BELLE SNIFFS AT IT
The Junior League of the Church held a business meeting that
afternoon, and Jessie and Amy, having completed the restringing
of the aerial and, as Amy said, opened communication again with
the ether, the two chums walked downtown to the parish house. Dr.
Stanley’s church with the parsonage on one side and the parish house
on the other, faced Bonwit Boulevard, but it was only on the edge of
Roselawn. His was a large parish.
This latter fact was the reason why Belle Ringold and most of her
friends attended the same church, as well as the same day school, as
Jessie and Amy. The former girls lived nearer to New Melford proper.
Naturally, among the young people, there was some little rivalry
between the Roselawn circle and these others.
On this afternoon the main topic of discussion was of the interest
the church societies were bound to take in the new hospital. All
clubs and institutional societies were bound to lend a hand in so
noble a work as this proposed. Dr. Stanley had spoken more than once
from the pulpit of the proposed raising of a foundation fund for the
hospital.
“Oh, we’ve got to do something, of course,” Belle Ringold said rather
crossly. “It’s expected. But I do think that we girls ought to have
our time to ourselves between school terms.”
“Why, it will be fun,” said Amy, overhearing this complaint. “How do
you want to spend your time this summer, anyway, Belle?”
“Not working like a regular slave in some show or bazaar, or some
other money-making scheme. Of course, you younger girls don’t mind.
You have few social duties——”
“My! My! Hear ye!” chuckled Amy, who seldom got offended by them but
always made fun of Belle’s airs. “Whom are you entertaining, Miss
Ringold? The Prince De Kakyak? Your time is so fully occupied, I
know. Oh, de-ah, yes!”
Jessie pulled her chum’s sleeve in warning while Belle’s eyes flashed.
“Miss Impudence!” she said. “You ought to be in the nursery still.”
“Believe me,” said the incorrigible girl, grinning, “I never was
very still in the nursery, or anywhere else. However, fearing that
if I kept still now you would have a misapprehension concerning what
the hospital committee means to do about raising the fund and the
proposed entertainment, I will a tale unfold——”
“Pooh! What do you know about it?” scoffed Belle.
“Well, I ought to know a good deal. It was my idea,” Amy said
proudly. “Wasn’t it, Jess?”
“I’d like to know what you mean?” exclaimed Belle, heatedly. “You
can’t fool me.”
Jessie felt called upon to support her chum. Besides, it was true.
Amy had really suggested the radio concert idea. She said so.
“Well!” ejaculated Belle Ringold, “if they think that I am going to
be at the beck and call of you girls of Roselawn and help boost one
of your schemes, I guess not!” and she sniffed audibly.
“Don’t be so sour, Belle,” laughed Amy. “Did anybody ask you to do
anything about it?”
“I guess you don’t know everything,” Sally Moon said quickly,
catching at a chance to make her friend feel a little better. “You
may have started this radio concert idea, but it isn’t finished yet.
Do you know what Miss Allister wants?”
“Something pretty good, I expect,” said Amy easily. “Miss Allister is
awfully nice, if anybody should ask you.”
“Well,” said Sally, eagerly, delighted to be able to tell news in
order to counteract the effect of the Roselawn girls’ statements,
“Miss Allister has asked the chorus that sang at graduation and made
such a hit, to repeat the numbers at this radio concert you seem to
know so much about.”
“Well, I never! Is it going to be an amateur affair?” exclaimed Amy,
with some scorn, and with more than a little disappointment, too.
“I think that is splendid,” declared Jessie. “You girls that were
in that chorus will have an interesting time. I wonder what sending
station will arrange for giving the concert?”
“I never!” repeated Amy, still pouting a little. Then she laughed
shortly and the usual sunny look came into her pretty face. “Well,”
she confessed, “I guess our idea has got clear away from us. We’re
not in it, Jess. We neither of us sang in Miss Allister’s chorus.”
“But where will the concert be given?” her chum repeated, looking for
an answer to Sally Moon.
“At Stratfordtown. So we just heard. The committee has arranged
to send the stuff from there. And say, Jess! Was it really Mark
Stratford who fell in his plane over at your place yesterday?”
Amy groaned heartily while her friend replied affirmatively to the
question of Sally Moon.
“And I’ll say he fell into luck,” said Amy. “He lost a million dollar
airplane, more or less, and a diamond-set watch that he thinks the
world of, and didn’t even break a finger. But here am I, wasting
gray matter on thinking up schemes for the hospital committee to use
in raising money, and then cheated out of having any share in the
radio concert. Jess! do you hear what these girls that belong to Miss
Allister’s chorus are going to do?”
“I am glad for their sakes,” said Jessie composedly. “Perhaps we can
get into it, too, Amy.”
“Not with us!” snapped Belle Ringold, who had by no means got over
her grouch. “If you two try to get into that chorus, I won’t sing at
all. And I know others that feel the same.”
“You all—you and your friends—must feel awfully uncomfortable,”
laughed Amy. “I would not have those feelings for worlds, Belle.”
“Never mind,” whispered Jessie, who was always the peacemaker unless
her temper was very seriously ruffled.
“She certainly is an even-tempered girl, that Belle Ringold,” said
Amy, as the two chums moved away. “Mad all the time! Well, Jess, they
certainly have put something over on us.”
“I think it is a grand idea,” rejoined Jessie eagerly. “If it is
partly an amateur concert there will be just so many more people
interested in it and thereby interested in the hospital foundation
fund.”
“But, honey! The fact remains,” Amy said rather ruefully, “we are not
in it!”
“But we are going to be,” declared her chum decidedly. “We thought of
it first——”
“But maybe they won’t let us. It can’t all be in the hands of the
ladies of the hospital committee. I suppose over at Stratfordtown
there will be somebody, Mr. Blair, for instance——”
“We’ll see him,” said Jessie. “And we’ll ask Mark. If Mark feels so
friendly toward us we’ll give him a chance to show it. I am just
determined, Amy Drew, to sing in that concert.”
“I would like to recite something,” sighed Amy. “You know, Miss
Seymour praised me for that after our June entertainment at the high
school. I am just as eager to get into it as you are, Jess. But I do
hate to go to Mr. Blair—or even to Mark Stratford or his father—and
ask him right out.”
“I am not afraid to ask for what I want,” declared Jessie, who had
considerable firmness and good sense. “But I wish we could find
Mark’s watch to return to him. Then there would be some reason in our
asking a favor. Though I don’t want him to feel that he has got to
pay us for breaking down that aerial.”
“He can help us get on the program for just any old reason, for all I
care,” said Amy. “But how are you going to find his watch, Jess?”
“I don’t know. I feel that we ought to make inquiries of those
children.”
“Little Hen and those others?” Amy cried.
“Yes. Mind you,” said Jessie seriously. “I do not want to believe,
and I do not believe, that Henrietta knows a thing about the watch.
But some of the others—well, the poor things haven’t had much
bringing up, I suppose.”
“More like dragging up,” chuckled her friend.
“We’ll go over to Dogtown in the morning and I’ll try to get
Henrietta to tell us if she knows anything about the watch.”