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

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!