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

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?”