The Girls of Central High at Basketball Part 18

"Now, now! what have I told you about being good losers?" she demanded, briskly.

"Tha--that's all right," stammered Roberta. "We cheered 'em, didn't we?

But I feel it's my fault. I fumble dreadfully. You know, I always did when I was on the team before. Get somebody else in my place, Mrs.

Case--do!"

Naturally Lily Pendleton told all this to Hester; but it only added to Hester's bitterness of spirit. Deep down in her heart she felt the sting of Central High's defeat--only she wouldn't admit it. The team had lost--she believed it, too--because she wasn't there in her place at forward center!

And Mrs. Case had tried to show her how she might win back, if she would, and Hester had refused. Her bad temper had cut her off from the instructor's help entirely. She was a pariah--and she felt it.

So she told Lily she was glad the team was having up-hill work and was so nasty about it that Lily, who was feeling bad, too, about the affair, almost got mad herself, and went home early.

"That Hester Grimes _can_ be awfully exasperating when she wants to be," Lily admitted to her mother.

"Bless me, child! I don't really see why you a.s.sociate so much with her. She does come of such common people. Why, Mrs. Grimes is impossible!" sighed Mrs. Pendleton.

CHAPTER XVII

HEBE POc.o.c.k IN TROUBLE

The big frost came soon after the Keyport game and Eve excitedly informed her particular friends when she came in to school that the nuts were falling in showers. It was toward the end of the week when this happened and it had already been arranged that a nutting party should take an entire Sat.u.r.day for the trip to Peveril Pond, some miles beyond the Sitz place.

The Beldings' car and one of Mr. Purcell's sight-seeing autos were to carry the party from the Hill, with two seats reserved for Eve and her brother Otto, whom they would pick up at the farmhouse. Prettyman Sweet and Lily Pendleton were invited--indeed, Eve had insisted upon all the basketball team being of the party--and Purt was dreadfully exercised in advance regarding what would be the proper costume to wear.

"Oh," said Bobby Hargrew, "when folks go fox-hunting in the fall they wear red coats, because the fox is red, I suppose. Now, you ought to wear a nut-brown suit, hadn't you?"

"Yes, Purt," drawled Lance Darby, "something nutty will suit you, all right, all right!"

The girls wore sweaters and old caps and old skirts and lace up boots--all but Lily. She came "dressed to the nines," as Bobby declared.

"What under the sun are you supposed to represent, Lil?" demanded Jess Morse. "You--you look like a fancy milkmaid."

"Well, I'm going into the country; I shall look the part," said Lily, demurely.

"Oh, say!" continued Jess, in a whisper, "you've got altogether too much red on your cheeks for a milkmaid, young lady."

At that Lily flushed deeper than the "fast color" on her cheek.

"Is that so, Miss?" she snapped. "I guess a milkmaid ought to be rosy-cheeked."

Chet, going by, overheard this. He glanced at the red spots in Lily's naturally pale cheek, and laughed.

"On the contrary," he said, winking at Jess.

"What's on the contrary?" demanded Lily, sharply.

"Milkmaids shouldn't be rosy-cheeked, you know," said Chet, gravely.

"Why not, Mr. Funny?"

"Because a milkmaid is naturally a pail girl," chortled Chet.

Lily was rather angry for a while because they joked her about the rouge. She was the only girl in all the Junior cla.s.s who used cosmetics and, as Chet laughingly said once, "painting the Lily was a thankless job--it didn't improve her looks!"

They piled into the two autos and started off with much laughter and blowing of horns. Nellie Agnew was almost the last one to board the Beldings' car.

"I had to run down to Mrs. Doyle's for Daddy Doctor," she explained.

"Poor little Johnny is dreadfully sick. He never really recovered from the shock, or the cold, when he fell into the sewer basin. He's such a poor, weak little thing now. It would make your heart ache to see him, Laura."

"Lil says that Hester goes there all the time, and that she's always doing something for Rufe, or the rest of them," Jess Morse said.

Laura shook her head. "I know," she said. "I saw Hester and Rufie in the park together the other day. They seem to be very good friends.

And I'm sorry."

"Why--for pity's sake?" demanded Nellie.

"Why, father is on the Board of Education this year, you know, and he told us--but you mustn't repeat it!--that Bill Jackway had admitted that the night the gym. was first raided Rufus slipped into the building unbeknown to him early in the evening, and was there until after midnight. Then he cried to go home, being afraid, he said. But Jackway let him out without ever making the rounds of the gym., and so he doesn't know for sure whether the damage to the apparatus was done while Rufe was there, or afterward."

"My goodness me!" gasped Nellie. "How awful!"

"Could it be that half-foolish boy, do you suppose?" cried Jess.

"He isn't so foolish. Rufe is dreadfully cunning about some things,"

replied Laura. "Think of those footprints in the athletic field. I _know_ the person who made them walked backwards. Maybe Rufe got into the gym. again unknown to his uncle; and he'd be just sharp enough to get out of that window backward and so reach the fence."

"And he could be hired to do that for a little money," said Jess, confidently.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that!" exclaimed Nellie. "It's too dreadful."

"But Mr. Jackway can't make Rufe admit it. The boy won't speak. And the Board doesn't know what to do about it," Laura said. "Now, I've told you girls this; don't let it go any farther."

They promised--and they were girls who could keep their word. Lance and Chet on the front seat of the machine, with Bobby between them, hadn't heard it at all.

When the cars reached the Sitz place Eve and Otto were taken into the tonneau of the Beldings' car, and they went on, down the leaf-strewn road, toward Peveril Pond. The forest fire that had threatened all this side of the ridge had burned out without crossing the wide highway known as "the State Road" and so the lower slope of the ridge and all the valley had been untouched.

They pa.s.sed the district school which Eve attended before she came to Central High.

"And we had a splendid teacher at the last," sighed Eve. "But when I first went to it--oh! the boys acted so horrid, and the girls gabbled so. It wasn't a school. My mother said it was 'a bear garden!'

"You see, there were some dreadfully bad big boys went to the school, off and on. The Four Corners isn't so far away, you know. Hebe Poc.o.c.k--Laura will remember him?"

"I guess so!" cried Laura.

"Well, he was one of the big boys in school when I first came here. We had a new teacher--we were always having 'new' teachers. Sometimes there would be as many as four in one term. If they were girls they broke down and cried and gave it up; and if they were young men they were either beaten or driven out of the neighborhood.

"But I can remember this particular young man pretty well, little as I was," laughed Eve. "He wasn't very big, but he didn't look puny, although he wore gla.s.ses. But when he opened school he took off the gla.s.ses and put them in his desk. He was real mild mannered, and he had a nice smile, and the big girls liked him. But Hebe and the other big boys said they were going to run him off right quick!"