THE ICE CARNIVAL
"Oh, Miss Laura! Do you really mean it?" murmured Janet Steele, her full pink cheeks actually becoming white she was so much in earnest.
"Of course we mean it," Jess Morse said practically. "And glad to have you."
"I don't know--"
Janet looked for a moment at the sulky-faced Lily Pendleton. Jess immediately pulled that young girl forward.
"Why, Lil isn't half as bad as she sounds," declared Jess, laughing. "This is our very particular friend, Janet Steele, Lil. You've got to treat her nicely. If you don't," she added sharply, "you'll never get a chance to go camping with us girls again as you did last summer. You and your Hester Grimes can go off somewhere by yourselves."
Really, Lily Pendleton had improved a good deal since the time Jess mentioned, and the latter's blunt speech brought her to a better mind at once.
"Well, of course," she said, offering Janet her hand, "I did not mean it just that way. You know how cranky Hessie is when she does get mad. But Laura has suggested a perfectly splendid idea. Miss Steele as a Red Cross girl and Chet as Uncle Sam will be fine to lead the grand march on skates."
So it was decided, and they hurried Janet down to the girls' boathouse, which had a warm, cozy clubroom at one end where Mr. Godey, the watchman, stayed, and where, at this time of year, he was often busy sharpening skates. Laura found a pair of skates for the Red Cross girl, and for an hour the latter practiced with the girls of Central High the steps and figures of the masquerade parade, which Laura and her friends already had worked out to perfection.
"Don't worry a bit about to-night, Janet," Laura told her, when they all hurried away from the lakeshore about dusk. "We'll push you through the figures. Jess and I will be on either side of you, except when we pair off with the boys. And then you will be with my brother Chet. And if he isn't nice to you he'll hear from me!" she added with vigor.
"Oh, but Laura!" whispered Jess Morse, as they separated from Janet, "Chet mustn't be too nice to her. For Janet Steele is an awfully pretty girl."
"Now, dear!" exclaimed her laughing chum, "don't develop incipient jealousy."
With only two hours before them in which to do a hundred things, the girls were as busy as bees for the remainder of the afternoon. That Hester Grimes had been forbidden to take part in the carnival by Gee Gee troubled the girls of Central High less than they might have been troubled had it been almost any other of their number that the strict teacher had demerited. For, to tell the truth, Hester Grimes was not well loved.
The daughter and much-indulged only child of a wealthy butcher, Hester had in the beginning expected to be catered to by her schoolmates. With such rather shallow schoolmates as Lily Pendleton, Hester was successful. Lily toadied to her, to use Bobby Hargrew's expression; nor was Lily alone in this.
Upon those whom Hester considered her friends she spent her pocket money lavishly. She was not a pretty girl, but was a tremendously healthy one--strong, well developed, and tomboyish in her activities. Yet she lacked magnetism and the popularity that little Bobby Hargrew, for instance, attained by the exercise of the very same traits Hester possessed.
Hester antagonized almost everybody--teachers and students alike. Even placid, peace-loving Mother Wit, found Hester incompatible. And because Laura Belding was a natural leader and was very popular in the school, Hester disliked her and showed in every way possible that she would not follow in Laura's train. Yet there had been a time when Hester had felt under obligation to Laura.
Laura was secretly glad to see Lily Pendleton weaned slowly away from the butcher's daughter. The last summer had started Lily in the right direction, and although the overdressed girl had still some weaknesses of character to overcome, she had greatly improved, as this incident of the afternoon revealed.
Lily was not alone in complaining about Miss Carrington's harshness, however. It was the principal topic of conversation when the girls gathered in the boathouse rooms to prepare for the races and the features that were to precede the principal attraction of the carnival--the masquerade grand march.
"Sh! She's right here now," whispered Bobby Hargrew sepulchrally, coming into the dressing-room. "She's on watch at the door."
"Who?" asked Jess Morse.
"Not Hester?" cried Lily. "She told me she wouldn't come down here!"
"Gee Gee," shot back Bobby, with pursed lips. "She is going to be sure that Hester doesn't appear."
"Mean thing!" Nellie Agnew said. And when the doctor's gentle daughter made such a statement she had to be fully aroused. "She thinks she has spoiled the whole act!"
"I believe you," Bessie Yeager said. "I wonder if Miss Carrington really sleeps at night?"
"Why not, Bess?" cried Dora Lockwood.
"I think she lies awake thinking up mean things to do to us."
"Oh, oh!" murmured Nellie.
"I bet you!" exclaimed the slangy Bobby.
"Careful, girls. If she hears you!" warned Laura.
"Then you would be 'perspicuous au grautin,' as the fellow said," chuckled Bobby. "There! the whistle has sounded."
"The fête has begun," sighed Jess. "I do hope everything will go off right."
"The boys are taking in money all right," Laura said with satisfaction. "I believe we shall make a thousand dollars for the Red Cross."
"I hope so," said her chum. "Come on, girls! It's first the fancy skating before the ice arena is all cut up."
The effort to make the Ice Carnival of the Central High a success was aided by a perfect evening and perfect ice. The latter had been shaved and smoothed over every gnarly place. There was not a single crack in which a skate could be caught to throw the wearer. The arena roped off from the spectators was as smooth as a ballroom floor.
It was about two acres in extent. Around three sides of the roped-off space there was a roped-off alley with boards laid upon the ice upon which the spectators could stand. Uprights held the strings of colored lights which were supplied with electricity from the city lighting company; for this was not the first exhibition of the kind that had been staged upon Lake Luna.
Around the alley allotted to the audience, each member of which had to pay a half dollar for a ticket, was a guarded space so that those who did not pay entrance fee could not get near enough to enjoy the spectacle.
The short-distance races, following the figure skating, were all within the oval of the principal arena. Then the ropes were taken down at one end and the long-distance races came off, a mile track having been marked with staffs upon the ice, staffs which now held the clusters of colored lanterns.
For two hours the company was so well amused that few were driven away by the cold--and it was an intensely cold night The ringing of the skates on the almost adamantine ice revealed the fact that Jack Frost had a tight clutch on the waters of Lake Luna.
"I wish my mother could have seen this," Janet Steele murmured to Laura Belding. "I think it is like fairyland."
"Isn't it pretty? Now comes the torchlight procession. The boys arranged this their own selves. See if it isn't pretty!"
The short end of the oval had been closed again after the long-distance races, and now there dashed into the arena from the boys' lane to the dressing-rooms a long line of figures in dominos, each bearing a colored light. They were the boys that could skate the best--the most sure-footed.
Back and forth, around and around, in and out and across! The swift movement of the figures was well nigh bewildering; while the intermingling of colored lights, their weaving in and out, made a brilliant pattern that brought applause again and again from the spectators.
Then the boys divided, taking stations some distance apart, and the torches were tossed from hand to hand, as Indian clubs are tossed in gymnasium exercises. The effect was spectacular and seemed a much more difficult exercise than it really was.
Meanwhile the girls selected for the masquerade were dressing in the boathouse. Their masquerade costumes were as diverse and elaborate as though it were a ball they were attending. There was no dress as simple as Janet Steele's Red Cross uniform; yet with her glowing face and sparkling eyes and white teeth there were few more effective figures in the party.
She had proved herself to be a fine and strong skater. Laura and Jess, who sponsored her, were delighted with the new girl's appearance on the ice. She had learned, too, her part quite perfectly. When the girls first came out and the boys darted back to get into their fancy costumes, the summary of the figures the girls wove on the ice were already known to Janet. She fulfilled her part.
Then returned the boys, "all rigged out," Bobby said, and the masquerade parade began. The crowd standing about the arena cheered and shouted. It really was a most attractive grand march, and there chanced, better still, to be no accident. Smoothly the young people wended their way about the ice, their skates ringing, their supple bodies swaying in time to the music, led by those two masks of Uncle Sam and the Red Cross girl.
"It is lovely," Mrs. Belding said to her husband. "What a fine skater our Chetwood is, Henry. And it is so near Christmas! I hope that bank-note will turn out to be a good one so that he will not lose the money," she finished wistfully.
"There, there!" said the jeweler. "I'll go to see Monroe to-morrow. He's at home again."