Marjorie Dean College Freshman Part 19

"They are fairly fast players, but," Miss Barlow's eyebrows went up, "they are so tricky. They composed the freshman team, last year.

Gratifying, isn't it, to be able to head basket ball two years in succession?" The question was freighted with sarcasm.

"Very," returned Muriel, inwardly amazed at this new att.i.tude on the part of her reserved room-mate. It was the first time Moretense had ever grown personal in regard to any of the students.

"I am positive the juniors won't play them this year," Hortense continued. "They had enough of them last. Really, the umpire nearly wore herself out shrieking 'foul' during that game. My word, but they worked hard-cheating. It did them not a particle of good. They lost by ten points."

"Do you like basket ball?" Muriel was further astonished at her companion's apparent interest in the sport.

"Yes, I do, when it is well and fairly played. I have never yet seen a really clever game played at Hamilton."

Similar information drifted to the Lookouts concerning the soph.o.m.ores'

work at basket ball, during the few days that preceded the game. Far from the usual amount of enthusiasm which attends this sport was exhibited by the upper cla.s.s students. The freshmen, however, were duly excited over it. While many of them had disapproved the partiality shown at the try-out, they could only hope that the freshman team would rally to their work on the day of the game and vanquish the sophs. The team was practicing a.s.siduously. That was a good sign. The soph.o.m.ores were not nearly so faithful at practice.

"If 'our crowd' can play even half as well as the scrub teams could at Sanford High they can whip this aggregation of geese, Robin Page excepted," Jerry a.s.serted scornfully to her chums on the evening before the game. The next day's recitations hastily prepared, the Lookouts had gathered in Ronny's room for a spread.

"I feel sorry for Miss Page," remarked Ronny, without lifting her eyes from their watch on the chafing dish in which the chocolate had begun to bubble.

"So do I. I told her so yesterday," confessed Muriel. "I met her in the library and we had quite a long talk. She said she would have resigned after the first day of practice, but she felt that it would be cowardly.

She knows the game as it should be played, but the other four girls are quite shaky on some points of it and they won't let her correct them when they make really glaring mistakes. She tried it twice. Both times she just escaped quarreling with them. So she quit."

"I think she is so plucky to stay on the team under such circ.u.mstances."

Marjorie looked up from her sandwich-making labors, her face full of honest admiration for Robin. "She is such a delightful girl, isn't she?"

"She makes me think of a small boy," was Jerry's comparison. "Tell you something else about her when I get this tiresome bottle of olives opened. If I don't extract the treacherous old cork very gently, I'm due to hand myself a quarter of a bottle of brine in the eyes or in my lap or wherever it may happen to land. There!" She triumphantly drew forth the stubborn cork without accident. "Now about Robin Page. She asked me to ask you girls to go to the game with the Silverton Hall crowd. Then she wants us to be her guests at dinner at the Hall and spend the evening with her and her pals. I've accepted for us all, so make your plans accordingly."

"I've already asked Moretense to go to the game with us." Muriel looked briefly perplexed. "I don't think anyone will care if I ask her to go with us to meet the Silverton Hall girls. I can't go with you folks to dinner, for my estimable room-mate has invited me to the Colonial and engaged a table ahead. I am to meet Miss Angier and Miss Thompson, juniors and friends of hers."

"When did you make all these dates and right over our heads?" Jerry quizzed, trying to appear offended and failing utterly.

"Oh, the other day," returned Muriel lightly. "It shows you that I am well thought of, too, in high-brow circles." She cast a sly glance toward Lucy. The latter was happily engaged in cutting generous slices from a fruit cake which had come by express that day. Mrs. Warner had made it early in the fall and had put it away to season. It had arrived at an opportune time, and Lucy had gladly contributed to the feast.

She chuckled softly over Muriel's good-natured thrust, but made no reply. It was her chief pleasure to listen to her chums, rather than talk. While she had expanded wonderfully as a result of a.s.sociation with a fun-loving, talkative quartette of girls who had taken pains to draw her out, she still had spells of the old reserve. She was gradually growing used to the gay badinage, which went on constantly among her chums, and on rare occasions would convulse them by some dry remark of her own.

While the Five Travelers were preparing their little feast in the utmost good fellows.h.i.+p, in a room two doors farther up the hall five other girls sat around a festal table, arguing in an anything but equable manner. Four of them were members of the soph.o.m.ore team. The fifth was Leslie Cairns.

"It's not fair to the kid if you girls don't give her a chance to win."

Leslie Cairns' s.h.a.ggy eyebrows met in a ferocious scowl. "Don't be stingy. You won enough games last year. Have a heart!"

"Honestly, Les, you talk like an idiot!" exclaimed Natalie Weyman impatiently. "You have a crush, and no mistake, on that little Elster simpleton. I don't care whether you like what I say or not. You think she is a scream because she behaves more like a jockey than a student. I think she is so silly. You will get tired of her swaggering ways before long. See if you don't."

"She's a game little kid, and I like her," flung back Leslie with belligerent emphasis. "Why did you put me to all the trouble to fix things so that she could make the team if you didn't intend to give her a showing. That cost me time and money." Her voice rose harshly on the last words.

"Shh!" Dulcie Vale held up a warning finger. "You are almost shouting, Les. Lower your voice."

"I should _say_ so." Natalie Weyman's face was a disagreeable study.

Before the arrival of Lola Elster at Hamilton, she and Leslie had been intimate friends. Now Leslie had in a measure deserted her for the bold little freshman she so detested.

"Beg your pardon." Leslie's tones dropped back to their usual drawl.

"Sorry you girls have decided you must break the record tomorrow. Why so strenuous? You haven't Beauty and her gang to fight. They haven't had even a look-in. I hear they are really _players_, too. The trouble with you, Nat, is you are two-faced. You pretended that you were anxious for Lola to make the team because you thought she would make a fine record for herself on the floor. You said her pals ought to be on the team, too. So they are, the three of them. I worked that. Now you didn't say that you wanted these three freshmen on the team so as to keep those Sanford upstarts off. I caught that, too, and fixed it. I didn't mind. I can't see them. What you wanted was a crowd of freshmen your team could whip easily."

"That is absolutely ridiculous and unkind in you, Leslie!" Natalie's face was scarlet. "How could I possibly know beforehand just how well the freshmen we-that is-you--" Natalie stammered, then stopped.

Leslie Cairns' upper lip drew back in a sneering smile. "How could you know? Well, you dragged them over to the gym and set them at work with the ball. This was before the try-out. What? You took good care not to ask me along that day. Joan is as deep in it as you are. Then you came back puffing about what wonderful players these kids were and so forth.

Would I fix it for them. I did. The day of the try-out I was pretty sore. You can't fool me on a basket ball. They are not much more than scrubs; except Lola. She is O. K. I saw you and Joan had put one over on me, but it was too late to make a fuss. Think I don't know you, Nat? Ah, but I do!"

Natalie sat biting her lip, her eyes narrowed. She was well aware that Leslie knew her traitorous disposition. For selfish reasons she did not wish to quarrel with her.

"All right, Leslie," she shrugged. "Have it your own way. Go on thinking that, if it will be any satisfaction to you. You must remember we have our own end to hold up as soph.o.m.ores. Why, if we _tried_ to favor Lola during the game, it would be noticed and we would have trouble over it.

Ever since that Beauty contest, I've noticed a difference in the way I am treated. I used to be _It_ on the campus. I've lost ground, somehow.

We Sans have worked too hard for first place here to give way now. We must keep up our popularity or be at the dictation of the common herd.

Our team simply _has_ to make good tomorrow."

CHAPTER XXII.-A HARD a.s.sIGNMENT.

When the chimes rang out a melodious Angelus at six o'clock that evening, the soph.o.m.ore-freshman game was over and the freshman had received the most complete whitewash on record at Hamilton. The score at the end of the game was 26-4 in favor of the sophs. In the freshman quarters, just off the main floor of the gymnasium, Lola Elster sat weeping tears of sheer fury, with Miss Cairns alone to comfort her.

"They told me they wouldn't work hard! They told me it would be a walk away!" she reiterated vengefully. "You wait. I'll be even with that Joan Myers!" The bulk of her spite was directed against Joan, with whom she had come most into contact during the game.

On the way to their respective campus houses, groups of indignant freshmen freely discussed and deplored the disgrace that had fallen upon them. At least thirty-five girls were bound for Silverton Hall, walking five abreast, their clear voices rising high in the energy of discussion. Among these were Marjorie, Ronny, Jerry and Lucy. All four were separated, each walking in a different group.

In the foremost rank were Robin Page, Portia Graham, Elaine Hunter, Blanche Scott and Marjorie. Four of them were engaged in trying to console Robin, who was feeling the disgrace keenly.

"You should have resigned from that team, Robin, the minute you saw what they were at practice," Blanche Scott said energetically. "It was fine in you to stick for the honor of the cla.s.s. You did your best today, under the circ.u.mstances. You were the only one who scored."

"Yes; you need not feel bad, Robin," consoled Portia Graham. "I know one thing. There is going to be a new freshman team before long, and I hope you will play center."

"You believe, then, Portia, that we ought to raise a real fuss and demand a new team?" Elaine Hunter's blue eyes were alight with antic.i.p.ation. She was glad to have some one else express her own thought.

"Yes; don't you? It is the only way to wipe our escutcheon clear. Don't you agree with us, Miss Dean? We should all stand together in a matter of this kind. We can only guess as to why such a team was picked in the first place. Good players ignored and 'flunks' taken on, with the exception of Robin. Miss Reid, I understand, favors a certain element of students here. The management of the sports is in her hands, but it should not be. It really belongs to the senior sports committee. I hear, that, for two or three years, they have been positive figureheads. She has done all the managing. It is time there was a change."

"Two of the senior committee did not care much, I believe. The manager, Miss Clement, told me that she was simply overruled. She objected, but that was all the good it did," informed Blanche Scott.

Portia had gone on talking, without giving Marjorie a chance to agree with her. She now laughingly apologized and again solicited an opinion.

"I think a new team should be chosen," Marjorie said evenly. Her eyes were sparkling in the darkness like twin stars. Here, at last, were girls like the Lookouts. She was so glad that the matter was to be taken up and threshed out she could have shouted. A definite blow for democracy was about to be struck at Hamilton. "My friends and I thought the try-out very unfair. We are considered good players at home, but we were not even chosen to sub."

She went on a little further to explain why, in her estimation, the team chosen were so unfit for the responsibility. Her short talk proved conclusively that she understood basket ball as only an expert could.

"Won't you and Miss Harding please enter the lists again, when we have the new try-out?" coaxed Elaine Hunter.

"No." Marjorie's refusal was quietly emphatic. "Not this year. I am willing to do all I can to help the good work along, but I don't care to play. Muriel feels the same. Next year we hope to make the team. There are some good players among the freshmen who had no chance at the try-out. I would like to see them play. I would like to see Miss Page play center. She plays a wonderful game."

"Thank you." Walking beside Marjorie, Robin gave her arm a grateful little squeeze. "You and I are going to be great friends," she laughed.

"How did you guess my pet ambition?"