The Girls of Central High on the Stage/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
IN SUSPENSE
But when Jess got home—and Mrs. Prentice took her there in the car, but would not come in herself—she had hard work to satisfy her mother that such a change as this opportunity suggested was a good one for them to make. In short, Mrs. Morse did not enthuse.
"Just think of the trouble of it all," she sighed. "My dear Jess, we have been here so long"
"But Mr. Chumley doesn't want us any longer," interposed Jess.
"Tut, tut! that is only the old gentleman's way. He really will not raise our rent, do you think?"
"Why, Mother!" expostulated the girl, "he has already raised it and threatened to put us out if we don't find the increased three dollars on the first."
"I am afraid you were not politic enough," said her mother.
"One cannot be politic with Mr. Chumley. He wants his house for another tenant; he has as good as said so. And do come and see Mrs. Prentice's little cottage. It is a love."
Even after she had seen it, however, Mrs. Morse was doubtful. She shrank from the change.
"And think of the expense of moving," she declared.
"But the two dollars less we pay a month will soon pay for that," said Jess, eagerly.
"Well—er—perhaps," admitted her mother, doubtfully.
Jess had to do it all, however. She had to attend to every detail of the change. Fortunately her mother received a check of some size and the daughter obtained a part of it for current expenses. She hired a truckman, packed most of their possessions after school hours, and saw to the setting up of their goods and chattels in the new home.
There were several tons of furnace coal in the cellar of the new home. In the old cottage there had been no heater. Mrs. Prentice told Jess that she could pay for the coal a little at a time, and the girl gladly availed herself of this advantage.
For the winter promised to be a severe one. Since frost had set in in earnest there had been no let-up. Jess and her mother moved during the short holiday vacation. The day school closed; the contestants for the prize offered by Mrs. Kerrick handed in their plays. The announcement of the successful one would be after the intermission—on the first Monday of the New Year.
When the Morses really came to remove their goods from the house in which they had lived so long, old Mr. Chumley would have liked to get out an injunction against their doing so.
"I never thought you'd do it, Widder!" he croaked, having hurried over the minute he heard the moving man was at the door. "Why—why mebbe we could have split the difference. P'r'aps three dollars a month more was a leetle steep."
"Oh, dear me!" sighed Mrs. Morse. "Really, Mr. Chumley, this is Jess's doings. She thinks the change will be better for us"
"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.