BUCKING THE STUDENT COUNCIL
Early December brought cold weather in its train and unusually heavy
snows. Householders were kept busy shoveling walks clean and the
boys and girls reveled in plenty of coasting. Sarah was invariably
late for supper these days and no amount of scolding from Winnie, or
pleading from Aunt Trudy, could induce her to desert the hill as
long as a single coaster remained to keep her company. Finally
Doctor Hugh devised a plan of going around that way before he came
home and, if Sarah were there, picking her and the sled up bodily
and bestowing them in the car.
"I'll bet I know something you don't," said Fannie Mears one noon,
coming over with Nina Edmonds to sit at the corner table with
Rosemary in bland indifference to scowls from Sarah and sighs from
Shirley.
Fannie Mears and Rosemary were not close friends at all, and the
latter was surprised at the overture. But she hospitably swept part
of the lunch aside to make room for the visitors and offered them a
couple of Winnie's delicious egg sandwiches.
"Thanks, we have enough," said Fannie. "Have you heard what the boys
are going to do?"
"Boys" with Fannie, meant the high school lads as Rosemary
immediately understood. The boys in the seventh grade failed to
interest either Fannie or Nina.
"No, what?" answered Sarah bluntly, in blissful ignorance that she
was not supposed to be included in the conversation.
"The Common Council has asked 'em to clean off the streets,"
announced Fannie, addressing herself to Rosemary, "and Jack Welles
is going to make himself awfully unpopular, if he isn't careful."
"Clean off the streets?" repeated Rosemary. "Why what do you mean?"
"There's been so many storms, they haven't been able to keep some of
the streets clear of snow," explained Nina, biting into a cup cake,
for Nina lunched almost exclusively on cake. "They've had gangs of
men working, but before they get one snow carted away, another
falls. And now the Common Council has decided to ask the high
school boys to work after school. My father is a Councilman, and he
told us all about the last meeting. They'll pay the boys and it will
be a regular lark."
"Yes, if Jack Welles doesn't go and spoil everything," said Fannie
darkly.
"How can he spoil everything?" Rosemary demanded.
She had not seen Jack so often once the school year was well under
way. Football practice had absorbed him during the early fall and
later came basketball. Other school and class activities, too,
claimed his attention, for Jack was popular and a good student as
well. He was president of his class, the Sophomores, and had that
year been appointed Student Advisor to the grammar school boys.
"How can Jack spoil things?" repeated Rosemary.
Fannie leaned across the table--she dearly loved to be important and
now she had something to tell.
"It's like this," she began. "My brother told me. The Student
Council had a letter from the Eastshore Common Council, saying they
wanted volunteer snow workers among the high school boys. And the S.
C. called the presidents of the four classes together and told them
to go ahead and get the workers, twelve from each class."
Fannie stopped and looked at Rosemary expectantly. Sarah's mouth was
wide open and she was listening eagerly. Shirley had wandered away
to play.
"Well?" said Rosemary sharply.
"Well," echoed Fannie disagreeably. "The boys made out their lists
and when Jack read his he had asked the two Gordon boys, Jerry and
Fred, and Eustice Gray and Norman Cox and Ben Kelsey. And Will says
the president of the Student Council was simply furious."
Rosemary began to fold up the napkins and put them back in the box.
Will Mears was Fannie's brother and the other boys she knew only by
sight.
"Why was Frank Fenton furious?" asked Sarah, delighting in the sound
of the three F's, though quite unconscious she had used them.
"Oh, do be still!" Fannie tried to squelch the younger girl. "Frank
was mad, of course, because the S. C. counted on having all the snow
money for the dramatic fund. They want to put on a play this spring
and Will says they haven't a cent in the treasury. And now Jack
Welles goes and spoils a perfectly splendid chance to earn a lot of
money."
"That's the third or fourth time you've said that about Jack," cried
Rosemary, stung into speech at last. "What has he done to spoil
anything? I don't see."
"Why I should think you would," said Fannie, while Nina nodded
sagely. "The Gordon boys and Eustice and Norman and Ben are as poor
as can be; they want the money for themselves, and Will says they
jumped at the chance to earn it. Don't you see, it will keep that
much out of the dramatic fund, and Jack could just as well have
appointed boys who could have been glad to turn over the money to
the school. Will calls it a disgusting lack of class spirit."
Rosemary's blue eyes snapped and fire burned in her cheeks.
"There's nothing the matter with Jack Welles' class spirit, Fannie
Mears!" she cried. "I should think you would be ashamed to repeat
anything like that, I don't care who said it."
"Well I'm not the only one who said it, or Will, either," declared
Fannie, rising as the warning bell sounded. "The president of the
Student Council told him what he thought of him, all right."
Inwardly seething, Rosemary managed to get away to her class room
without further argument. She had never liked Fannie Mears, she told
herself and now she almost hated her. As for Will Mears, president
of the High School Juniors, well he wasn't a bit better. What a
disagreeable family the Mears must be!
It was cooking class day, and Rosemary stayed almost an hour after
school that night, "puttering" as Miss Parsons called it, about the
school kitchen. Sarah and Shirley went home without her, and she was
walking briskly along alone, tramping hardily through the snow late
that afternoon, when Jack Welles overtook her.
"How's the soup?" he asked cheerfully, that being a stock question
of his ever since the fateful Institute dinner.
"How's the Student Council?" asked Rosemary.
Jack's open face changed.
"What do you know about the Student Council?" he said gruffly.
"Oh, I heard--something," replied Rosemary. "Was Frank Fenton
unfair, Jack?"
"Well, he doesn't think so," said Jack, "I suppose you girls have
been gossiping and you might as well get the story straight," he
added.
Rosemary nodded eagerly.
"I hope the Gray boys and the others will shovel snow," she cried
impulsively. "I don't give a fig for the old dramatic fund, Jack."
"I do," said Jack. "It's all right to turn the snow money into the
fund and I've nothing to say against that. But when the Student
Council kicks because five boys out of forty-eight want to keep what
they earn, and they know they are putting themselves through school,
I think it shows a contemptible, small spirit and I told Frank so
to-night. You see, Rosemary," he went on a little more calmly,
"there aren't a whole lot of ways a boy can earn money and go to
school in a small town like this--nearly everyone tends to his own
fires and sweeps off his own walks and runs his own errands. If we
hadn't had one snow storm after another, there wouldn't have been
this chance. And I purposely appointed these five boys because I
know what they are up against. And by gum," he said forcibly if
inelegantly, "on my squad they stay!"
"But can't the Student Council make you back down and appoint
others?" asked Rosemary, glowing with excitement. "I thought the S.
C. could do anything in high school, Jack."
"They are pretty powerful," her companion admitted, "but they don't
dare carry this to the faculty, because they'll look so small and
Eustice Gray is in the direct line for one of the college
scholarships. Every teacher on the faculty staff will stand by the
boys--they're all fine students and making a stiff fight to get
through school. You don't suppose Mr. Hamlin is going to think the
dramatic fund is more important than shoes for Norman Cox, do you?"
Mr. Hamlin was the principal of the high school.
"But it can't be very pleasant for the boys," urged Rosemary,
troubled.
"You've said it," confessed Jack gloomily. "I had a second fight
there, for after the fellows heard the Student Council was raising a
rumpus, they said they would get off my team and let others take
their places. Norman said he guessed they could get independent jobs
shoveling snow after school hours."
"Could they?" asked Rosemary.
"I suppose they could, but they won't if I have anything to say
about it," declared Jack with what Doctor Hugh called his "bull-dog"
expression. "I was told to appoint a snow cleaning team and I've
done it, and by gum my nominations stand. If the Student Council
doesn't like 'em, they can appeal to the faculty--and they'll get
what's coming to them! The town Council doesn't give a hoot where
the money goes, all they want is to have the snow cleaned away. I
told the fellows if they walked out, they made me just five short,
for I wouldn't appoint anyone in their places. If they want to see
the Sophomore class fall down on the job, all right. You watch my
twelve names go through!"
Rosemary watched. So did all the high and half the grammar school,
for word of the dispute, variously colored to suit different
informants, had been noised around and the only persons in actual
ignorance of the state of affairs were the high school faculty. The
Student Council was desperately anxious that they should remain in
that state, for there had been one or two previous clashes over the
relative importance of the dramatic fund, and the members of the
council had no wish to be accused of "forcing" any unfair demands.
So, as Jack had foreseen, his nominations were allowed to stand and
the next afternoon, forty-eight laughing, shouting boys reported to
Bill McCormack, bluff and kindly member of the Eastshore Common
Council who would, in a larger municipality, have been called
"Streets and Highways Commissioner" or by similar sonorous title.
But before the boys met "Bill" in front of the town hall, the
president of the Student Council, Frank Fenton, and Will Mears,
president of the Junior class, had held a conference with Mr.
Edmonds, the most influential member, some said, next to the
president, Cameron Jordan, a cousin of the old and respected
physician. The result of this conference was that Bill McCormack
held in his fat, red hands a sheaf of papers which allotted the
streets to the four classes and took the decision quite away from
him.
"I was told to give these papers to the heads of the gangs," said
Mr. McCormack, smiling expansively. "Here ye are--Senior, Junior,
Sophomore, Freshman--them's your working papers, me lads, and now
off with ye; the shovels ye'll be finding in the basement of the
hall."
Jack Welles glanced at the slip of paper handed him, folded it up
and stuffed it in his pocket. As soon as his "gang" was fitted out
with snow shovels, he marched them away in the wake of one of the
lumbering wagons that was to carry the snow off to a vacant field on
the outskirts of the town.
"What did we draw, Jack?" asked Norman Cox curiously.
"Plummers Lane," said Jack laconically.
Plummers Lane, was the nearest approach to a "slumming section" that
Eastshore possessed. The idle, the shiftless and the vicious
congregated there, living in tumbled down shacks in the winter and
the middle of the streets, in summer. There were two factories, one
a novelty works, the other a canning and candy factory and the "dump
lot" bounded the Lane on the north and the jail on the south.
Altogether it was not the choicest portion which could fall to the
lot of the young snow cleaners.
"It's enough to make you want to resign from the dramatic club!"
exclaimed Kenneth Vail, who, in common with the other boys, labored
under no delusion that chance fortune had sent them to Plummers
Lane.
"If you had only put some one else in my place--" began Eustice Gray
uncomfortably, but seven voices immediately shouted to him, in
friendly chorus to "dry up."
"We'll make Plummers Lane look sick," declared Jack. "From the looks
of it, I don't think there's been a shovel down here since the first
snow. If the S. C. thinks they have marked more off for us than we
can clean up, we'll show them! Here goes for the first shovel--out
of the way, Mike!"
The grinning driver reined in his team and dodged as Jack hurled a
heavy shovelful over the side of the cart. The other boys followed
suit and twelve strong, sturdy backs bent to their task. The
population of Plummers Lane, that part of it visible by day, draped
itself along the curb to watch operations and hand out advice, but
any more practical help was not offered or expected.