But before the boys met "Bill" in front of the town hall, the president of the Student Council, Frank Fenton, and Will Mears, president of the Junior class, had held a conference with Mr. Edmonds, the most influential member, some said, next to the president, Cameron Jordan, a cousin of the old and respected physician. The result of this conference was that Bill McCormack held in his fat, red hands a sheaf of papers which allotted the streets to the four classes and took the decision quite away from him.
"I was told to give these papers to the heads of the gangs," said Mr. McCormack, smiling expansively. "Here ye are—Senior, Junior, Sophomore, Freshman—them's your working papers, me lads, and now off with ye; the shovels ye'll be finding in the basement of the hall."
Jack Welles glanced at the slip of paper handed him, folded it up and stuffed it in his pocket. As soon as his "gang" was fitted out with snow shovels, he marched them away in the wake of one of the lumbering wagons that was to carry the snow off to a vacant field on the outskirts of the town.
"What did we draw, Jack?" asked Norman Cox curiously.
"Plummers Lane," said Jack laconically.
Plummers Lane, was the nearest approach to a "slumming section" that Eastshore possessed. The idle, the shiftless and the vicious congregated there, living in tumbled down shacks in the winter and the middle of the streets, in summer. There were two factories, one a novelty works, the other a canning and candy factory and the "dump lot" bounded the Lane on the north and the jail on the south. Altogether it was not the choicest portion which could fall to the lot of the young snow cleaners.
"It's enough to make you want to resign from the dramatic club!" exclaimed Kenneth Vail, who, in common with the other boys, labored under no delusion that chance fortune had sent them to Plummers Lane.
"If you had only put some one else in my place—" began Eustice Gray uncomfortably, but seven voices immediately shouted to him, in friendly chorus to "dry up."
"We'll make Plummers Lane look sick," declared Jack. "From the looks of it, I don't think there's been a shovel down here since the first snow. If the S. C. thinks they have marked more off for us than we can clean up, we'll show them! Here goes for the first shovel—out of the way, Mike!"
The grinning driver reined in his team and dodged as Jack hurled a heavy shovelful over the side of the cart. The other boys followed suit and twelve strong, sturdy backs bent to their task. The population of Plummers Lane, that part of it visible by day, draped itself along the curb to watch operations and hand out advice, but any more practical help was not offered or expected.