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

“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.’”