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

“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.