The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross Part 12

Lily was not alone in complaining about Miss Carrington's harshness, however. It was the princ.i.p.al topic of conversation when the girls gathered in the boathouse rooms to prepare for the races and the features that were to precede the princ.i.p.al attraction of the carnival--the masquerade grand march.

"Sh! She's right here now," whispered Bobby Hargrew sepulchrally, coming into the dressing-room. "She's on watch at the door."

"Who?" asked Jess Morse.

"Not Hester?" cried Lily. "She told me she wouldn't come down here!"

"Gee Gee," shot back Bobby, with pursed lips. "She is going to be sure that Hester doesn't appear."

"Mean thing!" Nellie Agnew said. And when the doctor's gentle daughter made such a statement she had to be fully aroused. "She thinks she has spoiled the whole act!"

"I believe you," Bessie Yeager said. "I wonder if Miss Carrington really sleeps at night?"

"Why not, Bess?" cried Dora Lockwood.

"I think she lies awake thinking up mean things to do to us."

"Oh, oh!" murmured Nellie.

"I bet you!" exclaimed the slangy Bobby.

"Careful, girls. If she hears you!" warned Laura.

"Then you would be 'perspicuous au grautin,' as the fellow said," chuckled Bobby. "There! the whistle has sounded."

"The fete has begun," sighed Jess. "I do hope everything will go off right."

"The boys are taking in money all right," Laura said with satisfaction. "I believe we shall make a thousand dollars for the Red Cross."

"I hope so," said her chum. "Come on, girls! It's first the fancy skating before the ice arena is all cut up."

The effort to make the Ice Carnival of the Central High a success was aided by a perfect evening and perfect ice. The latter had been shaved and smoothed over every gnarly place. There was not a single crack in which a skate could be caught to throw the wearer. The arena roped off from the spectators was as smooth as a ballroom floor.

It was about two acres in extent. Around three sides of the roped-off s.p.a.ce there was a roped-off alley with boards laid upon the ice upon which the spectators could stand. Uprights held the strings of colored lights which were supplied with electricity from the city lighting company; for this was not the first exhibition of the kind that had been staged upon Lake Luna.

Around the alley allotted to the audience, each member of which had to pay a half dollar for a ticket, was a guarded s.p.a.ce so that those who did not pay entrance fee could not get near enough to enjoy the spectacle.

The short-distance races, following the figure skating, were all within the oval of the princ.i.p.al arena. Then the ropes were taken down at one end and the long-distance races came off, a mile track having been marked with staffs upon the ice, staffs which now held the cl.u.s.ters of colored lanterns.

For two hours the company was so well amused that few were driven away by the cold--and it was an intensely cold night The ringing of the skates on the almost adamantine ice revealed the fact that Jack Frost had a tight clutch on the waters of Lake Luna.

"I wish my mother could have seen this," Janet Steele murmured to Laura Belding. "I think it is like fairyland."

"Isn't it pretty? Now comes the torchlight procession. The boys arranged this their own selves. See if it isn't pretty!"

The short end of the oval had been closed again after the long-distance races, and now there dashed into the arena from the boys' lane to the dressing-rooms a long line of figures in dominos, each bearing a colored light. They were the boys that could skate the best--the most sure-footed.

Back and forth, around and around, in and out and across! The swift movement of the figures was well nigh bewildering; while the intermingling of colored lights, their weaving in and out, made a brilliant pattern that brought applause again and again from the spectators.

Then the boys divided, taking stations some distance apart, and the torches were tossed from hand to hand, as Indian clubs are tossed in gymnasium exercises. The effect was spectacular and seemed a much more difficult exercise than it really was.

Meanwhile the girls selected for the masquerade were dressing in the boathouse. Their masquerade costumes were as diverse and elaborate as though it were a ball they were attending. There was no dress as simple as Janet Steele's Red Cross uniform; yet with her glowing face and sparkling eyes and white teeth there were few more effective figures in the party.

She had proved herself to be a fine and strong skater. Laura and Jess, who sponsored her, were delighted with the new girl's appearance on the ice.

She had learned, too, her part quite perfectly. When the girls first came out and the boys darted back to get into their fancy costumes, the summary of the figures the girls wove on the ice were already known to Janet. She fulfilled her part.

Then returned the boys, "all rigged out," Bobby said, and the masquerade parade began. The crowd standing about the arena cheered and shouted. It really was a most attractive grand march, and there chanced, better still, to be no accident. Smoothly the young people wended their way about the ice, their skates ringing, their supple bodies swaying in time to the music, led by those two masks of Uncle Sam and the Red Cross girl.

"It is lovely," Mrs. Belding said to her husband. "What a fine skater our Chetwood is, Henry. And it is so near Christmas! I hope that bank-note will turn out to be a good one so that he will not lose the money," she finished wistfully.

"There, there!" said the jeweler. "I'll go to see Monroe to-morrow. He's at home again."

CHAPTER X

BUT WHO IS HE?

"Well, Mr. Monroe," the jeweler said, when he was ushered into the banker's office the following forenoon by the bank watchman, "I presume that bill is a counterfeit of some kind?"

"My dear Belding," said the banker, who was a portly and jolly man, who shook a good deal when he chuckled, and who shook now, "I thought you were old enough, and experienced enough, to discover the counterfeit from the real."

"My son took the bill in over the counter," said the jeweler, rather chagrined.

"But haven't you examined it?" said Mr. Monroe, taking the strange bank-note from a drawer of his desk.

"Well--yes," was the admission, made grudgingly.

"And are you not yet a.s.sured?"

"Neither one way nor the other," frankly confessed the jeweler. "It was taken by Chet for a hundred-dollar bill. And it is that on one side!"

"It certainly looks to be," chuckled Mr. Monroe.

"But who ever heard of such a thing?" demanded the exasperated customer of the bank. "A hundred printed on one side and a fifty on the other! The printers of bank-notes do not make such mistakes."

"Hold on! n.o.body is infallible in this world--not even a bank-note printer," said the banker, reaching into another drawer and bringing forth a large indexed sc.r.a.pbook.

"Here's a case that happened some years ago. I am a sc.r.a.pbook fiend, Belding," chuckled Mr. Monroe. "There were once two bills issued for a Kansas bank just like this one you have brought to me. Only this note that we have here was printed for the Drovers' Levee Bank of Osage, Ohio, as you can easily see. This note went through that bank, was signed by Bedford Knox, cashier, and Peyton J. Weld, president, as you can see, and its peculiar printing was not discovered.

"Ah, here we have it!" added Mr. Monroe, fluttering the stiff leaves of the sc.r.a.pbook and finally coming to the article in question. "Listen here: 'It was found on communication with Washington that a record was held there of the bill, and the department was anxious to recall it. With another bill it had been printed for a bank in Kansas, and the mistake had been made by the printer who had turned the sheet upside down in printing the reverse side.

The first plate bore the obverse of a fifty-dollar bill at the top and of a hundred-dollar bill at the bottom, while the other plate held the reverse of both sides. By turning the sheet around for the reverse printing, the fifty-dollar impression had been made on the back of the hundred-dollar bill.'

"Do you see, now?" laughed the banker. "Quite an easy and simple mistake, and one that might often be made, only the printers are very careful men."

Oddly enough, Mr. Belding, although relieved by the probability that the Department at Washington would make the strange bill right for him, was suddenly attracted by another fact.