AN INVITATION TO A PARTY
Superintendent Blair suddenly put up his hand and stopped the chorus
in the middle of its second number. He looked very stern but he
spoke composedly enough to Miss Allister. She was in a flutter of
excitement.
“Let them rest awhile,” said Mr. Blair, bruskly. “They are not doing
well; nowhere near good enough to broadcast from Stratfordtown. We
pride ourselves here, Miss Allister, on sending out good stuff.
“Perhaps they will do better later. Let them rest. Meanwhile, we will
try out these others. Who is first? Miss Norwood?” He looked from the
paper in his hand to Jessie.
“Oh, yes! Miss Norwood. Ready, Miss Jessie?”
Jessie gave her music to the accompanist at the piano. Her hands
shook and she flushed and paled alternately. She wished that she had
a glass of water. Her mouth felt as dry as though she were suffering
from a fever.
She caught, however, Amy’s encouraging glance. Amy never showed
nervousness on such an occasion as this. She was perfectly calm.
Jessie tried to control her trembling as she stood before the horn
and the first chords of the music were struck on the piano by the
lady who played her accompaniment.
Jessie Norwood had a very sweet voice and a strong one. She had
something more than that, too—sympathy. When she sang anything it was
with feeling and an expression that few but professional performers
obtain.
Before the song was half through the girl from Roselawn had gained
Mr. Blair’s full attention and at its end he marked his approval by
swift applause.
“Good! Good!” he ejaculated. “Now,” he said, swinging to face the
other girls, “if you young people would do half as well, your songs
would be all right. Now! Who comes next?”
He looked at his paper and announced Amy’s recitation. It was a
humorous bit, that Amy did very well indeed. She had the ease that
usually marks a much more practiced recitationist. After all, the
full flavor of the piece was lost on radio telephony because her
facial expression and her gestures would not be seen by her audience
downstairs. But Mr. Blair had as encouraging a smile for her as he
had had for Jessie.
The latter, in the midst of Amy’s recitation, felt that somebody was
standing behind her. She turned swiftly. Smilingly looking into her
flushed face, and with his hand stretched out, stood Mark Stratford.
It was the first time Jessie had seen him since he had fallen with
his aeroplane on the Norwood premises.
He seized the Roselawn girl’s hand and squeezed it warmly, but
they did not speak until Amy had “made her bow” at the end of the
recitation.
“Got to say Thank you! Jessie,” whispered the young man. “You and Amy
Drew certainly were good friends of mine when I fell that time. Sorry
you were not at home when I called.”
“Oh, Mark! We did not do much,” said Jessie, flushing.
“That’s according to what you call ‘much.’ To me it was much. I
understand that I was in line for incineration in that plane if you
girls had not dragged me out and put out the fire.”
“Amy put out the fire,” said Jessie, earnestly but in the same low
tone.
“It’s all right,” and Mark grinned. “I know whom to thank.”
“But, Mark! We didn’t find your watch!” Jessie Norwood exclaimed
eagerly.
“I suppose not. I suppose the place has been raked over for it?”
“Oh, yes. Amy and I looked carefully. I am so sorry!”
“Don’t let it worry you. Of course, I’d give a good deal rather than
lose it. I suppose it would do no good to offer a reward for it?” he
added thoughtfully. “I don’t want my grandmother to know. She is so
old, you know, that she is easily disturbed.”
Jessie was greatly disturbed, and she was not old! She stared at
Mark Stratford with worried look. Should she tell him her suspicions
regarding the red-haired Dogtown boy, Monty Shannon?
Mr. Blair just then was congratulating Amy Drew. She had finished her
recitation and with a glowing face and a smile she came away from the
horn. She saw Mark, then, and waved her hand to him. As he went to
meet her Jessie was given a moment’s time to reconsider the matter of
the lost watch.
Jessie Norwood was no prude; but she did want to do the right thing.
She had been trained to think for herself; perhaps she got a certain
logical slant of mind from her father. And, in addition, she felt a
real interest in Montmorency Shannon.
The red-haired boy was so bright and ingenious that it seemed a
more than dreadful thing for him to be suspected of stealing. If he
had found the watch at the scene of the aeroplane disaster and had
hidden and sold it, stealing was the only term that applied.
“I must try to get him to confide in me,” thought Jessie. “He must
tell me how he expects to pay for that receiving set he says he has
bought.”
Mr. Blair nodded to Miss Allister then and told her to try the chorus
again.
“I am going down to the reception room to listen in with the people
there. I want to see how it sounds at a distance.”
Amy of course began to giggle when she whispered to Mark and Jessie:
“He wants to _see_ how it _sounds_! Isn’t that funny?”
Belle Ringold had fixed her eyes on Mark when first he slipped into
the room; she could scarcely give her attention to the renewed
rehearsal. Miss Allister was greatly flustered by the inattention of
the girls. She had really lost control of them.
“Let’s get out of this squalling,” said Mark, in an undertone. “Guess
that chorus is going to be a frost. That is what brought me up
here. I was listening in with father and the ladies downstairs, and
father sent me up to tell Blair that he doubted if the chorus would
add anything to the reputation of the company, even if it was for
charity.”
“Oh, dear, me,” murmured Jessie when they got out into the anteroom.
“If the chorus is not a success Miss Allister will be awfully
disappointed.”
“Not to say anything of how mad Belle and Sally will be,” said Amy.
“Oh, Jess! We are lucky that we didn’t get into the chorus after all.”
“You girls need not be troubled,” Mark said kindly. “Your bits will
stand out well in the entertainment. More individual, you know. And I
think you both do mighty well.”
He took them down to the big offices where the company’s receiving
station was situated. Here was an audience room seating at least a
hundred people, and with the use of an amplifier and loud speaker the
numbers being tried upstairs could be plainly heard.
Jessie was rather disappointed in not being able to speak to
Mr. Blair again. Somehow, she felt that the superintendent was
interested, in spite of himself, in Bertha Blair. Their last names
were the same. Was it not probable that the girl was a relative of
the superintendent? At least, it seemed possible.
There was no chance just then to speak of the matter. Her mother and
the other women of the hospital committee were discussing excitedly
the case of the girls’ chorus, and how discordant it had sounded.
“I do not understand it,” said one of the members of the committee.
“You will all agree that at the school celebration Miss Allister had
them perfectly trained. I really expected them to do even better
here.”
“Oh, perhaps they will be all right when it comes to the night of
the concert itself,” rejoined one easy-going person. “They are only
girls, you know, after all.”
“But,” declared Mrs. Norwood vigorously, “they are old enough to
realize that this is an important thing. They should appreciate the
opportunity to aid in a good cause. At least I, for one, do not mean
to see the girls make our concert ridiculous. I know what is the
matter with that chorus.”
“Bully!” whispered Amy, under her breath.
“I think you speak rather harshly, Mrs. Norwood.” It was Mrs. Moon
who spoke. The Moons and the Ringolds “always worked in double
harness,” to quote Amy Drew. “Surely we cannot expect the girls to
take the matter as seriously as we do.”
“Why not?” Jessie’s mother demanded. “The hospital is for the poor
and the sick among women and children of our town. Every girl singing
in that chorus is quite old enough to understand that. You heard what
Mr. Stratford said. He cannot approve the chorus unless it sounds
better.”
“I am very sure Mrs. Ringold will not agree to having the chorus cut
out of the program!” Mrs. Moon exclaimed. “And I can see that is what
you are aiming at. If she were here——”
“Why isn’t Mrs. Ringold here?” interposed another of the members.
“She was too busy.”
“Really? And aren’t our private and personal affairs just as
important as Mrs. Ringold’s?” was the exclamation. “I approve of what
Mrs. Norwood says. Give Miss Allister one more chance. If the chorus
does not show up better at the next rehearsal, cut it out and find
other numbers to take the place of it.”
On the way home in the Norwood car Amy whispered to Jessie:
“Suppose they do cut out the chorus, Jess?”
“Well—if they do?” returned her chum.
“What I said before. We might get better parts. And get Nell Stanley
into it, too.”
“Oh, goody!” exclaimed Jessie, suddenly clapping her hands. “And
there is Bertha, too.”
“Bertha Blair?” asked Amy curiously.
“Yes. She wants to sing there. And perhaps she would be willing to
sing for the hospital fund and in that way get Mr. Blair interested
in her.”
“Mr. Blair—Bertha Blair. Humph! Funny, isn’t it?” drawled Amy. “But
on the other hand, there’s little Hen who is Bertha’s cousin. Guess
Mr. Blair is no relative of little Hen,” and the gay girl laughed.
Oddly enough the freckled little girl was the first person they saw
when the car rolled into the Norwood place. Henrietta, dressed in her
mended taffeta silk and silk stockings, stood on the lower step of
the house eagerly looking down the drive. The Roselawn girls had not
seen her since the week of the _Water Thrush_.
“Oh, Miss Jessie!” she cried when Chapman had brought the car to a
halt. “I got an invite for you; and for Miss Amy, too.”
“An ‘invite’?” asked Jessie, somewhat puzzled.
“Yep. It’s coming off to-night. Mrs. Foley almost forgot it.”
“What did she almost forget?” Jessie pursued, while, as usual, Amy
broke into laughter.
“’Tain’t nothing to laugh at,” declared the odd child. “But having
six—and all boys—it’s not to be wondered at.”
“Do tell us what it is you are trying to say?” begged the amused
Jessie. “And what have Mrs. Foley and her six boys got to do with it?”
“Everything,” said Henrietta promptly. “Anyway, Billy has something
to do with it. It’s his birthday and his party you’re invited to.”
“Oh, my goodness!” cried Amy. “Now I understand. Billy Foley is to
have a birthday party.”
“That’s what I said,” declared Henrietta complacently. “And Mrs.
Foley says if you two young ladies was to come it would please her
highly.”
It was evident that the invitation was couched very nearly in Mrs.
Foley’s own words. Jessie and Amy looked at each other and by
eye-signal agreed.
“Of course we will come, Henrietta,” said Jessie. “And we are very
glad that Mrs. Foley thought of us.”