The Radio Girls on the program

The Junior League of the Church held a business meeting that afternoon, and Jessie and Amy, having completed the restringing of the aerial and, as Amy said, opened communication again with the ether, the two chums walked downtown to the parish house. Dr. Stanley’s church with the parsonage on one side and the parish house on the other, faced Bonwit Boulevard, but it was only on the edge of Roselawn. His was a large parish.

This latter fact was the reason why Belle Ringold and most of her friends attended the same church, as well as the same day school, as Jessie and Amy. The former girls lived nearer to New Melford proper. Naturally, among the young people, there was some little rivalry between the Roselawn circle and these others.

On this afternoon the main topic of discussion was of the interest the church societies were bound to take in the new hospital. All clubs and institutional societies were bound to lend a hand in so noble a work as this proposed. Dr. Stanley had spoken more than once from the pulpit of the proposed raising of a foundation fund for the hospital.

“Oh, we’ve got to do something, of course,” Belle Ringold said rather crossly. “It’s expected. But I do think that we girls ought to have our time to ourselves between school terms.”

“Why, it will be fun,” said Amy, overhearing this complaint. “How do you want to spend your time this summer, anyway, Belle?”

“Not working like a regular slave in some show or bazaar, or some other money-making scheme. Of course, you younger girls don’t mind. You have few social duties——”

“My! My! Hear ye!” chuckled Amy, who seldom got offended by them but always made fun of Belle’s airs. “Whom are you entertaining, Miss Ringold? The Prince De Kakyak? Your time is so fully occupied, I know. Oh, de-ah, yes!”

Jessie pulled her chum’s sleeve in warning while Belle’s eyes flashed.

“Miss Impudence!” she said. “You ought to be in the nursery still.”

“Believe me,” said the incorrigible girl, grinning, “I never was very still in the nursery, or anywhere else. However, fearing that if I kept still now you would have a misapprehension concerning what the hospital committee means to do about raising the fund and the proposed entertainment, I will a tale unfold——”

“Pooh! What do you know about it?” scoffed Belle.

“Well, I ought to know a good deal. It was my idea,” Amy said proudly. “Wasn’t it, Jess?”

“I’d like to know what you mean?” exclaimed Belle, heatedly. “You can’t fool me.”

Jessie felt called upon to support her chum. Besides, it was true. Amy had really suggested the radio concert idea. She said so.

“Well!” ejaculated Belle Ringold, “if they think that I am going to be at the beck and call of you girls of Roselawn and help boost one of your schemes, I guess not!” and she sniffed audibly.

“Don’t be so sour, Belle,” laughed Amy. “Did anybody ask you to do anything about it?”

“I guess you don’t know everything,” Sally Moon said quickly, catching at a chance to make her friend feel a little better. “You may have started this radio concert idea, but it isn’t finished yet. Do you know what Miss Allister wants?”

“Something pretty good, I expect,” said Amy easily. “Miss Allister is awfully nice, if anybody should ask you.”

“Well,” said Sally, eagerly, delighted to be able to tell news in order to counteract the effect of the Roselawn girls’ statements, “Miss Allister has asked the chorus that sang at graduation and made such a hit, to repeat the numbers at this radio concert you seem to know so much about.”

“Well, I never! Is it going to be an amateur affair?” exclaimed Amy, with some scorn, and with more than a little disappointment, too.

“I think that is splendid,” declared Jessie. “You girls that were in that chorus will have an interesting time. I wonder what sending station will arrange for giving the concert?”

“I never!” repeated Amy, still pouting a little. Then she laughed shortly and the usual sunny look came into her pretty face. “Well,” she confessed, “I guess our idea has got clear away from us. We’re not in it, Jess. We neither of us sang in Miss Allister’s chorus.”

“But where will the concert be given?” her chum repeated, looking for an answer to Sally Moon.

“At Stratfordtown. So we just heard. The committee has arranged to send the stuff from there. And say, Jess! Was it really Mark Stratford who fell in his plane over at your place yesterday?”

Amy groaned heartily while her friend replied affirmatively to the question of Sally Moon.

“And I’ll say he fell into luck,” said Amy. “He lost a million dollar airplane, more or less, and a diamond-set watch that he thinks the world of, and didn’t even break a finger. But here am I, wasting gray matter on thinking up schemes for the hospital committee to use in raising money, and then cheated out of having any share in the radio concert. Jess! do you hear what these girls that belong to Miss Allister’s chorus are going to do?”

“I am glad for their sakes,” said Jessie composedly. “Perhaps we can get into it, too, Amy.”

“Not with us!” snapped Belle Ringold, who had by no means got over her grouch. “If you two try to get into that chorus, I won’t sing at all. And I know others that feel the same.”

“You all—you and your friends—must feel awfully uncomfortable,” laughed Amy. “I would not have those feelings for worlds, Belle.”

“Never mind,” whispered Jessie, who was always the peacemaker unless her temper was very seriously ruffled.

“She certainly is an even-tempered girl, that Belle Ringold,” said Amy, as the two chums moved away. “Mad all the time! Well, Jess, they certainly have put something over on us.”

“I think it is a grand idea,” rejoined Jessie eagerly. “If it is partly an amateur concert there will be just so many more people interested in it and thereby interested in the hospital foundation fund.”

“But, honey! The fact remains,” Amy said rather ruefully, “we are not in it!”

“But we are going to be,” declared her chum decidedly. “We thought of it first——”

“But maybe they won’t let us. It can’t all be in the hands of the ladies of the hospital committee. I suppose over at Stratfordtown there will be somebody, Mr. Blair, for instance——”

“We’ll see him,” said Jessie. “And we’ll ask Mark. If Mark feels so friendly toward us we’ll give him a chance to show it. I am just determined, Amy Drew, to sing in that concert.”

“I would like to recite something,” sighed Amy. “You know, Miss Seymour praised me for that after our June entertainment at the high school. I am just as eager to get into it as you are, Jess. But I do hate to go to Mr. Blair—or even to Mark Stratford or his father—and ask him right out.”

“I am not afraid to ask for what I want,” declared Jessie, who had considerable firmness and good sense. “But I wish we could find Mark’s watch to return to him. Then there would be some reason in our asking a favor. Though I don’t want him to feel that he has got to pay us for breaking down that aerial.”

“He can help us get on the program for just any old reason, for all I care,” said Amy. “But how are you going to find his watch, Jess?”

“I don’t know. I feel that we ought to make inquiries of those children.”

“Little Hen and those others?” Amy cried.

“Yes. Mind you,” said Jessie seriously. “I do not want to believe, and I do not believe, that Henrietta knows a thing about the watch. But some of the others—well, the poor things haven’t had much bringing up, I suppose.”

“More like dragging up,” chuckled her friend.

“We’ll go over to Dogtown in the morning and I’ll try to get Henrietta to tell us if she knows anything about the watch.”