CHAPTER XXIV.HELPING THE GOOD WORK ALONG
The warning, brazen voice of the dinner gong, which Miss Remson rang but once before each meal, broke in upon Jerry’s pertinent surmise. It was a signal which called for postponing further conjecture in the matter.
“I’ve thought of Leslie Cairns more than once, Jerry, in connection with both those letters,” Marjorie confessed as Jerry took the letters Marjorie had carefully examined, folded them and tucked them into a small leather portfolio. “Perhaps it’s been unfair in me to judge her by past performances.”
“How could one help it? Come along, self-accusing Bean. I’m hungry enough to eat all the dinner on our table, and give the rest of you not a scrap. We’ll continue our amazing careers as private investigators tonight after the ten-thirty bell is heard in the land and a grateful hush has settled down on Room 15.”
During the busy, merry evening spent with Robin, Phil and the cast of Silverton Hall payers, Marjorie had neither inclination nor opportunity to consider the guilt or non-guilt of Leslie Cairns. As stage manager Leila Harper combined more than usual efficiency with a drollness of speech and manner which kept the amateur thespians in a constant gale of giggles.
“Remember your cues and lines, or you’ll be walking into the middle scenes where you’re neither expected nor wanted,” she warned her flock.
The play, a two-act comedy entitled “The House Party,” was a bright, snappy little production written by Eileen Potter, a promising Silverton Hall sophomore. Phil had advocated the first production of it as a house play. The sophomore class would be the guests of the Silverton Hall sophs on the eventful evening. The living room was to be turned into a theatre. Phil had enlisted Robin’s, Marjorie’s and Leila’s services in rehearsing it.
Her plan, into which Robin, Marjorie and Leila gladly entered, had a triple motive. She was anxious that Eileen’s talent should be recognized on the campus. She was determined that the unharmonious sophomore class should be brought into harmony. She intended to hammer away at this plan until she accomplished that harmony. Last ofall, she liked giving house plays. Phil had a soul even more bent on democracy than was that of Marjorie, if such a condition could be. Robin often said to her: “Truly, Phil, if you had lived in the days of ’76 you would have managed somehow to annex your name to the Declaration of Independence.”
After the rehearsal the hard-working actors, managers and prompters were treated to frozen custard and sponge cake by Barbara Severn. She declared Leila to be a slave-driver and that the custard and cake were needed by the cast as nourishment.
“If I am a slave-driver, why is it you are offering me custard and cake?” Leila demanded, as Barbara presented her with a plate of the frozen sweet.
“Merely because you have worked harder than your slaves. You are what I should call a unique slave-driver,” Barbara sweetly explained.
“And you have far more good sense than you sometimes appear to have,” Leila complimented. Whereupon the two beamed at each other and shook hands.
“Don’t fail to be here for another rehearsal Thursday night and the dress rehearsal on Saturday night,” were Leila’s parting words to the cast, delivered in the middle of the front walk to theactor group who had followed her out on the veranda.
She started across the campus in the pale winter moonlight with Marjorie and Jerry, grumbling in pretended displeasure at the amount of things she had to do during the next few days.
“Don’t say a word!” Marjorie exclaimed. “Two more rehearsals this week, the Beauty contest on Friday night, Muriel’s birthday’s next Monday. Saturday afternoon we have to go into town to buy presents. Monday afternoon we’ll have to go over to Baretti’s to trim the birthday table. Sunday I have to write letters, study and do a dozen and one small things. I can say now I have nothing special on hand after Monday, but long before then I’ll have a new lot of stunts planned for the rest of next week.” Her tone grew more despairing with each enumeration.
“You have so much trouble, Beauty, I’ll say nothing of my own,” was Leila’s commiserating return, delivered with an unsympathetic grin. “I am like an Irish fish out of water without Midget. That much I will say.” Vera had gone to New York for a few days’ visit with her father before he sailed on an all-winter cruise on the Mediterranean.
“I never saw an Irish fish. How does an Irish fish look?” Jerry critically demanded.
“Like me. Did you not just hear me say it?” Leila retorted.
“I must go to the Arms to see Miss Susanna this week,” Marjorie observed irrelevantly. No one appeared to be interested in her announcement. Jerry and Leila were conducting a laughing argument which had to do with Irish and non-Irish fishes.
“I love to talk to myself,” she made plaintive complaint when Jerry and Leila finally paused for breath.
“And I had far rather talk to you, Beauty, than to some P. G.’s I know,” Leila assured with deep meaning.
“You may talk tome, Bean,” Jerry graciously permitted. “I am appreciative.”
During the remainder of the short hike across the campus Marjorie became the laughing, but unimpressed, recipient of flattering attention.
“Jerry,” she burst out abruptly, soon after the two girls were in their own room, “it isn’t enough for us to say to each other that we are glad Miss Walker didn’t write that letter. It is not fair to her not to tell her the whole thing. Do you think it is?”
Jerry cocked her head to one side and considered. “Nope,” she answered after due deliberation. “I suppose she ought to be informed that she is not the villain we took her to be. It may take marvelous managing by Marvelous Manager to tell her the awful truth without rousing her ire. According to Gentleman Gus she is anything but a lamb-like person when she isn’t pleased.”
“Would you be willing to go with me to see her?” Marjorie asked, her brown eyes meditatively fixed on Jerry. “You are as——”
“Deep in the mud as you are in the mire,” supplied Jerry humorously.
“Something like that,” Marjorie agreed with a smile. “The letter was sent to me in the first place, but the credit of the discovery that Miss Walker didn’t write it belongs to you.”
“I’m not likely to pick any bouquets in such a briar patch,” shrugged Jerry. “Don’t want em. More likely she’ll get wrathful at us when she finds, we have kept the forged letter so long without going to her and having matters out. But Jeremiah is not afraid. Let us hope she behaves like the letter she really wrote.”
In the act of removing one of her slippers, Jerry took it by the strap. Waving it jauntily she launched into a Bean jingle.
“Upon the haughty soph we’ll callTo clear her tarnished name;For we have seen, O, noble Bean,That she was not to blame.”
“Upon the haughty soph we’ll callTo clear her tarnished name;For we have seen, O, noble Bean,That she was not to blame.”
“Upon the haughty soph we’ll callTo clear her tarnished name;For we have seen, O, noble Bean,That she was not to blame.”
“Upon the haughty soph we’ll call
To clear her tarnished name;
For we have seen, O, noble Bean,
That she was not to blame.”
“That was an inspired jingle, Jeremiah,” Marjorie approved, her face singularly sunny. “Miss Walker is not to blame. Since we know she isn’t, we should be, if we didn’t hurry to tell her so.”