CHAINS ON HIS WHEELS
"How came you to meet Janet?" asked Laura Belding, remembering what her
brother had first told her about the Red Cross girl.
"She was coming my way, of course."
"Coming your way?" Laura repeated, her eyebrows raised questioningly. "Oh!
I see! You met her at the hospital."
"You said a forkful," declared the slangy youth.
"Dear me, Chet," Laura observed soberly. "I think your slang is becoming
atrocious. So Janet was down there!"
"She had been calling on our friend with the broken leg, too," said Chet.
"She does seem interested in him, doesn't she?" Laura said thoughtfully. "I
wonder why?"
"Because her mother's half-brother went to Alaska years ago and they never
heard of him again," said Chet. "She told me."
"Oh!"
"Nothing wonderful about that," the brother declared.
"It is interesting."
"To them, I suppose," said Chet "But why don't you ask Miss Steele to join
you girls in the play you are getting up?"
"I never thought of it," confessed Laura.
"Your thought-works are out of kilter, Sis," declared Chet, laughing again.
"I'd certainly play Miss Steele off against the menace of Hester Grimes."
There was something besides mere sound in Chet Belding's advice, and his
sister appreciated the fact. But she did not go bluntly to the other girls
and suggest the Red Cross girl for the part of "the dark lady." She
realized that, if the new girl could act, she would amply fill the part in
the play. But Hester was supposed to have it now, and the very next day Mr.
Mann gave that candidate an hour's training in the part Hester was supposed
to fill.
When they all came together for rehearsal again the second day, Hester
Grimes was present and she showed the effect of Mr. Mann's personal help.
Yet her work was so stiffly done, and she was so awkward, that it seemed to
most of the girls that she was bound to hurt and hinder rather than help in
the production.
"She'd put a crimp in anything," declared Bobby Hargrew, as the Hill girls
went home that afternoon.
The streets in this residential section had been pretty well cleared of
snow, and people had their automobiles out once more.
"Say, Jess!" exclaimed Bobby.
"Say it," urged Josephine Morse. "I promise not to bite you."
"If Hester plays that part, what are they going to do with her hands and
feet?" asked the unkind Bobby.
"Oh, hush!" exclaimed Laura.
"Well, when she's supposed to pick the rose and hold it up to the light,
and kiss it, her hand is going to look like a full-grown lobster--and just
as red."
"Girls, we must not!" begged Laura. "Somebody will surely tell Hester what
we say, and then--"
"She'll refuse to play," said Jess.
"Oh, fine, _fine_!" murmured one of the Lockwood twins.
"If we get her mad it will do no good," Nellie Agnew said. "Maybe then she
will insist on being 'the dark lady.'"
The boys were on the corner of Nugent Street waiting for the girls to come
along.
"How goes the battle, Laura?" asked Lance Darby. "Have you learned your
part yet?"
"I thought I had," sighed Laura. "But when I come to take cues and try to
remember the business of the piece, I forget my lines."
"This being leading lady is pretty tough on Mother Wit," laughed Chet.
"Oh, my!" exclaimed Bobby Hargrew suddenly. "Here comes Pretty Sweet in his
car. Why! he's got Lil with him. I thought that was all over."
They gaily hailed the driver of the automobile and his companion as the
vehicle passed. Short and Long, with gloomy face, watched the car out of
sight.
"Well," he growled, "he's got nonskid-chains on his wheels to-day, all
right."
"Chains on his wheels, Billy?" asked Bobby. "What do you mean? Doesn't he
always have them on in winter?"
"Humph! He forgot 'em once, anyway."
"Hey, Billy!" exclaimed Chet Belding, "you are skidding yourself, aren't
you?"
"Aw----"
"Least said soonest mended," added Lance, likewise giving the smaller boy a
quick, stern look.
"Oh, I see!" muttered Bobby, searching the flushed face of Short and Long.
"Say, Billy----"
But Short and Long started on a quick trot for home, and left his friends
to stare after him. It was Bobby who did most of the staring, however. She
said to Jess and Laura, after they had parted from the other boys:
"What do you know about that boy? I'm just wise to him. I believe I know
what is the matter with Short and Long."
"Do you mean," asked Laura, "what makes him act so to Purt?"
"You have guessed my meaning, Mother Wit."
"What is the trouble between them?" demanded Jess. "Although Billy never
was much in love with Purt Sweet."
"Don't you two girls remember the Saturday night that man was hurt on
Market Street?"
"I should say I do remember it!" Laura agreed. "He is in the hospital yet,
and he doesn't know who he is or where he came from."
"Oh, it's nothing to do with his identity," Bobby hastened to say. "It is
about the car that ran him down. You know the police never have found the
guilty driver."
"Goodness!" gasped Jess. "You surely don't mean----"
"I mean that the car had no chains on its rear wheels. That is all that was
noticed about it Nobody got the number. But I heard Short and Long say he
knew somebody who had been driving a car that day without chains. And the
boys left us, didn't they, to look up the car?"
"What has that to do with Purt Sweet?" demanded Laura.
"Why, you heard what Billy just said about him and his chains!" cried
Bobby. "'He's got nonskid-chains on his wheels to-day, all right.' Didn't
you hear him? And he's had a grouch against Pretty Sweet ever since the
time--about--that the man was hurt."
"Oh, Purt wouldn't have done such a thing. He might have run the man down;
but he would never have run off and left him in the street!"
"I don't know," Jess said. "He'd be frightened half to death, of course, if
he did knock the man down."
"I do not believe Prettyman Sweet is heartless," declared Laura warmly.
"The boys are making a mistake. I'm going to tell Chet so."
But when she took her brother to task about this matter she could not get
Chet to admit a thing. He refused to say anything illuminating about the
car that had run down the stranger at the hospital, or if the boys
suspected anybody in particular.
"If we think we know anything, I can't tell you," Chet declared "Billy?
Why, he's always sore at Purt Sweet. You can't tell anything by him!"
Just the same it was evident that the boys were hiding much from their girl
chums; and, of course, that being the case, the girls were made all the
more curious.