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

“I certainly have been careless,” she said. “I – I must have nudged that purse off the counter with my elbow. I – I – My dear girl! will you forgive me?”

She stepped forward and opened her arms to Jess. She was not only a well dressed lady, but she was a handsome one, and her smile, when she chose to allow it to appear, was winning. The anger and indignation Jess had felt began to melt before this apology and the lady’s frank manner.

“I – I suppose it was a natural mistake,” stammered Jess.

“Not if she’d known you, Miss Jess,” Griff said, quite sharply for him. “Nobody who knew you or your mother would have accused you of taking a penny’s worth that didn’t rightfully belong to you.”

Jess, whose heart was still sore from the blow she had received at Mr. Closewick’s grocery, thought this was very kind of Griff. And they owed his father, too! If there were tears standing in her eyes they were tears of gratitude.

“You see, my dear,” said the lady, her voice very pleasant indeed now, “I did not know you as well as young Mr. Vandergriff seems to.”

“We – we go to school together,” explained Jess, weakly, and found herself drawn into the arms of the lady.

Mr. Chumley rose up with a grunt and a groan; he had the purse and all the coins.

“Very careless! very careless!” he repeated. “And here is nearly a hundred dollars, madam. Think of carelessly carrying a hundred dollars in a silly purse like that! It is astonishing – ”

Mrs. Prentice had implanted a soft little kiss on Jess’s forehead and shaken her a little playfully by both shoulders.

“Don’t you bear malice, my dear,” she whispered. Then she turned briefly to the old man.

“You’re very kind, I’m sure,” she said, taking the purse into which Mr. Chumley had crammed the money. “Thank you.”

“Money comes too hard for folks to scatter it around,” complained the landlord.

Mrs. Prentice seemed to be much amused. “I should be more careful, I suppose. I presume, now, I ought to count it to see if – if you gathered it all up, sir?” she added, her eyes dancing.

A little breath of red crept into the withered cheeks of the miserly old man. “Well, well!” he ejaculated. “One can’t be too careful.”

“I presume not,” said the lady.

“And if the gal had known the money was there she might have been tempted, ye see.”

Jess flushed again and Griff looked angry; but Mrs. Prentice said, coolly:

“Were you tempted, sir? Perhaps I had better count my money, after all?”

“Ahem! ahem!” coughed the old gentleman. “Perhaps you don’t know who I am? There is a vast difference between me – my condition, I mean – and the gal and her mother.”

“Ah! Do you think so?” asked Mrs. Prentice, and then turned her back upon him. “I should like to know you better, my dear – and your mother. I hope you will show me that I am really forgiven by allowing me to call some day – Oh! I couldn’t face your mother now. I know just how I would feel myself if I had a daughter who had been accused as I accused you. I certainly need to take care – as our friend here says.”

“I am sure mother would be pleased to meet you,” stammered Jess.

“You know, I am Mrs. Prentice. My brother-in-law, Patrick Sarsfield Prentice, is editor and proprietor of the Centerport Courier .”

Jess’s interest was doubly aroused now. So this was the rich Mrs. Prentice, whom they said really backed Centerport’s newest venture in the newspaper field?

“My mother has met Mr. Prentice – your brother-in-law,” she said, diffidently. “You know, mother writes. She is Mary Morse.”

“Ah, yes,” said the lady, preparing to follow Griff out. “I am really glad to have known you – but I am sorry we began our acquaintance so unfortunately.”

“That – that is all right, Mrs. Prentice,” returned the girl.

Griff called back goodnight to her over his shoulder. And at the gate he parted from the lady whose carelessness had made all the trouble.

“That’s just what I told you, Mrs. Prentice,” he said. “They’re all right folks, those Morses. Yes, Mrs. Prentice, I’ll remember to send all those things you ordered over in the morning – first delivery,” and he went off, whistling.

Mrs Prentice would have turned away from the gate of the Morse cottage and gone her homeward way, too, had she not heard a cackling little “ahem!” behind her. There was the wizened Mr. Chumley right on her heels.

“Very fortunate escape – very fortunate escape, indeed,” said the landlord.

“It was,” agreed the repentant lady. “I might have gone farther and done much worse in my excitement.”

“Oh, no,” said he. “I mean it was fortunate for the girl – and her mother. Of course, they’ve got nothing, and had the money really been missing it would have looked bad.”

Mrs. Prentice eyed him in a way that would have made a person with a thinner skin writhe a little. But Mr. Chumley’s feelings were not easily hurt.

“You evidently know all about those people?” said the lady, brusquely.

“Oh, yes. They’ve been my tenants for some years. But rents are going up in this neighborhood and – Well, I can get a much more satisfactory tenant.”

“You have been warning them out of the cottage?” asked Mrs. Prentice, quickly.

“Not just that,” said the old man, rubbing his hands together as though he had an imaginary cake of soap between them and was busily washing the Morse affair from his palms. “You see, I’ve told them I shall be obliged to increase their rent at New Year’s.”

“What do they pay you now?”

Mr. Chumley told her frankly. He wasn’t ashamed of what he took for the renting of that particular piece of property. In a business way, he was doing very well, and business was all that mattered with Mr. Chumley.

“But that’s better than I can get for the same sort of a cottage in this very vicinity,” exclaimed Mrs. Prentice.

“Ah! these agents!” groaned Mr. Chumley, shaking his head. “They never will do as well as they should for an owner. I found that out long ago. If I was a younger man, Mrs. Prentice, I would take hold of your property and get you twenty-five per cent. more out of it.”

“Perhaps,” commented the lady. “And you intend to raise the rent on these people?”

“I have done so. Three dollars. I can get it. Besides, a woman alone ain’t good pay,” said Chumley. “And they’re likely to fall behind any time in the rent. Most uncertain income – ”

“Is it true that Mrs. Morse writes for a living?”

“I don’t know what sort of a livin’ she makes. Foolish business. She’d better take in washing, or go out to day’s work – that’s what she’d better do,” snarled the old man. “This messin’ with pen, ink, an’ a typewriter an’ thinkin’ she can buy pork an’ pertaters on the proceeds – ”

“Perhaps she doesn’t care for pork and potatoes, my friend,” laughed the lady, eyeing Mr. Chumley whimsically.

But a flush had crept into the old man’s withered cheek again. He was on his hobby and he rode it hard.

“Poor folks ain’t no business to have finicky idees, or tastes,” he declared. “They gotter work. That’s what they was put in the world for – to work. There’s too many of ’em trying to keep their hands clean, an’ livin’ above their means. Mary Morse is a good, strong, hearty woman. She’d ought to do something useful with her hands instead of doing silly things with her mind.”

“So she writes silly things?”

“Stories! Not a word of truth in ’em, I vum! I read one of ’em once,” declared Mr. Chumley. “Widder Morse wants to ape these well-to-do folks that live ’tother end o’ Whiffle Street. Keeps her gal in high school when she’d ought to be in a store or a factory, earnin’ her keep. She’s big enough.”