She wished to shake Bobby off. She dared not take her into Mr. Vandergriff’s store. Suppose the butter and egg man should treat her as the grocer had?
“Say! you ought to be up there,” cried the unconscious Bobby. “I just came past the house and it was all lit up like – like a hotel. And Mr. Sharp was just coming out with Mrs. Kerrick. Mrs. Kerrick is going to do something big for us girls of Central High.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jess, only half interested in Bobby’s gossip.
“Going to give us a chance to win a prize, or something,” pursued Bobby.
“Oh! how do you know?” Jess showed more interest now.
“Why, I heard Mr. Sharp say, as he was helping Mrs. Kerrick into Colonel Swayne’s auto:
“‘The girls of Central High should be delighted, Mrs. Kerrick – and very grateful to you, indeed. Two hundred dollars! And a chance for any smart girl to win it!’ – just like that. Now, Jess, you and I are both smart girls, aren’t we?” demanded Bobby, roguishly.
“We think we are, at any rate,” returned Jess, more eagerly. “Two hundred dollars! Oh! wouldn’t that be fine!”
“It would buy a lot of candy and ice-cream sodas,” chuckled Bobby.
But to herself Jess Morse thought: “And it would mean the difference, for mother and me, between penury and independence! Oh, dear me! is it something that I can do to earn two hundred dollars?”
And she listened to Bobby’s surmises about the mysterious prize without taking in half what the younger girl was saying. Two hundred dollars! And she and her mother did not have a cent. She looked up and saw the lights of the butter and egg store just ahead, and sighed.
CHAPTER III – WHAT MR. CHUMLEY NEEDED
“Well, old Molly-grubs, I’ve got to leave you here,” said Bobby Hargrew, pinching the arm of Jess. “You’re certainly down in the mouth to-night. I never saw you so before. I’d like to know what the matter is with you,” complained Bobby, and ran off in the rain.
Jess was heartily glad to get rid of her; and it was seldom that she ever felt that way about Bobby. Bobby was the double distilled essence of cheerfulness.
But Jess felt as though nothing could cheer her to-night but the finding of a big, fat pocket-book on the street – one that “didn’t belong to nobody!” There wasn’t such an object in sight, however, along the glistening walk – the walk that glistened in the lamplight from Mr. Vandergriff’s store.
She positively had to try her luck at the butter and egg shop. The man could do no more than refuse her, that was sure.
But when Jess had lowered her umbrella and backed into the shop, she found several customers waiting at the counter. Mr. Vandergriff and his son, whom the boys called “Griff” and who played fullback on the Central High football team, were waiting upon these customers. Soon Griff was through with the man he was waiting on and came to Jess.
“What’s yours to-night, Miss Morse?” he asked, and was so cheerful about it that the girl’s heart rose. They didn’t owe Mr. Vandergriff such a large bill, anyway. The proprietor was waiting upon the lady who stood beside Jess as she gave her order to Griff. The lady was a very dressy person and she laid her silver-mesh purse on the counter between herself and Jess. The latter saw the glint of gold coins between the meshes of the purse and her heart throbbed. She moved quietly away from the lady. Wasn’t it wicked – seemingly – that one should have so much money, while another needed the very necessities of life?
“Thank you, Griff,” Jess heard herself saying to the younger Vandergriff, as he packed her modest order in the basket. “I shall have to ask you to charge that.”
“All right, Miss Morse. Nothing more to-night?”
“No,” said Jess, and went back and unhooked her umbrella from the edge of the counter where she had hung it, and started for the door. A bright-eyed man in a long blue raincoat who had been waited upon by Griff already was just then going out, and he held open the door for her. As she stepped out the girl saw that the rain was no longer falling – merely a mist clung about the street lamps. She did not raise her umbrella, but hurried toward home.
There was enough in her basket for breakfast, at least. She would wait until to-morrow – which was Saturday – before she went to the butcher’s. Perhaps something would happen. Perhaps in the morning mail there would be a check for her mother instead of a returned manuscript.
And all the time, while her feet flew homeward, she thought of the prize of two hundred dollars that Mrs. Mabel Kerrick was to offer for the girls of Central High to work for. What was the task? Could it be something that she excelled in?
Jess was almost tempted to wait up until the reception was over and then run to the Belding house and see her chum before Laura went to bed. Laura might know all about it.
Two hundred dollars!
Jess saw the words before her in dancing, rain-drop letters. They seemed to beckon her on, and in a few minutes she was at the cottage, just at the “elbow” of Whiffle Street, and came breathlessly into the kitchen.
The room was empty, and the fire in the stove was but a spark. Jess tiptoed to the sitting-room door and peered in. Her mother, wearing an ink-stained jacket, was busy at her desk, the pen scratching on the big sheets of pad paper. The typewriter was open, too, and the girl could see that the title and opening paragraphs of a new story had already been written on the machine.
“Genius burns again!” sighed Jess, and went back to remove her damp hat and jacket, and replenish the fire. Mother would want some tea by and by, if she worked late into the evening, and Jess drew the kettle forward.
She stood her umbrella behind the entry door, and removed her overshoes and put them under the range to dry. She had scarcely done so when a stumbling foot sounded on the porch. She opened the door before the visitor could knock, so that Mrs. Morse would not be disturbed.
“Why, Mr. Chumley!” she exclaimed, recognizing the withered little man who stood there.
“Oh! you’re home, are ye?” squeaked the landlord. “I was here a little while ago and nobody answered my knock, though I could hear that typewriter going rat, tat, tat all the time.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Chumley,” said Jess, hastily. “But you know how mother is when she’s busy. She hears nothing.”
“Humph!”
“Won’t you come in?” hesitated Jess, still holding the door. The rent was not due for a day or two, and he usually gave them a few days’ grace if they did not happen to have it right in the nick of time.
“I guess I will,” squeaked the landlord.
He was a little whiffet of a man – “looked like a figure on a New Year’s cake,” Bobby Hargrew said. His mouth was a mere slit in his gray, wrinkled face, and his eyes were so close together that the sharp bridge of his nose scarcely parted them.
Some landlords hire agents to attend to their property and to the collection of rents. Not so Mr. Chumley. He did not mind the trouble of collecting, and he could fight off repairs longer than any landlord in town. And the one-half of one per cent. collection fee was an item.
“Think I’ve come ahead of time, eh?” he cackled, rubbing his blue hands – as blue as a turkey’s foot, Jess thought – over the renewed fire. “It ain’t many days before rent’s due again. If ye have it handy ye can pay me now, Miss Josephine.”
“It isn’t handy, Mr. Chumley. We are shorter than usual just now,” said Jess, hating the phrase that comes so often to the lips of poverty.
“Well! well! Can’t expect money before it’s due, I s’pose,” said the old man, licking his thin lips. “And I’m afraid ye find it pretty hard to meet your bills at ’tis?” he added, his