HELPING THE GOOD WORK ALONG
The warning, brazen voice of the dinner gong, which Miss Remson rang but
once before each meal, broke in upon Jerry’s pertinent surmise. It was a
signal which called for postponing further conjecture in the matter.
“I’ve thought of Leslie Cairns more than once, Jerry, in connection with
both those letters,” Marjorie confessed as Jerry took the letters
Marjorie had carefully examined, folded them and tucked them into a
small leather portfolio. “Perhaps it’s been unfair in me to judge her by
past performances.”
“How could one help it? Come along, self-accusing Bean. I’m hungry
enough to eat all the dinner on our table, and give the rest of you not
a scrap. We’ll continue our amazing careers as private investigators
tonight after the ten-thirty bell is heard in the land and a grateful
hush has settled down on Room 15.”
During the busy, merry evening spent with Robin, Phil and the cast of
Silverton Hall payers, Marjorie had neither inclination nor opportunity
to consider the guilt or non-guilt of Leslie Cairns. As stage manager
Leila Harper combined more than usual efficiency with a drollness of
speech and manner which kept the amateur thespians in a constant gale of
giggles.
“Remember your cues and lines, or you’ll be walking into the middle
scenes where you’re neither expected nor wanted,” she warned her flock.
The play, a two-act comedy entitled “The House Party,” was a bright,
snappy little production written by Eileen Potter, a promising Silverton
Hall sophomore. Phil had advocated the first production of it as a house
play. The sophomore class would be the guests of the Silverton Hall
sophs on the eventful evening. The living room was to be turned into a
theatre. Phil had enlisted Robin’s, Marjorie’s and Leila’s services in
rehearsing it.
Her plan, into which Robin, Marjorie and Leila gladly entered, had a
triple motive. She was anxious that Eileen’s talent should be recognized
on the campus. She was determined that the unharmonious sophomore class
should be brought into harmony. She intended to hammer away at this plan
until she accomplished that harmony. Last of all, she liked giving house
plays. Phil had a soul even more bent on democracy than was that of
Marjorie, if such a condition could be. Robin often said to her: “Truly,
Phil, if you had lived in the days of ’76 you would have managed somehow
to annex your name to the Declaration of Independence.”
After the rehearsal the hard-working actors, managers and prompters were
treated to frozen custard and sponge cake by Barbara Severn. She
declared Leila to be a slave-driver and that the custard and cake were
needed by the cast as nourishment.
“If I am a slave-driver, why is it you are offering me custard and
cake?” Leila demanded, as Barbara presented her with a plate of the
frozen sweet.
“Merely because you have worked harder than your slaves. You are what I
should call a unique slave-driver,” Barbara sweetly explained.
“And you have far more good sense than you sometimes appear to have,”
Leila complimented. Whereupon the two beamed at each other and shook
hands.
“Don’t fail to be here for another rehearsal Thursday night and the
dress rehearsal on Saturday night,” were Leila’s parting words to the
cast, delivered in the middle of the front walk to the actor group who
had followed her out on the veranda.
She started across the campus in the pale winter moonlight with Marjorie
and Jerry, grumbling in pretended displeasure at the amount of things
she had to do during the next few days.
“Don’t say a word!” Marjorie exclaimed. “Two more rehearsals this week,
the Beauty contest on Friday night, Muriel’s birthday’s next Monday.
Saturday afternoon we have to go into town to buy presents. Monday
afternoon we’ll have to go over to Baretti’s to trim the birthday table.
Sunday I have to write letters, study and do a dozen and one small
things. I can say now I have nothing special on hand after Monday, but
long before then I’ll have a new lot of stunts planned for the rest of
next week.” Her tone grew more despairing with each enumeration.
“You have so much trouble, Beauty, I’ll say nothing of my own,” was
Leila’s commiserating return, delivered with an unsympathetic grin. “I
am like an Irish fish out of water without Midget. That much I will
say.” Vera had gone to New York for a few days’ visit with her father
before he sailed on an all-winter cruise on the Mediterranean.
“I never saw an Irish fish. How does an Irish fish look?” Jerry
critically demanded.
“Like me. Did you not just hear me say it?” Leila retorted.
“I must go to the Arms to see Miss Susanna this week,” Marjorie observed
irrelevantly. No one appeared to be interested in her announcement.
Jerry and Leila were conducting a laughing argument which had to do with
Irish and non-Irish fishes.
“I love to talk to myself,” she made plaintive complaint when Jerry and
Leila finally paused for breath.
“And I had far rather talk to you, Beauty, than to some P. G.’s I know,”
Leila assured with deep meaning.
“You may talk to _me_, Bean,” Jerry graciously permitted. “I am
appreciative.”
During the remainder of the short hike across the campus Marjorie became
the laughing, but unimpressed, recipient of flattering attention.
“Jerry,” she burst out abruptly, soon after the two girls were in their
own room, “it isn’t enough for us to say to each other that we are glad
Miss Walker didn’t write that letter. It is not fair to her not to tell
her the whole thing. Do you think it is?”
Jerry cocked her head to one side and considered. “Nope,” she answered
after due deliberation. “I suppose she ought to be informed that she is
not the villain we took her to be. It may take marvelous managing by
Marvelous Manager to tell her the awful truth without rousing her ire.
According to Gentleman Gus she is anything but a lamb-like person when
she isn’t pleased.”
“Would you be willing to go with me to see her?” Marjorie asked, her
brown eyes meditatively fixed on Jerry. “You are as——”
“Deep in the mud as you are in the mire,” supplied Jerry humorously.
“Something like that,” Marjorie agreed with a smile. “The letter was
sent to me in the first place, but the credit of the discovery that Miss
Walker didn’t write it belongs to you.”
“I’m not likely to pick any bouquets in such a briar patch,” shrugged
Jerry. “Don’t want em. More likely she’ll get wrathful at us when she
finds, we have kept the forged letter so long without going to her and
having matters out. But Jeremiah is not afraid. Let us hope she behaves
like the letter she really wrote.”
In the act of removing one of her slippers, Jerry took it by the strap.
Waving it jauntily she launched into a Bean jingle.
“Upon the haughty soph we’ll call
To clear her tarnished name;
For we have seen, O, noble Bean,
That she was not to blame.”
“That was an inspired jingle, Jeremiah,” Marjorie approved, her face
singularly sunny. “Miss Walker is not to blame. Since we know she isn’t,
we should be, if we didn’t hurry to tell her so.”
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