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

“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