“The Girls of Central High at Basketball; Or, The Great Gymnasium Mystery,” the third volume of the series, told of the girls when they had become juniors and related the struggle of the rival basketball teams of the three Centerport highs, and the high schools of Keyport and Lumberport, at either end of Lake Luna, for the trophy cup. That series of games had just been finished and Central High had won the trophy, when Laura and her friends, as members of the M. O. R., are again introduced to the reader’s notice at the opening of this chapter.
CHAPTER II—WHAT JOSEPHINE MORSE NEEDED
In spite of the bright lights illuminating the windows of the M. O. R. house—and many other larger and finer houses at that end of Whiffle Street—outside it was dark and dreary enough. Especially was this so at the “poverty-stricken end,” as Josephine Morse called her section of the street. Jess and her widowed mother lived on the fringe of the wealthy Hill district, where Whiffle Street develops an elbow, suddenly becomes narrow, and debouches upon Market Street.
It was raining, too. Not an honest, splashing downpour, but a drizzling, half-hearted rain that drifted about the streets as though ashamed of itself, leaving a deposit of slime on all the crosswalks, and making the corner street-lamps weep great tears. The gas-lamps, too, seemed in a fog and struggled feebly against the blackness of the evening.
Under a huge umbrella which snuffed her almost like a candle, Jess had made her way into Market Street and to Mr. Closewick’s grocery store near the corner. She carried a basket on her arm and she had given the clerk rather a long list of necessary things, although she had studied to make the quantities as modest as possible. The clerk had put them all up now and packed them into the basket and stood expectantly with the list checked off in his hand.
“Two dollars and seven cents, Miss Jess,” he said.
“I’ll have to ask you to add that to our bill,” said the girl, flushing. “Mother is short of money just now.”
“Wait a moment, Miss Jess; I’ll speak to Mr. Closewick,” said the clerk, seemingly as much embarrassed as the girl herself, and he stepped hastily toward the glass-enclosed office at the rear of the store.
But the pursy old man with the double chin and spectacles on his forehead, the height of which the wisp of reddish-gray hair could not hide, had observed it all. He got down ponderously from his stool and squeaked out behind the long counter in his shiny boots.
“I sent my bill over to your mother this morning, Miss Jess,” he said. “It is more than twenty dollars without this list of goods to-night,” and he shook the modest little paper in his hand, having taken it from the clerk.