Chapter 12

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!”