The Girls of Central High on the Stage/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
A SKATING PARTY
The girls of the Junior class in modern history were filing out on Friday.
"What do you know about that?" hissed Bobby Hargrew, in the ears of her chums. "Gee Gee is getting meaner and meaner every day she lives."
"What did she do to you now?" demanded Dora Lockwood, one of the twins.
"Didn't you notice? She sent Postscript to hunt up Moscow on the map of Russia. Now! you know very well that Moscow was burned in 1812!"
"You ridiculous child!" exclaimed Nellie Agnew. "You will never do anything in school but make jokes and try the patience of your teachers."
"I am no friend to teachers, I admit," confided Bobby to Dora and Dorothy. "Don't you think they ought to be made to earn their money?"
"Any teacher who is so unfortunate as to have you in his, or her, class, is bound to earn all the salary coming to them," declared Dorothy.
"Bad grammar—but you don't know any better," declared the harum-scarum. "You're just as bad as Freddie Atkinson. Dimple asked him who compiled the dictionary, and Freddie said, 'Daniel Webster.'
"'No, sir! Noah!' snapped Dimple.
"'Oh, Professor!' exclaimed Fred. 'I thought Noah compiled the Ark?'"
As the girls were laughing over this story of Bobby Hargrew's, Eve Sitz came up briskly. Laura and Jess were near at hand, and in a moment a group of the Juniors who always "trained together" were in animated discussion.
"Yes. It's frozen hard. Otto was on it with a pair of horses and our pung," declared Eve, who came in every morning from the country on the train, and whose father owned a big farm over beyond Robinson's Woods.
"What's frozen?" demanded Dora.
"Peveril Pond. It's as smooth as glass. I want you to all come over on Saturday afternoon; we'll have a lot of fun," declared Eve.
"You're always inviting us to the farm, Evangeline," said Nellie Agnew; "I should think your father and mother would be tired of having us overrun the place."
"Never you mind about them," declared Evangeline, smiling. "They love to have young folks around. Now, remember! Saturday at noon the autos will start from the Beldings' front door—if it doesn't snow."
"Oh, snow!" cried Bobby. "I hope not yet."
"'Beautiful snow! he may sing whom it suits—
I object to the stuff, 'cause it soaks through my boots!'"
"It's too bad," said Jess, "that Mrs. Kerrick didn't offer a prize for verse. Bobby would win it, sure!"
"Never you mind," said Bobby, with mock solemnity. "I may surprise you all yet. I am capable of turning out tragic stuff—you bet your boots!"
"Mercy, Bobby! how slangy you are getting," murmured Nell Agnew, the doctor's daughter.
"You think I cannot be serious?" demanded Bobby, very gravely. "Listen here. Here is what I call 'The Lay of the Last Minorca'—not the 'Last Minstrel!'
"'She laid the still white form beside those that had gone before,' quoth Bobby, in sepulchral tone.
"'No sob, no sigh, forced its way from her heart, throbbing as though it would burst.
"'Suddenly a cry broke the stillness of the place—a single heartbreaking shriek, which seemed to well up from her very soul, as she left the place:
"'"Cut, cut, cut-ah-out!"
"'She would lay another egg to-morrow.'"
"You ridiculous girl!" exclaimed Laura. "Aren't you ever serious at all?"
"My light manner hides a breaking hear-r-r-t," croaked Bobby. "You don't know me, Laura, as I really are!"
"Don't want to," declared Laura Belding, briskly. "It must be awful to be a humorist. All right, Eve. We'll come on Saturday. Chet will see Mr. Purcell about the big car. Lake Luna is frozen only at the edges, and is unsafe. But we will have a good time at Peveril Pond."
Fortunately Mrs. Morse received payment for a story in a magazine that week or Jess would never have had the heart to join the skating party. But the sum realized was sufficient to settle with Mr. Closewick, pay the month's rent of the cottage, and pay a part of each bill at Mr. Heuffler's and Mr. Vandergriff's shops.
These payments left Jess and her mother almost as badly off as they were before. And there was the new account started at Mr. Hargrew's. But Chet Belding urged Jess very strongly to be his guest on Saturday, and there was really no reason why Jess should not go. Her mother had seen Mr. Prentice and begun furnishing items to the Courier from day to day; and the girl felt that, with care, they might be able to keep from getting so deeply into debt again.
No snow had fallen up to Saturday noon; but it was cold, and the clouds threatened a feathery fall before many hours. The young folk who gathered in the big hall of the Belding house thought little of the cold, however. There were warm robes and blankets in the Belding auto and in the sightseeing machine that Mr. Purcell had sent. Chet, in his bearskin coat, looked like the original owner of the garment—especially when he pulled the goggles down from the visor of his cap, and prepared to go out to the car.
"My dear fellow," drawled Prettyman Sweet, the dandy of Central High, who was of the party, "you look howwidly fewocious, doncher know! I wouldn't dwess in such execrable taste for any sum you could mention—no, sir!"
"Beauty's only skin deep, they say, Pretty," responded Chet. "So, if you were flayed, you might look quite human yourself."
"Purt" was gorgeous in a Canadian skating suit—or so the tailor who sold it to him had called it. It was all crimson and white, with a fur-edged velvet cap that it really took courage to wear, and fur-topped boots. And his gloves! they were marvels. One of them lying on the floor of the Beldings' hall gave Topsy, Mrs. Belding's pet terrier, such a fright that she pretty nearly barked her head off.
She made so much noise that Lance grabbed at her and tried to put her out of the room, Topsy still barking furiously.
"You look out!" drawled Bobby Hargrew. "One end of that dog bites, Lance!"
They turned Purt around and around to get the beauties of his costume at every angle. And they "rigged" him sorely. But the exquisite was used to it; he would only have felt badly if they had ignored his new "get-up."
"It's quite the thing, I assure you," he declared. "And, weally, one should pay some attention to the styles. You fellows, weally, dress in execrable taste."
When the party was complete they bundled into their wraps again and piled into the machines. Mrs. Belding had retired to her own room until the "devastation of the barbarians," as she called it, was past; but Mammy Jinny straightened up the hall and dining room after the young folk with great cheerfulness.
"Yo' know how yo' was yo'self, Miss Annie, w'en yo' was oberflowin' wid de sperits ob youth," she said, soothingly.
"I am sure I never overflowed quite so boisterously," sighed Mrs. Belding.
"No. Yo' warn't one ob de oberflowin' kind, Miss Annie," admitted the old black woman. "But Mars' Chet an' Miss Laura, and dem friends ob theirs, sartain sure kin kick up a mighty combobberation—yaas'm!"
The wintry wind blew sharply past the crowd of Central High Juniors as the Belding auto and the bigger machine struck a fast pace when once they had cleared the city. There was lots of fun in the autos on the way to the Sitz farm; but they were all glad to tumble out there and crowd into the big kitchen "for a warm."
The Swiss family were the most hospitable people in the world. Eve's mother had a great heap of hot cakes ready for them, and there was coffee, too, to drive out the cold.
"We're going to take Patrick down to the pond with us to keep up the fires while we're skating," Eve told Laura. Eve looked very pretty in her skating rig, and she was a splendid skater, too. "Father and Otto are somewhere down in the woods already. This cold weather coming on marks the time for hog killing, and some of the porkers have been running in the woods, fattening on the mast. There is an old mother hog that has gotten quite wild, and has a litter of young ones with her that are hard to catch. They may have to shoot her. So if you hear a gun go off, don't be alarmed."
The hired man, who stayed with the Sitzes all the year around, was a comical genius and the boys knew him well. As they started on the walk to the pond, Chet asked him:
"Do you skate yourself, Pat?"
"Sure, and it's an illegant skater I used to be when I was young," declared Pat; "barrin' that I niver had thim murderin' knives on me feet, but used ter skate on a bit of board down Donnegan's Hill."
"He'll never own up that he doesn't know a thing," whispered Eve to Laura and Jess, as the boys laughed over this statement of the Irishman. "He was planting potatoes in the upper field, and all by himself, last spring, and a man drove along the road, and stopped and asked him what kind of potatoes they were.
"'Sure, I know,' says Patrick.
"'Then what kind are they?' repeated the neighbor.
"'Sure, they're raw ones, Mr. Hurley,' says he, and Hurley came to the house roaring with laughter over it. Nothing feazes Patrick."
The long, sloping hill, under the chestnuts and oaks, would have made a splendid coasting place; only there was no snow on the ground.
"But when the snow does come," cried Dora Lockwood, "if the pond is still frozen over, won't it be a great course?"
"The ice is all right now, at any rate," Eve reassured them. "And there isn't a spring hole in the entire pond, Otto says."
Patrick had brought an axe and, with the help of some of the boys, soon had a big bonfire burning on the edge of the pond. Meanwhile the other boys helped the girls with their skate-straps, and then got on their own skates.
The ice hadn't a scratch on it. It was like a great plate of glass, and so clear in places that they could see to the bottom of the pond—where the bottom was sandy.
All the young folk were soon on the ice, the boys starting a hockey game at the far end, and the girls circling around in pairs at the end nearest to the fire.
"That's what Mrs. Case, our physical instructor, says we ought to learn," said Laura, watching the boys.
"And it's jolly good fun, too," cried Bobby.
"But suppose you turned your ankle, or fell down and tore your dress?" suggested Nellie. "I believe hockey on the ice is too rough."
"No game needs to be rough," declared Laura. "That isn't the spirit of athletics. Didn't we learn how to play basketball without being rough?"
"Even Hessie Grimes learned that," chuckled Bobby.
At that moment a gun was fired back in the thicker woods, and then out of the brush the girls saw an animal charging directly for the pond. Patrick saw it, too, and leaped up from before the fire and ran toward the beast.
"It's a big hog!" cried Bobby.
"That's the one they want to catch," said Eve. "She is ugly, too, I believe." Then she raised her voice in warning to Patrick: "Look out, Patrick! She is real cross."
"Faith!" returned the Irishman, half squatting down in the path of the charging sow. "It's not afraid I be of the likes of a pig. 'Tis too many of their tails I've twisted in ould Ireland, to run from wan in Ameriky"
Just then the animal spied him and went for Patrick, full tilt. There wasn't time for the Irsihman to dodge; but he did spread his legs, and the angry mother-hog ran between them.