The Crimson Sweater

by Ralph Henry Barbour

So Harry and the two instructors were duly admitted, and the meeting went into the plans for the entertainment. Sid, one of the most enthusiastic members present, reminded everyone that he could play the banjo, and Jack promised to let him do his worst. Roy was elected temporary captain and manager and Jack temporary treasurer. Then an assessment of fifty cents each was levied and Jack spent the best part of three days collecting the sums. He, Roy, Chub and two others had gone down into their pockets and advanced the money for the goals, sticks and pucks, and with Christmas Recess drawing near they were anxious to get some of it back. The rink was to be paid for in January and the pump on its arrival. It was going to be necessary to collect something over sixty dollars from the entertainment, and the committee was getting anxious. There was little time for rehearsal, and, with Horace and Otto doing all in their power to throw cold water on the scheme, Roy and his friends had plenty to worry them.

But Harry proved a brick. She went into it to the present exclusion of all else and made things hum. She talked it up everywhere she went with the result that the affair was extensively advertised before it was well on foot. Harry attended a girls' academy at Silver Cove, and she wasn't satisfied until every pupil there had faithfully promised to attend the entertainment. She also persuaded Mr. Buckman to take part, something that Jack and the others had failed at. Mr. Cobb had already consented to sing and do a monologue. Then Harry devised costumes and found them, levying on the wardrobes of most of her friends and acquaintances. And in spite of the fact that she and Chub and Jack and Roy met at least twice a day she still maintained her air of polite indifference toward the latter.

When the morning of the day of the entertainment arrived affairs seemed in the wildest chaos and even Harry lost her head for awhile. Some of the promised participators had backed down at the last moment, the principal soloist had a bad cold, the stage was still unbuilt, several of the costumes were yet wanting and Harris and Kirby, down for a duet and dance, weren't on speaking terms! And just as though all that wasn't enough to drive the committee distracted, Chub had appeared at breakfast with a long face and announced that he had forgotten to mail the poster to Hammond Academy. In support of the assertion he produced it, stamped and addressed. It had been lying in his pocket for three days. As Hammond with its seventy-odd students had been counted on to send quite a delegation, this was a hard blow. But Jack, with the cheerfulness of desperation, obtained permission to deliver the poster by messenger and sent Sid Welch across the river with it at nine o'clock.

That was certainly a day of troubles. Luckily there were few recitations for anyone. Jack and Chub spent most of the morning directing and aiding in the erection of the stage at the end of the gymnasium. The stage was a sectional affair which, when not in use, was stored in the furnace room. Unfortunately one section seemed to be missing, and putting the thing together was, as Chub said, like joining one of those geographical puzzles.

"You know the things, Jack; they're cut up with a scroll-saw into all sorts of wiggly pieces, and Florida insists on getting next to New Hampshire and Illinois won't fit anywhere except between South Carolina and Georgia."

"There must be a piece of this missing," answered Jack. "I'm going to have another look."

And presently he came back staggering under what looked like a length of board walk.

"Funny you fellows couldn't find this," he said disgustedly as he swung one end around against the wall and brought down six pairs of dumb-bells. "It was right in plain sight; they were using it for a carpenter's bench."

"It is funny," growled Warren. "Wonder they didn't make an ice-chest or a sewing-machine out of it!"

After that it was plain sailing until they came to the curtain. It was a beautiful thing, that curtain, fourteen feet wide and twelve feet long and bearing a picture of Niagara Falls in blue, green, purple and pink surrounded by a wreath of crimson cabbages—only they were supposed to be roses. Despite its beauty, work up and down it would not. Half way up it began to range itself in artistic folds, apparently forgetting all about the wooden roller at the bottom. Once it came down unexpectedly on Chub's head, and Chub danced around and shook his fist at it and declared that he'd cut holes in it for two cents. No one offered to put up the two cents and so the curtain was saved. In the end Jack manufactured a new pulley-block and after that the foolish thing worked charmingly every other time.