The Turner Twins

“Mr. Chairman!”

“Mister – ” Dan Whipple pointed a finger at Ned and nodded.

“Turner,” prompted Kewpie from a front seat.

“Mr. Turner,” encouraged the chairman.

“I’d like to say that I never heard so much talking and saw so little action,” began Ned, impatiently. “What’s the matter with some one saying something useful instead of just chewing the rag?”

“You tell ’em,” piped a small junior, above the applause and laughter.

“All right! I’ll tell you fellows that you’re a lot of pikers to hesitate to pledge three or four hundred dollars to keep your team going. Where I come from we had to have a new grand stand two years ago, and we called a meeting like this and we raised seven hundred dollars in thirty-five minutes in cash and pledges. There were a lot more of us, but half of us would have felt like Rockefellers if we’d ever found a whole half-dollar in our pockets! Some of us gave as high as five dollars, but not many. Most of us pledged two dollars; and those who didn’t have two dollars went out and worked until they’d made it, by jingo! And we got our grand stand up inside of two weeks, in time for the big baseball game.”

There was real applause this time, and those in the front of the hall had swung around to have a look at the earnest youth who was calling them names.

“That’s one way of getting the money,” continued Ned, warming up finely, “but there’s another. Out my way – ”

“Say, where do you come from?” called some one.

“I come from California,” answered Ned, proudly. “Maybe you’ve heard of it!”

“Attaboy!” shouted Kewpie. “Swing your leg, Nid!”

“When we want to raise some money out there and folks are too stingy to give it outright, we take it away from them another way. We get up a fête. We give them a good time and they pay for it. Why not try it here? I don’t know how many folks there are in this burg, but I reckon there are enough to part with three or four hundred dollars. Give them an excuse to spend their money and they’ll spend it!”

Ned sat down amid loud applause, and Dave Brewster was recognized, although half a dozen others were clamoring for speech.

“Turner’s said something, fellows,” declared Brewster. “The idea’s worth considering. We’ve never tackled the town folks for money, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t come across. They’ve come to our games for years without paying a cent, except for the Farview game, and it wouldn’t hurt them to give a little to a good cause. I don’t know what sort of a fête Turner has in mind, but I should think we might get up something that would do the business.”

“Mr. Chairman,” said Kewpie, “I move that a committee of three be appointed by the chair, to include Nid, – I mean Mr. Turner, – to consider the – the matter of giving a fête to raise the money.”

“Seconded!”

“You have heard the motion,” droned Whipple. “All those in favor will so signify by saying ‘Aye.’ Contrary, ‘No.’ Moved and carried. I will appoint the presidents of the senior and upper middle classes and Mr. Turner to the committee, three in all. Is it the sense of this meeting that your committee is to report to it at a subsequent meeting, or is it to have authority to proceed with the matter if it decides that the scheme is a good one?”

“Full authority, Mr. Chairman!” “Let ’em go ahead with it!” “Sure! That’s what we want. Let’s have action!”

“Is there any other business? Then I declare the meeting adjourned!”

Whipple captured Ned on the way out. “We’d better get together right away on this, Turner,” he said. “Can you meet Cooper and me at my room to-morrow at twelve?”

Ned agreed, and he and Laurie and Lee went on. “What I’d like to know,” remarked Laurie, after a moment’s silence, “is how you’re going to have a fête in a place like this. The weather’s too cold for it.”

“Maybe it will be warmer,” answered Ned, cheerfully. “Besides, we don’t have to have it outdoors.”

“It wouldn’t be a fête if you didn’t,” sniffed the other.

“Well, what’s the difference? Call it anything you like. The big thing is to get the money.”

“You had your cheek with you to talk the way you did,” chuckled Laurie.

“He talked sense, though,” asserted Lee, warmly.

“Of course. The Turners always do.” Laurie steered Ned toward the entrance of East Hall. “Well, good night, Lee. See you at the fête!”

Upstairs, Ned tossed his cap to the bed, plumped himself into a chair at the table, and drew paper and pencil to him. “Now,” he said, “let’s figure this out. I’ve got to talk turkey to those fellows to-morrow. What’s your idea, partner?”

“Hey, where do you get that stuff?” demanded Laurie. “Why drag me into it? It’s not my fête. I don’t own it.”

“Shut up and sit down there before I punch your head. You’ve got to help with this. The honor of the Turners is at stake!”

So Laurie subsided and for more than an hour he and Ned racked their brains and gradually the plan took shape.

CHAPTER XII – THE COMMITTEE ON ARRANGEMENTS

“It’s like this,” explained Ned. He and Laurie and Polly and Mae Ferrand were in the little garden behind the shop. The girls were on the bench and the boys were seated on the turf before the arbor, their knees encircled with their arms. A few yards away Antoinette eyed them gravely and twitched her nose. On the porch step, Towser, the big black cat, blinked benignly, sometimes shifting his gaze to the branches of the maple in the next yard, where an impudent black-and-white woodpecker was seeking a late luncheon.

“There are two sub-committees,” continued Ned, earnestly. “Whipple and Cooper are the Committee on Finance and Publicity, and Laurie and I are the Committee on Arrangements. I told them I had to have help and so they took Laurie in.”

“No thanks to you,” grumbled Laurie, who was, however, secretly much pleased.

“It’s going to be next Saturday afternoon and evening, and this is Tuesday, and so there isn’t much time. We were afraid to make it any later because the weather might get too cold. Besides, the team needs the money right off. I looked in an almanac and it said that next Saturday would be fair and warm, so that’s all right.”

“But don’t you think almanacs make mistakes sometimes?” asked Polly. “I know ours does. When we had our high-school picnic, the almanac said ‘showers’ and it was a perfectly gorgeous day. I carried my mackintosh around all day and it was a perfect nuisance. Don’t you remember, Mae?”

“Well, you’ve got to believe in something,” declared Ned. “Anyway, we’re going to have it at Bob Starling’s, and if it’s too cold outdoors, we’ll move inside.”

“You mean at Uncle Peter’s?” exclaimed Polly.

“Yes. We thought of having it at school first, but Mr. Hillman didn’t like it much; and besides, the fellows would be inside without having to pay to get there! You see, it’s going to cost every one a quarter just to get in.”

“And how much to get out?” asked Mae, innocently.

Ned grinned. “As much as we can get away from them. There’ll be twelve booths to sell things in – ”

“What sort of things?” Polly inquired.

“All sorts. Eats and drinks and everything. We’re getting the storekeepers to donate things. So far they’ve just given us things that they haven’t been able to sell, a pile of junk; but we’re going to stop that. Biddle, the hardware man, gave us a dozen cheap pocket-knives, but he’s got to come across again. We’ve been to only eight of them so far, but we haven’t done so worse. Guess we’ve got enough truck for one booth already. And then there’ll be one of them for a rummage sale. We’re going to get each of the fellows to give us something for that, and I’ll bet we’ll have a fine lot of truck. Each booth will represent a college and be decorated in the proper colors: Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and so on. And – and now it’s your turn, Laurie.”

“Yes, I notice that I always have to do the dirty work,” said the other. He hugged his knees tighter, rolled over on his back for inspiration, and, when he again faced his audience on the bench, smiled his nicest. “Here’s where you girls come in,” he announced. “We want you two to take two of the booths and get a girl for each of the others. Want to?”

“Oh, it would be darling!” cried Polly.

“I’d love to!” said Mae.

“Only – ”

“Only – ”

“Only what!” asked Ned, as the girls viewed each other doubtfully.

“I’m not sure Mother would let me,” sighed Polly. “Do you think she would, Mae?”

“I don’t believe so. And I don’t believe Mama would let me. She – she’s awfully particular that way.”

“Gee!” said Ned, in disappointed tones, “I don’t see why not! It isn’t as if – ”

“Of course it isn’t,” agreed Laurie. “Besides, your mothers would be there too!”

“Would they?” asked Mae, uncertainly.

“Of course! Every one’s coming! What harm would there be in it? You can do things for – for charity that you can’t do any other time! All you’d have to do would be to just stand behind the booth and sell things. It won’t be hard. Everything will have the price marked on it and – ”

“You won’t need to go by the prices always, though,” interpolated Ned. “I mean, if you can get more than the thing is marked, you’d better do it! And then there’s the – the costumes, Laurie.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot. We’d like each girl to sort of wear something that would sort of match the college she represented – sort of,” he explained apologetically. “If you had the Yale booth, you could wear a dark-blue waist, and so on. Do you think that would be possible?”

Polly giggled. “We might ask Stella Hatch to take the Harvard booth, Mae. With her hair, she wouldn’t have to dress much!”

“And you and Polly could take your first pick,” observed Laurie, craftily. “You’d look swell as – as Dartmouth, Mae!”

“In green! My gracious, Ned! No, thank you! But Polly ought to be Yale. She looks lovely in blue. I think I’d like to be Cornell. My brother Harry’s in Cornell.”

“All right,” agreed Ned. “I wish you’d ask your mothers soon, will you? Do try, because we’ve just got to get girls for the booths. You’d have lots of fun, too. The Banjo and Mandolin Club is going to play for dancing for an hour at five and nine, and there’ll be an entertainment, too.”

“What sort?” asked Polly.

“We don’t know yet. Some of the gymnastic team will do stunts, I think, for one thing, and there’ll be singing and maybe Laurie will do some rope-swinging – ”

“I told you a dozen times I wouldn’t! Besides, I haven’t any rope.”

“We can find one, probably,” replied his brother, untroubled. “We haven’t settled about the entertainment yet. And there are two or three other things we haven’t got to. Starling’s going to have his garden all fixed up, and he’s going to cover the old arbor with branches and hang Chinese lanterns in it and have little tables and chairs there for folks to sit down and eat ice-cream and cake.

“And that reminds me, Polly. Do you suppose that Miss Comfort would make some cakes for us?”

“Why, yes, Nid, but – but you’d have to buy them. I don’t think you ought to expect her to donate them.”

“We meant to buy them, of course, Polly. And we wondered if your mother would make some of those dandy cream-puffs.”

“I’m sure she will. How many would you want?”

“I don’t know. You see, there’s no way of telling how many will come. There are three thousand people in Orstead, but that doesn’t mean much, does it? The ‘Messenger’ editor’s agreed to put in an advertisement for us for nothing, and there’ll be notices all around town in the windows: we got the man who prints the school monthly to do them for just the cost of the paper. So folks ought to come, shouldn’t you think?”

“Oh, I’m sure they will!” agreed Polly, and Mae echoed her. “But it’ll be dreadfully hard to know how much cake and ice-cream and refreshments to order, won’t it?”

“Fierce,” agreed Ned. “I suppose the best way will be to reckon on, say, three hundred and order that much stuff. Only, how do you tell how much three hundred will eat?”

“Why, you can’t! Besides, Nid, three hundred people would only bring in seventy-five dollars!”

“In admissions, yes; but we’ve got to make them buy things when we get them in there. If every one spent a dollar inside – ”

“But lots of them won’t. Do you think they will, Mae?”

Mae shook her head. “No, I don’t. Lots and lots will just come out of curiosity and won’t spend a cent. I know, boys, because that’s the way they act at the fairs here.”

Ned kicked at the turf gloomily. “Gee, that’s fierce!” he muttered.

“Well, we’d ought to get more than three hundred folks,” said Laurie. “Remember, it’s to be afternoon and evening too. I’ll bet there’ll be nearer six hundred than three.”

Ned brightened. “That’s so. And six hundred, even if they only averaged fifty cents apiece, would be three hundred dollars. And I guess if we can make three hundred, we can dig up the other fifty! Well, we’ve got to get busy, Laurie. I got them to give me a cut from practice this afternoon and I’ll have to make the most of my time,” he explained to the girls.

“Oh! And did they let you off, too, Nod?” asked Polly.

“No, we’re through with baseball,” Laurie answered. “No more till spring. I’m just fairly broken-hearted!”

“When will you know about helping us, Polly?” Ned asked.

“I’ll ask Mother right away; and you’ll ask, too, won’t you, Mae? Can you stop in this evening? I do hope it’ll be all right!”

“So do we!” said Ned and Laurie, in a breath. “Rather!”

And the Committee on Arrangements hurried away.

That night the committee met again in Dan Whipple’s room in West Hall and satisfactory progress was reported all along the line. Ned read a list of donations from the town merchants, and announced that twelve young ladies from the high school would be on hand, appropriately attired, to take charge of the booths. Lew Cooper showed proofs of the poster that was to be displayed in windows and tacked on posts and fences, and of the four-inch, double-column advertisement to appear in the “Messenger.” Dan reported that Mr. Wells, the physical director, had promised to see that the best six members of the gymnastic team should exhibit afternoon and evening.

“That means, though,” he said, “that we’ll have to have some kind of a platform. Better make a note of that, Lew.”

“Platforms cost money,” answered Lew, dubiously. “Maybe we can borrow – I’ll tell you what! There’s one stored over in the field-house, one they use to set the dressing-tent on. It’s in two pieces, – sections, – but I guess it’s big enough. We’ll see if we can’t get the use of it.”

“Good! Better ask Mr. Wells, Say, Hal, did you see Norris?”

Hal Pringle was Dan’s room-mate, and, while he was usually present at the meetings, he was careful to keep himself in the background unless called on for advice. Now he looked up from his book and nodded. “Yes, it ’a all right. They’ll play for an hour in the afternoon and an hour at night. I had to promise them eats, though.”

“Of course. Much obliged. Speaking of eats, fellows, what’s been done about the refreshments?”

“Nothing yet,” answered Ned. “I wanted to talk that over. How many sandwiches and how much salad will we want? And how many gallons of ice-cream and – ”

“Whoa!” begged Dan. “Blessed if I know! How the dickens are we going to know how much food will be needed? What’s the rule about it? Or isn’t there any?”

“Depends on how many will attend the show,” said Lew. “Find that out – ”

“How’re we going to find it out, you chump? How many do you suppose we can count on, Ned?”

“Maybe six hundred,” was the answer. “But if it should rain – ”

“There you are! If it rained, we mightn’t get two hundred! I’ll say that’s a problem. We’d be in a fine fix if we found ourselves with two or three freezers of ice-cream on our hands and a lot of other truck. Look here, Tabby might know. Suppose you ask her, Ned. We’ve got to have enough and not too much.”

“It’ll be all right about the ice-cream,” said Laurie. “The man said we could return what we didn’t open if we got it back that night so he could pack it over. But the other things – ”

“You talk to Tabby in the morning,” repeated Dan. “She’ll know if any one does. Now what else? What about the entertainment part of it, Mr. Chairman of the Committee on Arrangements? What have you got in mind besides the gymnastics?”

“We thought we might find some one who could sing or dance. But we don’t know many of the fellows.”

“Bully! There’s Cheesman, Lew. He’s a corker. And Kewpie isn’t so bad. He sings a funny song mighty well.”

“He couldn’t sing it in the afternoon, though, Dan: he’d be at the field.”

“That’s so! still, the game ought to be finished by four. We wouldn’t have the entertainment part until late, would we?”

“About four, I thought,” said Ned, “but Kewpie could come last. I’ll put him down, anyway.”

“Anything else besides songs?” asked Dan.

“Yes, only-” Ned dropped his voice and glanced at Pringle – “only it’s got to be kept a secret to make good.”

“Oh, Hal’s all right. He’s a sort of ex-officio member of the committee. Shoot, Ned!”

CHAPTER XIII – NED GETS INTO THE GAME

Four hectic days followed. To Laurie, since Ned was held for two hours each afternoon at the football field, fell most of the duties of the Committee on Arrangements, and he was a very busy youth. He badgered shopkeepers into parting with goods to be sold at the booths, helped Bob Starling trim up the old arbor in the garden of the Coventry place, made frequent trips to the Or stead caterer’s, engaged eight cakes from Miss Comfort and twelve dozen cream-puffs from the Widow Deane, spent two hours Wednesday helping Lew and Hal Pringle distribute posters throughout the village, and attended to a hundred other matters between-times. Of course, Ned aided when he could, and was helpful with advice and unfailing in suggestions; but recitations and football practice didn’t leave him much time, even though he conscientiously arose a full hour earlier every morning that week, and skimped studying so much that he got in trouble with three instructors in one day!

Miss Tabitha had proved as helpful as Dan Whipple had predicted. She had shaken her head at the idea of entertaining six hundred at the fête. “You mustn’t count on more than half that many,” she said. “I dare say all the boys will go, and they’ll make ninety. Then, if you get two hundred of the townsfolk, you’ll be doing very nicely. Don’t decide how much salad or how many sandwiches you want until Saturday morning. So much will depend on the weather. Even if you hold the affair indoors, lots of folks won’t come if it rains. You say you’ve ordered eight cakes from Martha Comfort and twelve dozen cream-puffs from Mrs. Deane?”

“Yes’m,” said Ned. “We wanted Mrs. Deane to make more, but she didn’t think she could.”

“Well, that’s a hundred and fourty-four cream-puffs, and – let me see – one of Miss Comfort’s cakes will cut into sixteen pieces, and eight times sixteen – ”

“A hundred and twenty-eight, ma’am.”

“Well, and a hundred and twenty-eight and a hundred and forty-four – ”

“Two hundred and seventy-two.”

“You’re real quick at figures, aren’t you? Seems as if, though, counting on three hundred, you’d be a little short. I’ll have Aunt Persis make one of her marble-cakes. That’ll help out, I guess.”

“Yes’m; thanks awfully,” answered Ned.

“Who is going to serve the refreshments?”

“Why – why – ” Ned’s face fell. “I guess we hadn’t thought of that!”

“Well, it makes a heap of difference, because you can make a quart of ice-cream serve ten people or twenty, just as you’ve a mind to. I usually count on sixteen. Same way with a loaf of cake, and same way with salad. It’s awfully easy to waste salad when you’re serving it. Now, if you’d like me to, Ned, I’ll attend to serving everything for you. You just have the things set down there and I’ll look after them.”

“Oh, Miss Hillman, if you would! Gee, that would be great! It – it’ll be a lot of trouble, though, ma’am.”

“Well, I guess it won’t be the first trouble I’ve seen,” replied Miss Tabitha, dryly; “nor it won’t be the last!”

Thursday afternoon Laurie hurried over to the Coventry place as soon as a two-o’clock recitation was done. Bob was awaiting him at the gate, and conducted him around to the back of the big square house. Ned stared in surprise. The tangle of trees and vines and shrubbery had been trimmed to orderly neatness, the long, unkempt grass had been shorn to a yellow, but respectable, turf, and the old arbor showed new strips where Thomas, the Starlings’ man, had been at work on the decrepit frame. Near at hand lay piles of cedar and hemlock branches.

“Dad got a couple of the men to cut those down near the tunnel and haul them up here.” Bob explained. “Thomas is going to help us put them up. He made a peachy job of the garden, didn’t he?”

“You bet!” responded Laurie, heartily. “I wouldn’t have known the place! I say, Bob, this arbor’s longer than I thought it was.”

“Forty feet, about. Why?”

“I only ordered six tables and a dozen chairs from the caterer,” answered Laurie, dubiously. “Guess they aren’t enough; but he’s charging twenty-five cents apiece for them – ”

“Twenty-five cents for a table? Isn’t that dirt-cheap?”

“We’re only renting them, you idiot!”

“Oh, I see. Well, six is enough, I guess; you don’t want to crowd them. Now let’s get busy with the green stuff. I’ll yell down cellar for Thomas. There’s a ball of twine, and I’ve got two hammers and a lot of tacks on the side porch. You take your coat off and I’ll – ”

“We’ll have to have a step-ladder, Bob!”

“There’s a short ladder right beside you. Be right back.”

Laurie sat down on a wheelbarrow, after removing his coat and folding back the sleeves of his shirt, and looked around him. The garden was fairly large – larger in appearance since the clutter of shrubbery along the sides had been cleared away. Along the School Park edge ran a tall hedge of lilac bushes. At the back was the high board fence, painted dark brown, that separated the garden from the Widow Deane’s humble property. On the other side was a rusty ornamental iron fence, mostly hidden by vines. Broad walks, in spite of Thomas’s efforts rather overrun with weeds, surrounded the central plot of ancient turf, and another ran straight down the middle of the garden, connecting with the arbor. Wires were to be strung from the trees and across to the arbor, and Chinese lanterns hung thereon. Laurie, half closing his eyes, sought to visualize the place as it would appear on Saturday. He did want the affair to be a success, both financial and artistic, both on account of the school and – well, for the honor of the Turners! While he was musing, two things happened simultaneously: Bob and Thomas appeared from the house, and a familiar voice came to him from the opposite direction.

“Nod!” called the voice. “Nod, will you please come here a moment?”

Laurie’s eyes sought the board fence. Over the top of it appeared the head and shoulders of Polly. He left the wheelbarrow and hurried through the arbor and down the walk beyond. Polly’s face indicated distress, whether mental or physical Laurie couldn’t determine. But Polly’s first words explained.

“I can’t stay here l-long,” she said. “I – I’m just hanging by my elbows. I cl-climbed up on a board, and it’s fallen down!”

“I’ll get you a ladder!” cried Laurie, gallantly.

“N-no, never mind. I’m going to drop in a s-second. I just want to ask you what Brown’s color is. Nettie Blanchard is going to be Brown and – ”

“Why, brown, of course!”

“Oh!” There was the sound of desperate scraping against the farther side of the fence, and Polly’s countenance became fairly convulsed with the effort of holding herself in sight. “Oh! She said it was pur-pur – ”

Polly disappeared. There was a thud from the next yard.

“Purple!” The word floated across to him, muffled but triumphant.

“Are you hurt, Polly?” he called anxiously.

“Not a bit,” was the rueful response, “but I’m afraid the day-lilies are!” Then she laughed merrily. “Thanks, Nod! I didn’t think Nettie was right. She loves purple, you see!”

“Does she? Well, say, maybe she can be Williams. We weren’t going to have Williams, but its color is purple, I think, and if she is going to be disappointed – ”

“She will look very well indeed in brown,” came from the other side in judicial tones; “and if we begin making changes, half the girls will want to be something they aren’t. Why, Pearl Fayles begged to be some girls’ college neither Mae nor I had ever heard of, just so she could wear lavender and pale lemon!”