Keineth Part 13

That is what Keineth wondered, too. They had won five games--they _must_ win the next and set! Walking close to Billy she confronted him, her face ablaze. For just a moment they looked hard into one another's eyes; not a boy and girl, the one proudly conscious of his boyhood and two years' difference in age, the other a very young and all-admiring girl--but just two mortals contesting together against two others.

And at last they, Keineth and Billy, met on equal ground--Keineth had proven her mettle--let Billy show his! Keineth's clear, straightforward gaze made Billy drop his eyes in sudden shame.

"Play square," she said sternly. And Billy played square! Their opponents had not a chance!

"Well, Billy did wake up," some one said and some one else added: "If they'd lost it would have been his fault. That Randolph girl played a corking game for her age!"

They had won the tennis tournament! Keineth did not enjoy half so much the silver cup they placed in her hands as she did Peggy's delight and Mr. Lee's hearty handclasp of congratulation. The young people carried them off to luncheon at the club-house, where they made merry far into the afternoon.

That evening Billy, with a very serious face, approached his father, where he sat alone on the veranda.

"Dad, I've withdrawn my name from the paddle races!"

"What's wrong, son?"

"I'm not a good sport--that's why," Billy answered with his usual frankness. "I had a sort of grudge against Keineth because she wouldn't tell me about her father and I'd vowed to get even and I just laid down on that tennis game--until she made me ashamed!"

"But she did make you ashamed, Billy?"

"Yes--she told me to play square and I just thought then that no one would ever have to tell me to play square more than once!"

Mr. Lee laid his arm across the boy's shoulder.

"Laddie--these games we play teach us a lot, don't they? There is something in them more than fun and more than the health they give!

You've learned a motto to-day that you can pin on your s.h.i.+eld when you go out to meet the other matches life offers!"

"You can just bet I'll always try to play square! And I'm going now to find Ken and tell her she's a brick!"

Mr. Lee watched the boy disappear. Though a smile hovered about his lips, his eyes were serious--the cigar between his fingers had quite gone out.

"May he keep that spirit all through life," he was thinking.

CHAPTER XV

NOT ON THE PROGRAM!

Keineth, a little tired after the strain of the tennis match, thought it much more fun to watch the others. Billy had gone into the paddling races, and no one but Mr. Lee and Keineth knew that it was because Keineth had begged him--and he had won and Keineth had been the first to examine the wrist watch he had received as an award. And on Friday the entire family waited eagerly near the eighteenth green of the golf course for Barbara and Carol Day to play up in the final game for the golf champions.h.i.+p!

Keineth and Peggy held hands tightly in their excitement.

"Oh, I can tell by Barb's walk she's ahead," Peggy cried as the two players, their caddies and a small gallery, appeared around the corner of the wood that screened the seventeenth green.

"She was two down at the turn and Carol was playing par golf," someone volunteered. "What does down at the turn mean?" whispered Keineth.

"The turn's at the end of the ninth hole and a-l-a-s, down means Barb was behind. Pooh, she always plays better when she's down!"

A man had just returned from the fifteenth tee.

"They were dormie at the sixteenth," the girls heard him say.

"What _queer_ words they do use in golf! I thought dormie was a window!"

"Oh, Ken," giggled Peggy, "you mean dormer and it's dormie when one player is just as many holes ahead as there are more holes to play.

Good gracious!" her face fell, "that means that Barbara will _have_ to win these three holes and she always slices on the eighteenth!"

"She won't this time, Peggy! That girl's like steel in a match!" a man nearby broke in.

"She's driving first!" Billy cried. "Oh, look--look--look! P-e-ach-y!"

Breathlessly they watched the two players advance toward the green.

Barbara had outdriven her opponent but she topped her second. Carol Day, playing a bra.s.sie, put her ball well up. Barbara recovered on her third shot, carried the bunker which guarded the green twenty yards from it, and laid her ball on the edge of the green. Carol's third caught the top of the bunker, shot into the air and dropped back into the sand pit!

"Oh-h!" breathed Peggy delightedly into Keineth's ear. She knew it was the worst bunker on the course.

But difficulties only made Carol Day play the better. She studied the shot for several moments while Barbara and the gallery watched with tense interest. Then they saw her lift her niblick slowly, her head bent; a cloud of sand raised, the ball cleared the bunker's top, dropped upon the green, rolled a few feet and rested within an easy putt of the cup!

The gallery applauded. It was a splendid shot, one of the kind that ought to win a match for its player. Even Keineth cried out in generous praise of the play.

Peggy gripped Keineth's hand so hard that it hurt.

"Steady, steady, there, Barb," Mr. Lee muttered. Barbara walked slowly to her ball. Her eyes were lowered, she did not glance at the familiar faces about the green. Her next shot demanded the utmost skill, care and steadiness she could command. Of them all she was the coolest. She _must_ run down her putt to win the match!

Peggy suddenly shut her eyes that she could not see what happened. The others saw Barbara, with an easy movement, line her putt. The ball rolled slowly over the clipped turf, dead straight to the hole--closer, closer, hung for one fraction of a second on the rim of the cup and then with a thud that was like music, dropped in! Barbara was the champion of the women players of the club!

"Why, it almost made me sick." Peggy confided to Keineth afterwards. "I will be a wreck when this week is over! And oh, if I can only win the life-saving medal to-morrow! Think of it, four prizes in the Lee family! There will be no living with us. I don't care a straw for the cups they give--it's that little bit of a bronze medal I want There's going to be a man here from Was.h.i.+ngton to give it to the winner--one of the Volunteer Life-saving a.s.sociation. And that medal's _got_ to go right here," and defiantly she struck her hand against her breast.

"I just can't wait," Keineth sighed in a tragic manner.

"The last day is most fun of all," Peggy explained.

"How can we ever settle down into calm living?"

"Huh--fast enough! I've got to begin reviewing English. I have a condition to make up."

"And I want to work on my music," cried Keineth, suddenly conscience-smitten.

"Mother says that to-morrow night we'll wind up with a supper on the beach. It's lots jollier than the dinner dance at the Club and we're too young to go to that, anyway. Barb could go if she wanted to, but she'd rather have the fun at the beach. We fry bacon and roast corn and mother makes cocoa and then we sing. Oh, dear, won't it be awful to grow old and not do those things?"

Together they sighed mightily at such a prospect!

For the last day of the Sports Week there was a program of fun that began immediately after breakfast and lasted through the day. All the club members gathered on the beach where gaily-decorated booths had been built. From these lemonade and sandwiches were served continuously. The motor boats, canoes and skiffs, their flags flying, made bright splashes of color against the green water. Stakes, topped with flags, marked the course for the swimming races. The judges were taken out on one of the larger motor boats.

Keineth had never seen anything quite like it. To her it seemed like a chapter from some story and a story strange and exciting!