The Radio Girls on the program

Superintendent Blair suddenly put up his hand and stopped the chorus in the middle of its second number. He looked very stern but he spoke composedly enough to Miss Allister. She was in a flutter of excitement.

“Let them rest awhile,” said Mr. Blair, bruskly. “They are not doing well; nowhere near good enough to broadcast from Stratfordtown. We pride ourselves here, Miss Allister, on sending out good stuff.

“Perhaps they will do better later. Let them rest. Meanwhile, we will try out these others. Who is first? Miss Norwood?” He looked from the paper in his hand to Jessie.

“Oh, yes! Miss Norwood. Ready, Miss Jessie?”

Jessie gave her music to the accompanist at the piano. Her hands shook and she flushed and paled alternately. She wished that she had a glass of water. Her mouth felt as dry as though she were suffering from a fever.

She caught, however, Amy’s encouraging glance. Amy never showed nervousness on such an occasion as this. She was perfectly calm. Jessie tried to control her trembling as she stood before the horn and the first chords of the music were struck on the piano by the lady who played her accompaniment.

Jessie Norwood had a very sweet voice and a strong one. She had something more than that, too—sympathy. When she sang anything it was with feeling and an expression that few but professional performers obtain.

Before the song was half through the girl from Roselawn had gained Mr. Blair’s full attention and at its end he marked his approval by swift applause.

“Good! Good!” he ejaculated. “Now,” he said, swinging to face the other girls, “if you young people would do half as well, your songs would be all right. Now! Who comes next?”

He looked at his paper and announced Amy’s recitation. It was a humorous bit, that Amy did very well indeed. She had the ease that usually marks a much more practiced recitationist. After all, the full flavor of the piece was lost on radio telephony because her facial expression and her gestures would not be seen by her audience downstairs. But Mr. Blair had as encouraging a smile for her as he had had for Jessie.

The latter, in the midst of Amy’s recitation, felt that somebody was standing behind her. She turned swiftly. Smilingly looking into her flushed face, and with his hand stretched out, stood Mark Stratford. It was the first time Jessie had seen him since he had fallen with his aeroplane on the Norwood premises.

He seized the Roselawn girl’s hand and squeezed it warmly, but they did not speak until Amy had “made her bow” at the end of the recitation.

“Got to say Thank you! Jessie,” whispered the young man. “You and Amy Drew certainly were good friends of mine when I fell that time. Sorry you were not at home when I called.”

“Oh, Mark! We did not do much,” said Jessie, flushing.

“That’s according to what you call ‘much.’ To me it was much. I understand that I was in line for incineration in that plane if you girls had not dragged me out and put out the fire.”

“Amy put out the fire,” said Jessie, earnestly but in the same low tone.

“It’s all right,” and Mark grinned. “I know whom to thank.”

“But, Mark! We didn’t find your watch!” Jessie Norwood exclaimed eagerly.

“I suppose not. I suppose the place has been raked over for it?”

“Oh, yes. Amy and I looked carefully. I am so sorry!”

“Don’t let it worry you. Of course, I’d give a good deal rather than lose it. I suppose it would do no good to offer a reward for it?” he added thoughtfully. “I don’t want my grandmother to know. She is so old, you know, that she is easily disturbed.”

Jessie was greatly disturbed, and she was not old! She stared at Mark Stratford with worried look. Should she tell him her suspicions regarding the red-haired Dogtown boy, Monty Shannon?

Mr. Blair just then was congratulating Amy Drew. She had finished her recitation and with a glowing face and a smile she came away from the horn. She saw Mark, then, and waved her hand to him. As he went to meet her Jessie was given a moment’s time to reconsider the matter of the lost watch.

Jessie Norwood was no prude; but she did want to do the right thing. She had been trained to think for herself; perhaps she got a certain logical slant of mind from her father. And, in addition, she felt a real interest in Montmorency Shannon.

The red-haired boy was so bright and ingenious that it seemed a more than dreadful thing for him to be suspected of stealing. If he had found the watch at the scene of the aeroplane disaster and had hidden and sold it, stealing was the only term that applied.

“I must try to get him to confide in me,” thought Jessie. “He must tell me how he expects to pay for that receiving set he says he has bought.”

Mr. Blair nodded to Miss Allister then and told her to try the chorus again.

“I am going down to the reception room to listen in with the people there. I want to see how it sounds at a distance.”

Amy of course began to giggle when she whispered to Mark and Jessie: “He wants to see how it sounds! Isn’t that funny?”

Belle Ringold had fixed her eyes on Mark when first he slipped into the room; she could scarcely give her attention to the renewed rehearsal. Miss Allister was greatly flustered by the inattention of the girls. She had really lost control of them.

“Let’s get out of this squalling,” said Mark, in an undertone. “Guess that chorus is going to be a frost. That is what brought me up here. I was listening in with father and the ladies downstairs, and father sent me up to tell Blair that he doubted if the chorus would add anything to the reputation of the company, even if it was for charity.”

“Oh, dear, me,” murmured Jessie when they got out into the anteroom. “If the chorus is not a success Miss Allister will be awfully disappointed.”

“Not to say anything of how mad Belle and Sally will be,” said Amy. “Oh, Jess! We are lucky that we didn’t get into the chorus after all.”

“You girls need not be troubled,” Mark said kindly. “Your bits will stand out well in the entertainment. More individual, you know. And I think you both do mighty well.”

He took them down to the big offices where the company’s receiving station was situated. Here was an audience room seating at least a hundred people, and with the use of an amplifier and loud speaker the numbers being tried upstairs could be plainly heard.

Jessie was rather disappointed in not being able to speak to Mr. Blair again. Somehow, she felt that the superintendent was interested, in spite of himself, in Bertha Blair. Their last names were the same. Was it not probable that the girl was a relative of the superintendent? At least, it seemed possible.

There was no chance just then to speak of the matter. Her mother and the other women of the hospital committee were discussing excitedly the case of the girls’ chorus, and how discordant it had sounded.

“I do not understand it,” said one of the members of the committee. “You will all agree that at the school celebration Miss Allister had them perfectly trained. I really expected them to do even better here.”

“Oh, perhaps they will be all right when it comes to the night of the concert itself,” rejoined one easy-going person. “They are only girls, you know, after all.”

“But,” declared Mrs. Norwood vigorously, “they are old enough to realize that this is an important thing. They should appreciate the opportunity to aid in a good cause. At least I, for one, do not mean to see the girls make our concert ridiculous. I know what is the matter with that chorus.”

“Bully!” whispered Amy, under her breath.

“I think you speak rather harshly, Mrs. Norwood.” It was Mrs. Moon who spoke. The Moons and the Ringolds “always worked in double harness,” to quote Amy Drew. “Surely we cannot expect the girls to take the matter as seriously as we do.”

“Why not?” Jessie’s mother demanded. “The hospital is for the poor and the sick among women and children of our town. Every girl singing in that chorus is quite old enough to understand that. You heard what Mr. Stratford said. He cannot approve the chorus unless it sounds better.”

“I am very sure Mrs. Ringold will not agree to having the chorus cut out of the program!” Mrs. Moon exclaimed. “And I can see that is what you are aiming at. If she were here——”

“Why isn’t Mrs. Ringold here?” interposed another of the members.

“She was too busy.”

“Really? And aren’t our private and personal affairs just as important as Mrs. Ringold’s?” was the exclamation. “I approve of what Mrs. Norwood says. Give Miss Allister one more chance. If the chorus does not show up better at the next rehearsal, cut it out and find other numbers to take the place of it.”

On the way home in the Norwood car Amy whispered to Jessie:

“Suppose they do cut out the chorus, Jess?”

“Well—if they do?” returned her chum.

“What I said before. We might get better parts. And get Nell Stanley into it, too.”

“Oh, goody!” exclaimed Jessie, suddenly clapping her hands. “And there is Bertha, too.”

“Bertha Blair?” asked Amy curiously.

“Yes. She wants to sing there. And perhaps she would be willing to sing for the hospital fund and in that way get Mr. Blair interested in her.”

“Mr. Blair—Bertha Blair. Humph! Funny, isn’t it?” drawled Amy. “But on the other hand, there’s little Hen who is Bertha’s cousin. Guess Mr. Blair is no relative of little Hen,” and the gay girl laughed.

Oddly enough the freckled little girl was the first person they saw when the car rolled into the Norwood place. Henrietta, dressed in her mended taffeta silk and silk stockings, stood on the lower step of the house eagerly looking down the drive. The Roselawn girls had not seen her since the week of the Water Thrush.

“Oh, Miss Jessie!” she cried when Chapman had brought the car to a halt. “I got an invite for you; and for Miss Amy, too.”

“An ‘invite’?” asked Jessie, somewhat puzzled.

“Yep. It’s coming off to-night. Mrs. Foley almost forgot it.”

“What did she almost forget?” Jessie pursued, while, as usual, Amy broke into laughter.

“’Tain’t nothing to laugh at,” declared the odd child. “But having six—and all boys—it’s not to be wondered at.”

“Do tell us what it is you are trying to say?” begged the amused Jessie. “And what have Mrs. Foley and her six boys got to do with it?”

“Everything,” said Henrietta promptly. “Anyway, Billy has something to do with it. It’s his birthday and his party you’re invited to.”

“Oh, my goodness!” cried Amy. “Now I understand. Billy Foley is to have a birthday party.”

“That’s what I said,” declared Henrietta complacently. “And Mrs. Foley says if you two young ladies was to come it would please her highly.”

It was evident that the invitation was couched very nearly in Mrs. Foley’s own words. Jessie and Amy looked at each other and by eye-signal agreed.

“Of course we will come, Henrietta,” said Jessie. “And we are very glad that Mrs. Foley thought of us.”