Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School Part 15

"Yes," admitted Grace. "I am just as enthusiastic over basketball as ever, only I haven't had the time to devote to it that I did last year."

"Never mind, you'll make up for lost time after Thanksgiving," said Anne soothingly. "As for me, I'm going to dream about the play."

"Anne, I believe you have more love for the stage than you will admit,"

said Grace, laughing. "You are all taken up with the idea of this play."

"If one could live in the same atmosphere as that of home, then there could be no profession more delightful than that of the actor," replied Anne thoughtfully. "It is wonderful to feel that one is able to forget one's self and become some one else. But it is more wonderful to make one's audience feel it, too. To have them forget that one is anything except the living, breathing person whose character one is trying to portray. I suppose it's the sense of power that one has over people's emotions that makes acting so fascinating. It is the other side that I hate," she added, with a slight shudder.

"I suppose theatrical people do undergo many hards.h.i.+ps," said Grace, who, now that the subject had been opened, wanted to hear more of Anne's views of the stage.

"Unless any girl has remarkable talent, I should advise her to keep off the stage," said Anne decidedly. "Of course when a girl comes of a theatrical family for generations, like Maud Adams or Ethel Barrymore, then that is different. She is practically born, bred and brought up in the theatre. She is as carefully guarded as though she lived in a little village, simply because she knows from babyhood all the unpleasant features of the profession and how to avoid them. There is some chance of her becoming great, too. Of course real stars do appear once in a while, who are too talented to be kept down. However, the really great ones are few and far between. When I compare my life before I came here with the good times I have had since I met you girls, I hate the very idea of the stage.

"Only," she concluded with a shame-faced air, "there are times when the desire to act is irresistible, and it did make my heart beat a little bit faster when I heard about the play."

"You dear little mouse," said Grace, putting her arm around Anne. "I was only jesting when I spoke about your love for the stage. I think I understand how you feel, and I hope you get the best part in the play.

I know you'll make good."

"She certainly will," said Nora. "But, to give the play a rest and come down to everyday affairs, where shall we meet to go to the football game?"

"Let me see," said Grace. "The game is to be called at three o'clock.

I suppose we shall all be through dinner by half past two. You had better bring your girls to my house. Each of you is to have two and Jessica has one besides Mabel. I am to have three; I found another yesterday. David promised to get me the tickets. I wonder how he and Hippy will enjoy chaperoning thirteen girls?"

"I won't have the slightest chance to talk to Hippy," grumbled Nora, "and he has neglected us shamefully of late, too."

"Never mind, you can have him all to yourself at my party," consoled Grace. "By the way, girls, do you think it would be of any use to invite Eleanor?"

"Eleanor?" exclaimed Nora. "After what she has said to you! You might as well throw your invitation into the fire, for it's safe to say that she will do so when she receives it."

Nevertheless, Grace wrote a cordial little note to Eleanor that evening, and two days later she received Eleanor's reply through the mail. On opening the envelope the pieces of her own note fell out, with a half sheet of paper containing the words, "Declined with thanks."

CHAPTER XII

A RECKLESS CHAUFFEUR

Thanksgiving Day dawned bright and clear, with just enough frost in the air to make one's blood tingle. It had been a mild fall, with a late Indian summer, and only one or two snow flurries that had lasted but a few hours. This was unusual for Oakdale, as winter generally came with a rush before the middle of November, and treated the inhabitants of that northern city to a taste of zero weather long before the Christmas holidays.

It was with a light heart that Grace Harlowe ate her breakfast and flitted about the house, putting a final touch here and there before receiving her guests. Before eleven o'clock everything was finished, and as she arranged the last flower in its vase she felt a little thrill of pride as she looked about the pretty drawing room. Before going upstairs to dress, she ran into the reception hall for the fourth time to feast her eyes upon a huge bunch of tall chrysanthemums in the beautiful j.a.panese vase that stood in the alcove under the stairs. They had come about an hour before with a note from Tom Gray saying that he had arrived in Oakdale that morning, had seen the boys and would be around to help David and Reddy at the "girl convention," as he termed it.

Grace was overjoyed at the idea of seeing Tom Gray again. They had been firm friends since her freshman year, and had entertained a wholesome, boy-and-girl preference for each other untinged by any trace of foolish sentimentality.

As she dressed for dinner, Grace felt perfectly happy except for one thing. She still smarted a little at Eleanor's rude reply to her invitation. She was one of those tender-hearted girls who disliked being on bad terms with any one, and she really liked Eleanor still, in spite of the fact that Eleanor did not in the least return the sentiment.

Grace sighed a little over the rebuff, and then completely forgot her trouble as she donned the new gown that had just come from the dressmaker. It was of Italian cloth in a beautiful shade of dark red, made in one piece, with a yoke of red and gold net, and trimmed with tiny enameled b.u.t.tons. It fitted her straight, slender figure perfectly and she decided that for once she had been wise in foregoing her favorite blue and choosing red.

The party that evening was to be a strictly informal affair. Grace had suspected that the girls whom the members of the Phi Sigma Tau were to entertain were not likely to possess evening gowns. In order to avoid any possibility of hurt feelings, she had quietly requested those invited to wear the afternoon gowns in which they would appear at the game.

Before one o'clock her guests had arrived. They were three shy, quiet girls who had wors.h.i.+ped Grace from a distance, and who had been surprised almost to tears by her invitation. Two of them were from Portville, a small town about seventy miles from Oakdale, and had begun High School with Grace, who had been too busy with her own affairs up to the present to find out much about them.

The other girl, Marie Bateman, had entered the cla.s.s that year. She had come from a little village forty miles south of Oakdale, was the oldest of a large family, her mother being a widow of very small means. As her mother was unable to send her away to school, she had done clerical work for the only lawyer in the home town for the previous two years, studying between whiles. She had entered the High School in the junior cla.s.s, determining to graduate and then to work her way through Normal School. By dint of questioning, Grace had discovered that she lived in a shabby little room in the suburbs, never went anywhere and did anything honest in the way of earning money that she could find to do.

The realization of what some of these girls were willing to endure for the sake of getting an education made Grace feel guilty at being so comfortably situated. She determined that the holidays that year should not find them without friends and cheer.

After a rousing Thanksgiving dinner, in which the inevitable turkey, with all its toothsome accompaniments, played a prominent part, the girls retired to Grace's room for a final adjustment of hair and a last survey in the mirror before going to the game. High School matters formed the princ.i.p.al theme of conversation, and Grace was not surprised to learn that Eleanor had been carrying things with a high hand in third-year French cla.s.s, in which Ellen Holt, one of the Portville girls, recited.

"She speaks French as well as Professor La Roche," said Miss Holt, "but she nearly drives him crazy sometimes. She will pretend she doesn't understand him and will make him explain the construction of a sentence over and over again, or she will argue with him about a point until he loses his temper completely. She makes perfectly ridiculous caricatures of him, and leaves them on his desk when cla.s.s is over, and she asks him to translate impertinent slang phrases, which he does, sometimes, before he realizes how they are going to sound. Then the whole cla.s.s laughs at him. She certainly makes things lively in that cla.s.s."

The sound of the bell cut short the chat and the four girls hurried downstairs to greet Jessica, Mabel and the girls who were the Bright's guests. Nora and Anne, with their charges, came next, and last of all David, Tom and Hippy paraded up the walk, in single file, blowing l.u.s.tily on tin horns and waving blue and white banners. A brief season of introduction followed, then Grace distributed blue and white rosettes with long streamers that she had made for the occasion, to each member of the party. Well supplied with Oakdale colors, they set out for the football grounds, where an immense crowd of people had gathered to see the big game of the season.

"I shall never forget the first football game I saw in Oakdale," said Anne to David as they made their way to the grandstand. "It ended very sensationally for me."

"I should say it did," replied David, smiling. "Confidentially, Anne, do you ever hear from your father?"

"Not very often," replied Anne. "He is not liable to trouble me again, however, because he knows that I will not go back to the stage, no matter what he says. He was with the western company of 'True Hearts'

last year, but I don't know where he is now, and I don't care. Don't think I'm unfeeling; but it is impossible for me to care for him, even though he is my father."

"I understand," said David sympathetically. "Now let's forget him and have a good time."

"Hurrah! Here comes the band!" shouted Hippy.

The "Oakdale Military Band" took their places in the improvised bandstand and began a short concert before the game with the "Stars and Stripes," while the spectators unconsciously kept time with their feet to the inspiring strains.

When the two teams appeared on the field there were shouts of enthusiasm from the friends of the players, and the band burst forth with the High School song, in which the students joined.

After the usual preliminaries, the game began, and for the next hour everything else was forgotten save the battle that waged between the two teams.

Miriam Nesbit, Eva Allen and Marian Barber, with their guests, joined Grace's party, and soon the place they occupied became the very center of enthusiasm. Reddy, who was playing left end on the home team, received an ovation every time he made a move, and when towards the end of the game he made a touchdown, his friends nearly split their loyal throats in expressing their approval.

It was over at last, and Oakdale had won a complete victory over the Georgetown foe, who took their defeat with becoming grace. As soon as Reddy could free himself from the grasp of his school fellows, who would have borne him from the field in triumph if he had not stoutly resisted, he hurried to his friends, who showered him with congratulations.

"O you t.i.tian-haired star!" cried Hippy, clasping his hands in mock admiration. "You are the rarest jewel in the casket. Words fail to express my feelings.

"'O joy, O bliss, O rapture! Let happiness now hap!

I am a sea of gurgling glee, with ecstacy on tap.'"

Hippy recited this effusion in a killing falsetto voice, and endeavored to embrace Reddy fervently, but was dragged back by Tom and David, to Reddy's visible relief.

"He's the idol of the hour. Don't put your irreverent hands on him," was David's injunction.

"But I adore idols," persisted Hippy. "Let me at him."

"Quit it, fat one!" growled Reddy, with a grin. "I'll settle with you later."

With gay laughter and jest, the young folks made their way from the grounds and started down the road toward home.

The whole party, walking four abreast, had just turned the curve where the road ended and Main Street began, when there was a hoa.r.s.e honk!