room.
+
+"Young ladies," she said, in her most severe manner, "I hope you are all
+prepared for the review. But I doubt it--I seriously doubt it. Some of
+you have been falling behind of late in a most astonishing manner, and I
+fear for your standing--I fear for it."
+
+This manner of approaching the exam, was, of course, very soothing to
+the nervous girls; but it was Gee Gee's way and they should all have
+been used to it by this time. She had opened the drawer of her desk--the
+top right-hand drawer--and was fumbling in it.
+
+Pretty soon she gave her entire attention to sorting the papers in this
+drawer, which seemed to be pretty full. As the moments passed, her
+manner betrayed the fact that the teacher was much disturbed.
+
+"Oh! I hope she's lost 'em!" exclaimed the wicked Bobby Hargrew.
+
+"I don't," returned the girl she spoke to. "We'd suffer for it."
+
+"Well, I got my fingers crossed!" chuckled Bobby. "She can't accuse me.
+I wasn't near her old desk."
+
+"Wasn't it locked?" whispered another of the waiting girls.
+
+Miss Carrington heard the bustle in the class, so she sat up and looked
+out over the room with asperity.
+
+"I want to know what this means, girls," she said, snappily. "My desk
+was left open by chance while I was out of the room for perhaps ten
+minutes. The examination papers were in this drawer. Now I cannot find
+them. Has somebody done this for a joke?" and she looked hard in Bobby's
+direction.
+
+"Look out, Bob," warned one of her mates; "crossing your fingers isn't
+going to save you."
+
+But suddenly, even while she was speaking, Miss Carrington seemed to be
+stabbed by a thought. She started to her feet and turned her gaze upon
+the part of the room in which Josephine Morse sat. And Jess's face was
+aflame!
+
+"Miss Morse!"
+
+Gee Gee's voice was never of a pleasing quality. Now it startled every
+girl in the room. Jess slowly arose, and she clung to the corner of her
+desk a moment for support.
+
+"Do you remember seeing me put those question papers into this drawer?
+_Do_ you?" demanded the teacher.
+
+"Ye--yes, ma'am," replied Jess.
+
+"You were standing right here at my desk?"
+
+Jess nodded, while the whole class watched her now paling face. Many of
+the girls looked amazed; some few looked angry. Laura Belding's eyes
+fairly blazed and she half rose from her seat.
+
+"Sit down, young ladies!" commanded Miss Carrington, who was quick to
+see these suggestive actions on the part of the class. "Come here to me,
+Miss Morse."
+
+Jess walked up the aisle. After that first moment her strength came back
+and she held her head up and stared straight into the face of the
+teacher. The tears that had sprung to her eyes she winked back.
+
+"I had called you to my desk, Miss Morse," said Gee Gee, in a low voice,
+and staring hard at the girl, "and had pointed out to you that this
+particular examination would be a trying one. Is that not a fact?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," admitted Jess.
+
+"Miss Gould called me and I hastily thrust the papers, which I
+particularly told you were the question papers, into this drawer. Did I
+not?"
+
+"You did."
+
+"And then I hurried out of the room without locking the drawer--without
+pulling down the roll top of the desk, indeed. Is that not so, Miss
+Morse?"
+
+"It is," said Jess, getting better control of her voice now.
+
+"And you were left standing here. The other girls were gone. Now, Miss
+Morse, I freely admit that I am culpable in leaving such important
+papers in the way. I should have locked them up. I presume the
+temptation was great----"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Miss Carrington!" exclaimed the girl, more indignant
+than frightened now. "You are accusing me without reason. I would not do
+such a thing----"
+
+"Not ordinarily, perhaps," interposed Miss Carrington. "But it all came
+to you in a moment, I presume. And you did not have time to put them
+back."
+
+This she had said in a low voice, so that nobody but Jess heard her. But
+the girl's voice rose higher as she grew hysterical.
+
+"Miss Carrington, you are unfair! I never touched them!"
+
+"You must admit, Miss Morse, that circumstances are very much against
+you," declared the teacher.
+
+"I admit nothing of the kind. A dozen people might have been in the room
+while you were out and the desk was open. Ten minutes is a long time."
+
+"You seem to have thought out your defense very well, Miss Morse," said
+Gee Gee, sternly. "But it will not do. It is too serious a matter to
+overlook. I shall send for Mr. Sharp," and she touched the button which
+rang the bell in the principal's office.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV--A MILE A MINUTE
+
+
+The moon, hanging low upon the horizon, was young but brilliant. The air
+was so keen and clear that without the help of the moonlight it seemed
+as though the stars must have flooded the lake with white light.
+
+Nearer the southern shore the jingle of sleigh-bells and the laughter
+and shouting of the skaters marked the revelers who gave a free course
+to the iceboats out here nearer the open water. For both east and west
+of Cavern Island, which lay in the middle of Lake Luna, opposite
+Centerport, the ice was either unsafe, or there were long stretches of
+open water. The freight boats up and down the lake kept this channel
+open.
+
+But there was a wide and safer course before the flying aero-iceboat.
+And soon she was moving so fast that the girls heard nothing but the
+shriek of the wind rushing by.
+
+Here and there before them lanterns glowed like huge fireflies. These
+lights were in the rigging of several ice-yachts. Chet and Lance had a
+pair of automobile searchlights rigged forward on their own boat.
+
+Another yacht had started from the old boathouse at about the time our
+friends and their new-fangled craft got under way. There were girls
+aboard it, too; but at first the Beldings and Jess and Lance did not
+recognize the other party.
+
+The strange yacht was distinguished, however, by a red and green lamp.
+As Chet had been slow in starting, the other boat got ahead. But now,
+although the wind was fair and the other yacht traveled splendidly, the
+aero-iceboat bore down upon it, beating it out and leaving it behind
+like an express train going by a freight.
+
+However, Chet would not allow Lance to throw on all speed. There were
+too many other craft on the ice before them--and it was night.
+
+The lights of the City of Centerport soon fell behind them; then, almost
+at once, they picked up the lights of Keyport at the extreme end of the
+lake. They were traveling some!
+
+Chet had strapped on a megaphone, which he had borrowed from Short and
+Long, who was coxswain of the boys' Central High eight-oared shell, and
+through this he shouted his orders to Lance. They ran down within a mile
+of Keyport, and then shut off the engine and circled about on the
+momentum they had gained. There were too many skaters and sleighs on the
+ice down here to make iceboating either safe or pleasurable.
+
+"My goodness me! Wasn't that fun?" gasped Jess.
+
+"Felt like you was traveling some, eh?"
+
+"Oh, Chet! it was great!"
+
+"It certainly is a fine boat, Bobby," agreed Laura. "You and Launcelot
+have done well."
+
+"Wait!" said Lance, warningly.
+
+"Wait for what?" demanded Laura.
+
+"We didn't travel that time. We were only preparing you--warming her up,
+as it were. Wait till we let her out."
+
+"My goodness!" cried Jess. "Can you go faster?"
+
+"We'll show you, going home," said Chet.
+
+Just then the boat with the green and red light swooped down upon them
+and a voice shouted:
+
+"What kind of a contraption is that you've got there, Belding?"
+
+"Hullo!" exclaimed Chet. "That's Ira Sobel's yacht. Ira is Purt Sweet's
+cousin." Then he answered: "Oh, this is a little rigging of my own, Mr.
+Sobel. But she can travel. Rather beat's your _Nightkawk_, eh?"
+
+"Well, she did that time," admitted Sobel, doubtfully.
+
+"My goodness me!" the friends heard the Central High dandy exclaim. "I
+weally wouldn't want to travel any faster, Ira. I--I haven't weally got
+my breath yet!"
+
+"Oh, I say!" cried another voice from the iceboat, and they recognized
+Lily Pendleton's. "What do you think about the prize? Did you hear?"
+
+"Why, they haven't decided on the best play yet, have they?" returned
+Jess, eagerly, and before her chum could speak.
+
+"No, But I heard they'd put it all into Mr. Monterey's hands. He's the
+manager of the Opera House, you know. And mother is very well acquainted
+with him. You girls laughed at my play----"
+
+"Not I, Lily," interrupted Laura, good-naturedly. "I was too afraid that
+the rest of you might have a chance to laugh at mine."
+
+"Well, I bet I've a good chance to win. Mr. Monterey is real nice, and
+mother is going to see him."
+
+"Pooh!" exclaimed Chet. "She's one of those people who think influence
+brings things about. Don't you be worried, girls; I bet Mr. Sharp won't
+let anybody get that prize through favoritism."
+
+"That's very encouraging, Chet," said Jess. "But perhaps Lily will win
+it. You know, she goes to plays more than any other girl in the Junior
+class of Central High, that's true. And she reads novels--real silly
+ones. Maybe she knows how to write just what would please a theatrical
+manager."
+
+"Pooh!" said Laura, "I'm not giving up all hope yet--especially because
+of Lil Pendleton's say-so."
+
+"Now, look out!" shouted Lance. "All ready to go back, Chet?"
+
+"Start her!" exclaimed his chum, "Cling tight, girls--and take a good
+breath. I want to time this trip. It's all of nine miles to the starting
+point and we'll show you----"
+
+His voice trailed off and the girls did not hear the rest of his speech.
+The big propeller-wings began to beat the air, and the sound rose to a
+keen buzzing. Chet snapped his watch back into his pocket, raised his
+hand, and the iceboat tore ahead.
+
+In twenty seconds the wind rushed past them so that the girls were
+forced to bend their heads. The way was clear and Lance had "let her
+out." Chet bent sidewise watching the ice through his goggles.
+Occasionally he screamed an order to his chum, who signaled with his
+hand that he heard and understood.
+
+It was like the flight of a meteor! Laura and Jess never had realized
+before what it meant to travel fast. Motoring on land was nothing like
+this. As though shot out of some huge cannon the aero-iceboat skimmed
+the lake. The wind was almost in their faces, but that made little
+difference to this new invention of the chums.
+
+The other yachts had to tack against the wind; not so the aero-iceboat.
+Swift and straight she flew and suddenly Chet roared to Lance to shut
+down, and the propeller groaningly stopped.
+
+Chet flung up his goggles and drew out his watch.
+
+"Eight and a half minutes!" he cried, with glee. "And, as I told you,
+it's a good nine miles."
+
+"Let me off! let me off!" gasped his sister, struggling down from the
+narrow body of the boat. "Why! I never want to travel any faster, Chet.
+Do you think it is _safe?_"
+
+"You bet it is, Miss Laura," said Lance. "Or we wouldn't have invited
+you girls to go with us."
+
+"Just wait till some day--say Saturday. By daylight I'd drive this thing
+faster than that. I tell you, we've got the speediest craft on the whole
+lake."
+
+"It beats what Mrs. Case told us about ski running in Sweden," cried
+Jess, who was delighted with the experience. "And if Mrs. Case starts a
+class to travel on skis this winter, I want to be in it."
+
+"Well! it's all right to hear about. But the experience is sort of
+shaking," sighed Laura. "I'm not sure that I have an over-abundance of
+pluck, after all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI--"JUST LIKE A STORY BOOK"
+
+
+The Morses were completely settled in their little house before school
+opened. Jess had had a busy vacation, but aside from her ride on Chet's
+and Lance's _Blue Streak_ she had joined in little of the holiday fun of
+her mates at Central High.
+
+There was one basketball game during the holiday recess. Central High
+met the Keyport team on their own court and outplayed them most
+decidedly; therefore the athletic temperature went up several degrees.
+
+Mrs. Case, the physical instructor of Central High, was an enthusiastic
+out-of-doors woman, and as a heavy snow fell about New Year's she easily
+interested the girls under her instruction in skiing. This exercise, she
+pointed out, might take the place of the fortnightly walking expeditions
+during the snowy weather, and there was so much broken country behind
+Centerport that the sport could be indulged in with profit.
+
+The boys were getting so much sport out of ice hockey that--as the
+league approved of that form of exercise--the physical instructor
+introduced it on the girls' athletic field. The field could be flooded,
+and had been; now it was a perfectly smooth piece of ice and upon it
+those of the older girls who were already good skaters, had a chance to
+learn the mysteries of hockey.
+
+"Huh! Father Tom says it's nothing but old-fashioned 'shinny' with a
+fancy name tacked onto it," declared Bobby Hargrew. "But my! isn't it
+fun?"
+
+Jess and her chum, as well as the irrepressible, "took" to hockey, and
+there were enough of the other girls interested for two good teams to be
+made up.
+
+Hester Grimes captained one team and Laura the other. There was still
+some little feeling of rivalry between Hester and Mother Wit--perhaps
+not much on the side of the latter; but the wholesale butcher's daughter
+was inclined to be overbearing, and was never really satisfied unless
+she had an important part in whatever went on.
+
+The struggle between the two teams for supremacy among the girls of
+Central High in this particular sport really led, however, to good
+results. Hester was backed by strong players; and being so muscular a
+girl herself she carried her side to victory two out of every three
+times.
+
+"We ought to beat her--she'll get too uppity to live with," declared
+Bobby, discussing these games.
+
+"It will do us good to be beaten occasionally," laughed Laura. "You
+begin to think, Bobby, that you must belong to the winning side all the
+time."
+
+"Yes. Who doesn't?" sniffed Miss Hargrew. "It's all right--all this talk
+about playing the game for the game's sake; but right down in the bottom
+of our hearts, don't all of us play to win? If we don't, we never play
+well, that's as sure as shooting."
+
+When the school re-opened, however, on the first Monday in January, the
+subject uppermost in the minds of the girls of Central High was the
+prize contest in play-writing for the M. O. R's. The girls crowded into
+Assembly that morning, all on the _qui vive_ to hear what the principal
+would have to say.
+
+But after the opening exercises, when Mr. Sharp came forward to speak,
+he surprised everybody by saying:
+
+"We are not ready to report upon the matter of the plays. Mr. Monterey
+will confer with us at noon, and before school is dismissed to-day we
+will announce the winner.
+
+"It is not often that a committee having in charge the decision of the
+winner in an amateur play-writing competition has the happiness to be
+aided by a professional manager of a theater, and a man, too, who has
+produced plays of importance himself.
+
+"Mr. Monterey's knowledge of what will _act_ well will make our final
+decision, I believe, one that will strike all competitors as eminently
+fair. We have tried to decide upon the prize winner in a way that will
+satisfy the giver of the prize, too--Mrs. Kerrick. She demanded a play
+that would act well and that will draw an audience because of its
+dramatic value as a play--not merely because it is written by a girl of
+Central High, or is performed by the girls and their friends for the
+benefit of the M. O. R's.
+
+"Before the day closes, I can promise you, the decision will be made and
+the name of the prize-winner, and of the title of the play, will be
+announced. You are excused to your lessons for the morning."
+
+The buzz of excitement--especially from the girls' side--when Mr. Sharp
+had ceased speaking, could scarcely be controlled. Not even Miss
+Carrington's basilisk eye could quell it.
+
+Of course, poor Bobby fell a victim to Gee Gee's sour temper. She
+thought the teacher had long since reached the class room, and she was
+gabbling away to Nell Agnew and Jess "sixteen to the dozen," as she
+would have said herself. When out of a door popped the bespectacled Miss
+Carrington, grimmer and more stern than usual.
+
+"Indeed, Miss! are you supposed to rattle away like that about matters
+entirely foreign to your lessons, on the way to class room?" demanded
+the teacher.
+
+"Oh, indeed, Miss Carrington," exclaimed the contrite Bobby (she always
+_was_ contrite when caught in a fault, for all her sauciness and
+lightness arose from thoughtlessness) "I really forgot--I did not mean
+to make a noise in the corridor."
+
+"Humph! did not mean--did not mean? What excuse is _that_, pray?"
+
+"Not a very good one, I am afraid," admitted Bobby. "But I truly did not
+intend to break a rule. We were all so much interested in the play----"
+
+"Yes. Quite so. It is evident that I will get little out of you young
+ladies until the matter of this silly play is settled. I presume you are
+one of the contestants, Miss Clara?"
+
+"Not at all, Miss Carrington," said Bobby, demurely. "I _did_ start to
+write one. It--it would have been a tragedy based upon several of the
+main incidents in the Punic Wars. But I found that to give the matter
+proper attention I should be obliged to neglect some of the studies,
+and----"
+
+"That will do, Miss Hargrew," interposed the teacher, severely. "You
+bring me on Friday afternoon a resume of those same Punic Wars--say a
+thousand words, I shall learn thereby just how much you know about the
+subject you selected for your play."
+
+Perhaps Bobby deserved what she got; but she "pulled a dreadfully long
+face" about it, while the other girls were inclined to enjoy her
+chagrin.
+
+As for Jess Morse, it seemed to her that the waiting for the
+announcement of the prize-winner was too hard a cross to bear. So much
+depended upon the decision of the committee--it did seem as though she
+could not keep her mind upon the lessons.
+
+If she won--_if she won!_--there would be plain sailing in the domestic
+waters of the Morses' life--and that had come to mean a great deal to
+the girl. For even Mrs. Prentice's kindness to them had not cleared away
+all the troubles for Jess Morse.
+
+True, the account at Mr. Closewick's had been paid. Jess, too, had seen
+to it that the month's rent for their new home was met and a little
+something paid each week on the running store accounts.
+
+But when Mrs. Morse drew her salary for the last week from the
+_Courier_--and it amounted to nearly ten dollars that week--she had been
+obliged to pay the money over to her dressmaker. She had found it
+necessary to order a new costume, if she was to follow the fashionable
+receptions, and the like, on the Hill. This matter of her mother being a
+society reporter, Jess feared, would cost them more in the end than it
+was worth to them.
+
+And now they began the New Year with positively nothing in the family
+purse. And there was so much needed. There would be another reception at
+the M. O. R. house this very week and Jess told herself that she could
+not go because of her lack of a gown. Ah! these things were all
+veritable tragedies to her.
+
+Lily Pendleton was very sure that she was going to take the prize. And
+she was not afraid to talk about it.
+
+"Mother saw Mr. Monterey, and I am sure he was impressed by what she
+told him," she announced. "Why, when the New Century Club met at our
+house last week, I read two acts of my play, and all the ladies said it
+was fine."
+
+"Aren't you modest!" grumbled Bobby. "I should think it would pain you."
+
+"Now, don't you get saucy, Bobby," warned Lily. "_You_ are not
+interested in this contest, that's sure."
+
+"Huh!" cried Bobby. "I knew better than to try to write any such thing.
+If I won the prize nobody would believe that I wrote it."
+
+"Oh, Bob," said Dora Lockwood. "You are _too_ modest."
+
+"Yes, sir--ree!" returned Bobby. "I know it. I am of the same modest and
+withdrawing nature as the turtle."
+
+"The turtle?"
+
+"Yep," said Bobby, "You know what the little boy said when he first went
+into the country? He came running to his father and says: 'Oh, Dad!
+what's this thing I found? When I poked it, it put its hands and feet in
+its pockets and swallowed its head!' Now, there can't be anything much
+more retiring than the turtle--or _me_."
+
+The bell called them in for the final session then, and half an hour
+before closing time the signal from Mr. Sharp's office announced that
+the girls of all classes were to file to the Assembly hall and take
+their seats. On this occasion the boys were not present.
+
+"If I don't get it I hope you do, Jess," whispered Laura Belding to her
+chum as they went to their seats.
+
+But to herself Jess kept saying: "Oh, it would be too good to be
+true--too good to be true! It would be just like a story-book."
+
+Mr. Sharp was smiling when he rose to speak.
+
+"I must admit that I am surprised--happily surprised," he began.
+"Several of the plays submitted to the committee are really marked by a
+vigor of style and originality of text and plot that have delighted me.
+Particularly are 'The Strong Defense,' by Miss Belding, 'Appearances,'
+by Miss Hilyard, 'The Arrow's Flight,' by Miss Agnew and 'Harrowdale,'
+by Miss Buford to be praised upon these points.
+
+"Of course, there were some handed in to the committee that were utterly
+unintelligible; the writers had not grasped the first principles of
+play-writing. But, as a whole, I am proud of your efforts, and I know
+Miss Gould is. I only fear that many of you young ladies who began plays
+did not finish them. It narrowed the choice down to a very few.
+
+"And yet," pursued Mr. Sharp, "there was really little doubt in the
+minds of any of the committee at the first reading of the manuscripts.
+And when the plays considered, from a literary standpoint, really
+acceptable, were put in the hands of Mr. Monterey for a final reading
+and judgment, we were assured that our opinion was correct.
+
+"There is but one, among them all, that is a really _actable_ (pardon
+the coining of the word), and that one, too, has in it the elements of a
+really heart-moving story. The author has failed in many of the
+professional rules of play-writing--even her grammar is somewhat shaky
+in spots," added Mr. Sharp, smiling suddenly. "But the story is so sweet
+and so moving, and is so well fitted to the acting capacity of you girls
+and your brothers, that there is not the shadow of a doubt as to the
+worth of the piece and the success of the writer."
+
+For a moment he was silent. The girls were eager, Lily Pendleton preened
+herself in her seat. Her play had not been named when the principal gave
+lukewarm praise to those mentioned. She was sure that he now referred to
+her and to her play.
+
+On the other hand, Jess Morse had lost all hope. Her poor little play
+was not even mentioned, as Chet would have said, "among the also rans!"
+
+"I am glad to announce--and to congratulate the young lady at the same
+time," said Mr. Sharp, "that Miss Josephine Morse is the winner of the
+two hundred dollars offered by Mrs. Kerrick, the title of her play being
+'The Spring Road.'"
+
+It came like a thunderbolt! Jess could only gasp and stare up at him
+until his smiling, rosy face, and the big spectacles, were blurred in a
+mist that seemed to rise before her like a curtain.
+
+Bobby Hargrew started the cheering; but it was Laura who reached Jess
+first and hugged her _tight_.
+
+"I'm just as disappointed as I can be!" she cried. "I actually thought
+_my_ play was going to be best. But as it wasn't---- Why, Jess, I'm
+almost as happy over your winning it as you can be yourself!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII--LILY PENDLETON IS DISSATISFIED
+
+
+"I consider it a very unfair decision--unfair in every particular,"
+proclaimed Lily Pendleton, after school. "Why, he did not even _mention_
+'The Duchess of Dawnleigh.' I can't believe that Mr. Monterey even _saw_
+my play. I certainly shall make inquiries."
+
+Bobby Hargrew was caustic. "'The Duchess of Dawnleigh!'" she repeated.
+"Say Lil! would you really know a live duchess if you saw one coming up
+the street? Why didn't you write about something you knew about?"
+
+"I guess I know as much about duchesses as _you_ do, Bobby Hargrew!"
+
+"I hope so," granted Bobby, cheerily. "If I had to go up against a
+duchess--a real, live one--I expect I'd be like the little milliner in
+Boston, when some great, high-and-mighty personages came there from
+England. One of them was a sure-enough duchess, and she sent for the
+little milliner to do some work for her.
+
+"The little workwoman was just about scared into a conniption," chuckled
+Bobby, "when she found she had to go to the grand hotel to meet the
+grand lady and so asked a friend who knew a little more about the
+nobility than _she_ did, what she should do when she entered the grand
+lady's presence.
+
+"'Why, when you enter the room,' explained the friend, 'merely bow, and
+in speaking to her say "Your Grace."'
+
+"The little milliner," continued Bobby, "thought she could do that all
+right, and she went to the interview with the duchess without any dress
+rehearsal. When she got inside the lady's door she bowed very low and
+says, right off:
+
+"'For what we are about to receive, Oh, Lord, make us truly grateful!'"
+
+But While there may have been some disappointment in the hearts of some
+of the girls of Central High who had striven for the prize, they not yet
+having heard Jess Morse's play read, even the disappointed ones were not
+niggardly with their congratulations.
+
+Jess walked in a maze that afternoon when she went home, Laura on one
+side and Nell Agnew on the other, while Bobby pirouetted around them
+like a very brilliant and revolving planet.
+
+"And is there a part in your play for me?" demanded the irrepressible.
+"I just dote on actin. But no thinking part for mine, young lady! I must
+at least be important enough in the play to say: 'Me Lord! the carriage
+waits.'"
+
+"You could play the part of _Puck_ or _Ariel_, Bobby," declared Nellie
+Agnew.
+
+"Hah! did you use those characters in 'The Arrow's Flight'?" gibed
+Bobby. "No wonder it was turned down then. Stealing boldly from
+Shakespeare!"
+
+"No, I didn't, Miss!" returned Nell, rather sharply. "I hope you noticed
+that I was one of those who was 'honorably mentioned.'"
+
+"Sure. Mr. Sharp let you all down easy," chortled Bobby.
+
+"I believe the decision in the contest was eminently fair," declared
+Laura. "Yet I thought I would surely win."
+
+"So did I," cried Nell.
+
+"And I didn't even dare _hope_ for it," said Jess, awe-stricken. "It's
+just the most wonderful thing that ever happened."
+
+But Mrs. Morse took the success of "The Spring Road" quite as a matter
+of course.
+
+"There, Josephine!" she exclaimed. "Now you can have the new clothes you
+are really suffering for----"
+
+Jess decided that the argument might as well come right then. So she
+halted her mother on the verge of her plans for renewing the girl's
+wardrobe in a style more befitting the means of Lily Pendleton's mother,
+than her own!
+
+"We have got to pay our debts," declared the girl, warmly. "Every penny
+must be paid, Mother, dear. Let's be free of bills and duns for once, at
+least. Let us start square with the world--and stay square if we can."
+
+Mrs. Morse did not wish her daughter to use the prize money for their
+general needs. Jess had much trouble to convince her that it would make
+her, Jess, far happier to do that than to own the finest set of furs, or
+the most beautiful evening gown, that would be displayed upon the Hill
+that winter.
+
+She did agree, finally, however, to have a new dress so that she could
+attend the M. O. R. reception that week, at which her play was read
+aloud by Miss Gould herself, and it was praised by the audience until
+Jess's ears fairly burned. Then the committee properly appointed went
+into executive session and plans for the production of "The Spring Road"
+went with a rush.
+
+It was easy to choose a cast of characters. With a little advice from
+Jess it was not hard to select the very girls and boys best fitted to
+act in the piece. And such selection was made that very week, the
+typewritten 'sides' distributed to the several players, and the boys and
+girls went to work to memorize their parts. Lance Darby and Chet Belding
+were both in the play, and although neither Laura, nor Jess herself, had
+a part, they were both so busy (for they were on the M. O. R. play
+committee) that for a few days athletics and sports were well-nigh
+neglected.
+
+Through the good-natured manager of the Centerport Opera House, scenery
+and much of the properties and some costumes for the inferior characters
+were to be obtained. But the principal characters would furnish their
+own costumes, and that is where Lily Pendleton began to lose her
+dissatisfaction. Disappointed as she had been regarding the decision of
+the committee, when she found that she was cast for an important part in
+Jess's play she "came out of the sulks," as Bobby termed it.
+
+Mr. Monterey suggested to the committee, too, the name of a man to take
+charge of the rehearsals--really, to be stage director of "The Spring
+Road." He came to the M. O. R. house one afternoon to read the play--a
+dapper, foreign-looking man of an indeterminate age, who continually
+twirled a silken black mustache and listened devotedly to any girl who
+talked to him.
+
+Lily began to cultivate Mr. Pizotti assiduously. Really, one might have
+supposed _she_ had written the play, instead of Jess Morse, she was so
+frequently in conference with Mr. Pizotti that first afternoon.
+
+Bobby, who had likewise been cast for a part in "The Spring Road,"
+watched Lily's actions with the stage manager with a good deal of
+disgust.
+
+"What do you know about that foolish girl?" she demanded. "I'll wager
+that greasy foreigner has got a wife and ten children--and neglects
+them. He has brilliantine on that moustache, and he smells of hair-oil,
+and I'll wager, too his hair will show gray at the roots, and I _know_
+it is thin on top."
+
+"How wise you are, Miss Bobby," said Nellie, who heard her. "For a child
+you seem to have learned a lot."
+
+"I'm foxy," returned Bobby, grinning impishly. "I'm fully as smart as
+that kid brother of Alice Long's. He came up to see us the other
+day--Alice brought him. Aunt Mary is real old fashioned, you know, and
+she sat in the kitchen darning and Tommy was playing around the floor.
+She thought it was getting toward tea time and she said to him:
+
+"'Tommy, go into the front hall and see if the clock is running, that's
+a good boy.'
+
+"Tommy came back after a minute, and says:
+
+"'No, ma'am, it ain't running; it's standing still. But it's wagging
+it's tail!'"
+
+"And there's Lil putting on her hat in a hurry so as to meet the man
+when Miss Gould is through with him, and walk down the block----Did you
+ever?" exclaimed Jess.
+
+"Poor Pretty Sweet!" groaned Bobby. "_His_ nose is out of joint. He has
+been Lil's bright and shining cavalier for months. Dear, dear me! The
+Duchess of Dusenberry--was _that_ the name of Lil's play?--sure does
+have her favorites, and like the _Queen of Hearts_ in "Alice in
+Wonderland," has only one command for her discarded courtiers: 'Off with
+their heads!'" and Bobby giggled as she peered from the window to watch
+the dapper Mr. Pizotti and Lily Pendleton walk down the street side by
+side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII--THE SKI RUNNERS
+
+
+The New Year had ushered in the first big fall of snow--and it kept
+coming. Every few days, for the following fortnight, snow fell until
+Centerport's street-cleaning department was swamped, and the drifts lay
+deep upon the vacant lots and against fences and blind walls.
+
+Skating was done for, for the ice on the lake had become overloaded, and
+had broken up into a shifting mass of blocks, grinding against each
+other when the wind blew, and threatening the safety of any craft that
+tried to put out in it.
+
+So traffic on Lake Luna ceased, and, of course, iceboating was likewise
+impossible. Chet and Lance Darby, had they not been so extremely busy
+learning their parts in the new play, could not have used their
+aero-iceboat during this time. Sleds were out in force,
+however--bobsleds, double-runners, toboggans, "framers," and every sort
+of coasting paraphernalia. Even the Whiffle Street hill was made a
+coasting place by the young folk of the neighborhood, much to the
+despair of some grouty people who had forgotten their own youth, and who
+either telephoned their complaints to the police, or sprinkled ashes on
+the slide in the early morning hours.
+
+It was at this time, however, that Mrs. Case, the girls' physical
+instructor of Central High, took her class in ski running out into the
+open.
+
+At first the dozen or more girls had practiced on their athletic field,
+which was now snow-covered, too. It was a particularly odd experience to
+stand upon narrow boards of ash, some ten feet in length, and then try
+to shuffle along on them without tipping sideways, or plunging
+head-first into a drift.
+
+Each ski runner held a pole, with a spike in one end, and this was an
+aid to balancing, as well as of additional use if one tumbled down. It
+was no easy task, the girls found, to get up when they had been thrown
+into a drift.
+
+"My!" commented Bobby Hargrew, "if you cross your feet going down hill
+on these things, you're likely to dislocate every joint in your body."
+
+"Be sure you do not cross your feet, then," advised Mrs. Case, grimly.
+"I have shown you all the correct position to stand upon these skis. The
+professional ski runner does not even use a pole. He will take the steep
+sides of mountains at a two-mile a minute rate. I have seen them do so
+in Switzerland and in Sweden and Norway. And they will jump into the air
+from the verge of high banks, and land on the drift at the bottom with
+perfect balance."
+
+"This is going to be no cinch to learn," pronounced Bobby. "I know it's
+going to be some time before I am good enough at it to jump off the top
+of Boulder Head on Cavern Island--now you see!"
+
+"You would better take a much less difficult jump first," advised Mrs.
+Case, smiling. "It will be enough fun for us to learn to travel on the
+skis without any frills. In Europe--especially on the road between St.
+Moritz and Celerina--I have often seen ski riders with horses. A horse
+trots ahead, drawing several riders on skis, who cling together by the
+aid of a rope fastened to the horse's collar. Sometimes each rider has a
+horse, and they race horses just as though they were riding in sleighs.
+
+"It is great sport, but like every other healthful form of athletics, it
+is often made dangerous and objectionable by those who are reckless, or
+rough. We will learn to balance ourselves, and to coast down a gentle
+descent."
+
+So, the next Saturday, the teacher and more than a dozen girls of
+Central High piled into a big, straw-filled sleigh, and were whisked out
+into the hills south of the city. The inn at Robinson's Woods--a popular
+picnicking ground in summer--was made their headquarters, and there they
+left the sleigh and took to the difficult skis.
+
+The climb to the top of the bluff overlooking the speedway, on which
+everybody--almost--who owned a sleigh was driving that afternoon, was
+not an easy one for the girls. Mrs. Case, holding her body erect, yet
+easily, shuffled up the incline with such little apparent effort that
+some of her pupils were in despair.
+
+"We'll never be able to run as you do, Mrs. Case!" cried Dora Lockwood.
+"Never! Why--ouch! There, I came near tumbling down that time."
+
+"Keep your balance. Use the pole if you have to," advised the
+instructor. "It is not a running motion--it is more like a slide."
+
+"Say!" growled Bobby, who was having trouble, too. "It beats the
+'debutante slink,' that came in with narrow skirts. I feel as if I was
+tumbling down every second."
+
+But they gained confidence in time. They reached the top of the bluff
+and then the long, easy slope, right beside the speedway, spread,
+spotless, before them. Mrs. Case showed them how to start, and after a
+fashion several of the bigger girls reached the bottom of the hill, and
+then panted up again, pronouncing it the best ever!
+
+Bobby would not be outdone, as she said, "by anything in skirts," and so
+she ventured. Halfway down the hill one of her skis must have struck
+something--perhaps the stub of a bush sticking out of the snow. Whew!
+Bobby turned almost a complete somersault!
+
+She was buried so deep in a drift--and head first, at that--that it took
+both Laura and Mrs. Case to pull her out.
+
+"Oh-me-oh-my!" cried Bobby, who looked like an animated snow-girl for
+the moment. "And just as I was getting on so well, too! Wasn't that
+mean?"
+
+"Perhaps you'd better not try any more to-day, Clara" said the
+instructor.
+
+"And let those other girls get ahead of me? Well! I guess not!" declared
+Miss Hargrew, and she ploughed back to the top of the hill, fastened her
+feet upon the skis again, and started once more.
+
+Laura and Jess Morse were on the hilltop, looking out upon the white
+track over which the sleighs were flying.
+
+"Look there!" gasped Jess, seizing her chum's arm. "Isn't that the
+Pendletons' sleigh?"
+
+"Of course it is. With the big plumes and the pair of dappled grays? And
+that stiff and starched coachman driving? No mistake," admitted Laura.
+
+"Who's in the sleigh with Lil?" demanded Jess.
+
+"As I live!" cried her chum, in a somewhat horrified tone. "It--it is
+that Pizotti--that man!"
+
+"Can you beat her?" said Jess, shaking her head.
+
+"How foolish!" added Laura. "He is not a good man. He has known her so
+short a time--and to go sleigh-riding with her. Lil will be talked
+about, sure enough."
+
+"Well, I don't know as _we_ need to worry about her," said Jess,
+shrugging her shoulders.
+
+But Laura Belding could not put her schoolmate's indiscreet actions out
+of her mind so easily. She wondered if Mrs. Pendleton knew of Lily's
+familiarity with the foreign-looking Pizotti. The man might know his
+business as a stage director; but he certainly was neither of the age,
+nor the condition in life, to be cultivated as a friend by any young
+girl.
+
+Lily Pendleton was so foolishly romantic, and so crazy about theatrical
+matters, that to be noticed by any person connected with the stage, or
+theatrical affairs, quite turned her head. And then, she still talked a
+great deal about her own play, "The Duchess of Dawnleigh." She was sure
+it had not been given a proper reading--especially by Mr. Monterey.
+Perhaps, for reasons best known to himself, this stranger, Mr. Pizotti,
+had promised the foolish girl that he would help her get "The Duchess of
+Dawnleigh" produced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX--THE FIRST DRESS REHEARSAL
+
+
+Laura Belding was a particularly frank, outspoken girl, and when she met
+Lily Pendleton that Saturday night at the rehearsal of Jess's play, she
+came out "flat-footed," as her chum would have said, with the question:
+
+"Who was that in the sleigh with you to-day, Lil?"
+
+Lily flushed instantly, bridled, and smiled. "Who do you s'pose?" she
+returned.
+
+"I don't believe your mother knew you had that theatrical man to drive
+with you," said Laura, bluntly.
+
+"Why, how you talk! I merely met Signor Pizotti, and took him up----"
+
+"You don't know who he is," spoke Laura.
+
+"Oh, indeed, Miss! And do _you?_" demanded Lily, rather sharply.
+
+"No, And I don't want to know him."
+
+"He is a very scholarly man--and he knows all about staging this play.
+If it wasn't for him, I guess, 'The Spring Road' would suffer from
+frost," said Lily, with an unkind laugh.
+
+"That may be," said Laura, flushing a little herself, for any slur cast
+upon her chum's play hurt her, too. "But his knowledge of how to produce
+or stage a play does not establish his private character."
+
+"Pooh! you are interfering in something that you know nothing about,"
+declared Miss Pendleton, loftily. "And it does not concern you at all."
+
+"I do not believe your mother would approve," ventured Laura.
+
+"Never you mind about my mother," snapped Lily, and turned her back on
+Mother Wit.
+
+The latter took herself to task later, thinking she had been too
+presumptuous.
+
+"But really," she said to Jess, on their way home that evening, "I did
+not mean to be. Only, the man looks so unreliable. I'm afraid of him."
+
+"I'm not afraid of him," said Jess, decidedly. "I only dislike him. But
+there is no accounting for tastes. My mother knew of a foolish girl who
+wrote to an opera tenor--one of those handsome, spoiled foreigners, and
+she sent him her photograph and told him how much she liked his
+singing--and all that. Just a silly letter, you know. But she didn't
+sign her name and she thought he would never learn who she was.
+
+"But he went to the photographer," continued Jess, "and bribed him to
+tell who the girl was, and by that time she had written to the man
+several times, and he had written to her. So then he threatened her that
+if she did not give him five hundred dollars he would send her letters
+to her father. And she was in dreadful trouble, for she was afraid of
+what her father would do."
+
+"Oh, Lil won't do anything like _that!_" gasped Laura. "I don't believe
+she even thinks she _cares_ about that Pizotti. It is only his foreign
+way that makes it appear so. But I believe he is flattering her about
+her play, and perhaps will get money from her or her mother."
+
+"Pizotti! Ha!" grunted Jess, before they separated. "I'm like Bobby
+Hargrew: I don't believe that's even his name. It sounds too fancy to be
+a _real_ name."
+
+But Mr. Pizotti was an able man in his business. He came from time to
+time to the M. O. R. house and his advice regarding the play was always
+practical. He was something of a musician, too, and played the
+accompaniments for the girls who sang in "The Spring Road." He suggested
+improvements in the costumes, too; and Lily Pendleton was entirely
+guided by his taste in her choice of the gowns she was to wear in the
+production.
+
+Mrs. Pendleton was a very busy woman in a social way and allowed her
+daughter to do about as she pleased. Lily aped the manners of girls who
+had long since graduated from school and were flashy in their dress and
+manners.
+
+To tell the truth, the after-hour athletics, governed by Mrs. Case, had
+been the one saving thing in Lily Pendleton's life for some months. She
+would have become so enamored of fashion and frivolity, had it not been
+for the call of athletics, that she would have fallen sadly behind in
+her school work.
+
+But she liked certain activities enjoyed by those who were attentive to
+Mrs. Case's classes; and to gain these privileges one had to stand well
+in her general studies. Lily was smart enough, was a quick student, and
+so kept up her school work.
+
+This business of acting appealed to her immensely. She was "just crazy
+about it," as she admitted to her particular friend, Hester Grimes.
+
+"I wish my folks were poor, so that I would have to work when I leave
+school," she declared. "Then I'd go on the stage myself."
+
+"You wouldn't!" exclaimed Hester.
+
+"I would in a minute. And this Signor Pizotti could place me very
+advantageously----"
+
+"Pooh! you don't believe anything that fellow says, do you?" demanded
+her chum, who was eminently practical and had none of the silly ideas in
+her head that troubled Lily.
+
+"You don't know him!" exclaimed Lily.
+
+"Don't want to," replied Hester, gruffly.
+
+Preparations for the first dress rehearsal of "The Spring Road" went on
+apace. But, of course, Bobby Hargrew _would_ have bad luck! She was
+thrown from Short and Long's bobsled one night and had to be helped
+home. The hurt to her foot was a small matter; but the doctor said she
+would have to wear her arm in a sling for a time.
+
+"And how can I play _Arista_ with my arm strapped to my side?" wailed
+Bobby, when Jess and Laura came in to commiserate with her over the
+accident. "Oh, dear me! I am the most unlucky person in the world. If it
+was raining soup I'd have a hole in _my_ dipper!"
+
+Mr. Monterey, the local manager, came himself to the dress rehearsal. He
+only sat out front, and watched and listened; and he went away without
+expressing an opinion to anybody. Yet Jess saw him there and was excited
+by the possibility of Mr. Monterey's recognizing the value of the play
+for professional purposes.
+
+At the Morse domicile things were going better, and the girl's mind was
+vastly relieved from present troubles. Yet she was wise enough to see
+that in the offing the same danger of debt threatened them if they were
+not very, very careful.
+
+It was true that scarcely half the prize money had been spent; yet Mrs.
+Morse's regular work on the _Courier_ barely fed them; and her success
+with the popular magazines was but fitful. Sometimes two months passed
+without her mother receiving even a ten-dollar check from her fugitive
+work.
+
+Oh, if she could only find somebody who would take the play--after the
+M. O. R.'s had made use of it--and whip it into shape for professional
+use, and give her a part of the proceeds!
+
+That was the thought continually knocking at the door of Jess Morse's
+mind. It was "too good to be true," yet she kept thinking about it, and
+hoping for the impossible, and dreaming of it.
+
+However, the dress rehearsal of "The Spring Road" was pronounced by the
+teachers and Mr. Pizotti as eminently satisfactory. Bobby was
+letter-perfect in her part, if she _did_ have "a damaged wing," as she
+said. And most of the other important roles were well learned.
+
+The very prettiest girl of Central High had been chosen for the chief
+female character, and in this case prettiness went with brains. She had
+learned her part, and was natural and graceful, and was altogether a
+delight.
+
+As for Launcelot Darby, he was the most romantic looking _Truant Lover_
+that could have been found. And he played with feeling, too, although
+his mates were making a whole lot of fun of him on the side. But Laura
+had urged him to do his best, and Lance would have done anything in his
+power to please Mother Wit.
+
+Chet Belding, as a peasant, "made up" well, and was letter perfect, too,
+in his part, if a little awkward. But that did not so much matter,
+considering the character he had to portray. And, of course, he would do
+nothing to belittle Jess's play. His whole heart was in his work, too.
+
+So, after that first dress rehearsal, the committee and Jess were
+hopeful of success. The time for the production of the play was set, the
+tickets printed, and out of school hours everything was in a bustle of
+preparation for the great occasion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX--"MR. PIZOTTI"
+
+
+"Listen to this!"
+
+Bobby Hargrew, her arm still in a sling, seized Jess Morse by the wrist
+and "tiptoed" along the corridor of the second wing of Central High,
+where the small offices were located, and with tragic expression pointed
+to a certain door that stood ajar.
+
+Jess, amazed, did not speak, but listened. Out of the room came a
+muffled voice, but the words spoken were these:
+
+"Unhand me! Nay, keep your distance, Count Mornay! I am no peasant wench
+to be charmed either by your gay coat or your gay manner. Ah! your
+villainies are known to me, nor can you hide the cloven hoof beneath the
+edge of Virtue's robe."
+
+"Ha! ha!" chuckled Bobby, almost strangling with laughter. "He ought to
+have worn boots and so hidden his 'cloven hoof.' Come away, Jess, or I
+shall burst! Did you ever hear the like?"
+
+"Why--why, what is it?" demanded Jess, mystified.
+
+"Oh, don't! Wait till I laugh!" chuckled Bobby, when they were around
+the corner of the corridor again. "Isn't that rich?"
+
+"Who was it talking?" asked Jess.
+
+"Talking! Didn't you recognize that oration?"
+
+"I did not. Mother doesn't allow me to read any penny-dreadful story
+papers, magazines or books."
+
+"Oh, ho! Wait!" gasped Bobby. "That's Lil."
+
+"Lily Pendleton?"
+
+"You evidently haven't heard any of the 'Duchess of Dusenberry' before.
+_That's it!_"
+
+"Not part of her play?"
+
+"That is one of the melodramatic bits," said Bobby, weakly, leaning
+against the wall for support. "Yes, really, Jess. That is in her play.
+I've heard her recite it before."
+
+"My goodness me!" gasped Jess.
+
+"It's not _all_ so bad, I guess. But when she gets flowery and romantic
+she just tears off such paragraphs as that. 'Nor can you hide the cloven
+hoof beneath the edge of Virtue's robe.' Isn't that a peach?"
+
+"Bobby!" exclaimed Jess, breathless herself by now, "you use the worst
+slang of any girl in Central High."
+
+"That's all right. But Lil's using worse language than I ever dreamed
+of," laughed Bobby. "I've heard her spouting that sort of stuff time and
+time again. When she shuts herself up, presumably to study her part in
+your play, half the time she is reciting her own lines. She likes the
+sound of 'em. And she had that Pizotti fellow backed in a corner of the
+front hall at the M. O. R. house the other afternoon, reciting that same
+sort of stuff to him.
+
+"Repeating her play?"
+
+"Yep. The silly! And he pretending that it was great, and applauding
+her. I'll wager that he sees a way to make money out of Lil Pendleton,
+or he wouldn't stand for it."
+
+Jess carried this idea in her mind, although she was not as much
+troubled by her schoolmate's foolishness as was Mother Wit. There was a
+loyalty among the girls of Central High, however, that few ignored.
+Despite the fact that Jess had never especially liked Lily Pendleton,
+she would have done anything in her power to help her.
+
+So, that very evening, when she was marketing, she chanced to see
+something that brought Lil's affairs into her mind again. She was going
+into Mr. Vandergriff's store when she saw a man, bundled in a big
+ulster, talking with the proprietor.
+
+Griff came forward to wait on Jess, and the girl might not have noticed
+the man by the desk a second time had she not overheard Mr. Vandergriff
+say:
+
+"You take advantage of my good nature, Abel. Because I knew you in the
+old country, you come here and plead poverty. I can't see your family
+suffer, for your wife is a nice woman, if you _are_ a rascal!"
+
+"Hard words! Hard words, Vandergriff," muttered the other.
+
+Jess saw that he was a little man, and the high ulster collar muffled
+the lower part of his face. But as he turned toward the door she caught
+a glimpse of a glossy black mustache, and two beady black eyes.
+
+It was Mr. Pizotti!
+
+The girl was so astonished, for the man was shabbily dressed, and
+shuffled out with several bundles under his arm, that she could scarcely
+remember what else she wanted to buy when Griff asked her.
+
+"Oh, I say, Griff!" she demanded, breathlessly, and in a whisper. "Who
+was that man who just went out?"
+
+"Why--oh, that was only Abel Plornish."
+
+"Abel Plornish!"
+
+"Yep. Poor, useless creature," said the boy, with disgust. "Or, so
+father says. He knew Abel in England. You know, father came from London
+before he was married," and Griff smiled.
+
+"But this man--are you sure his name is Plornish?"
+
+"Quite, Jess. Why, he plays the violin, or the piano, in some cheap
+moving picture place, I believe."
+
+"Then he is a musician?" demanded Jess, breathlessly.
+
+"And a bad one, I reckon. But he has done other things. He's been on the
+stage. And he's even worked in the Centerport Opera House, I believe."
+
+"And that is really his name?" asked Jess.
+
+"It's an awful one, isn't it? Plornish! Nothing very romantic or fancy
+about that," laughed Griff. "Now, what else, Jess?"
+
+Jess was so disturbed by this discovery that she could only think to ask
+Griff one more question. That related to where Plornish lived.
+
+"Somewhere on Governor Street. I think it's Number 9. Tenement house.
+Oh, they're poor, and I believe when he gets any money he spends it on
+himself. I saw him once on Market Street dressed like a dandy. But when
+his wife and children come in here they look pretty shabby."
+
+It wasn't very late, and, anyway, Jess couldn't have slept that night
+without talking the matter over with Mother Wit. She left her basket in
+the kitchen, saw that her mother was busy at her desk, and ran up
+Whiffle Street hill to the Belding house.
+
+"Is dat suah yo', Miss Jess?" asked Mammy Jinny, peering out of the side
+door when Jess rang the bell. "Come right erlong in, honey. Yo's jes' as
+welcome as de flowers in de Maytime. B-r-r! ain't it cold?"
+
+"It is cold, Mammy," said Jess to the Beldings' old serving woman.
+"Where's Laura?"
+
+"She's done gone up to her room ter listen ter Mars' Chet an' dat Lance
+Darby boy orate dem pieces dey is goin' to recite in school nex' week."
+
+"They are going to act in my play, Mammy!" cried Jess.
+
+"Mebbe so. Mebbe so. But it's all recitationin' ter me. Dat leetle Bobby
+Hargrew was in here and she say it's jes' like w'en you-all useter
+recite at de Sunday night concerts in de Sunday school room. An' dem
+pieces yo' orated den was a hull lot nicer dan w'at Mars' Chet is
+sayin'. 'Member how you recited dat 'Leetle drops o' water, leetle
+grains o' sand' piece, Miss Jess? Dat was suah a nice piece o' po'try."
+
+"And you don't care for the parts you have heard of my play, Mammy?"
+asked Jess, much amused.
+
+"Suah 'nuff, now! Did you make up disher play dey is goin' ter act?"
+demanded Mammy Jinny.
+
+"I certainly did."
+
+"Wal, I hates ter hu't yo' feelin's, Miss Jess," said Mammy, gravely,
+"but dat 'Leetle drops o' water' po'try was a hull lot better--ter _my_
+min'! Ya'as'm! yo kin' go right up. Yo'll hear dem-all
+a-spoutin'--spoutin' jes' like whales!"
+
+And so she did. Chet was reading his lines with much unction while
+striding up and down Laura's pretty little room. Lance and Mother Wit
+were his audience.
+
+"For goodness sake, Chet!" cried Jess, breaking in. "Who told you your
+part was tragic, and that 'The Spring Road' was tragedy?"
+
+"Huh?" questioned Chet, stopping short and blinking at her.
+
+"Do read the lines naturally. Don't be 'orating,' as Mammy Jinny calls
+it. I guess she's right. 'Little drops of water' is better than all that
+bombastic stuff. Do, do, my dear, speak it naturally."
+
+"Hear her!" growled Chet "And she wrote it!"
+
+"I never really meant it to sound like that, Chet," declared Jess,
+shaking her head. "I really didn't. Why! it sounds almost as bad as 'The
+Duchess of Dawnleigh.'"
+
+"Wha--what's that?" demanded Lance.
+
+"Not Lil's play?" cried Laura. "Have you heard it?"
+
+Jess told what she had heard at the door of the recitation room that
+afternoon, and they laughed over it.
+
+"Yet I can see very well," continued Jess, "that you actors can make my
+words sound just as absurd if you want to. Do, _do_ be natural."
+
+"That's what I tell them," sighed Laura. "I am glad you heard Chet
+spouting here. One would think he was playing 'Hamlet,' or 'Richard
+III.'"
+
+Chet was a little miffed. But he soon "came out of it," as Lance said,
+and he was so fond of Jess anyway that he would have tried his best to
+please her.
+
+He grew more moderate in his "orating" and the girls, as critics, were
+better pleased. Lance took a leaf out of his chum's book, too, and when
+he declaimed his lines he succeeded in pleasing Jess and Laura the first
+time. Besides, Lance was naturally a better actor than Chet.
+
+Mr. Pizotti had taught them how to enter properly, and how to take their
+cues; but to Jess's mind he was not the man to train amateurs to speak
+their parts with naturalness. If Miss Gould had not given so much time
+to the rehearsals of "The Spring Road" the play would have not been half
+the success it promised to be. And, of course, the Central High teacher
+gave her attention mainly to the girls in the cast of characters.
+
+When Lance and Chet lounged off to the latter's den Jess instantly
+poured into Laura's ears her discovery of the identity of "Mr. Pizotti."
+
+"Well, even at that he may be a man trying to earn his living. Many
+stage people change their names for business reasons. 'Plornish' is not
+an attractive name, you must admit," said Laura, smiling. "'Pizotti'
+fits his foreign look."
+
+"But what is he trying to get out of Lil Pendleton?" demanded Jess,
+bluntly.
+
+"That's what troubles me," admitted Mother Wit. "I believe he is trying
+to get money out of Lily, or from her folks. And it has to do with Lil's
+play. You can see that she believes her play was slighted and that it is
+a great deal better than yours, Jess."
+
+"I guess she has a good opinion of it," returned Jess, laughing.
+
+"Well, suppose this fellow tells her she is right, and that he can get
+it produced, if she will put up the money?" suggested Mother Wit. "I--I
+wish Lil would place confidence in me."
+
+"Tell her mother."
+
+"No use," sighed Laura. "I doubt if she would even listen to me. She
+wouldn't want to be bothered. You know very well the kind of woman Mrs.
+Pendleton is."
+
+"Well, I don't suppose it is any of our business, anyway," spoke Jess.
+
+"It is. Lil is one of us--one of the girls of Central High. We have a
+deep interest in anything that concerns her. The only trouble is,"
+sighed Laura, "I don't know just what is best to do."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI--MOTHER WIT PUTS TWO AND TWO TOGETHER
+
+
+The snow still mantled the ground, and the coasting and ski running
+remained very popular sports with the girls and boys of Central High.
+But a day's hard rain, with a sharp frost after it, had given the
+iceboating another lease of life, too. Lake Luna was a-glare from the
+mainland to Cavern Island, and the freight boats had given over running
+until the spring break-up.
+
+Not that there were no open places in the ice--for there were, and
+dangerous holes, too. The current through the length of the lake was
+bound to make the ice weak in places. But near the Centerport shore was
+a long stretch of open ice that the authorities pronounced safe.
+
+Chet and Lance got the _Blue Streak_ out again and there wasn't a girl
+in the junior class who was not envious of Laura and Jess. Skating was
+tame beside traveling at a mile a minute in an aero-iceboat; and the
+other ice yachts were not in the same class with the invention of Chet
+and Lance.
+
+The date set for the production of Jess's play in the big hall of the
+schoolhouse approached, however; and preparation for the event was
+neglected by none of the M. O. R.'s or the other girls and boys in the
+cast.
+
+Friday evening would see the first production; but the intention was to
+give a matinee for the pupils of the three Centerport High Schools at a
+nominal price on Saturday morning, and then a final performance Saturday
+evening. From these three performances the committee hoped to gain at
+least a thousand dollars, and possibly half as much more. This would be
+a splendid addition to the somewhat slim building fund of the
+M. O. R.'s.
+
+Lily Pendleton went about these days with a very self-satisfied
+expression of countenance and such a mysterious manner that Bobby said
+to her:
+
+"Huh! you look like an old hen that's hidden her nest and thinks
+nobody's going to find it, What are you up to now?"
+
+"Don't you wish you knew?" returned Lily.
+
+Even Hester Grimes admitted that she was not in Lil's confidence. But
+the hints Lily dropped troubled Mother Wit.
+
+Laura Belding had not forgotten the discovery her chum had made
+regarding the identity of the man who called himself "Pizotti." The
+stage director would not again attend the performance of "The Spring
+Road" until the day of the first production. Yet Laura believed that
+Lily had an understanding of some sort with him.
+
+Governor Street, where Griff told Jess the Plornish family lived, was
+one of the very poorest in that part of the city, being located at the
+foot of the Hill and below Market Street itself.
+
+Laura and Jess went shopping one afternoon on Market Street; and despite
+the fact that it was nipping cold weather, and that the street was a
+mass of snow-ice, save on the car tracks, they walked home. The
+sidewalks were slippery, and it took some caution to keep one's feet;
+but the chums were so sure of their balance that they stepped along
+quite briskly.
+
+From Mr. Vandergriff's store they saw a poorly dressed little
+girl--perhaps eight years old, or so--dragging a soap box on runners.
+The box had several packages of groceries in it, besides a bottle of
+milk.
+
+Just as the child started across Market Street there came a heavy sleigh
+with plumes, great robes, a pair of dapple gray horses, and a great
+jingling of bells. The driver did not see the little girl with her box
+until it was almost too late to pull out.
+
+It all happened in a flash! The peril was upon the child before she or
+anybody else realized it; and it had passed her, only smashing her sled
+and spilling her goods, in another moment.
+
+The sleigh, with the horses prancing, swept on and did not even stop for
+its occupants to note the damage it had done. The child was left crying
+in the gutter, with the groceries scattered about and the milk making a
+white river upon the dirty ice.
+
+Laura sprang to aid the little one in picking up her goods; but Jess
+exclaimed:
+
+"Did you see that, Laura?"
+
+"I should think I did! And they never stopped."
+
+"But did you see who was in the sleigh?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It was Lil--and that man was riding with her again."
+
+"Pizotti?" gasped Laura.
+
+"Yes. Here! give me that bottle. I'll run across and get another bottle
+of milk from Mr. Vandergriff. We'll have to help the little one carry
+her stuff home. The little sled is smashed to smithereens."
+
+"All right, Jess. Now, don't cry, child!" exclaimed Mother Wit, kindly,
+hovering over the little girl. "You won't be blamed for this, I know."
+
+But the child was staring after the sleigh instead of picking up her
+goods, and with such a wondering look on her face that Laura asked:
+
+"What is the matter with you? What did you see?"
+
+The child still remained dumb, and Laura took her by the shoulder and
+shook her a little.
+
+"What is your name?" she demanded.
+
+"Maggie," said the little one, gulping down a sob.
+
+"Maggie what?"
+
+"No, ma'am; Maggie Plornish," stammered the other.
+
+"My goodness me!" gasped Laura. "Did you see the man in that sleigh?"
+
+"No, ma'am! No ma'am!" cried the little girl, in great haste, and
+shaking her head violently. "There warn't no man in the sleigh."
+
+"Yes there was, child."
+
+"I didn't see no man," declared Maggie, energetically. "It was the lady
+I seen."
+
+"Do you know her?" asked Laura, slowly, convinced that the child was
+deceiving her--or, at least, attempting to do so.
+
+"No, ma'am. I never seed her before."
+
+It was evidently useless to try to get anything more out of the child on
+that tack. But Laura was sure that there could not be two Plornish
+families in Centerport, and if Jess had seen the stage director in Lily
+Pendleton's sleigh, it was plain that Maggie had seen him, too. And she
+had recognized him.
+
+"Where do you live, little girl?" asked Laura, quietly, as she saw Jess
+returning with a fresh bottle of milk.
+
+"Over 'ere on Governor Street. Number ninety-three, Miss."
+
+"Lead the way, then," said Laura, promptly. "We'll help you carry your
+things home and explain to mamma how you came to get them scattered. You
+surely have a mamma, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. And there's a new baby. That's who the milk's for."
+
+"Say! how many of you Plornish children are there?" asked Jess, to whom
+Laura had immediately whispered the intelligence that this child was
+evidently one of Mr. Pizotti's progeny.
+
+"Seven, ma'am. But some's older'n me and they're workin'."
+
+"Don't you go to school?" asked Laura.
+
+"I can't--not right now. We ain't got good shoes to go 'round--nor
+petticoats. And then, the baby didn't come along until a month ago and
+he has to be 'tended some while mamma washes and cleans up around."
+
+Laura looked at Jess meaningly and asked:
+
+"Where's your papa?"
+
+"Oh! he's home," said the child, immediately losing her smart manner of
+speaking.
+
+"Doesn't he work?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. Sometimes."
+
+"What's his trade?" asked Jess.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+Maggie Plornish had suddenly become very dull indeed!
+
+"Doesn't your father work regularly?" explained Laura, kindly. "Hasn't
+he any particular work?"
+
+Maggie considered this thoughtfully. Then she shook her head and with
+gravity replied: "I guess he's an outa."
+
+"A what?" gasped Jess.
+
+"An outa, Miss."
+
+"What under the sun's an 'outa'?" demanded Jess, looking at Laura.
+
+But Mother Wit understood and smiled. "You mean he's 'most always out of
+work?" she asked.
+
+Maggie Plornish nodded vigorously.
+
+"Yes, ma'am! He's us'lly outa work. Most reg'larly. Yes, ma'am!"
+
+"Well for mercy's sake!" gasped Jess, gazing at her chum in wonder. "Can
+you beat _that?_ If this is the same family----"
+
+Laura stayed her with a look. "We'll see," said Mother Wit. "Lead on,
+Maggie. We'll see your mother, anyway."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII--MRS. PLORNISH
+
+
+Governor Street was just as dirty and squalid as any other
+tenement-house street in the poorer section of a middle-class city. The
+street-cleaning department had given up all hope before they reached
+Governor Street, and the middle of the way was a series of ridges and
+mountains of heaped-up, dirty, frozen snow.
+
+The snow had been cleaned from the sidewalks, and the gutters freed so
+that the melting ice could run off by way of the sewers when the sun was
+kind; but the way to Number 93 was not a pleasant one to travel.
+
+However, Laura and Jess, with little Maggie, reached the door in
+question in a few minutes, A puff of steamy air--the essence of
+countless washings--met the girls as the lower door was pushed open.
+That is the only way the long and barren halls were heated--by the steam
+from the wash-boilers. For Number 93 Governor Street was one of those
+tenement houses which seem always to be in a state of being washed, and
+laundered, and cleaned up; yet which never show many traces of
+cleanliness, after all.
+
+"We live on the top floor," said Maggie, volunteering her first remark
+since starting homeward.
+
+"That doesn't scare us," said Laura, cheerfully. "Lead on, MacDuff!"
+
+"No. My name's Plornish," said this very literal--and seemingly
+dull--little girl.
+
+"Very well, Maggie MacDuff Plornish!" laughed Mother Wit. "We follow
+you."
+
+The little girl toiled up the stairs like an old woman. Laura and Jess
+caught glimpses of other tenements as they followed the child and saw
+that there was real poverty here. Jess began to compare her situation
+with that of these humble folk, and saw that she had much to be grateful
+for.
+
+She was troubled over the lack of a new party dress, perhaps, or because
+there were times when she and her mother were pinched for money. But the
+bare floors and uncurtained windows of these "flats," with the poor
+furniture and raggedly clothed children, spelled a degree of poverty
+deeper than Jess Morse had imagined before.
+
+A sallow woman met them at the door of one of the top-floor flats. She
+was as faded as her calico dress. Her arms were lean and her hands
+wrinkled, and all the flesh about her finger nails was swollen and of a
+livid hue, from being so much in hot water.
+
+Indeed, two steaming tubs stood in the kitchen into which the girls of
+Central High were ushered. A big wash was evidently under way, and Mrs.
+Plornish wiped her arms and hands from the suds, as she invited the
+girls in, staring in amazement at one and another meanwhile.
+
+"Your little Maggie met with an accident, Mrs. Plornish," said Laura,
+pleasantly, putting the packages she had carried upon the table. "And so
+we helped her home with her groceries."
+
+"And Mr. Vandergriff says never mind the bottle of milk that was
+spilled," explained Jess, setting the second bottle on the table.
+
+"You come from Mr. Vandergriff?" asked the woman, her faded cheek
+coloring a trifle.
+
+Laura explained more fully. Mrs. Plornish seemed to have had her
+motherly instincts pretty well quenched by time and poverty.
+
+"Yes'm. I expect Maggie'll git runned over and killed some day on that
+there Market Street," she complained. "But I ain't got nobody else to
+send. Bob and Betty, and Charlemagne, air either at school or to
+work----"
+
+"Where is your husband?" asked Laura, briskly. "Is he working?"
+
+"Off an' on," said the woman, but looking at the visitors a little
+doubtfully.
+
+"Engaged just at present?" pursued Laura.
+
+"Look here, Miss," said Mrs. Plornish, "air you charity visitors? Though
+you _be_ young."
+
+"We have nothing to do with charities," Laura said. "We just came to
+help Maggie. I didn't know but I might know of something for your
+husband to do if he is out of work."
+
+"He ain't. He's got a job right now. And I guess it will turn out to be
+a good one," spoke Mrs. Plornish, and she smiled with sudden
+satisfaction.
+
+"It seems to please you, Mrs. Plornish," said Jess, quickly. "I hope you
+will not be disappointed. Where is he working?"
+
+"Oh, this job o' work is goin' to take him out o' town for a while,"
+returned the woman, doubtfully.
+
+"Indeed? To Lumberport?" asked the insistent Jess.
+
+"No."
+
+"To Keyport, then?"
+
+"I can't tell you. It--it's a secret--that is, it's sort of a private
+affair. Abel is a very smart man in his way--and this--er--this job will
+bring him considerable money, I expect. I hope we'll all be better off
+soon."
+
+She seemed excited by the prospect of her husband's secret employment,
+yet she was doubtful, too. Laura and Jess looked at each other and they
+both came to the same conclusion. If Abel Plornish, alias "Mr. Pizotti,"
+was scheming to get some money from the Pendletons, Mrs. Plornish knew
+at least a little something about it.
+
+But Laura did not know how to get this information from the woman; nor
+did the girl believe that it was really right for her to do so. But
+Mother Wit thought it would do no harm to help the family if she could
+do so without offending. She drew forth her purse and looked gently at
+Mrs. Plornish.
+
+"You won't mind if I give you something to spend on Maggie?" asked
+Mother Wit, in her most winning way. "Do let me help her, Mrs. Plornish!
+I really mean no offense."
+
+"Why, you look an honest enough young lady," said the woman.
+
+"Maggie says she needs shoes so that she can go to school. Don't you
+think you can spare her for at least a part of the time?"
+
+"Mebbe I'd better, Miss. The truant officer's been around once," said
+Mrs. Plornish. "But the baby's so small----"
+
+"If your husband is as successful as you think he'll be," interposed
+Jess, sharply, "you'll be able to afford to let her go, eh? Then you
+will not have to work so hard yourself."
+
+"That's right, Miss!" cried Mrs. Plornish, briskly.
+
+Laura put the money for Maggie's shoes into her hand. "I hope we may
+come and see Maggie again?" she said, pinching the thin cheek of the
+little girl, who had been staring at them all this time, without
+winking, and without a word.
+
+"Sure you can, Miss! And thank you. Thank the young lady, Maggie,"
+ordered Mrs. Plornish.
+
+Maggie gave a funny, bobbing little courtesy as the older girls went
+out. Laura and Jess said nothing to each other until they reached the
+street. Then the latter declared:
+
+"She knows something about it."
+
+"About what?" asked Laura.
+
+"Whatever it is that's going on. Whatever it is 'Pizotti' is doing."
+
+"And we know he is staging your play for the M. O. R.'s," said Laura,
+quietly. "That's all we _do_ know at present."
+
+"But there's something else."
+
+"That we don't know. I wish we did."
+
+"And he's going out of town!"
+
+"Perhaps that is not so," returned Laura, thoughtfully. "Of course his
+wife knows that he works under an assumed name. That is no crime, of
+course----"
+
+"But there's something odd about it all," cried Jess.
+
+"All right. How are we going to find out? Lil won't tell us----"
+
+"And it is her business--or her mother's," said Jess. "And that's a
+fact."
+
+"She's one of us--she's a Central High girl," repeated Laura. "If we can
+save her from the result of her own awful folly, we should do so."
+
+"Huh! And we don't know what she's to be saved from as yet!" cried Jess,
+which ended the discussion for the time being.
+
+But that evening Bobby Hargrew hailed Jess in her father's store.
+
+"Say, Eminent Author! what do you know about _this?_"
+
+"About what, Bobby?" returned Jess.
+
+Bobby was unfurling some sort of a folded paper which she had drawn from
+that inexhaustible pocket of hers.
+
+"See! it's a show bill. My cousin, Ed Pembroke, sent it to me from
+Keyport. He says the town is plastered with them. Does it remind you of
+anything?" and she began to read in a loud voice:
+
+"'Coming! Coming! Coming! North Street Orpheum----' same date as your
+show here on Friday night, Jess."
+
+"I see," said Jess, peering over her shoulder as Bobby unctuously read
+on:
+
+"'High Class Entertainment for High Class people!' Ha! that's good,"
+sniffed Bobby. "'The Lady of the Castle' played by a capable cast of
+professional Thespians, who will assist the Talented Young Amateur,
+GREBA PENDENNIS. 'Her portrayal of the _Duchess_ is a Work of Art.' Wow,
+wow! Listen to that now!" cried Bobby, in great delight. "Wouldn't you
+think that was Lil Pendleton?"
+
+Jess stared at the bill, and whispered: "I would indeed."
+
+"But of course it isn't!" gasped Bobby, looking at Jess, in sudden
+curiosity.
+
+"What is Lil's middle name?" demanded Jess, suddenly.
+
+"Why--I---- Ah! she _has_ got a middle name, hasn't she? She signs it
+'Lillian G. Pendleton!'"
+
+"That is it," said Jess.
+
+"But of course this can't be Lil?" cried Bobby, aghast. "'The Lady of
+the Castle' might be another name for 'The Duchess of Doosenberry';
+though. What do you think, Jess?"
+
+"I don't know what to think," said Jess. "But you give me that bill,
+Bobby, and I'll show it to Mother Wit."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII--"CAUGHT ON THE FLY"
+
+
+The last few days before the first performance of "The Spring Road" was
+a whirl of excitement for most of the girls of Central High, and all
+those belonging to the M. O. R.'s. or who were to take part in the play.
+Mr. Sharp, on his own responsibility, announced a general holiday for
+Friday, with certain lessons to be made up to pay for the deducted time.
+
+"It is my opinion that little work can be expected from either the young
+ladies or young gentlemen on the momentous day," he said. "Besides, I
+understand that Miss Gould desires to have a final rehearsal of the play
+on Friday morning on the stage upstairs. Therefore, mere matters of
+education may be put aside."
+
+He was quite good natured about it, however, and entirely approved of
+the attempt of Central High pupils to do something upon the stage that
+was really "worth while." And Jess Morse's play was indeed far above the
+average of amateur attempts.
+
+"You girls are invited to a dash on the _Blue Streak_ after the
+rehearsal to-morrow, Sis," Chet Belding said to Laura at dinner Thursday
+evening. "Lance and I will show you some sport."
+
+Mrs. Belding looked doubtfully at her husband. "Do you think that
+iceboat Chet has built is really safe for the girls, James?" she asked.
+
+"Bless your heart, Mother!" returned the jeweler, his eyes twinkling,
+"it's quite as safe for Laura and Jess as it is for the boys."
+
+"Ye--es, I suppose so," admitted the good woman. "But it doesn't _seem_
+so safe. Girls are different from boys."
+
+"Not so different, nowadays," grumbled Chet. "You ought to see some of
+those husky Central High girls going off with Mrs. Case on their skis.
+And ski running is as dangerous as iceboating--believe me!"
+
+"I _do_ believe you, my son. I have no reason to doubt your word,"
+returned Mother Belding, quietly.
+
+"Oh, Mum! that's only an expression----"
+
+"Please stick to English--and facts, Chetwood," advised his mother.
+
+"I declare!" grumpily remarked her son. "A meal of victuals at this
+house has got to be just like attending one of Old Dimple's lectures."
+
+"Chet!" spoke his father, sternly.
+
+"Well! I guess I didn't mean it just that way--not the way it sounded,"
+the boy said hastily. "But mother _does_ pick a fellow up so----"
+
+"I have been doing that all your life, my son," said his mother.
+"Whenever you stub your toe, mother has been there to comfort you."
+
+"Got you there, Chet," laughed Laura. "And you used to be a terrible
+'stumble heels,' too."
+
+"Say! you're all down on me," declared her brother, but in a milder
+tone. "I reckon I'm not so popular in this house as I thought I was. But
+that isn't the answer to my question, Laura. Do you and Jess want to fly
+with us to-morrow just after lunch?"
+
+"Of course we do," replied his sister. "I don't suppose mother has any
+real objection?"
+
+"My objections to your sports and athletics seem to have very little
+reality about them, children," said Mrs. Belding. "Even my husband will
+not give me backing."
+
+"When I see Chet and Laura anemic, or otherwise sickly, as the result of
+their out-of-door sports or gym. work, you will find me up in arms with
+you against such activities, Mother," declared Mr. Belding, jovially.
+"I'd a good deal rather have little Mother Wit here half a Tom-boy----"
+
+"Which I'm not, I hope, Papa Belding!" cried Laura, quickly.
+
+"I should hope not," said her mother.
+
+"All right," laughed Mr. Belding. "But I would rather you were than like
+a few of the girls who attend your school. Some of them are growing up
+to womanhood too quickly to suit me. There's that Pendleton girl----"
+
+"What do you know about Lily Pendleton, Father?" asked Laura, quickly.
+
+"Why, she dresses like a girl of twenty-five--and acts that grown up,
+too," observed the jeweler. "She was in the store a week or so ago. Now!
+there's another bad thing. Her mother lets her do just about as she
+pleases, I guess."
+
+"Mrs. Pendleton has always been very lenient with Lillian," agreed his
+wife.
+
+"The girl brought into my store a jewel box in which were things valued
+at more than a thousand dollars, I believe. Old-fashioned jewels left
+her by her grandmother. She thought of having some re-set And she really
+wanted me to buy some of them. She said her mother wouldn't care what
+she did with them."
+
+"Of course, James, you did not give the girl money?" exclaimed Mrs.
+Belding.
+
+"Of course I did not! I am not a pawnbroker. But I valued the stones for
+her, and she took them away. I wonder what she really meant by trying to
+sell them?"
+
+Laura listened and flushed; but she remained silent. Since her visit to
+the Plornish tenement, and since she had read the playbill from Keyport
+that Jess had brought her, Laura had been very gravely exercised in her
+mind regarding Lily Pendleton. But she could not bring herself to the
+point of taking either her father or mother into her confidence. It was
+not her own secret; it was Lily's.
+
+The following morning the rehearsal of "The Spring Road" went with a
+snap and vim that delighted everybody. Miss Gould could not praise the
+girls and boys too highly. Even Mr. Pizotti signified his satisfaction
+with the way in which the play proceeded. Really, the actual production
+of the piece would go on well without his presence, although the sum
+they had agreed to pay the stage manager covered the three performances
+of the play already arranged for.
+
+Laura and Jess went down to the lake after luncheon to meet the two
+boys. The _Blue_ _Streak_, fresh in a new coat of paint, and with every
+part of the mechanism guaranteed in perfect order, was already hauled
+out upon the ice.
+
+The surface of the lake was not as it had been when the girls had taken
+their first ride on the aero-iceboat. Then the ice was like glass; but
+now it was pebbly, broken in spots, and not a little "hummocky." There
+was a stiff wind blowing, too, and this broke up the thinner ice around
+the water-holes. The course for sleighs and for iceboats was fairly
+safe, however, all the way to Keyport.
+
+"Say! we just saw Lily going driving with that sleek little foreigner,"
+said Lance, as the two girls appeared. "I should think Mrs. Pendleton
+would send a chaperone with her daughter. Old Mike, the coachman, is
+right under the girl's thumb."
+
+"What do you mean, Lance?" asked Laura, quickly.
+
+"Why, Lil Pendleton and the stage manager are out there in the
+Pendletons' sleigh. They're aiming for Keyport. And Lil has a big box in
+the sleigh. Guess they are taking lunch along."
+
+"Lunch!" ejaculated Chet. "Why, that yellow box would hold enough for an
+army."
+
+"My goodness me! A yellow box?" cried Jess. "Was it that box in which
+Lil has been bringing her costumes to and from the rehearsals?"
+
+"Dunno," said Chet, not much interested.
+
+But Jess turned to her chum, eagerly.
+
+"You know, Laura, she insisted in packing the dresses all into that box
+again this noon and taking them home with her as usual, although every
+other girl left her costume in the dressing-rooms. Did you notice it?"
+
+"No," said Laura, slowly.
+
+"Maybe she doesn't expect to get back until it's time to go on for the
+evening performance," suggested Lance.
+
+"That's not it," returned Laura, quietly.
+
+"What do you suppose that girl has got in her mind, Laura?" demanded
+Jess, as the boys were making the final preparations for their start.
+
+"I do not know. But I believe she is the 'talented young amateur'
+advertised to appear at the Keyport Orpheum to-night," said Laura,
+gravely.
+
+"You don't mean it!" gasped Jess. Then she added, with sudden
+excitement:
+
+"Why, she'll spoil my play!"
+
+"If she is not here to play her part she will certainly interfere sadly
+with the success of 'The Spring Road,'" admitted Laura.
+
+"Oh, oh! That mean, mean thing!" cried Jess, under her breath.
+
+"She is taking her costumes to wear in the production of her own play,
+which she has renamed 'The Lady of the Castle,'" said Laura. "She will
+make a lovely 'Duchess of Doosenberry,' as Bobby nicknamed it, in those
+robes, Jess."
+
+"Why, Laura, I believe you are not sympathetic," cried Jess.
+
+"Don't you be afraid, dear. Miss Lily will not appear as 'the talented
+young amateur, Greba Pendennis,' if that is what she really intends to
+attempt. I have fixed that."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Jess. But just then the boys shouted to
+them and they had to hurry to take their places in the iceboat
+
+"Chet," said Laura, to her brother, as she settled herself aboard, "run
+down near the Pendleton sleigh if you can. I want to speak to Lil."
+
+"Just as you say, Sis," returned her brother. "All ready? Let her go,
+Lance! We'll show these girls some traveling, eh?"
+
+The _Blue Streak_ was off in a moment and the way she tore over the ice
+always gave the two girls, at first, a feeling as though a wreck were
+imminent. But in a minute or two the feeling subsided, and through the
+automobile goggles they both wore they dared look ahead.
+
+On this cold afternoon there were not many sleighs or iceboats on the
+racing course between Centerport and Keyport. But suddenly Lance looked
+around, grinned through his mask, and waved his hand toward the shore.
+The girls immediately knew that he had sighted the Pendleton sleigh.
+
+Laura turned to look at her brother, and he nodded at her reassuringly.
+Lance reduced the speed, and the _Blue Streak_ began to move shoreward.
+
+The girls could now see the sleigh plainly. The yellow box in which Lil
+carried her costumes was a splotch of color against the white fur robes.
+And there was Lil herself and the black figure of the little stage
+director.
+
+The _Blue Streak_ ran closer and of a sudden the young folks aboard the
+iceboat saw that something was amiss with the Pendletons' horses. The
+dapple grays were fat, well fed beasts, and the coachman was old and
+rheumatic. Perhaps the appearance of another iceboat that had just
+passed the sleigh had startled the horses.
+
+However that might be, old Mike was suddenly flung from his seat, and
+the horses charged down the lake at a gallop, swinging the sleigh behind
+them at a pace that threatened to overturn it at any moment!
+
+The four friends on the aero-iceboat could hear Lil scream. And up
+sprang the little black figure of Pizotti, alias Plornish, and the next
+moment he had leaped to the ice!
+
+The horses tore on, and Lil was really in peril. But Chet guided the
+_Blue Streak_ right down to the runaway, coming so close that Lance
+Darby was able to leap into the driver's seat from the running iceboat.
+
+It was a feat that called for agility and coolness; but the boy did it
+bravely. The next moment he was out on the tongue, had recovered the
+trailing lines, and the dapple grays were soon brought to an abrupt
+stop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV--THE GREAT NIGHT
+
+
+The event had certainly come to a startling climax. Even Lily herself,
+writing a dozen "Duchess of Dawnleighs," could not have imagined quite
+so serious a situation to balk the determination of her created
+heroines, as here had arrived to balk herself!
+
+"Well, Lil," Laura said to her, as the girl got out of the sleigh. "I
+guess you won't run away to-day and leave us all in a fix--and spoil
+Jess's play. What do you think?"
+
+"Oh, Laura! is poor Mike hurt?" cried the girl, and from that moment
+Laura thought better of her. For Lil showed she was not entirely
+heartless. She had thought first of the old coachman who had served her
+family for so many years, and who was even then probably helping her to
+get to Keyport and the expected performance of "The Duchess of
+Dawnleigh," against his own good sense.
+
+"Here he comes, limping," said Laura, rather brusquely. "He's not dead.
+But how about Plornish?"
+
+"Plornish?" returned Lil, puzzled.
+
+"Pizotti, then, if you prefer his stage name."
+
+"Is--isn't Pizotti his name?" demanded Lil, still struggling with her
+tears.
+
+"His real name is Abel Plornish," said Laura, bluntly. She saw no use in
+"letting Lily down easy." "He has a wife and seven children living down
+on Governor Street, in a miserable tenement. He neglects them a good
+deal, I believe. But this time, if he had made what he expected to out
+of you----By the way, Lil, what were you going to pay him?"
+
+"I--I----For putting me on the stage with his company?" she stammered.
+
+"Is that the way he put it? Well, yes," said Laura. "It's the same
+thing. He was going to star you in your own play, was he?"
+
+"Ye--es," sobbed Lily. "And now it's all spoiled! And I was going to
+take all the money I pawned grandmother's jewels for----"
+
+"Goodness me! How much?" snapped Laura.
+
+"Five hundred dollars."
+
+"Has he got the cash?"
+
+"No," sobbed Lil.
+
+"All right, then. No harm done. I went to Mr. Monterey and he found out
+that Plornish had got together no company at all. You were the only
+person who had learned a part in your play, I guess, Lily. Ah! Chet's
+got him."
+
+Indeed, Chet had stopped the aero-iceboat and run back to the prostrate
+stage director. Plornish had a broken leg and had to be lifted by both
+boys into the Pendleton sleigh. Old Michael could manage the horses
+again and turned them about. Laura elected to go back to Centerport with
+the injured man and the very-much-disturbed Lily Pendleton.
+
+"Now, just see the sort of a man this fellow is," said Laura, paying no
+attention to the groanings of Plornish, "He was intending to get the
+money from you at Keyport and then disappear. All he spent was merely
+for the bills put up advertising the show--the show which he never
+intended would come off, Lil! And you were going down there and leaving
+us all in the lurch!"
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry!" groaned Lil.
+
+"I hope so. Sorry enough to go home and rest and prepare to play your
+part in 'The Spring Road' to-night," spoke Laura, tartly.
+
+"Oh, dear me! how can I?" cried the girl.
+
+"If you don't," said Laura, frankly, "I won't keep this affair a secret.
+You will be the laughing stock of all Central High. I am not going to
+allow Jess Morse's play to be spoiled because of _you_. If you were so
+jealous and envious that you did not want to see Jess's play succeed,
+you could have refused, at least, to be cast for an important part in
+it. And now," went on Mother Wit, firmly, "you are going to play that
+part."
+
+"Oh, Laura! you are so harsh," sobbed Lily.
+
+"Much that will hurt you!" sniffed Laura. "We'll drive around by the
+hospital and leave this Plornish man. If he dares to open his mouth,
+we'll have him punished for trying to swindle you," and Laura looked
+sternly at the black-eyed, foreign-looking fellow.
+
+"You see, we know all about you, Mr. Plornish, and you will have to
+abide by what is done for you. Some of us will help your family while
+you are helpless. But you've got to be good, or even Mr. Vandergriff
+will forget that you and he used to be boys together. Pah! with your
+hair dye, and paint and powder, and all! Why, you are nearly fifty years
+old, so Mr. Vandergriff says, and you act and dress like a silly boy."
+
+Lily listened to all this, and stopped sobbing. She began to see that
+there was a chance for her to escape being a butt for her
+school-fellows' jokes.
+
+"Can--can you keep Jess and the boys from talking?" she whispered to
+Laura.
+
+"They'll be like oysters if I tell them to," declared Mother Wit.
+
+"Oh, then, I'll do my best," agreed the foolish girl. Possibly she was
+deeply impressed by her escape.
+
+Mother Wit's plans were carried out to the letter. Plornish was
+deposited at the hospital, where he would remain for some weeks. The
+performance of Jess's play would have to get along without him on this
+opening night.
+
+And when the hour for the performance arrived, Lily Pendleton was ready,
+her tears wiped away, glorious in one of her costumes, and "preening
+like a peacock"--to quote Bobby Hargrew--before one of the long mirrors
+in the dressing room.
+
+"My, my!" laughed Bobby. "You look as grand as the Duchess of
+Doosenberry, don't you, Lil?"
+
+Lily looked at her rather sharply. "I'd really like to know how much
+that child knows?" the older girl murmured.
+
+But it wasn't what the shrewd Bobby _knew;_ it was what she _suspected!_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV--GOOD NEWS FOR JESS
+
+
+Behind the scenes just before the curtain rose upon the first act of
+"The Spring Road" there was such a bustle, and running about, and
+whispering, and excited signals and fragmentary talk, that it did look,
+Jess said, as though matters never would be straightened out.
+
+Did this one know his or her part perfectly? Was this dress right? Oh,
+dear! how can this one be made to look right "from the front?" And a
+thousand other doubts and queries.
+
+No matter how many times a play is rehearsed, it does seem just before
+the opening performance as though a dozen things would happen to spoil
+the effect of the first appearance. And to the author of the play it
+seems as though every person in that audience is a carping critic!
+
+Jess peered through the peephole in the curtain and saw that the hall
+was crowded.
+
+"I just know it will be a failure!" she moaned to her chum, Laura
+Belding. "It will be laughed at. I feel it!"
+
+"Strange how I should feel so differently!" spoke Laura, cheerfully.
+
+"Oh, dear! I'll never be able to hold up my head again if it's not
+liked," Jess pursued. "It will just _kill_ me."
+
+"Don't die so easy, Chum," said Laura. "You know we'll need you in the
+big inter-school meet after Easter."
+
+"Oh! I'll never be fit to do anything in athletics again!" gasped Jess.
+
+Which was certainly not borne out by the facts, for Jess Morse took a
+most important part in the spring meet of the Girls' Branch Athletic
+League, as a perusal of the next volume of this series: "The Girls of
+Central High on Track and Field; Or, The Champions of the School
+League," will prove.
+
+At last Miss Gould said all was ready. Really, she did very well without
+the assistance of the unpleasant, black-eyed, little Pizotti! The signal
+was given and the curtain rose on the first tableau--and it _was_ a
+pretty sight! In this allegorical introduction to Jess's play there were
+a score of the very prettiest girls of Central High, and they had been
+dressed and were grouped so artistically that an "Ah!" of admiration
+burst from the big audience.
+
+The little fantasy unwound the thread of plot which introduced the real
+play; but when the curtain went down there was no enthusiastic applause.
+The audience was expectant; but did not wholly understand it. And this
+was as it should be; the intent of that little prologue was merely to
+whet the appetite for the real play.
+
+"The Spring Road" ran its three acts through with unvarying success. The
+applause grew more pronounced; the interest of the audience grew deeper.
+The fact that a young girl had written the text of the play became
+harder and harder to believe as the evening lengthened.
+
+At the end--when the general lights went out, one by one upon the stage
+and left the two principal characters in the radiance of the spot light
+alone--and when this dimmed slowly and finally went out, the silence of
+the audience was momentous.
+
+Jess, in the wings, clinging to her chum, waited, scarcely breathing,
+for the verdict. Had it failed? Had the little lesson she had tried to
+teach, and the pretty story she had told, failed to "get over?"
+
+Suddenly there was a roar of delight from the back of the hall. Some of
+the older boys of Central High had managed to get tickets to this first
+performance, and, led by big Griff, they began to chant the well-known
+yell of Central High.
+
+But _that_ was not what Jess waited for. That was school loyalty. She
+had expected that.
+
+As the thunder of the boys' applause began to wane there was another
+sound which reached the ears of those listening behind the curtain. A
+steady, sharp clapping of hands; then joined by a shuffling of feet. The
+great mass of the audience was applauding.
+
+The curtain went up, and the whole company appeared. It rose and rose
+again, at last to display only the principals, down to the final two who
+had closed the play. But that was not enough.
+
+They could hear Dr. Agnew's heavy voice growling somewhere out in the
+darkness of the auditorium:
+
+"Author! Author! Bring her out!"
+
+The boys took up the demand. They even called on Jess Morse by name, and
+hitched that name to the battle cry of their athletic field.
+
+"You've got to go!" cried Laura, giving her chum a push. "You've got to,
+Jess!"
+
+And so Jess Morse stepped forward, modestly, bashfully, and faced the
+great audience. Tears half blinded her, but she bowed as she had been
+taught. And all the time she tasted the first intoxicating draught of
+Fame!
+
+But that was not quite the end of it all. Mr. Monterey, of the
+Centerport Opera House, was in a seat down in front that evening. He
+never was seen to applaud once; but on Saturday evening, when the play
+was repeated for the general public to attend, he came again and this
+time brought a stranger who paid quite as close attention to Jess's play
+as did Mr. Monterey himself.
+
+After the performance and before Jess and Laura started for home with
+their escorts, they heard that the stranger with the local manager was a
+very famous New York producer. He had come especially to see "The Spring
+Road."
+
+And when Jess arrived home she found the gentleman, with Mr. Monterey,
+conferring with her mother in their little sitting room.
+
+"I assure you," said Mrs. Morse, proudly, "the play is practically
+Josephine's own work. It is her idea, clothed in her own language. I am
+pleased that you find it so admirable for a child to have written----"
+
+"It is admirable--in spots--for anybody to have written," said the New
+York gentleman. "And this is the young lady?"
+
+Mrs. Morse introduced Jess.
+
+"You are the budding playwright?" suggested the stranger.
+
+"I am not so sure of that," replied Jess, troubled a little. "I wanted
+the prize Mrs. Kerrick offered, and I did my best."
+
+"And your best is very good--remarkably good," declared the producer. "I
+have come to see you and your mother about it. I want you to let me have
+the right to produce the play. Monday I will come with a contract;
+meanwhile I want Mrs. Morse to accept this check--which Mr. Monterey
+will endorse for me--to bind the agreement. I take a sort of option on
+the play, as it were," he said, and he handed the check to Jess.
+
+"You do not mean it?" gasped the girl.
+
+"I certainly do," said the other, rising. "Your play is not like the
+work of a professional playwright; but a professional writer of plays
+can take your work and whip it into shape----And I am willing to show my
+confidence in its final success by risking that sum upon it to start
+with."
+
+Jess looked then at the check. It was another two hundred dollars. Jess
+shut her eyes tight for a moment; then she opened them again to be sure
+she was not dreaming.
+
+When she opened them she really believed she saw Poverty fly out of the
+window!
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+
+THE JANICE DAY SERIES
+
+By HELEN BEECHER LONG
+
+_12 mo, cloth, illustrated, and colored jacket_
+
+A series of books for girls which have been uniformly successful. Janice
+Day is a character that will live long in juvenile fiction. Every volume
+is full of inspiration. There is an abundance of humor, quaint
+situations, and worth-while effort, and likewise plenty of plot and
+mystery.
+
+An ideal series for girls from nine to sixteen.
+
+    JANICE DAY, THE YOUNG HOMEMAKER
+    JANICE DAY AT POKETOWN
+    THE TESTING OF JANICE DAY
+    HOW JANICE DAY WON
+    THE MISSION OF JANICE DAY
+
+
+
+
+THE NAN SHERWOOD SERIES
+
+By Annie Roe Carr
+
+_12 mo, cloth, illustrated, and colored jacket_
+
+In Annie Roe Carr we have found a young woman of wide experience among
+girls--in schoolroom, in camp and while traveling. She knows girls of
+to-day thoroughly--their likes and dislikes--and knows that they demand
+almost as much action as do the boys. And she knows humor--good, clean
+fun and plenty of it.
+
+    NAN SHERWOOD AT PINE CAMP
+    or The Old Lumberman's Secret
+
+    NAN SHERWOOD AT LAKEVIEW HALL
+    or The Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse
+
+    NAN SHERWOOD'S WINTER HOLIDAYS
+    or Rescuing the Runaways
+
+    NAN SHERWOOD AT ROSE RANCH
+    or The Old Mexican's Treasure
+
+    NAN SHERWOOD AT PALM BEACH
+    or Strange Adventures Among the Orange Groves
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Girls of Central High on the Stage, by 
+Gertrude W. Morrison
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH ***
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