Gertrude Morrison - The Girls of Central High on the Stage - or, The Play That Took The Prize

“Humph!”

“Won’t you come in?” hesitated Jess, still holding the door. The rent was not due for a day or two, and he usually gave them a few days’ grace if they did not happen to have it right in the nick of time.

“I guess I will,” squeaked the landlord.

He was a little whiffet of a man – “looked like a figure on a New Year’s cake,” Bobby Hargrew said. His mouth was a mere slit in his gray, wrinkled face, and his eyes were so close together that the sharp bridge of his nose scarcely parted them.

Some landlords hire agents to attend to their property and to the collection of rents. Not so Mr. Chumley. He did not mind the trouble of collecting, and he could fight off repairs longer than any landlord in town. And the one-half of one per cent. collection fee was an item.

“Think I’ve come ahead of time, eh?” he cackled, rubbing his blue hands – as blue as a turkey’s foot, Jess thought – over the renewed fire. “It ain’t many days before rent’s due again. If ye have it handy ye can pay me now, Miss Josephine.”

“It isn’t handy, Mr. Chumley. We are shorter than usual just now,” said Jess, hating the phrase that comes so often to the lips of poverty.

“Well! well! Can’t expect money before it’s due, I s’pose,” said the old man, licking his thin lips. “And I’m afraid ye find it pretty hard to meet your bills at ’tis?” he added, his head on one side like a gray old stork.

Jess flushed and then paled. What had he heard? Had that Mrs. Brown, in the grocer’s shop, told him already that Mr. Closewick had refused to let her increase the bill? The girl looked at him without speaking, schooling her features to betray nothing of the fear that gripped her heart.

“Hey?” squeaked Mr. Chumley. “Don’t ye hear well?”

“I hear you, sir,” said Jess, glancing quickly to make sure that she had closed the door tightly between the kitchen and the room in which her mother was at work.

“Well, I’m willin’ to help folks out – always,” said Mr. Chumley, his withered cheek flushing. “If you’re finding the rent of this house too much fer ye, why, there’s cheaper tenements in town. I own some of ’em myself. Taxes is increased this year and I gotter go up on all rentals – ”

“But, Mr. Chumley! we’ve lived in this cottage of yours ever since I can remember. We’ve paid you a lot of rent. You surely are not going to increase it now?”

“I am, after December, Miss Josephine,” declared Mr. Chumley. “I gotter do it. Beginnin’ with January first your mother will have to pay three dollars more each month. You kin tell her that. I’m giving you a month’s warning.”

“Oh, Mr. Chumley! Surely you won’t put us out – ”

“I ain’t sayin’ nothing about putting you out, though your mother ain’t as sure pay as some others. She’s slow. And she’s a woman alone. Hard to git your money out of a widder woman. No. She can stay if she pays the three dollars increase. Otherwise, I got the cottage as good as rented right now to another party.”

He moved toward the door, without lifting his eyes again to Jess’s face.

“You’ll tell her that,” he said. “I’d like to do business with her instead of with a half-grown gal. Don’t suppose you could let me have the next month’s rent to-night, eh?”

“It isn’t due yet, Mr. Chumley,” Jess said, undecided whether to “get mad” or to cry!

“Well – Hello! who’s these?”

There was another clatter of footsteps upon the porch as old Mr. Chumley opened the outer door. Jess looked past him and saw a female and a male figure crowding into the entry. For a moment she recognized neither.

“That’s the girl!” exclaimed the woman, and her voice was sharp and excited.

“Hello!” muttered Mr. Chumley, and stood aside. “Here’s young Vandergriff.”

Jess looked on, speechless with amazement. She now recognized Griff, and the woman with him was the fashionably attired lady who had stood beside Jess at the counter in the butter and egg store.

“Miss Jess! Miss Jess!” exclaimed Griff, quickly. “Did you open your umbrella on the way home?”

“I – I – ”

“Stupid!” exclaimed the woman.

“Why, Griff, I didn’t open it.”

“And you haven’t opened it yet?”

“Why – no,” admitted the puzzled Jess.

“Where is it?” cried the young man. “Now, you wait, Mrs. Prentice. I know it will be all right.”

“That’s all very fine, young man. But it isn’t your purse that is lost,” exclaimed the woman, tartly.

At last Jess understood. She started forward and her face flamed.

“Oh!” she cried. “Did you lose that silver mesh purse?”

“You see! She remembers it well enough,” said the woman.

“I could scarcely forget it. You laid it on the counter between us. And it was heavy with money,” said Jess.

“Now, wait!” cried Griff, interposing, while old Chumley listened eagerly, his little eyes snapping. “Did you set your umbrella aside without opening it, Miss Morse?”

“Yes, I did,” repeated Jess.

“And you had it hanging by the hooked handle on the edge of the counter right beside this lady, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“I saw it. It’s just like a story book!” laughed Griff. “Get the umbrella, Miss Morse. I knew it would be all right – ”

“I am not convinced that it is ‘all right,’ as you say, young man,” spoke Mrs. Prentice, eyeing Jess’s flushed face, suspiciously.

“Get it from behind the door there, Griff,” said the girl, hurriedly. She, too, had heard of such an incident as this. Perhaps the purse had been knocked from the counter into her open umbrella. But suppose it was not there?

“Here it is! here’s the umbrella!” squeaked the officious Mr. Chumley, coming out from behind the entry door, where he had been listening.

All three of them – Jess, Griff, and the excited loser of the purse – reached for the umbrella; but Griff was the first.

“Hold on!” said he to the landlord. “Let me have that, sir. The purse was lost in our store. We’re just as much interested in the matter as anybody.”

“I fail to see that, young man,” said Mrs. Prentice, tartly.

She was not naturally of a mean disposition; but she was excited, and the explanation Griff had given her of the loss of the purse had seemed to her unimaginative mind “far-fetched,” to say the least.

The boy half opened the umbrella and turned it over. Crash to the floor fell the purse, and it snapped open as it landed. Out upon the linoleum rolled the glistening coins – several of them gold pieces – that Jess had noted so greedily in the egg store.

“What did I tell you?” cried Griff, looking at Mrs. Prentice.

That lady only exclaimed “Oh!” very loudly and looked aghast at the rolling coins. Jess half stooped to gather up the scattered money. Then she thought better of it and straightened up, looking straight into the face of the owner of the purse.

But old Mr. Chumley could not stand the lack of interest the others seemed to show in what – to him – was the phase of particular importance in the whole affair. There was real money rolling all over the Widow Morse’s kitchen. He went down on his rheumatic old knees and scrambled for it. Mr. Chumley worshipped money, anyway, and this was a worshipper’s rightful attitude.

“My, my, my!” he kept repeating. “How careless!”

But Mrs. Prentice’s expression of countenance was swiftly changing. She flushed deeply – much more deeply than had Jess; then she paled. She picked up Mr. Chumley’s phrase, although she allowed the old man to pick up the money.