The Girls of Central High on Track and Field Part 24

"That is what those girls called you," muttered Margit, but the teacher did not hear.

"You claim to be Belas Salgo's daughter?" repeated Miss Carrington, at last.

"I am his daughter. I cannot remember my mother--much. But my father I remember very well. Why, I traveled everywhere with him! All over southern Europe we went. And to Algiers, and the other north coast cities. He played everywhere about the Mediterranean until he died. And then," said the girl, simply, "I lost all happiness--and I was brought to this great, cold country."

Miss Carrington had listened with her head resting on her hand and her eyes watching the girl from behind her gla.s.ses. Now she said:

"Well, I do not believe you are Belas Salgo's child--not the Belas Salgo I have good reason to remember. No. But I will take you home with me and we will talk this matter over.

"I was correcting some examination papers," she added, going to the desk and turning out the student lamp. "But they may go until another time,"

and with a sigh she put on her hat and cloak, and taking the Gypsy girl's hand led her out of the school building, the darkened corridors of which she knew so well.

CHAPTER XX--INTER-CLa.s.s RIVALRY

If Eve Sitz had been outside of the schoolhouse tower, being held by the girls all of this time, she must certainly have been by now at the point of exhaustion, and so must they.

But Eve had dropped just right, had caught the wire with her gloved hands just as she had expected to, and then swung down and hung from the steel strand for a few seconds to get her breath.

Nellie and Bobby, leaning out of neighboring windows, cheered her on.

"Hurrah, girls!" declared the irrepressible. "She's going to do it.

There she goes--hand under hand!"

"Oh, if she doesn't slip," wailed Nellie.

"She's not going to slip," cried Bobby. "Hurrah! She's on the roof."

Once on the main building Eve did not waste time. She ran to the door, which she knew would be open, and so darted down the stairs to the corridor out of which the tower stairway opened. There was the key in the lock as they had expected, and in a few moments she was calling the other four girls down.

"My goodness!" exclaimed Nellie, kissing Eve when she reached the foot of the stairs. "Aren't you just the brave, brave girl! And whatever should we have done without you?"

"I guess one of the others would have done the same had I not first thought of it," returned Eve, modestly.

"Hus.h.!.+" exclaimed Laura, suddenly. "I hear somebody."

A door opened below, and then somebody came up stairs. The girls crowded back into the corner and waited.

"I know that step," whispered Jess.

"Fee, fi, fo, fum!" murmured Bobby.

"And well may you say it is your 'foe,' Bobby," giggled Jess. "It's Miss Carrington."

"Never!" gasped Nell.

"Yes, it is. I am sure," agreed Laura.

"Oh, dear! if she catches us here we'll have to tell where we have been and all about it," groaned Eve.

"And demerits to work off to-morrow," moaned Bobby.

"Back into the stairway and keep still," whispered Laura.

They all crowded back. Miss Carrington came along the gloomy corridor and entered a cla.s.sroom. She did not turn the corner.

"Good! Now let's creep down and make our escape," whispered Bobby.

"But not by the front door. She came in that way."

"But the other doors will be locked--both the boys' and ours," urged Jess.

"I know the way out through the bas.e.m.e.nt," spoke Bobby, with determination. "I can open John's door. Come on."

So, at the very moment Prettyman Sweet tried the bas.e.m.e.nt door, the girls on whom he had played his trick were about to come out. Purt was scared and ran away. Later, when he escaped from Margit, the Gypsy girl, and ran to the foot of the tower stairs, Purt was scared again.

He found the door open and the girls gone. Who could have released them?

He slunk home in the darkness, taking the back alleys instead of Whiffle Street, and the next day he scarcely dared go to school for fear the girls had found out who played the trick on them.

But Laura and her mates all thought that either John, the janitor, or one of the teachers had chanced to close the tower door and lock it.

And, as they had been where they were forbidden to go, they said very little about their fright and anxiety.

But Eve was quite a heroine among them. The girl from the farm was a deal more muscular than most of her mates; perhaps no girl at Central High could have climbed out of that tower window and worked her way down the wire in just that manner.

And Eve was showing herself, as time went on, to be the best girl at the broad jump and at putting the twelve-pound shot, too. Lou Potter, of the senior cla.s.s, did well; but after a time she seemed to have reached her limit in both the jumping and shot-putting.

Then it was that Eve took a spurt and went ahead. She left all other compet.i.tors but Lou far behind.

Mrs. Case did not approve of inter-cla.s.s compet.i.tion in athletics; but the managing committee of the June meet had made such compet.i.tion necessary to a degree. The upper cla.s.ses of Central High had to choose their champions, and those champions in the foot races, from the 100-yard dash to the quarter-mile, had to compete the first week in June to arrange which should represent the school on the big day.

In other trials it was the same--broad jump, shot-putting, relay race teams, and all the rest. There was developed in the freshman cla.s.s a sprinter who almost bested Bobby Hargrew at first; but the freshmen had little, after all, to do when the big day came.

The main contestants for athletic honors were bound to be drawn from the junior and soph.o.m.ore cla.s.ses. It was a fact that the present senior cla.s.s of Central High had not been as imbued with the spirit of after-hour athletics, or with loyalty to the school, as had the younger cla.s.ses.

And the seniors had awakened too late to the importance of leaving a good record in athletics behind them when they were graduated. There was not a girl in the cla.s.s the equal of Mary O'Rourke, or Celia Prime, who had been graduated the year before.

Lou Potter, however, had many supporters, not alone among her own cla.s.s.

The fres.h.i.+es and sophs of course were jealous of the prominence of the juniors in athletics, so they centered their loyalty upon Lou.

Eve could do nothing that Lou Potter couldn't do! That was the cry, and the feeling ran quite high for a while. Besides, another thing came to make Eve rather unpopular with a certain cla.s.s of girls.

"Touch Day"--that famous occasion when candidates for members.h.i.+p in the M. O. R.'s were chosen--came in May, and Eve was one of the lucky girls to receive the magic "touch." The fact that she had not been attending Central High a year aroused bitter feeling, although Eve was a junior in good standing.

"Say!" cried Bobby Hargrew, "if they had kicked about _me_ being an M.

O. R. there would have been some sense in it. For I never really thought I'd arrive at such an honor."