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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Girls of Central High at Basketball, by
+Gertrude W. Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Girls of Central High at Basketball
+       The Great Gymnasium Mystery
+
+Author: Gertrude W. Morrison
+
+Release Date: November 2, 2011 [EBook #37912]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH AT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE BALL ROSE AND FLEW DIRECTLY AT THE BASKET.]
+
+
+
+
+THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH AT BASKETBALL
+
+GERTRUDE W. MORRISON
+
+1914
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+    CHAPTER I--HESTER IS MIFFED
+    CHAPTER II--THE KERNEL IN THE ATHLETIC NUT
+    CHAPTER III--JOHNNY DOYLE
+    CHAPTER IV--"THERE'S GOOD STUFF IN THAT GIRL"
+    CHAPTER V--HESTER AT HOME
+    CHAPTER VI--THE FIRST GAME
+    CHAPTER VII--THE SECOND HALF
+    CHAPTER VIII--THE ROUND ROBIN
+    CHAPTER IX--ANOTHER RAID
+    CHAPTER X--MOTHER WIT AND THE GRAY MARE
+    CHAPTER XI--HEBE POCOCK
+    CHAPTER XII--"OUT OF IT"
+    CHAPTER XIII--THE WIND VEERS
+    CHAPTER XIV--RACING THE FLAMES
+    CHAPTER XV--THE KEYPORT GAME
+    CHAPTER XVI--UPHILL WORK FOR THE TEAM
+    CHAPTER XVII--HEBE POCOCK IN TROUBLE
+    CHAPTER XVIII--MOTHER WIT TO THE RESCUE
+    CHAPTER XIX--AT LUMBERPORT
+    CHAPTER XX--WINNING ALL ALONG THE LINE
+    CHAPTER XXI--WHAT HESTER DID
+    CHAPTER XXII--WHAT MR. BILLSON COULD TELL
+    CHAPTER XXIII--CLIMBING UP
+    CHAPTER XXIV--HESTER WINS
+    CHAPTER XXV--THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HESTER IS MIFFED
+
+
+The referee's whistle sounded sharply, and the eighteen girls of
+Central High engaged in playing basketball, as well as an equal number
+strung along the side lines, stopped instantly and turned their eyes
+on Mrs. Case, the physical instructor.
+
+"Hester Grimes! you are deliberately delaying the game. I have
+reprimanded you twice. The third time I will take you out of the team
+for the week----"
+
+"I didn't, either!" cried the person addressed, a rather heavily built
+girl for her age, with a sturdy body and long arms--well developed in a
+muscular way, but without much grace. She had very high color, too,
+and at the present moment her natural ruddiness was heightened by
+anger.
+
+"You are breaking another rule of the game by directly addressing the
+referee," said Mrs. Case, grimly. "Are you ready to play, or shall I
+take you out of the game right now?"
+
+The red-faced girl made no audible reply, and the teacher signalled
+for the ball to be put into play again. Three afternoons each week
+each girl of Central High, of Centerport, who was eligible for
+after-hour athletics, was exercised for from fifteen to thirty minutes
+at basketball. Thirty-six girls were on the ground at a time. Every
+five minutes the instructor blew her whistle, and the girls changed
+places. That is, the eighteen actually playing the game shifted with
+the eighteen who had been acting as umpires, judges, timekeepers,
+scorers, linesmen and coaches. This shifting occupied only a few
+seconds, and it put the entire thirty-six girls into the game, shift
+and shift about. It was in September, the beginning of the fall term,
+and Mrs. Case was giving much attention to the material for the
+inter-school games, to be held later in the year.
+
+Hester Grimes had played the previous spring on the champion team, and
+held her place now at forward center. But although she had been two
+years at Central High, and was now a Junior, she had never learned the
+first and greatest truth that the physical instructor had tried to
+teach her girls:
+
+"_Keep your temper!_"
+
+Since spring several of the girls playing on the first team of Central
+High had left school, graduating as seniors. The work now was to whip
+this team into shape, and finally Mrs. Case and the girls themselves,
+voting upon the several names in their capacity as members of the
+Girls' Branch Athletic League, had settled upon the following roster
+of names and positions as the "make-up" of the best-playing basketball
+team of Central High:
+
+  Josephine Morse, goal-keeper
+  Evangeline Sitz, right forward
+  Dora Lockwood, left forward
+  Hester Grimes, forward center
+  Laura Belding, jumping center
+  Lily Pendleton, back center
+  Dorothy Lockwood, right guard
+  Nellie Agnew, left guard
+  Bobby Hargrew, goal guard
+
+The basketball court of Central High was located in the new Girls'
+Athletic Field, not far from the school building itself, and
+overlooking beautiful Lake Luna and the boathouses and rowing course.
+At the opening of Central High this fall the new field and gymnasium
+had first come into use.
+
+The athletic field, gymnasium and swimming pool were the finest in the
+State arranged for girls' athletics. They had been made possible by
+the generosity of one of the very wealthy men of Centerport, Colonel
+Richard Swayne, and his interest in the high school girls and their
+athletics had been engaged by one of the girls themselves, Laura
+Belding by name, but better known among her schoolfellows and friends
+as "Mother Wit."
+
+The play went on again under the keen eye of the instructor. Mrs. Case
+believed most thoroughly in the efficiency of basketball for the
+development and training of girls; but she did not allow her charges
+to play the game without supervision. Lack of supervision by
+instructors is where the danger of basketball and kindred athletics
+lies.
+
+The game is an excellent one from every point of view; yet within the
+last few years it has come into disfavor in some quarters, and many
+parents have forbidden their daughters to engage in it. Like bicycling
+in the past, and football with the boys, basketball has suffered "a
+black eye" because of the way it has been played, not because of the
+game itself.
+
+But the Girls' Branch played the game under sound rules, and under the
+keen oversight of the instructor engaged by the Board of Education of
+Centerport for that purpose. Basketball is the first, or one of the
+first vigorous team games to become popular among women and girls in
+this country, and under proper supervision will long remain a favorite
+pastime.
+
+The rules under which the girls of Central High played the game were
+such as brought into basketball the largest number of players allowed.
+Whereas there were often in the games on Central High courts only
+right forward, left forward, center, right guard and left guard, with
+possibly a jumping center--these games being engaged in by the girls
+for their own amusement--in the regular practice and when the
+representative team played the teams of other schools, the girls on
+the field numbered nine upon a side.
+
+Thus conforming with the new rules, Mrs. Case, and the physical
+instructors of the other highs of Centerport and the neighboring
+cities, made the interest in basketball more general and enabled a
+greater number of ambitious girls to gain coveted positions on the
+first team.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Case's whistle stopped the play again. And as the bustle
+and activity subsided, two girls' voices rose above all.
+
+"You just see! It's only Hester who gets scolded----"
+
+"It's not so! If she'd play fair----"
+
+"Miss Pendleton and Miss Agnew are discussing something of much
+importance--much more important than the game," said the referee,
+tartly.
+
+"Well, she said----" began Nellie Agnew, who was usually a very quiet
+girl, but who was flushed and angry now as she "looked daggers" at
+Lily Pendleton, who was Hester Grimes's chum.
+
+"That will do, Nellie!" exclaimed the instructor. "You girls evidently
+have not taken to heart what I have been telling you. The only way to
+play this--or any other team game--is to work together and talk as
+little as possible. And by no means allow your tempers to become
+heated.
+
+"We have formed a new line-up for the fall series of games with East
+and West High, and the highs of Keyport and Lumberport. It would be
+too bad to change the make-up of the team later; but I want girls on
+our champion team, who play the first class teams of other schools,
+who know how to keep cool and to keep their mouths shut. Now! don't
+let me have to repeat this again to-day at least. Time!"
+
+Hester Grimes turned and gave Nellie Agnew an angry look and then went
+on playing. The girls officiating at the lines changed with the actual
+players. Later they shifted again, which brought the first team into
+the field once more with the ball.
+
+When the practice was over Mrs. Case stopped Hester Grimes before she
+could run off the field. She spoke to her in a low voice, so that no
+other girl could hear; but she spoke firmly:
+
+"Hester, you are making a bad impression upon the teachers as well as
+on the minds of your fellow pupils by your indulgence in bad temper."
+
+"Nobody else calls me down for it but you, Mrs. Case," declared the
+big girl, bitterly.
+
+"You are a good scholar--you do not fail at your books," Mrs. Case
+continued, quietly. "You do not have occasion in the classroom to
+often show your real disposition. Here, in matters of athletics, it is
+different. Your deportment does not suit me----"
+
+"It never has, Mrs. Case," exclaimed the red-faced girl. "You have
+criticized me ever since you came here to Central High----"
+
+"Stop, Hester! How dare you speak that way to a teacher? I shall
+certainly report you to Mr. Sharp if you take my admonition in such a
+spirit. I have finished with you. If you do not show improvement in
+deportment on the athletic field I shall shut you out of practice
+entirely."
+
+The instructor spoke sharply and her face was clouded. She was a very
+brisk, decisive woman, and she considered that she had been patient
+with Hester Grimes long enough.
+
+Hester was the only daughter of a very wealthy wholesale butcher, and
+from her babyhood had been indulged and given her way. She was one of
+those girls who fairly "boss" their parents and everybody around their
+homes. She had bought the friendliness of some weak girls by her
+display and the lavish use of spending money. Perhaps, however, Lily
+Pendleton was really the only girl who cared for Hester.
+
+Most of the girls who had been relieved from basketball practice had
+run in to change to their street clothing. On the lower floor of the
+gymnasium building was the swimming pool, shower baths, and dressing
+room, besides the lockers for field materials, the doctor's and
+instructor's offices, and the hair-drying room. Above was the
+gymnasium proper with all the indoor apparatus allowed by the rules of
+the Girls' Branch.
+
+Each girl had her own locker and key, the key to be handed in at the
+instructor's office when she left the building. When Hester came into
+the long dressing room there was a chatter of voices and laughter.
+There was no restriction on talking in here.
+
+Lily met her chum at the door. The former was naturally a pale girl,
+rather pretty, but much given to aping fashions and frocks of grown
+women.
+
+"I'd like to box that Bobby Hargrew's ears," she said, to her angry
+chum. "She was just saying that you'd queer the team again before you
+got through. She's always hinting that you lost that last game we
+played East High last spring."
+
+"I'll just fix her for that--the mean little thing!" snapped Hester,
+and being just in the mood for quarreling she stalked over to where
+little Clara Hargrew was talking to a group of friends, among whom
+were Nellie Agnew and the Lockwood twins.
+
+"So you're slandering me, as usual, are you, Miss?" demanded Hester,
+her face very fiery and her voice very loud.
+
+"Meaning me?" demanded Bobby, shaking her curly head, and grinning
+impishly at the bigger girl.
+
+"Who else would I mean, Miss?" pursued Hester.
+
+"I couldn't slander you, Hessie," said the mischief-loving Bobby.
+
+"You are a trouble-maker all the time, Bobby Hargrew----" began the
+older girl, but Bobby broke in with:
+
+"If I made anywhere near as much trouble as you do about this
+gymnasium, Hessie, I'd talk soft."
+
+"Now, Bobby," cautioned Nellie Agnew, laying a quick hand upon the
+smaller girl's arm and drawing her away.
+
+But Hester, quite beside herself, lifted her palm and struck at Bobby.
+Perhaps the agile girl dodged; or maybe Nellie deliberately stepped
+forward. Anyhow, the stroke intended for Bobby landed full upon
+Nellie's cheek. Hester was strong and her hand heavy. The print of her
+palm left a white patch for a moment upon the plump cheek of the
+doctor's daughter.
+
+"Now you've done it, Hessie!" cried Bobby, angrily. "See what you've
+done!"
+
+"I didn't----" began Hester, rather startled by the result of her blow;
+but the tears of anger and pain had sprung to Nellie's eyes and for
+once the peacemaker showed some spirit.
+
+"It served you just right! You're always interfering," flashed out
+Hester.
+
+"You are a bad and cruel girl," said Nellie, sobbing, but more in
+anger than pain.
+
+"Bah! you run and tell Mrs. Case now. That will be about your style."
+
+"I shall tell my father," said Nellie, firmly, and turned away that
+her enemy might not exult longer in her tears.
+
+"And he's our physician and I guess he'll have something to say about
+your actions, Hessie!" cried Bobby Hargrew. "You're not fit to play
+with nice girls, anyway."
+
+"And you're one of the 'nice' ones, I suppose, Miss?" scoffed Hester.
+
+"I hope I am. I don't lose my temper and queer my team-mates' play.
+And nobody ever caught me doing mean things--and you've been caught
+before. If it wasn't for Gee Gee favoring you, you'd have been asked
+to leave Central High before now," cried Bobby.
+
+"That's so, too," said one of the twins, quite as angry as Bobby, but
+more quietly.
+
+"I should worry!" laughed Hester, loudly and scornfully. "What if I
+did leave Central High? You girls are a lot of stuck-up ninnies,
+anyway! I hate you all, and I'll get square with you some day--you just
+see if I don't!"
+
+It was perhaps an empty threat; yet it was spoken with grim
+determination on Hester Grimes's part. And only the future could tell
+if she would or would not keep her promise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE KERNEL IN THE ATHLETIC NUT
+
+
+The Girls' Branch Athletic League of Central High had been in
+existence only a few months. Gymnasium work, folk dancing, rowing and
+swimming, walking and some field sports had been carried to a certain
+point under the supervision of instructors engaged by Centerport's
+Board of Education before the organization of the girls themselves
+into an association which, with other school clubs, held competitions
+in all these, and other, athletics for trophies and prizes.
+
+Centerport, a lively and wealthy inland city located on the shore of
+Lake Luna, boasted three high schools--the East and West Highs, and the
+newer and large Central High, which was built in "the Hill" section of
+the town, the best residential district, on an eminence overlooking
+the lake and flanked on either side and landward, as well, by the
+business portions of the city. The finest estates of the Hill district
+sloped down to the shore of the lake.
+
+Public interest had long since been aroused in the boys' athletics;
+but that in girls' similar development had lagged until the spring
+previous to the opening of our story.
+
+In the first volume of this series, entitled "The Girls of Central
+High; Or, Rivals for All Honors," was related the organization of the
+Girls' Branch, and the early difficulties and struggles of a group of
+girl sophomores, most of whom were now on the roster of the basketball
+team as named in our first chapter. Laura Belding was the leading
+character in that first volume, and her quick-wittedness and loyalty
+to the school and to the athletic association really brought about, as
+has been intimated, the building of a fine gymnasium for the girls of
+Central High and the preparation of the athletic field connected
+therewith.
+
+In "The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna; Or, The Crew That Won,"
+the second volume of the series, was narrated the summer aquatic
+sports of the girls and their boy friends; and in that story the
+Lockwood twins, Dora and Dorothy, came to the fore as champion
+canoeists among the girls, as well as efficient members of the crew of
+the eight-oared shell, which won the prize cup offered by the Luna
+Boat Club to the champion shell rowed by high school girls.
+
+Lake Luna was a beautiful body of water, all of twenty miles in
+length, with Rocky River flowing into it from the west at Lumberport,
+and Rolling River carrying off her overflow at the east end of the
+lake, where stood the third of the trio of towns--Keyport. Both
+Lumberport and Keyport had a well conducted high school, and the girls
+in both were organized for athletics as were the three chief schools
+of Centerport.
+
+South of Centerport was a range of low hills, through which the two
+railroads which tapped the territory wound their way through deep cuts
+and tunnels. In the middle of the lake was Cavern Island, a very
+popular amusement park at one end, but at its eastern end wild and
+rocky enough. The northern shore of the lake was skirted by farms and
+deep woods, with a goodly mountain range in the distance.
+
+The girls who had been in the first class at basketball practice began
+to troop out of the gymnasium in their street apparel. Chetwood
+Belding and his chum, Lance Darby, were waiting for Laura and Jess
+Morse. With them was a gangling, goose-necked youth, dressed several
+degrees beyond the height of fashion. This was Prettyman Sweet, the
+acknowledged "glass of fashion and mould of form" among the boys of
+Central High.
+
+"Hullo! here's Pretty!" cried Bobby Hargrew, dancing out behind Laura
+and Jess. "You're never waiting to beau _me_ home, are you, Mr.
+Sweet?"
+
+"I--oh--ah----" stammered Purt, in much confusion. "It weally would give
+me pleasure, Miss Bobby; but I weally have a pwior engagement--ah!"
+
+Just then Hester and Lily came out of the door. Bobby dodged Hester in
+mock alarm. Lily stopped in the shelter of the doorway to powder her
+nose, holding up a tiny mirror that she might do it effectively, and
+then dropping both mirror and "powder rag" into the little "vanity
+case" she wore pendant from her belt.
+
+Purt Sweet approached Miss Pendleton with a mixture of diffidence and
+dancing school deportment that made Bobby shriek with laughter.
+
+"Oh, joy!" whispered the latter to Nellie, who appeared next with the
+Lockwood twins. "Purt has found a shrine before which to lay his
+heart's devotion. D'ye see _that_?" pointing derisively to Lily and
+young Sweet turning the first corner.
+
+Hester was strolling away by herself. Nellie said, quickly:
+
+"Let's not go _this_ way. I don't want to meet that girl again
+to-night."
+
+"Much obliged to you, Nell, for taking my slapping. But Hester never
+really meant to hit me, after all. You got in the way, you know."
+
+"You'd better behave," said one of the twins admonishingly. "You made
+this trouble, Bobby."
+
+"There you go!" cried Bobby, with apparent tears. "Nobody loves me;
+Hester tried to slap me, and Pretty Sweet wouldn't even walk with me.
+Oh, and say!" she added, with increased hilarity, "what do you suppose
+the boys are telling about Pretty now?"
+
+"Couldn't say," said Dora Lockwood. "Something ridiculous, I venture
+to believe."
+
+"It's _funny_," giggled Bobby. "You see, Purt thinks he's really
+getting whiskers."
+
+"No!" exclaimed Dorothy.
+
+"Sure. You watch him next time you have a chance. He's always feeling
+to see if his side-tapes have sprouted. He _has_ got a little yellow
+fuzz on his upper lip--honest!
+
+"Well, Purt went into Jimmy Fabro's shop the other day--you know, that
+hair-cutting place right behind Mr. Betting's store, on the side
+street? Well, Purt went in and took a chair. Jimmy was alone.
+
+"'What you want--hair cut again this week, Pretty?' asked Jimmy.
+
+"'No--o,' says Purt. 'Sh--sh--shave.'
+
+"Jimmy grunted, dropped back the chair, muffled Purt up in the towels,
+and then squinted up and down his victim's cheeks. Finally he mumbled
+something about being 'right back' and ran into Mr. Belding's and came
+back with a watchmaker's glass stuck in his eye. Then he squinted up
+and down Purt's face some more and finally mixed a big mug of
+lather--and lathered Purt's eyebrows!"
+
+"Oh! what for?" demanded Dora Lockwood.
+
+"That's what Purt asked him," giggled Bobby. "Jimmy said in his gruff
+way:
+
+"'I'm hanged if I can see hair anywhere else on your face, Pretty. You
+want your eyebrows shaved off, don't ye, Pretty?' So, Chet says,
+Purt's been trying to shave himself since then in a piece of broken
+mirror out in the wood shed, and with a jack-knife."
+
+Although Nellie Agnew laughed, too, at Bobby's story, she was in no
+jolly mood when she parted from the other girls and entered Dr.
+Agnew's premises.
+
+The doctor, Nellie's father, was a broadly educated physician--one of
+the small class of present day medical men who, like the "family
+doctor" of a past generation, claimed no "specialty" and treated
+everything from mumps to a broken leg. He was a rather full-bodied
+man, with a pink, wrinkled face, cleanly shaven every morning of his
+life; black hair with silver threads in it and worn long;
+old-fashioned detachable cuffs to his shirts, and a black string tie
+that went around his collar twice, the ends of which usually fluttered
+in the breeze.
+
+There had long since been established between the good doctor and his
+daughter a confidential relation very beautiful to behold. Mrs. Agnew
+was a very lovely woman, rather stylish in dress, and much given to
+church and club work. Perhaps that is why Dr. Agnew had made such a
+comrade of Nellie. She might, otherwise, have lacked any personal
+guide at a time in her life when she most needed it.
+
+It was no new thing, therefore, that Nellie should follow the doctor
+into the office that evening after dinner, and perch on the broad arm
+of his desk chair while he lit the homely pipe that he indulged in
+once a day--usually before the rush of evening patients.
+
+When Nellie had told her father all about the unpleasant quarrel at
+the gymnasium the doctor smoked thoughtfully for several minutes. Then
+he said, in his clear, quiet voice--the calm quality of which Nellie
+had herself inherited:
+
+"Do you know what seems to me to be the kernel in the nut of these
+school athletics, Nell?"
+
+"What is it, Daddy Doctor?"
+
+"Loyalty. That's the kernel--loyalty. If your athletics and games don't
+teach you that, you might as well give 'em up--all of you girls. The
+feminine sex is not naturally loyal; now, don't get mad!" and the
+doctor chuckled. "It is not a natural virtue--if _any_ virtue is
+humanly natural--of the sex. It's only the impulsive, spitfire girls
+who are naturally loyal--the kind who will fight for another girl.
+Among boys it is different. Now, I am not praising boys, or putting
+them an iota higher than girls. Only, long generations of working and
+fighting together has made the normal male loyal to his kind. It is an
+instinct--and even our friends who call themselves suffragettes have
+still to acquire it.
+
+"But this isn't to be a lecture, Nell. It's just a piece of advice.
+Show yourself loyal to the other girls of Central High, and to the
+betterment of basketball and the other athletics, by----"
+
+"By what?" cried Nellie.
+
+"By paying no attention to Hester Grimes, or what she does. After all,
+her shame, if she is removed from your basketball team, is the shame
+of her whole class, and of the school as well. Ignore her mean ways if
+you can. Don't get in the way of her hand again, Nell," and his eyes
+twinkled. "Remember, that blow was not intended for you, in the first
+place. And I am not sure that Clara Hargrew would not sometimes be the
+better for the application of somebody's hand--in the old-fashioned
+way! No, Nell. Say nothing. Make no report of the affair. If Hester is
+disloyal, don't you be. Keep out of her way as much as possible----"
+
+"But she spoiled our games with the other schools last spring, and she
+will do so again," complained Nellie.
+
+"Then let Mrs. Case, or somebody else, be the one to set the matter in
+motion of removing Hester from the team. That's my advice, Miss."
+
+"And of course I shall take it, Daddy Doctor," said Nellie slowly.
+"But I _did_ think it was a chance for us to get rid of Hester. She is
+_such_ a plague."
+
+The doctor's eyes twinkled. "I wonder why it is that we always want to
+shift our burdens on other folks' shoulders? Do you suppose either the
+East or West Highs would find Hester any more bearable if she attended
+them instead of Central?"
+
+The girls of Central High had something of more moment than Hester
+Grimes's "tantrums" to think of the next day. Bobby Hargrew came
+flying up the path to the doctor's porch long before school time.
+Nellie saw her and ran out to see what she wanted.
+
+"What do you s'pose?" cried Bobby.
+
+"Couldn't guess, Chicken-little," laughed Nellie. "Has the sky
+fallen?"
+
+"Almost as bad," declared Bobby, twinkling, but immediately becoming
+grave. "The gymnasium----"
+
+"Not burned!"
+
+"No, no! But it's been entered. And by some awfully mean person. The
+apparatus on the upper floor has been partly destroyed, and the
+lockers broken into downstairs and lots of the field materials
+spoiled. Oh, it's dreadfully mean, Nellie! They even sawed through the
+rungs of the hanging ladders a little way, so that if anybody swung on
+them they'd break.
+
+"And with all the harm they did, nobody can tell how they got into the
+building, or out again. The watchman sleeps on the premises. You know,
+he's not supposed to keep awake all night, for the same man keeps the
+field in repair during the day. But my father says that Jackway, the
+watchman, must have slept like the dead if he didn't hear the
+marauders while they were damaging all that apparatus.
+
+"It's just too mean," concluded Bobby. "There isn't a basketball that
+isn't cut to pieces, and the tennis ball boxes were broken open and
+the balls all thrown into the swimming pool. Tennis rackets were
+slashed, hockey sticks sawed in two, and other dreadful things done.
+It shows that whoever did it must have had a grudge against the
+athletic association and us girls--must have just _hated_ us!"
+
+"And who hates us?" cried Nellie, the question popping out before she
+thought.
+
+Bobby turned rather white, though her eyes shone. She tapped Nellie on
+the shoulder with an insistent index finger.
+
+"You and I know who _says_ she hates us," whispered the younger girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+JOHNNY DOYLE
+
+
+Franklin Sharp, principal of Central High, had something particular to
+say that morning at Assembly. At eight-thirty o'clock the gongs rang
+in each room and the classes marched to the hall as usual. But there
+was an unusual amount of excitement, especially on the girls' side of
+the great hall.
+
+The news Bobby Hargrew had brought to Nellie Agnew had spread over the
+Hill long before schooltime. Bobby, running from house to house, had
+scattered the news like burning brands; and wherever she dropped a
+spark a flame of excitement had sprung up and spread.
+
+And how many of the girls had whispered the same thing! What Hester
+Grimes had said the previous afternoon had been heard by a dozen
+girls; a hundred had learned of it before the gymnasium had cleared
+that afternoon; now the whole school--on the girls' side, at least--knew
+that Hester had declared her hatred of the girls of Central High
+before the damage was done in the gymnasium.
+
+This gossip could not fail to have flown to Principal Sharp's ears. He
+was eminently a just man; but he seldom interfered in the girls'
+affairs, preferring to let his assistant, Miss Grace G. Carrington
+(otherwise "Gee Gee" among the more thoughtless of her pupils) govern
+the young ladies. But what the principal said on this occasion seemed
+to point to the fact that he had taken cognizance of the wild
+supposition and gossip that was going the round of the girl's classes.
+
+"A cruel and expensive trick has been perpetrated by some
+irresponsible person with pronounced criminal instincts," declared Mr.
+Sharp, seriously. "This is not the outburst of some soul prone to
+practical joking, so-called; nor is it the mere impish mischievousness
+of a spirit with a grudge against its fellows. The infamous actions of
+the person, or persons, in the girls' gymnasium last night show
+degeneracy and a monkeyish wickedness that can be condoned in no
+particular.
+
+"We can declare with confidence that no pupil of Central High could
+have accomplished the wicked work of last night. It would have been
+beyond the physical powers of any of our young ladies to have broken
+into the building; and we are equally confident that no young
+gentleman on our roster is at that early stage of evolution in which
+he would consider such work at all amusing.
+
+"Of course, there will be an investigation made--not alone by the
+school authorities, but by the police. The matter is too serious to
+ignore. The damage done amounts to several hundreds of dollars. And
+the mystery of how the culprit or culprits entered the building, with
+the doors and windows locked and Jackway asleep in his bed in the
+doctor's office, must likewise be explained.
+
+"Meanwhile, young ladies and gentlemen, let no wild romances or
+unsubstantiated rumors shake your minds. We none of us know how the
+criminal entered the gymnasium, or who he is. Let the matter rest
+there until the investigation is completed and the actual wrong-doer
+brought to book. I hope I make myself clear? That is all. You are
+dismissed to classes."
+
+But, to himself, perhaps the principal said: "Meanwhile I will go out
+and stop the water from running down hill!" For the gossip having once
+begun to grow, there was no stopping it. Some of the girls had already
+begun to look askance at Hester when they passed her. Others
+whispered, and wondered, and surmised--and the wonder grew like the
+story of the man who ate the three black crows.
+
+Hester, however, did not realize what all this meant. She was still
+angry with Nellie, and Bobby, and the others whom she considered had
+crossed her the previous afternoon. And especially was she angry with
+Mrs. Case, the physical instructor.
+
+"I don't much care if the stuff in the gymnasium _was_ all cut up,"
+she declared, to her single confidant, Lily Pendleton.
+
+"Oh, Hester! Don't let them hear you say it!" cried her chum, who had
+heard some of the whispers against Hester, but had not dared repeat
+them to her chum for fear of an outbreak of the latter's unfortunate
+temper.
+
+"What do I care for 'em?" returned Hester, and went off by herself.
+
+Hester Grimes was not entirely happy. She would not admit it in her
+own soul, but she was lonely. Even Lily was not always at her beck and
+call as she once had been. To tell the truth, Lily Pendleton seemed
+suddenly to have "a terrible crush" on Prettyman Sweet.
+
+"And goodness only knows what she sees in that freak to want to walk
+with him," muttered Hester, in retrospection.
+
+Lily and Purt were pupils in the same dancing class and just at
+present dancing was "all the rage." Hester did not care for
+dancing--not even for the folk dancing that Mrs. Case taught the girls
+of Central High. She liked more vigorous exercises. She played a sharp
+game of tennis, played hockey well, was a good walker and runner, and
+liked basketball as well as she liked anything.
+
+"And here these Miss Smarties and Mrs. Case want to put me off the
+team," thought Hester Grimes, walking down toward the athletic field
+and the gym. building after school that day.
+
+There was little to go to the gym. for just now, with the fixtures cut
+up and broken. But Hester felt a curiosity to see the wreck. And there
+were other girls from Central High who seemed to feel the same. Some
+were ahead of her and some came after. They exclaimed and murmured and
+were angry or excited, as the case might be; but Hester mooned about
+in silence, and the only soul she spoke to in the building was Bill
+Jackway.
+
+The latter looked very much worried. He was a steady, quiet,
+red-haired man, with pale blue eyes and a wandering expression of
+countenance at most times. But he was a good and careful worker and
+kept the athletic field in good shape and the gym. well swept and
+dusted.
+
+Jackway had never been married; but his sister had married a man named
+Doyle and was now a widow with two children. When Jackway got an hour
+or two off from the gym. he went to see his sister, and played with
+the baby, Johnny. Johnny, who was a sturdy little fellow of three, had
+been brought to-day to see his uncle by his gangling big brother, Rufe
+Doyle. Rufe was a second edition of his uncle, Bill Jackway, without
+Bill's modicum of sense. A glance at Rufe told the pitiful story. As
+his Irish father had said, Rufe was "an innocent." But he loved Baby
+Johnny and took great care of him.
+
+"Johnny's growing like a weed, Rufie," said Hester, kindly enough, as
+she pinched the little fellow's cheek softly. "You take such good care
+of him."
+
+Rufe threw back his head, opened his mouth wide, and roared his
+delight at this compliment.
+
+"Yes, ma'am!" he chuckled, when his paroxysm was over. "Johnny ain't
+much out of my sight when he's awake. Is he, Uncle Bill?"
+
+"No, Rufus," replied Jackway, sadly.
+
+"I'm pretty smart to take care of Johnny so well--ain't I, Uncle Bill?"
+demanded the weak-minded boy again.
+
+"You are smart enough when you want to be, Rufus," muttered Jackway,
+evidently in no very social mood.
+
+"You're worried about what happened last night, aren't you?" demanded
+Hester, sharply.
+
+"Yes, ma'am; I be," admitted the watchman.
+
+"You needn't be. They'll never blame you," returned Hester, brusquely,
+and went out.
+
+She wandered into the park at the foot of Whiffle Street and sat down.
+Here Rufus Doyle followed her with Baby Johnny. There had been heavy
+rains for the past week--until the day before. The gutters had run full
+and the park squad of "white wings" were raking the beaten leaves into
+windrows and flushing the sand and debris into the sewers. One basin
+cover had been laid back and left an open trap for unwary feet.
+
+Rufus Doyle was trying to coax a gray squirrel near for Johnny to
+admire. But Johnny was not particularly interested in bunny. Hester
+saw the toddler near the open hatch of the sewer basin one moment; the
+next he had disappeared, and it seemed to her as though a faint cry
+rang in her ears.
+
+She leaped up from the bench.
+
+"Johnny!" she called.
+
+Rufus was still engaged with the squirrel. Nobody seemed to have
+noticed the disappearance of the baby. Hester dashed to the open basin
+and peered down into the swirling brown water.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"THERE'S GOOD STUFF IN THAT GIRL"
+
+
+Again that cry--that weak, bubbling wail from out the darkness of the
+sewer basin. Something swirled past Hester's strained vision in the
+dervish dance of the debris floating in the murky water. It was a tiny
+hand, stretched forth from a skimpy blue-cloth sleeve.
+
+It was Johnny Doyle's hand; but the child's body--the rest of it--was
+under water!
+
+The water was not more than six feet below the surface of the ground;
+but deep, deep down was the entrance of the big drain that joined the
+main sewer taking the street water and sewerage from the whole Hill
+section. Johnny was being sucked down into that drain.
+
+The girl, her mind keenly alert to all this, shrieked unintelligible
+cries for help--unintelligible to herself, even. She could not have
+told afterward a word she said, or what manner of help she demanded;
+but she knew the boy was drowning _and that she could swim_!
+
+With her clothing to hold her up a bit Hester believed she could swim
+or keep afloat even in that swirling eddy. The appealing little hand
+had no more than waved blindly once, than Hester gathered her rather
+full skirts about her and jumped, feet first, into the sewer-basin.
+
+That was no pleasant plunge, for, despite her skirts, Hester went down
+over her head. But her hands, thrashing about in the water, caught the
+baby's dress. She came up with Johnny in her arms, and when she had
+shaken the water from her eyes so that she could see, above was the
+brown face of one of the street cleaners. He was lowering a bucket on
+a rope, and yelling to her.
+
+What he said Hester did not know; but she saw her chance, and placed
+little Johnny--now a limp, pale rag of a boy--in the bucket, and the man
+drew him up with a yell of satisfaction.
+
+Hester was not frightened for herself. She felt the tug of the eddy at
+her feet; but she trod water and kept herself well above the surface
+until the man dropped the bucket down again. Then she saw the wild
+eyes and pallid, frightened face of Rufus at the opening, too; and a
+third anxious countenance. She knew that this belonged to Nellie
+Agnew's father.
+
+"Hang on, child!" exclaimed the physician, heartily. "We'll have you
+out in a jiffy."
+
+Hester clung to the rope and was glad to be dragged out of the filthy
+basin. She sat on the ground, almost breathless, for a moment. Rufe,
+with a wild cry, had sprung to Johnny. But the doctor put the
+half-witted lad aside and examined the child.
+
+"Bless him! he isn't hurt a mite," declared Dr. Agnew, cheerfully.
+"Run, get a taxi, Rufe! Quick, now! I'll take you and Johnny, and Miss
+Hester, too, home in it."
+
+Everybody was used to obeying the good doctor's commands, and Rufus
+Doyle ran as he was told. Hester was on her feet when the cab
+returned, and Dr. Agnew was holding the bedraggled and still
+unconscious Johnny in his arms.
+
+"We'll take you home first, Hester," said Dr. Agnew. "You live
+nearest."
+
+"No, no!" exclaimed Hester. "Go by the way of Mrs. Doyle's house. The
+baby ought to be 'tended to first."
+
+"Why, that's so," admitted the physician, and he looked at her a
+little curiously.
+
+Hester whisked into the cab and hid herself from the curious gaze of
+the few passers-by who had gathered when the trouble was all over. The
+taxi bore them all swiftly to the Doyles' humble domicile. It was on a
+street in which electric cabs were not commonly driven, and Rufe was
+mighty proud when he descended first into a throng of the idle
+children and women of the neighborhood.
+
+Of course, the usual officious neighbor, after one glance at Johnny's
+wet figure, had to rush into the house and proclaim that the boy had
+been drowned in the lake. But the doctor was right on her heels and
+showed Mrs. Doyle in a few moments that Johnny was all right.
+
+With a hot drink, and warm blankets for a few hours, and a good sleep,
+the child would be as good as new. But when the doctor came out of the
+house he was surprised to find the cab still in waiting and Hester
+inside.
+
+"Why didn't you go home at once and change your clothing?" demanded
+Dr. Agnew, sharply, as he hopped into the taxi again.
+
+"Is Johnny all right?" asked Hester.
+
+"Of course he is."
+
+"Then I'll go home," sighed Hester. "Oh, I sha'n't get cold, Doctor.
+I'm no namby-pamby girl--I hope! And I was afraid the little beggar
+would be in a bad way. He must have swallowed a quantity of water."
+
+"He was frightened more than anything else," declared Dr. Agnew,
+aloud. But to himself he was thinking: "There's good stuff in that
+girl, after all."
+
+For he, too, had heard the whispers that had begun to go the rounds of
+the Hill, and knew that Hester Grimes was on trial in the minds of
+nearly everybody whom she would meet. Some had already judged and
+sentenced her, as well!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HESTER AT HOME
+
+
+If Hester had arrived at the Grimes's house in two cabs instead of one
+it would have aroused her mother to little comment; for, for some
+years now, her daughter had grown quite beyond her control and Mrs.
+Grimes had learned not to comment upon Hester's actions. Yet, oddly
+enough, Hester was neither a wild girl nor a silly girl; she was
+merely bold, bad tempered, and wilful.
+
+Mrs. Grimes was a large, lymphatic lady, given to loose wrappers until
+late in the day, and the enjoyment of unlimited novels. "Comfort above
+all" was the good lady's motto. She had suffered much privation and
+had worked hard, during Mr. Grimes's beginnings in trade, for Hester's
+father had worked up from an apprentice butcher boy in a retail
+store--was a "self-made man."
+
+Mr. Grimes was forever talking about how he had made his own way in
+the world without the help of any other person; but he was,
+nevertheless, purse-proud and arrogant. Hester could not fail to be
+somewhat like her father in this. She believed that Money was the
+touchstone of all good in the world. But Mrs. Grimes was naturally a
+kindly disposed woman, and sometimes her mother's homely virtues
+cropped out in Hester--as note her interest in the Doyles. She was
+impulsively generous, but expected to find the return change of
+gratitude for every kindly dollar she spent.
+
+They had a big and ornate house, in which the servants did about as
+they liked for all of Mrs. Grimes's oversight. The latter admitted
+that she knew how to do a day's wash as well as any woman--perhaps
+would have been far more happy had she been obliged to do such work,
+too; but she had no executive ability, and the girls in the kitchen
+did well or ill as they listed.
+
+Now that Hester was growing into a young lady, she occasionally went
+into the servants' quarters and tried to set things right in imitation
+of her father's blustering oversight of his slaughter house--without
+Mr. Grimes's thorough knowledge of the work and conditions in hand. So
+Hester's interference in domestic affairs usually resulted in a
+"blow-up" of all concerned and a scramble for new servants at the
+local agencies.
+
+Under these circumstances it may be seen that the girl's home life was
+neither happy nor inspiring. The kindly, gentle things of life escaped
+Hester Grimes. She unfortunately scorned her mother for her "easy"
+habits; she admired her father's bullying ways and his ability to make
+money. And she missed the sweetening influence of a well-conducted
+home where the inmates are polite and kind to one another.
+
+Hester was abundantly healthy, possessed personal courage to a
+degree--as Dr. Agnew had observed--was not naturally unkind, and had
+other qualities that, properly trained and moulded, would have made
+her a very nice girl indeed. But having no home restraining
+influences, the rough corners of Hester Grimes's character had never
+been smoothed down.
+
+Her friendship with Lily Pendleton was not like the "chumminess" of
+other girls. Lily's mother came of one of the "first families" of
+Centerport, and moved in a circle that the Grimeses could never hope
+to attain, despite their money. Through her friendship with Lily, who
+was in miniature already a "fine lady," Hester obtained a slight hold
+upon the fringe of society. But even Lily was lost to her at times.
+
+"Why ain't I seen your friend Lily so much lately?" asked Mrs. Grimes,
+languidly, the evening of the day Hester had plunged into the sewer
+and rescued little Johnny Doyle.
+
+"Oh, between dancing school and Purt Sweet, Lil has about got her
+silly head turned," said Hester, tossing her own head.
+
+"My goodness me!" drawled Mrs. Grimes, "that child doesn't take young
+Purt Sweet seriously, does she?"
+
+"Whoever heard of anybody's taking Pretty seriously?" laughed Hester.
+"Only Pretty himself believes that he has anything in his head but
+mush! Last time Mrs. Pendleton had an evening reception, Purt got an
+invite, and went. Something happened to him--he knocked over a vase, or
+trod on a lady's dress, or something awkward--and the next afternoon
+Lil caught him walking up and down in front of their house, trying to
+screw up courage enough to ring the bell.
+
+"'What's the matter, Purt?' asked Lily, going up to him.
+
+"'Oh, Miss Lily!' cries Purt. 'What did your mother say when you told
+her I was sorry for having made a fool of myself at the party last
+night?'
+
+"'Why,' says Lil, 'she said she didn't notice anything unusual in your
+actions.'
+
+"Wasn't _that_ a slap? And now Lil is letting Purt run around with her
+and act as if he owned her--just because he's a good dancer."
+
+"My dear!" yawned her mother. "I should think you'd join that dancing
+class."
+
+"I'll wait till I'm asked, I hope," muttered Hester. "Everybody
+doesn't get to join it. We're not in that set--and we might as well
+admit it. And I don't believe we ever will be."
+
+"I'm certainly glad!" complained her mother, rustling the leaves of
+her book. "Your father is always pushing me into places where I don't
+want to go. He had a deal in business with Colonel Swayne, and he
+insisted that I call on Mrs. Kerrick. They're awfully stuck-up folks,
+Hess."
+
+"I see Mrs. Kerrick's carriage standing at the Beldings' gate quite
+often, just the same," muttered Hester.
+
+"Yes--I know," said her mother. "They make a good deal of Laura. Well,
+they didn't make much of me. When I walked into the grounds and
+started up the front stoop, a butler, or footman, or something, all
+togged up in livery, told me that I must go around to the side door if
+I had come to see the cook. And he didn't really seem anxious to take
+my card."
+
+"Oh, Mother!" exclaimed Hester.
+
+"You needn't tell your father. I don't blame 'em. They've got their
+own friends and we've got ourn. No use pushing out of our class."
+
+"You should have gone in the carriage," complained Hester.
+
+"I don't like that stuffy hack," said her mother. "It smells of--of
+liv'ry stables and--and funerals! If your father would set up a
+carriage of his own----"
+
+"Or buy an automobile instead of hiring one for us occasionally,"
+finished Hester.
+
+For with all his love of display, the wholesale butcher was a thrifty
+person.
+
+With Lily so much interested for the time in other matters, Hester
+found her only recreation at the athletic field; and for several days
+after the mysterious raid upon the girls' gymnasium there was not much
+but talk indulged in about the building. Then new basketballs were
+procured and the regular practice in that game went on.
+
+In a fortnight would come the first inter-school match of the fall
+term--a game between Central High girls and the representative team of
+East High of Centerport. In the last match game the East High girls
+had won--and many of the girls of Central High believed that the game
+went to their competitors because of Hester Grimes's fouling.
+
+There was more talk of this now. Some of the girls did not try to hide
+their dislike for Hester. Nellie Agnew did not speak to her at all,
+and the latter was inclined to accuse Nellie of being the leader in
+this apparent effort to make Hester feel that she was looked upon with
+more than suspicion. The mystery of the gymnasium raid overshadowed
+the whole school; but the shadow fell heaviest on Hester Grimes.
+
+"She did it!"
+
+"She's just mean enough to do it!"
+
+"She said she hated us!"
+
+"It's just like her--she spoils everything she can't boss!"
+
+She could read these expressions on the lips of her fellow students.
+Hester Grimes began to pay for her ill-temper, and the taste of this
+medicine was bitter indeed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE FIRST GAME
+
+
+It would have been hard to tell how the suspicion took form among the
+girls of Central High that Hester Grimes knew more than she should
+regarding the gymnasium mystery. Whether she had spoiled the
+paraphernalia herself, or hired somebody to do it for her, was the
+point of the discussion carried on wherever any of the
+girls--especially those of her own class--met for conference.
+
+Older people scoffed at the idea of a girl having committed the crime.
+And, indeed, it was a complete mystery how the marauder got into the
+building and out again. Bill Jackway, the watchman, was worried almost
+sick over it; he was afraid of losing his job.
+
+Bobby Hargrew was about the only girl in Central High who "lost no
+sleep over the affair," as she expressed it. And that wasn't because
+she was not keenly interested in the mystery. Indeed, like Nellie, she
+had seen at the beginning that suspicion pointed to Hester Grimes. And
+perhaps Bobby believed at the bottom of her heart that Hester had
+brought about the destruction. Bobby and Hester had forever been at
+daggers' points.
+
+Bobby, however, was as full of mischief and fun as ever.
+
+"Oh, girls!" she exclaimed, to a group waiting at the girls' entrance
+to the school building one morning. "I've got the greatest joke on Gee
+Gee! Listen to it."
+
+"What have you done now, you bad, bad child?" demanded Nellie. "You'll
+miss playing goal guard against East High if you don't look out. Miss
+Carrington is watching you."
+
+"She's always watching me," complained Bobby. "But this joke can't put
+a black mark against _me_, thank goodness!"
+
+"What is it, Bobby?" asked Dorothy Lockwood.
+
+"Don't keep us on tenter-hooks," urged her twin.
+
+"Why, Gee Gee called at Alice Long's yesterday afternoon. You know,
+she is bound to make a round of the girls' homes early in the term--she
+always does. And Alice Long was able to return to school this fall."
+
+"And I'm glad of that," said Dorothy. "She'll finish her senior year
+and graduate."
+
+"Well," chuckled Bobby, "Gee Gee appeared at the house and Tommy,
+Short and Long's little brother, met her at the door. Alice wasn't in,
+and Gee Gee opened her cardcase. Out fluttered one of those bits of
+tissue paper that come between engraved cards--to keep 'em from
+smudging, you know. Tommy jumped and picked it up, and says he:
+
+"'Say, Missis! you dropped one of your cigarette papers.' Now, what do
+you know about _that_?" cried Bobby, as the other girls went off into
+a gale of laughter. "Billy heard him, and it certainly tickled that
+boy. Think of Gee Gee's feelings!"
+
+Not alone Bobby, but all the members of the basketball team were doing
+their very best in classes so as to have no marks against them before
+the game with the East High girls.
+
+Mrs. Case coached them sharply, paying particular attention to Hester.
+It was too bad that this robust girl, who was so well able to play the
+game, should mar her playing with roughness and actual rudeness to her
+fellow-players. And warnings seemed wasted on her.
+
+Hester never received a demerit from Miss Carrington. In class she was
+always prepared and there was little to ruffle her temper. The
+instructors--aside from Mrs. Case--seldom found any fault with Hester
+Grimes.
+
+The game with the crack team of the East High girls was to be played
+on the latter's court. The girls of Central High had been beaten there
+in the spring; this afternoon they went over--with their friends--with
+the hope of returning the spring defeat.
+
+Bobby had been in the audience and led the "rooting" among the girls
+for Central High at the former game. Now she had graduated from a mere
+basketball "fan" to a very alert and successful goal guard.
+
+This was Eve Sitz's first important game, too; but the Swiss girl was
+of a cool and phlegmatic temperament and Laura Belding, as captain,
+had no fears for her.
+
+The audience was a large one, and was enthusiastic from the start. The
+girls of Central High always attended the boys' games in force and
+applauded liberally for their own school team; so Chet Belding and
+Lance Darby, with a crowd of strong-lunged Central High boys at their
+backs, cheered their girl friends when they came on the field with the
+very effective school yell:
+
+  "C-e-n, Central High!
+  C-e-n-t-r-a-l, Central High!
+  C-e-n-t-r-a-l-h-i-g-h, Central High!
+  Ziz-z-z-z----
+                  Boom!"
+
+The teams took their places after warming up a little, their physical
+instructors acting as coaches, while the physical instructor for West
+High School of Centerport was referee. The officials on the lines were
+selected from the competing schools.
+
+It was agreed to play two fifteen-minute halves and the ball was put
+into play by the referee. The girls of Central High played like
+clockwork for the first five minutes and scored a clean goal. Their
+friends cheered tumultuously.
+
+When the ball was put into play again there was much excitement.
+"Shoot it here, Laura! I'm loose!" shouted Bobby, whose slang was
+always typical of the game she was playing.
+
+"Block her! Block her!" cried the captain of the East High team.
+
+Most of the instructions were supposed to be passed by signal; but the
+girls would get excited at times and, unless the referee blew her
+whistle and stopped the play, pandemonium _did_ reign on the court
+once in a while. Suddenly the ball chanced to be snapped to Hester's
+side of the court. Her opponent got it, and almost instantly the
+referee's whistle blew.
+
+"That Central High girl at forward center is over-guarding."
+
+"No, I'm not!" snapped Hester.
+
+The lady who acted as referee was a bit hot-tempered herself, perhaps.
+At least, this flat contradiction brought a most unexpected retort
+from her lips:
+
+"Central High Captain!"
+
+"Yes, ma'am?" gasped Laura Belding.
+
+"Take out your forward center and put in a substitute for this half."
+
+"But, Miss Lawrence!" cried Laura, aghast.
+
+"You are delaying play, Miss Belding," said the referee, sharply.
+
+Laura looked at Hester with commiseration; but she did not have to
+speak. The culprit, with a red and angry visage, was already crossing
+the court toward the dressing rooms. Laura put in Roberta Fish, and
+play went on.
+
+But the Central High team was rattled. East High got two goals--one
+from a foul--and so stood in the lead at the end of the half. The
+visiting team did not work so well together with the substitute
+player, and the captain of East High, seeing this fact, crowded the
+play to Roberta Fish's side.
+
+"My goodness!" whispered Bobby Hargrew, as they ran off the field at
+the end of the half. "I hope that's taught Hester a lesson. And this
+is once when we need Hester Grimes badly."
+
+"I should say we did," panted Laura.
+
+"We've got to play up some to win back that point we lost, let alone
+beating them," cried Jess Morse.
+
+Nellie Agnew was the first to enter the dressing room assigned to the
+Central High girls. She looked around the empty room and gasped.
+
+"What's the matter, Nell?" cried Bobby, crowding in.
+
+"Where is she?" demanded the doctor's daughter.
+
+"Hessie has lit out!" shouted Bobby, turning back to the captain and
+her team-mates.
+
+"She's got mad and gone home!" declared Jess Morse. "Her hat and coat
+are gone."
+
+"_Now_ what will we do?" cried Dorothy Lockwood.
+
+And the question was echoed from all sides. For without Hester it did
+not seem possible that the Central High team could hold its own with
+its opponents.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE SECOND HALF
+
+
+The dressing room buzzed like an angry beehive for a minute. It was
+Laura Belding, captain of the team, who finally said:
+
+"Hester surely can't have deserted us in this way. She knows that
+Roberta is not even familiar with our secret signals."
+
+"She's gone, just the same," said her chum, Jess. "That's how mean
+Hester Grimes is."
+
+"Well, I declare! I don't know that I blame her," cried Lily
+Pendleton.
+
+"You don't blame her?" repeated Nellie. "I don't believe you'd blame
+Hester no matter what she did."
+
+"She hasn't done anything," returned Lily, sullenly.
+
+"How about the gym. business----"
+
+Bobby Hargrew began it, but Laura shut her off by a prompt palm laid
+across her mouth.
+
+"You be still, Bobby!" commanded Nellie Agnew.
+
+"You're all just as unfair to Hessie as you can be," said Lily with
+some spirit. "And now this woman from West High had to pick on her----"
+
+"Don't talk so foolishly, Lil," said Dora Lockwood. "You know very
+well that Hester has been warned dozens of times not to talk back to
+the referee. Mrs. Case warns her almost every practice game about
+something. And now she has got taken up short. If it wasn't for what
+it means to us all in this particular game, I wouldn't care if she
+never played with us."
+
+"Me, too!" cried Jess, in applause. "Hester is always cutting some
+mean caper that makes trouble for other folk."
+
+"We can't possibly win this game without her!" wailed Dorothy.
+
+"I'll do my very best, girls," said Roberta Fish, the substitute
+player at forward center.
+
+"Of course you will, Roberta," said Laura, warmly. "But we can't teach
+you all our moves in these few moments--Ah! here is Mrs. Case."
+
+Their friend and teacher came in briskly.
+
+"What's all this? what's all this?" she cried. "Where is Hester?"
+
+"She took her hat and coat and ran out before we came in, Mrs. Case,"
+explained Laura.
+
+"Not deserted you?" cried the instructor.
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"But that is a most unsportsmanlike thing to do!" exclaimed the
+instructor, feeling the desertion keenly. That one of her girls should
+act so cut Mrs. Case to the heart. She took great pride in the girls
+of Central High as a body, and Hester's desertion was bad for
+discipline.
+
+"You must do the best you can, Laura, with the substitute," she said,
+at last, and speaking seriously. "I will inform Miss Lawrence that you
+will put in Roberta for the second half, too. Nothing need be said
+about Hester's defection."
+
+"I am afraid we can't win with me in Hessie's place," wailed Roberta.
+
+"You're going to do your very best, Roberta," said Mrs. Case, calmly.
+"You always do. All of you put your minds to the task. Your opponents
+are only one point ahead of you. The first five-minutes' play in the
+first half was as pretty team work on your part as I ever saw."
+
+"But we can't use our secret signals," said Laura.
+
+"Play your very best. Do not put Roberta into bad pinches----"
+
+"But the captain of the East High team sees our weak point, and forces
+the play that way," complained Jess Morse.
+
+"Of course she does. And you would do the same were you in her place,"
+said Mrs. Case, with a smile. "But above all, if you can't win
+gracefully, _do_ lose gracefully! Be sportsmanlike. Cheer the winners.
+Now, the whistle will sound in a moment," and the instructor hurried
+away to speak to the referee.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" groaned Roberta. "My heart's in my mouth."
+
+"Then it isn't where Sissy Lowe, one of the freshies, said it was in
+physiology class yesterday," chuckled Bobby Hargrew.
+
+"How was that, Bobby?" queried Jess.
+
+"Sissy was asked where the heart was situated--what part of the
+body--and she says:
+
+"'Pleathe, Mith Gould, ith in the north thentral part!' Can you beat
+those infants?" added Bobby as the girls laughed.
+
+But they were in no mood for laughter when they trotted out upon the
+basketball court at the sound of the referee's whistle. They took
+their places in silence, and the roars of the Central High boys, with
+their prolonged "Ziz--z--z--z----Boom!" did not sound as encouraging as it
+had at the beginning of the first half.
+
+Basketball is perhaps the most transparent medium for revealing
+certain angles of character in young girls. At first the players
+seldom have anything more than a vague idea of the proper manner of
+throwing a ball, or the direction in which it is to be thrown.
+
+The old joke about a woman throwing a stone at a hen and breaking the
+pane of glass behind her, will soon become a tasteless morsel under
+the tongue of the humorist. Girls in our great public schools are
+learning how to throw. And basketball is one of the greatest helps to
+this end. The woman of the coming generation is going to have
+developed the same arm and shoulder muscles that man displays, and
+will be able to throw a stone and hit the hen, if necessary!
+
+The girl beginner at basketball usually has little idea of direction
+in throwing the ball; nor, indeed, does she seem to distinguish fairly
+at first between her opponents and her team mates. Her only idea is to
+try to propel the ball in the general direction of the goal, the
+thought that by passing it from one to another of her team mates she
+will much more likely see it land safely in the basket never seemingly
+entering her mind.
+
+But once a girl has learned to observe and understand the position and
+function of team mates and opponents, to consider the chances of the
+game in relation to the score, and, bearing these things in mind, can
+form a judgment as to her most advantageous play, and act quickly on
+it--when she has learned to repress her hysterical excitement and play
+quietly instead of boisterously, what is it she has gained?
+
+It is self-evident that she has won something beside the mere ability
+to play basketball. She has learned to control her emotions--to a
+degree, at least--through the dictates of her mind. Blind impulse has
+been supplanted by intelligence. Indeed, she has gained, without
+doubt, a balance of mind and character that will work for good not
+only to herself, but to others.
+
+Indeed, it is the following out of the old fact--the uncontrovertible
+fact of education--that what one learns at school is not so valuable as
+is the fact that he _learns how to learn_. Playing basketball
+seriously will help the girl player to control her emotions and her
+mind in far higher and more important matters than athletics.
+
+To see these eighteen girls in their places, alert, unhurried,
+watchful, and silent, was not alone a pleasing, but an inspiring
+sight. Laura and her team mates--even Roberta--waited like veterans for
+the referee to throw the ball. Laura and her opposing jumping center
+were on the _qui vive_, muscles taut, and scarcely breathing.
+
+Suddenly the ball went up. Laura sprang for it and felt her palms
+against the big ball. Instantly she passed it to Jess Morse and within
+the next few seconds the ball was in play all over the back
+field--mostly in the hands of Central High girls.
+
+They played hard; but nobody--not even Roberta--played badly. The East
+High girls were strong opponents, and more than once it looked as
+though the ball would be carried by them into a goal. However, on each
+occasion, some brilliant play by a Central High girl brought it back
+toward their basket and finally, after six and a half minutes, the
+visiting team made a goal.
+
+The Central High girls were one point ahead.
+
+The ball went in at center again and there was a quick interchange of
+plays between the teams. Suddenly, while the ball was flying through
+the air toward East High's basket, the referee's whistle sounded.
+
+"Foul!" she declared, just as the ball popped into the basket.
+
+A murmur rose from the East High team. Madeline Spink, the captain,
+said quietly:
+
+"But the goal counts for us, does it not, Miss Lawrence?"
+
+"It counts as a goal from a foul," replied the referee, "which means
+that it is no goal at all, and the ball is in play."
+
+The East High girls were more than a little disturbed by the decision.
+It was a nice point; for on occasion a goal thrown from the foul line
+counts one. It broke up, for the minute, the better play of the East
+High team, and the instant the Central High girls got the ball they
+rushed it for a goal.
+
+There was great excitement at this point in the game. If Central High
+won two clean points it would hardly be possible for East High to
+recover and gain the lead once more. Laura signalled her players from
+time to time; but she was hampered whenever the ball came near
+Roberta, or the time was ripe for a massed play. The substitute did
+not know all the secret signals.
+
+Had Hester Grimes only been in her place! Her absence crowded the
+Central High team slowly to the wall. In the very moment of success,
+when a clean goal was about to be made, they failed and their
+opponents got the ball. Again it was passed from hand to hand. One
+girl bounced the ball and a foul was called. Again the Central Highs
+rushed it, and from the foul line made another goal.
+
+Two points ahead, and the boys in the audience cheered madly. No
+harder fought battle had ever been played upon that court.
+
+"Shoot it over, Jess!" roared Chet, at one point, rising and waving to
+his particular girl friend, madly. "Look out! they'll get you!"
+
+"Look out, Laura! don't let 'em get you----Aw! that's too bad," grumbled
+Lance Darby, quite as interested in the work of Chet's sister on the
+court.
+
+"Hi! no fair pulling! Say! where's the referee's eyes?" demanded Chet,
+the next moment, in disgust.
+
+"Behind her glasses," said his chum. "I never did believe four eyes
+were as good as two."
+
+The ball came back to center again and there was little delay before
+it was put in play. Only three minutes remained. The eighteen girls
+were as eager as they could be. Madeline Spink and her team mates were
+determined to tie the score at least. A clean goal would do it.
+
+They rushed the play and carried the ball into Roberta's country.
+Roberta never had a chance! In a moment the ball was hurtling toward
+the proper East High girl, and no guarding could save it.
+
+A cheer from the audience--those interested in the East High
+girls--announced another clean goal. The score was tied and two minutes
+to play!
+
+"Do not delay the game, young ladies!" warned the referee.
+
+They were in position again and the ball was thrown up. No fumbles
+now. Every girl was playing for all that there was in her! A single
+point would decide the rivalry of the two schools at the beginning of
+the playing season. To lead off with this first game would encourage
+either team immeasurably.
+
+East High led off first; but quickly Laura and her team mates got the
+ball again and pushed it toward the basket. There was no rough play.
+The umpires, as well as the referee, watched sharply. It was a sturdy,
+vigorous, but fair game. This was a time when Hester's hot temper
+might have brought the team disgrace; and for a moment Laura was,
+after all, glad that the delinquent had gone home.
+
+Then, suddenly, from full field and a fair position, the ball rose and
+flew directly for the basket. While in mid-air the whistle was blown.
+Time was called and the game was ended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ROUND ROBIN
+
+
+The spectators, as well as the players, held their breath and watched
+the flying ball. Although the whistle had blown, the goal--if the ball
+settled into the basket--would count for the visiting team. This one
+unfinished play would give the girls of Central High two clear points
+in the lead if all went well.
+
+The course of the flying ball was watched by all eyes, therefore. Chet
+Belding and his mates began their chant, believing that the ball was
+sure to go true to the basket.
+
+But they began too soon. The ball hit the ring of the basket, hovered
+a moment over it, and then fell back and rolled into the court! Chet's
+chant of praise changed to a groan. The game was over--and it was a
+tie.
+
+Disappointed as the girls of Central High were, they cheered their
+opponents nobly, and the East High girls cheered them. The audience
+had to admit that the game had been keenly fought and--after Hester was
+put out of it--as cleanly as a basketball game had ever been played on
+those grounds.
+
+Miss Lawrence, the referee, came to the Central High girls' dressing
+room and complimented Laura and her team on their playing.
+
+"I was sorry to put off your forward center, Miss Belding, in the
+first half. If you had brought her into the field in the second half
+your team, without doubt, would have won," said the referee. "That
+girl is a splendid player, but she needs to learn to control her
+temper."
+
+"That's always the way!" cried Nellie Agnew, when the West High
+instructor was gone. "Hester spoils everything."
+
+"She crabs every game we play," growled Bobby, both sullen and slangy.
+
+"She ought to be put off the team for good," said one of the twins.
+
+"That's so," chimed in her sister.
+
+"We'll never win this season if Hessie is included in this team,"
+declared Jess Morse.
+
+Even Lily Pendleton could find nothing to say now in favor of her
+chum. She hurried away from the others girls, and the seven remaining
+seriously discussed the situation. It was Nellie, despite her promise
+to her father, who came out boldly and said:
+
+"Let's put her off the team altogether."
+
+"We can't do it," objected Laura.
+
+"Ask Mrs. Case to do it, then," said Jess.
+
+"But who'll ask her? Hester will be awfully mad," said Eve Sitz.
+
+"I wouldn't want to be the one to do the asking," admitted the bold
+Bobby.
+
+The seven regular members of the basketball team were alone now.
+Dorothy Lockwood said:
+
+"I wouldn't want to be the one to sign a petition. But that is what we
+ought to do--sign a petition to Mrs. Case asking her to remove Hester."
+
+"What do you say, Mother Wit?" demanded Jess Morse of Laura.
+
+"I vote for the petition," said Laura, gravely.
+
+"And who'll sign it?" cried Dorothy.
+
+"All of us."
+
+"Not me first!" declared Dora.
+
+"We'll make it a 'round robin,'" said Laura, smiling. "All seven of us
+will sign in a circle, but nobody need take the lead in making the
+request. If we are all agreed Jess can write the petition to Mrs.
+Case."
+
+"I'll do it!" declared Jess Morse.
+
+With some corrections from her chum, Josephine finally prepared and
+presented for their signatures the petition, and having read it the
+girls, one after the other, signed her name in the manner Mother Wit
+had suggested. The petition and Round Robin was as follows:
+
+"We, the undersigned members of Basketball Team No. 1, of Central
+High, Girls' Branch Athletic League, after due and ample discussion of
+the facts, conclude that the retention of Hester Grimes as a member of
+the said team is a detriment thereto, and that her membership will, in
+the future, as in the past, cause the team to lose games in the Trophy
+Series of Inter-School Games. We therefore ask that the aforesaid
+Hester Grimes be removed from the team and that some other player be
+nominated in her stead."
+
+[Illustration: Josephine Morse, C. Hargrew, Dora Lockwood, Eve Sitz,
+Nellie Agnew, Laura Belding, Dorothy Lockwood]
+
+In signing the paper in this fashion no one girl could be accused of
+leading in the demand for Hester's removal. Lily had gone, so that
+nobody would tell Hester just what each girl said, or who signed
+first. That Nellie Agnew had taken the lead in this petition against
+her schoolmate the doctor's daughter herself knew, if nobody else did.
+She felt a little conscience-stricken over it, too, for she had told
+Daddy Doctor that she would be guided by his advice in the matter of
+Hester Grimes.
+
+And after supper that night her father said something that made Nellie
+feel more than ever condemned.
+
+"Do you know, Nell," he said, thoughtfully, pulling on his old black
+pipe as she perched as usual on the broad arm of his chair. "Do you
+know there is good stuff in that girl Hester?"
+
+"In Hester Grimes?" asked Nellie, rather flutteringly.
+
+"Yes. In Hester Grimes. I guess you didn't hear about it. And it
+slipped my mind. But when I was over to see little Johnny Doyle again
+to-day I found Hester there and the Doyles think she's about
+right--especially Rufus."
+
+"Rufus isn't just right in his mind--is he?" asked Nellie, her eyes
+twinkling a little.
+
+"I don't know. In some things Rufe is 'way above the average,"
+chuckled her father. "He is cunning enough, sure enough! But to get
+back to Hester. I never told you how she jumped into the sewer-basin
+and saved Johnny's life?"
+
+"No! Never!" gasped Nellie.
+
+The physician told her the incident in full. He told her further that
+Hester had done a deal, off and on, for the Widow Doyle and her
+children.
+
+"Oh, I wish I had known!" cried Nellie, in real contrition.
+
+"What for?" demanded the doctor.
+
+But she would not tell him. She knew that the petition had been mailed
+to Mrs. Case that very evening. Her name was on it, and in her own
+heart Nellie knew that she had had as much to do with the scheme to
+put Hester Grimes off the basketball team as any girl.
+
+"Perhaps, if the girls had known what Hester did for Johnny they
+wouldn't have been so bitter against her," thought the doctor's
+daughter. "I know _I_ would never have signed that hateful paper. Oh,
+dear! why did Daddy Doctor have to find out that there was some good
+in Hester, and tell _me_ about it?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ANOTHER RAID
+
+
+Hester Grimes, as the doctor said, had appeared late that afternoon at
+the Doyles' little tenement. She had gone there from the basketball
+game instead of going directly home.
+
+To tell the truth, she did not wish to be questioned by her mother,
+nor did she want to meet Lily. If she had felt hatred against her
+mates in Central High before, that feeling in her heart was now
+doubled!
+
+For, as all anger is illogical (indignation may not be) Hester turned
+upon the girls and blamed them for the referee's decision. Because
+Miss Lawrence had put her out of the game Hester would have been glad
+to know that her team mates had gone to pieces and been defeated.
+
+She had managed to recover outwardly from her disappointment and
+anger, however, when she arrived at the domicile of her humble
+acquaintances. Mrs. Doyle knitted jackets, and Hester had ordered one
+for her mother.
+
+"Ma is always lolling around and complaining of feeling draughts,"
+said Hester. "So I'll give her one of these 'snuggers' to keep her
+shoulders warm. She's always snuffing with a cold when it comes fall
+and the furnace fire is not lit."
+
+"Lots o' folks are having colds just now," complained Mrs. Doyle.
+"Johnny's snuffling with one."
+
+"Oh, he'll be all right--won't he, Rufie?" said Hester, chucking the
+baby under his plump little chin, but speaking to his faithful nurse.
+
+"In course he will, Miss Hester," cried Rufus, and then opened his
+mouth for a roar of laughter, that made even the feverish Johnny crow.
+
+"Rufus never gets tired of minding Johnny," said the widow, proudly.
+"But he does miss his Uncle Bill."
+
+Rufe's face clouded over. "He ain't never home no more," he said,
+complainingly.
+
+"But you can go over to see him at the gymnasium," said Hester.
+
+"Not no more he can't, Miss," said the widow. "Rufus used to go over
+to see Uncle Bill evenings; but Uncle Bill can't have him there no
+more."
+
+"Why not?" asked Hester, quickly; and yet she flushed and turned her
+own gaze away and looked out of the window.
+
+"Bill's had some trouble there. He's afraid the Board of Education
+would object. Somebody got into the building----"
+
+"I heard about it," said Hester, quickly.
+
+"Wisht Uncle Bill had another job," grumbled Rufus.
+
+"Rufie's real bright about some things," whispered his mother. "And
+sharp ain't no name for it! He is pretty cute. You can't say much
+before him that he don't remember, and repeat."
+
+"Wisht that old gymnasium building would burn up; then Uncle Bill
+could come home," muttered Rufe.
+
+Mrs. Doyle went to see to her fire. Hester beckoned the boy to the
+window and whispered to him. Gradually Rufe's face lit up with one of
+his flashes of cunning. Money passed from the girl's hand to that of
+the half-witted youth.
+
+Just then Dr. Agnew appeared and Hester took her departure.
+
+On the following morning Franklin Sharp, the principal of Central
+High, called a conference of his teachers at the first opportunity. He
+was very grave indeed when he told them that another raid had been
+made upon the girls' gymnasium.
+
+"Not so much damage is reported as was done before. But, then, the
+paraphernalia before destroyed was not all removed. But this time the
+scoundrel--or scoundrels--tried arson.
+
+"A fire was built in a closet on the upper floor. Bill Jackway smelled
+smoke and got up to see what it was. He found no trace of the
+firebug--can discover no way in which he got out----"
+
+"But how did he get in?" asked one of the teachers.
+
+"That is plain. It had rained early in the evening. Footprints are
+still visible leading across a soft piece of ground from the east
+fence to a window. The window was open, although Bill swears it was
+shut and locked when he went to bed at ten o'clock. That is how the
+marauder entered the building. How he got out is a mystery," declared
+the principal.
+
+"It is a very dreadful thing," complained Miss Carrington. "I do not
+see what we can do about it."
+
+"We must do something," said Miss Gould, with vigor.
+
+"Suppose you suggest a course of procedure, Miss Gould?" said the
+principal, his eyes twinkling.
+
+"I think it would be well," said Miss Gould, "to sift every rumor and
+story regarding this matter. There is much gossip among the girls. I
+have heard of a threat that one girl made in the gymnasium----"
+
+"That is quite ridiculous, Miss Gould!" cried Miss Carrington, with
+some heat. "You have been listening to a base slander against one of
+my very best pupils."
+
+"You mean this Hester Grimes, Henry Grimes's daughter?" said the
+principal, sternly.
+
+"That is the girl," admitted Miss Gould. "I know little about her----"
+
+"And I know a good deal," interposed Mrs. Case, grimly. "Miss
+Carrington finds her good at her books, and her deportment is always
+fair in classes. I find her the hardest girl to manage in all the
+school. She has a bad temper and she has never been taught to control
+it. It has gone so far that I fear I shall have to shut her out of
+some of the athletics," and she related all that had happened at the
+basketball game with the East High girls the afternoon before.
+
+"I do not approve of these contests," said Miss Carrington, primly.
+"They are sure to cause quarreling."
+
+"If they do, then there is something the matter with the girls,"
+declared Mr. Sharp, briskly.
+
+"And I have received this request from the girls of the team--seven of
+them--this morning," continued Mrs. Case, producing the "round robin."
+"The only girls beside Hester who did not sign it is a girl who always
+chums with her--the only really close friend Hester has to my knowledge
+in the school.
+
+"Now, I should like very much to be instructed what to do about this?
+The girls are perfectly in the right. Hester is not dependable on the
+team. There should be another girl in her place----"
+
+"Oh, but it is quite unfair!" cried Miss Carrington. "And remember her
+father is quite an important man. There will be trouble if Hester is
+put down in these tiresome athletics; or if this story that is going
+about is repeated to Mr. Grimes I can't imagine what he _would_ do."
+
+"Mr. Grimes does not run the Board of Education, nor does he control
+_our_ actions," declared Mr. Sharp. "We must take cognizance of these
+matters at once. I believe you should remove Hester from the team, as
+requested, Mrs. Case. You have ample reason for so doing. And this
+matter of the attempt to burn the gymnasium must be investigated
+fully."
+
+"But no girl could do these things in the gymnasium," cried Miss
+Carrington, with considerable asperity.
+
+"But she could get somebody else to do them--especially a girl who is
+allowed as much spending money as Hester Grimes," said the principal.
+"I can imagine no sane person committing such a crime. It is wilful
+and malicious mischief, and could only be inspired by hatred, or--an
+unbalanced mind. That is my opinion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MOTHER WIT AND THE GRAY MARE
+
+
+For some reason, that lively young "female Mercury," as Jess Morse
+sometimes dubbed her, Bobby Hargrew, did not hear of this new raid
+upon the girls' gym. early that morning; so, like the other pupils of
+Central High, she could not visit the athletic building until after
+school. She went then with Nellie and Laura and Jess, and the
+quartette were almost the first girls to enter the building that day.
+
+"It's a dreadful thing," said Laura, in discussing the affair.
+
+The girls were all noticeably grave about the matter this time. There
+was little excitement, or talk of "how horrid it was" and all that.
+There was a gravity in their manner which showed that the girls of
+Central High were quite aware that the case was serious in the
+extreme.
+
+One of their number was accused of being the instigator of these raids
+on the gymnasium. True, or false, it was an accusation that could not
+be lightly overlooked. Laura Belding was particularly grave; and
+Nellie Agnew had cried about it.
+
+The four friends went out into the field and examined the footprints
+in the earth.
+
+"Those were never Hessie's 'feetprints,' for, big as her feet are, she
+never wears boots like _those_!" giggled Bobby.
+
+"He was a shuffler--that fellow," said Jess. "See how blurred the marks
+are at the heel?"
+
+"And he shuffled right up to this window--And how do you suppose he
+opened it, if, as Mr. Jackway says, it was locked on the inside?"
+
+"Mystery!" said Bobby.
+
+"Give it up," added Jess. "What do you say, Mother Wit?"
+
+"That is the way he opened it," said Laura, softly, looking up from
+the foot prints.
+
+"What's that?" cried Jess.
+
+"Why--I hear you talking, but you don't say anything!" laughed Bobby.
+"_How_ did he open it?"
+
+"From the inside," said Laura.
+
+"Why, Laura!" gasped Nellie. "You do not distrust Mr. Jackway?"
+
+"Hush! Of course not," cried Jess, in a lower tone.
+
+"No, I do not distrust him," said Laura Belding.
+
+"What do you mean, then, by saying that the fellow opened the window
+from the inside?"
+
+"And that's ridiculous, Laura!" cried Jess. "He walked up to the
+window from across the field--you can see he did. And there's no mark
+showing how he went away. He did not leave by the window. He could not
+have been inside when he came from outside----"
+
+"Hold on! Hold on!" warned Bobby. "You're getting dreadfully mixed,
+Jess."
+
+"But I don't see what Laura's driving at," declared her chum.
+
+"Why," said Mother Wit, calmly, "the person who made those shoe prints
+walked backwards. Don't you see? That is what makes the shuffling mark
+at the heel. And see! the step is so uneven in length. He escaped by
+the window; he didn't enter by it."
+
+"Well!" cried Nellie Agnew. "That explains without explaining. The
+mystery is deeper than ever."
+
+"Why is it?" demanded Jess.
+
+"Don't you see? Before, we thought we knew how the fellow got in. It
+seems to be an easier thing to get out of the gym. than into it. But
+now Laura knocks that in the head. The mystery is: How did he get in?"
+
+"Oh, don't!" cried Bobby. "It makes my head buzz. And Laura is a
+regular lady detective. She's always finding out things that 'it would
+be better, far, did we not know!'"
+
+She said this to Nellie Agnew, when they had separated from Laura and
+Jess, and were walking toward home.
+
+"Say! do you know how Laura explained that canoe tipping over with
+Purt Sweet and Lily Pendleton?" pursued the lively one.
+
+"I didn't know that they had an accident," laughed Nellie. "Those
+canoes are awfully ticklish, I know."
+
+"I should say they were! Well, Purt and Lil borrowed Hessie's canoe
+and they no more than got started before they went head first into the
+water--and Lil, of course, helpless as usual, had to be 'rescued.' The
+number of times that girl has been 'rescued' this season is a
+caution!"
+
+"I do admire your elegant language," said Nellie, reprovingly. "But
+what did Laura say?"
+
+"She explained it all for them. Both Purt and Lil were trying to tell
+how such a wonderful thing chanced to happen as an overturn, when
+Laura said she could explain it satisfactorily to all hands. She said
+that Purt had made a mistake and parted his hair too far on one side,
+and that had overbalanced the canoe!"
+
+"Well, they do swamp awfully easy," laughed Nellie. "I guess Laura has
+found the right explanation of how the villain left the gym. But there
+is one explanation that I would like to have--a much more important
+one," concluded Nellie.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"_Who_ did it?"
+
+"I thought that was pretty well understood," growled Bobby.
+
+"No girl could have climbed over that fence, that's sure!"
+
+"Oh, I grant you that!" cried Bobby. "But she paid to have it done.
+There are plenty of tough fellows from down at the 'Four Corners' who
+work at the slaughter house. They could be hired to do it."
+
+"Hush, Bobby!" commanded the doctor's daughter. "I feel terribly
+condemned. I am afraid we are accusing Hester wrongfully. A girl
+couldn't have two such very opposite sides to her character," and she
+promptly told her friend what Dr. Agnew had related regarding Hester's
+rescue of little Johnny Doyle from the sewer basin.
+
+"Gee! that was some jump, wasn't it?" demanded the admiring Bobby.
+Then she shook her head slowly. "Well," she remarked, "nobody ever
+said Hester wasn't brave enough. She was brave enough to slap your
+face!" and then she giggled.
+
+"I don't care," said Nellie, slowly. "I fear we went too far when we
+asked Mrs. Case to take her off the team. And I'm _sure_ it isn't
+right for us to accuse her of being the cause of the trouble at the
+gym.--without further and better evidence."
+
+"Oh, dear, Nell! you're a great fuss-budget!" cried the effervescent
+Bobby. "Are you sure that your Daddy Doctor saw quite straight when he
+saw Hester save the kid? You know, he's getting awfully
+absent-minded."
+
+Nellie smiled at her, taking Bobby's jokes good naturedly.
+
+"I know father is absent-minded," she admitted. "But not as bad as all
+that."
+
+"I don't know," returned Bobby, with apparent seriousness. "The other
+day when he put the stethoscope to me before practice, I expected to
+see him take the receiver away from his ear and holler 'Hello,
+Central!' into it."
+
+"I'll tell him that!" promised Nellie.
+
+"All right. Do your worst," giggled Bobby. "It will be a month old
+before he gets around to sound my heart action again, and he will have
+forgotten all about it by then."
+
+The Saturday following a crowd of the girls went out to visit Eve
+Sitz, and Nellie and Bobby were included in the automobile load that
+left the Beldings' house right after luncheon. Saturday mornings Laura
+always helped in her father's jewelry store, while Chet was behind the
+counter as an extra salesman in the evening; so the Beldings'
+chauffeur drove the car to the Sitz farm for the girls.
+
+There were chestnut and hickory woods on, and near, the Sitz farm, and
+the girls had in mind a scheme for a big nutting party just as soon as
+Otto Sitz--Eve's brother--should pronounce the frost heavy enough to
+open the chestnut burrs and send the hickory nuts tumbling to the
+ground.
+
+There was always plenty to do to amuse the young folk--especially young
+folk from the city--on the Sitz place. This day Otto and the hired men
+were husking corn on the barn floor, and Nellie, and Bobby, and Jess
+and the Lockwood twins were supplied with "corn pegs" and sat around
+the pile, helping to strip the golden and red ears.
+
+Eve had an errand down at the nearest country store, so she put the
+old gray mare into the spring cart with her own hands, and Laura rode
+with her.
+
+"We had a nice colt from old Peggy last year, and two weeks ago it was
+stolen. Otto had just broken her to saddle, and she was a likely
+animal," Eve said. "Old Peggy misses her, and whinnies for her all the
+time," she added, as the mare raised her head and sent a clarion call
+echoing across the hills.
+
+"Hasn't your father tried to find the thief--or the colt?" queried
+Laura.
+
+"Yes, indeed. He's over to Keyport to-day to see the detective there."
+
+"But the colt may be outside the county," urged Laura.
+
+"That's so, too. We haven't any idea where Jinks went. That was her
+name--Jinksey. She doesn't look much like Old Peggy; but she was worth
+a hundred and fifty dollars, if she was worth a cent! More than father
+could easily afford to lose. And then--Otto really owned her--or would
+have owned her when he came of age. Father had promised Jinks to him."
+
+"It's a shame!" cried Laura, always sympathetic. "And you have no
+suspicion as to who could have taken her?"
+
+"No. Down beyond the store--beyond Robinson's Woods, you know--there is
+a settlement of people who have a hard name. They rob the gardens and
+orchards on the edge of town----"
+
+"Toward Centerport, you mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The Four Corners' crowd!" cried Laura.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, that gang are a bad lot. Once Chet and I motored through there
+and an ugly fellow named Pocock came out and fired a charge of
+bird-shot into a rear tire. He said an auto had been through there the
+week before and killed his pig, and he was going to shoot at every
+machine he saw. We've never taken that road again."
+
+"That Hebe Pocock is an awfully bad fellow," said Eve, seriously. "He
+tried to work for us once, but father wouldn't keep him more than a
+day. And he's been mad at us ever since."
+
+"Maybe some of those fellows in that gang stole your Jinksey."
+
+"How are we going to know? Father or Otto wouldn't dare go down there
+and look around. And I guess the police are afraid of those fellows,
+too."
+
+"Let's drive down past the store," suggested Laura, thoughtfully,
+after the old mare had again lifted up her voice.
+
+"Oh, my, Laura! What for?"
+
+"Something might come of it."
+
+"I guess nothing but trouble."
+
+"I've got what Chet and Lance call 'a hunch,'" said Laura, slowly.
+
+"We--ell----here's the store."
+
+"Just a little farther, Eve," said Laura, taking the reins herself,
+and clucking to the old mare.
+
+They passed the store on the trot. Around the first bend they came in
+sight of the little hollow where the roads crossed, making the
+renowned "Four Corners." Coming up the road was a boy on a bay colt.
+Instantly the old mare whinnied again, and the colt answered her.
+
+"It's Jinksey!" gasped Eve.
+
+"We're going to get her--if you're sure!" declared Laura.
+
+"Of course I'm sure. I'd know her anywhere--and so would Old Peggy."
+
+The colt snorted again, and the boy riding her tried to pull her out
+into a side path, to cut across the fields. Eve stood up and shouted
+to him. Laura urged the gray mare on, and she went down the hill at a
+tearing pace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HEBE POCOCK
+
+
+"Oh, Laura!" gasped Eve. "That boy will never give the colt up."
+
+"Why not? See him?" exclaimed Mother Wit. "He knows he is riding a
+stolen horse. There! he's sliding out of the saddle."
+
+The fact was, the colt--still but half broken under the saddle and with
+its eyes on its mother--would not move out of its tracks. The boy
+jumped off and tried to lead Jinks.
+
+"Get away from that horse, boy!" commanded Laura, bringing the old
+mare down to a more moderate pace as they approached the stolen colt.
+
+"I'll tell my brother!" yelled the youngster. "I'll set him on ye!
+This critter is his'n."
+
+"And he came by it just as dishonestly as you came by such grammar as
+you use," said Laura, laughing, while Eve hopped over the wheel on her
+side of the cart and grabbed the reins out of the boy's hands.
+
+"Let that horse alone!" cried the youngster, kicking at Eve with his
+bare foot.
+
+But Eve Sitz wasn't afraid of any boy--not even had he been of her own
+size and age. Her open palm smacked the youngster's head resoundingly
+and he staggered away, bawling:
+
+"Lemme erlone! Hebe! Hebron Pocock! I wantcher!"
+
+Laura was already backing the mare, preparatory to turning about.
+
+"Come on with the colt, Eve!" she cried.
+
+The boy they had unhorsed continued to bawl at the top of his voice.
+But for the moment nobody appeared. Eve lengthened the bridle rein for
+a leading strap and then essayed to climb into the cart again. The boy
+ceased crying and threw a stone. The colt jumped and tried to pull
+away, for the stone struck her.
+
+"Whoa, Jinks!" cried Eve. "If I could catch that boy! I'd do more than
+box his ears--so I would!"
+
+"Come on, Eve!" called Laura, looking over her shoulder. "Here come
+some women from the shanties. They will do something to us beside
+calling us names----or throwing stones," as she dodged one that the boy
+sent in her direction.
+
+"Whoa, Jinksey!" commanded Eve, again, trying to lead the frightened
+colt toward the cart.
+
+"Hebe Pocock! Yi-yi! You're wanted!" yelled the small boy again,
+sending down a perfect shower of stones from the bank above them, but
+fortunately throwing them wild.
+
+Eve managed to climb up into the cart, still holding the snorting,
+pawing colt by the strap.
+
+"Drive on! drive on!" she gasped, looking back at the several
+ill-looking and worse dressed women who were running toward them.
+
+"Go on!" urged Laura to the mare, and Old Peggy started back up the
+hill, while Eve towed Jinks behind. Suddenly, however, the bushes
+parted, and a roughly dressed fellow, with a red handkerchief tied
+around his head in lieu of a cap, stepped out into the road. He
+carried a gun in the hollow of his arm, the muzzle of which was turned
+threateningly toward the cart and the two girls in it. The two barrels
+looked as big around as cannon in the eyes of Laura and Evangeline
+Sitz!
+
+"Hey, there!" advised the ugly looking fellow. "You ladies better stop
+a bit."
+
+"It's Pocock!" whispered Laura.
+
+"I know it," returned Eve, in the same tone.
+
+"That horse you're leadin' belongs to me," said Pocock, with an ugly
+scowl.
+
+"You know better, Hebron," exclaimed Eve, bravely. "It belongs to my
+father."
+
+"It may look like your father's colt," said Pocock. "But I bought her
+of a gypsy, and it ain't the same an--i--mile."
+
+"The old mare knows her," said Laura, quickly, as the colt nuzzled up
+to Peggy and the gray mare turned around to look upon the colt with
+favorable eye.
+
+"That don't prove nothing," growled Pocock. "Drop that rein."
+
+"No, I won't!" cried Eve. "Even the bridle is father's. I recognize
+it."
+
+By this time the women from the shanties had arrived. They were
+dreadful looking creatures, and Laura was more afraid of them than she
+was of Pocock's shot-gun.
+
+"What's them gals doin' to your brother Mike, Hebe?" demanded one of
+the women. "They want slappin', don't they?"
+
+"They want to l'arn to keep their han's off'n my property," growled
+Pocock. "Come! let the little horse go."
+
+"No!" cried Eve.
+
+"Yes," cried Pocock, shifting his gun threateningly.
+
+"You bet she will!" cried the woman who had spoken before, and she
+started to climb up on Laura's side of the cart.
+
+Laura seized the whip and the woman jumped back.
+
+"Shoot her, Hebe!" she yelled. "She'd a struck me with that thing!"
+
+But Laura had no such intention. She brought the lash of the whip down
+upon the mare's flank. With a snort of surprise and pain the old horse
+sprang forward and had not Hebe Pocock leaped quickly aside he would
+have been run over.
+
+But unfortunately neither Eve nor the colt were prepared for this
+sudden move on Laura's part. The colt stood stock-still and Eve lost
+her grip on the bridle rein.
+
+"Go it!" yelled Pocock, laughing with delight. "I got the colt!"
+
+He sprang at the head of Jinks. The women were laughing and shrieking.
+
+"That's the time I did it!" gasped Laura, in chagrin, pulling down the
+old mare.
+
+And just then the purring of an automobile sounded in their ears and
+there rounded the nearest turn in the road a big touring car. It
+rolled down toward the cart and the group about the colt, with
+diminished speed.
+
+"Oh! we mustn't lose that colt after coming so near getting it away,"
+cried Laura.
+
+"But father can go after it with a constable," declared Eve,
+doubtfully.
+
+"But Pocock will get it away from here----"
+
+"Why, Laura Belding!" exclaimed a loud, good-natured voice. "What is
+the matter here?"
+
+"Mrs. Grimes!" gasped Laura, as the auto stopped. The butcher's wife
+and daughter were sitting in the tonneau. Hester looked straight ahead
+and did not even glance at her two school-fellows.
+
+"Isn't that young Pocock, that used to work for your father, Hester?"
+demanded Mrs. Grimes. "That's a very bad boy. What's he been doing to
+you, Laura?"
+
+"He has stolen that little horse from Eve's father," cried Laura. "And
+now he won't give it up."
+
+"'Tain't so!" cried Hebe Pocock, loudly. "Don't you believe that gal,
+Mis' Grimes. I bought this horse----"
+
+"Hebe," said the butcher's wife, calmly, "you never had money enough
+in your life to buy a horse like that--and you never will have. Lead it
+up here and let the girl have her father's property. And you women, go
+back to your homes--and clean up, for mercy's sake! I never did see
+such a shiftless, useless lot as you are at the Four Corners. When I
+lived there, we had some decency about us----"
+
+"Oh, Mother!" gasped Hester, grasping the good lady's arm.
+
+"Well, that's where we lived--your father an' me," declared Mrs.
+Grimes. "It was near the slaughter houses and handy for him. And let
+me tell you, there was respectable folk lived there in them days. Hebe
+Pocock! Are you goin' to do what I tell you?"
+
+The fellow came along in a very hang-dog manner and passed the strap
+to Eve Sitz.
+
+"'Tain't fair. It's my horse," he growled.
+
+"You know better," said Mrs. Grimes, calmly. "And you expect Mr.
+Grimes to find you a good job, do you? You wanted to get to be
+watchman, or the like, in town? If I tell Henry about this what chance
+do you suppose you'll ever have at _that_ job?"
+
+"Mebbe I'll get it, anyway," grinned Pocock.
+
+"And maybe you won't," said Mrs. Grimes, calmly.
+
+Meanwhile Laura and Eve, after thanking the butcher's wife, drove on.
+But Hester never looked at them, or spoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"OUT OF IT"
+
+
+For on that Saturday morning Mrs. Case had called at the Grimes house
+and asked to see Hester. The girl came down and, the moment she saw
+the physical instructor of Central High, seemed to know what was
+afoot.
+
+"So you've come to tell me I'm not on the team any more, I s'pose,
+Mrs. Case?" she demanded, tossing her head, her face growing very red.
+
+"I am sorry to tell you that, after your actions at the game with East
+High Wednesday afternoon, it has been decided that another girl
+nominated to your position on Team Number 1 would probably do better,"
+said Mrs. Case, quietly.
+
+"Well!" snapped Hester. "You've been wanting to get me off ever since
+last spring----"
+
+"Hester! although we are not at school now, we are discussing school
+matters, and I am one of your teachers. Just as long as you attend
+Central High you must speak respectfully to and of your instructors,
+both in and out of school. Do you wish me to report your language to
+Mr. Sharp?"
+
+Hester was sullenly silent for a moment
+
+"For I can assure you," continued Mrs. Case, "that if I were to place
+the entire matter before him, including your general deportment at the
+gymnasium and on the athletic field, I feel sure your parents would be
+requested to remove you from the school. Do you understand that?"
+
+"I don't know that I would be very sorry," muttered the girl.
+
+"You think you would not," said Mrs. Case; "but it is not so. You are
+too old to be taken out of one school and put in another because of
+your deportment. Wherever you went that fact would follow you. It
+would be hard work for you to live down such a reputation, Hester."
+
+"I wish father would send me to a boarding-school, anyway."
+
+"And I doubt if that would help you any. You will not be advised,
+Hester. But you will learn yet that I speak the truth when I tell you
+that you will be neither happy, nor popular, wherever you go, unless
+you control your temper."
+
+"What do I care about those nasty girls on the Hill?" sputtered the
+butcher's daughter. "They're a lot of nobodies, if they _are_ so
+stuck-up."
+
+"There is not a girl in your class, Hester, who puts on airs over
+you--or who attempts to," said Mrs. Case, warmly. "And you know that is
+so. Deep in your heart, Hester, you know just where the trouble lies.
+Your lack of self-control and your envy are at the root of all your
+troubles in school and in athletics."
+
+Hester only pouted; but she made no reply.
+
+"Now I am forced to remove you from this team where--if you would keep
+your temper--you could be of much use. You are a good player at
+basketball--one of the best in Central High. And we have to deny you
+the privilege of playing on the champion team because----"
+
+"Just because the other girls don't want me to play with them!" cried
+the girl, angrily.
+
+"And can they be blamed?" demanded the teacher, quite exasperated
+herself now. "If you had any loyalty to Central High you would not
+have acted as you did."
+
+"I don't care!" flashed out Hester.
+
+At that Mrs. Case arose to go. "You are hopeless," she said,
+decisively. "I had it in mind to offer you a chance to win back your
+position on the team. But such consideration would be thrown away on
+you."
+
+"I don't want to play with the horrid, stuck-up things!" cried Hester,
+quite beside herself now with rage and mortification. "I hate them
+all. I don't want any of them to be my friends. And as for your old
+athletics--I'm going to tell father that they're no good and that I
+want to withdraw from the League."
+
+"You may be saved the necessity for that if you haven't a care,
+Hester," warned Mrs. Case, taking her departure.
+
+It was because of this visit from the physical instructor, perhaps,
+that Hester fairly bullied her father at luncheon time into allowing
+her mother and herself to try out an automobile that an agent had
+wanted to sell the wholesale butcher for some time. If automobiles had
+been uncommon on the Hill Henry Grimes would have had one long before
+for his family, for he loved display, just as Hester did. But nearly
+every family at their end of Whiffle Street had a car.
+
+However, Mrs. Grimes woke up enough to show interest in the matter,
+too, for she really liked riding in a car that ran smoothly and
+rapidly over the macadamized roads about Centerport; so she added her
+complaint to Hester's and finally the butcher telephoned for the car
+to be sent up. But he would not give any time to it himself. Therefore
+it was that Hester and her mother appeared on the Hill road just above
+the Four Corners in season to extricate Laura Belding and Eve Sitz
+from their very uncomfortable session with Hebe Pocock and his crowd.
+
+"We ought to have gone along and left those girls to get out of it as
+best they could," snapped Hester, when the car rolled on and Laura and
+Eve, with the mare and colt, were out of sight.
+
+"Why, I declare for't!" ejaculated Mrs. Grimes. "You certainly do hate
+that Belding girl--and I don't see a living thing the matter with her.
+She's smart an' bright--remember how she found my auto veil that you
+lost last spring?"
+
+Hester had very good reason for remembering that occasion. She had
+always been afraid that Laura would circulate the story connected with
+that veil; and because Laura had kept silence Hester hated her all the
+more.
+
+And now Hester allowed bitter thoughts against Mother Wit and the
+other members of the basketball team to fester in her mind, until she
+was actually insanely angry with and jealous of them.
+
+When her mother that evening at dinner told Mr. Grimes about the
+actions of Hebron Pocock, who sometimes worked for the butcher at the
+slaughtering plant near the Four Corners, Hester tried to smooth the
+matter over and suggest that Hebe was "only in fun" and was just
+scaring two silly girls.
+
+"Well, I suggested him for watchman at the gymnasium," said Mr.
+Grimes. "But he isn't likely to get it. The Board has every confidence
+in this Bill Jackway, despite the fact that somebody seems to get into
+the gym. and damage things without his knowing how they do it. Bill is
+an easy-going fellow. That's why I suggested Hebe Pocock. If Hebe was
+on the job, he'd eat a fellow up who tried to monkey around the gym."
+
+Hester was silent thereafter until the subject of conversation was
+changed.
+
+The following week she found herself "out of it" with a vengeance. If
+Lily Pendleton had been absenting herself from Hester's side more than
+usual since the fall term opened, now she was still more away. Lily
+did not wish to lose her membership in the basketball team. To be a
+member of the champion nine of Central High gave her a certain
+prestige that that young lady did not wish to lose.
+
+Besides, Lily was one of the largest girls in the Junior class, was
+vigorous physically, and loved the game. So Hester was thrown back
+upon her own resources more than ever. And her own company did not
+please Miss Hester Grimes.
+
+She could, of course, have found associates among some of the younger
+girls, or among those who are always willing to play the courtier to a
+girl who spends her money freely. Yet there were few of these latter
+at Central High, and not many of the younger girls--the sophs and
+freshies--liked Hester well enough to chum with her.
+
+And now that the whispered accusations against the wholesale butcher's
+daughter had gone about the school regarding the gymnasium mystery,
+many girls looked askance at Hester when she passed by, and some even
+ignored her and refused to speak to her.
+
+Ordinarily this would have troubled her but little. She was often "not
+on speaking terms" with dozens of girls--especially with those of her
+own class. But this was different, and she began to notice it. Girls
+who had heretofore nodded to her on the street or in the yard of the
+school, at least, walked right by and did not turn their eyes upon
+her.
+
+Furthermore, when Hester approached a group of her classmates they
+often hushed their animated discussions and broke up the group
+quickly. They were speaking of her. She could not imagine what they
+said, but her heart burned with anger against them.
+
+Hester kept away from the gym. She told herself she did not care what
+happened to the "old place." She hated it. She would not go there and
+see another girl practice in her place on the basketball team.
+
+A game with the West High girls was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
+It was not until after that that her mother learned that she no longer
+played on the Central High team. And Mrs. Grimes wanted to know _why_.
+
+"Never you mind!" snapped Hester, who was not above being saucy to her
+mother at times. "It doesn't concern you."
+
+"Don't you _want_ to play any more?" insisted Mrs. Grimes.
+
+"No, I don't! Now, that's finished!" cried Hester, and flounced out of
+the room.
+
+Her father had agreed to buy the new auto, and she telephoned for the
+man at the garage to bring it up. Nobody ever crossed Hester, if he
+could help it, and when she said to the man that she wanted to learn
+to run the car he supposed that her father was willing.
+
+He did not ask her age, although the Centerport Board of Aldermen had
+established a rule that no person under sixteen should be given a
+license or be allowed to run a motor car. At any rate, he did not
+expect to be requested to let her run the car without his guidance.
+
+But this is exactly what Hester demanded when they were out of town.
+It was a warm, smoky fall day. There were brush fires somewhere over
+the ridge to the south of Centerport; or else some spark from a
+railroad locomotive had set the leaves in the ditches afire. It had
+been dry for a week and the woods were like tinder.
+
+They had run far out the road past the entrance to Robinson's Picnic
+Grounds, and there Hester demanded to manage the car alone, while the
+man sat in back.
+
+"You make me nervous!" she exclaimed. "I'll never learn anything with
+you nudging my elbow all the time. There! get along with you."
+
+She really was a very capable girl, and she was not unfamiliar with
+motor cars; but the chauffeur doubted.
+
+"I don't believe I can do it, Miss," he said. "I'll sit here----"
+
+Suddenly the car stopped. The engine was still running, but the car
+did not move.
+
+"_Now_ what's the matter?" snapped Hester. "Hop out and see, Joseph."
+
+The man did so and immediately she turned the switch again and the
+machine darted ahead, leaving the chauffeur in the middle of the road.
+
+"I'll be back after a little!" she called to him, coolly, over her
+shoulder, and the next moment rounded a turn safely and shut the
+amazed and angry chauffeur out of view.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE WIND VEERS
+
+
+The car purred along so easily and it was such a delight to manage the
+wheel without the interference of the chauffeur that Hester did not
+note the distance she traveled. Nor was she at first aware of the
+speed. Then she suddenly realized that she had shifted the gear to the
+highest speed forward, and that a picket fence she passed was merely a
+blur along the roadside.
+
+But this was a road on which there were few houses, and most of them
+were back in the fields, in the middle of the farms that bordered the
+pike.
+
+"This will never do," thought Hester, and she began to manipulate the
+levers and finally brought the car to a stop. The roadway was narrow
+and she would have to back to turn. But this was one of the very
+things she desired to learn how to do; and that officious Joseph was
+always fussing when he was beside her.
+
+"How many miles have I come, I wonder?" she asked herself, looking
+about.
+
+She was on a ridge of land overlooking a narrow valley. At the end of
+the valley the road seemed to dip from the ridge, and it disappeared
+in a thick haze of blue smoke.
+
+"The fire must be over that way," she thought. "Shall I run that far
+and see what it means? The wind is not blowing toward me."
+
+She started the car once more. The auto rolled on, but she noticed
+that it wasn't firing regularly.
+
+"Hullo! Is it going to kick up rusty now and here?" muttered Hester,
+and she stopped. Having learned that much, she opened the carburetor
+to see if the gasoline was flowing all right. Then she tried a dozen
+times to start the car, without success. Suddenly she stood up with a
+jerk. In the distance she heard a growing roar--the oncoming rush of a
+powerful car.
+
+Fortunately she had stopped on the side of the road. There was room
+for another car to pass. And out of the blue smoke ahead it appeared
+with startling suddenness, hurled like a missile from a gun directly
+up the road toward her.
+
+She knew the car almost instantly. It was the Beldings' auto and it
+was crowded with young folk. She knew where they had been. The next
+week the girls of Central High had been invited to Keyport to play the
+first team at basketball of the High School in that town.
+
+Hester had heard all about the game the day before with the West High
+girls. With Roberta Fish in Hester's old position at forward center,
+the girls of Central High had swept all before them. They had beaten
+their opponents with a good lead. Of course, the West High team was
+not as strong as the East High had been; but Roberta had done well and
+victory had, for the first time in months, perched upon the banner of
+Central High.
+
+A committee had been appointed to go over and see the Keyport
+managers, and now it was returning. The big car was driven by Chet
+Belding, with Launcelot Darby beside him. Laura, Jess, Bobby, Nellie,
+and the Lockwood twins filled the tonneau comfortably.
+
+Hester hoped that the Belding car would wheel right by and that her
+school fellows would not notice her. But Chet saw the car stalled, and
+Laura's quick eye detected the lone girl standing with her back to
+them, looking off across the valley.
+
+"What's the matter with that girl and her car?" demanded Lance, as
+Chet slowed down.
+
+"It's Hester. Mr. Grimes has bought a car at last, I understand," said
+Laura, leaning over the back of the seat and speaking to the boys. "Is
+she in trouble, do you think?"
+
+"I'll bet she is!" exclaimed Lance.
+
+"And out on this road alone. Where's the chauffeur?" said Chet.
+
+"And if the wind should change!" cried Nellie Agnew.
+
+"By Jove, that's so!" ejaculated Chet, bringing his car to a full stop
+right beside the stalled auto.
+
+"Hullo, Miss Grimes!" he sang out. "Can we help you? What's the matter
+with your car?"
+
+Hester saw it was useless to refuse to see them then. Besides, she did
+not want to be stalled there for hours.
+
+"That's what I've been trying to find out," she said, pointedly
+speaking to the boy, not to the girls.
+
+"Great machines," drawled Lance. "When you think you know all about
+'em they kick up and give you a lot of trouble. Isn't that so, Chet?"
+
+Chet was getting from under the wheel, and grunted. But Laura hopped
+out before him, came to Hester's side of the car, and asked:
+
+"Did it stop of itself?"
+
+"No. It wasn't firing regularly. I looked at the carburetor to see if
+it was all right. Then I tried to start her and couldn't," said
+Hester, ungraciously.
+
+Laura was going over the wiring to see if there were no loose contacts
+before Chet came to them. She turned the fly wheel far enough to get
+the buzz of the spark coils.
+
+"Go ahead, Sis!" chuckled Chet. "You know so much you'll be taking our
+old mill to pieces pretty soon, I reckon."
+
+Hester stood by and bit her lip with vexation. She was almost on the
+point of driving Laura away from the car, rather than have her
+enemy--for so she considered Mother Wit--help her out of her trouble.
+But night was coming on and she did not want to stand there much
+longer, if the car could be started.
+
+Laura removed a plug, grounded it on a cylinder and turned the wheel
+to a sparking point to note the quality of the spark and the strength
+of the battery. Then she ticked the carburetor and opened the small
+cock at the bottom.
+
+"You're getting your gloves all messy, Laura!" called Jess from the
+other car.
+
+"Hush!" commanded Chet, grinning, and holding up his hand. "Do not
+disturb the priestess of automobiling at her devotions. There will be
+something 'didding' in a minute--now watch."
+
+But Laura was serious--and interested. She closed the cock and felt
+along the gasoline pipe to the valve rod. This seemed to interest her
+particularly. In a moment she straightened up and stood back, saying
+to Hester:
+
+"You try the engine. Maybe she'll work now."
+
+Hester scrambled into her seat and tried the starter. The engine began
+to buzz like a saw-mill.
+
+"Great Scott, Laura!" cried her brother. "What did you do to it?"
+
+"Turned on the gasoline," said his sister, drily. "When Hester looked
+at her carburetor she turned it off. No wonder the engine wouldn't
+run."
+
+"Thanks," muttered Hester, in a choked tone, while the crowd in the
+other auto smothered their laughter, and she prepared to start the car
+when Chet should have stepped aside.
+
+"Hold on!" said young Belding. "This isn't any way to be traveling,
+Miss Hester."
+
+"Why not?" she snapped at him, for the situation was getting on her
+nerves now.
+
+"The wind is likely to change. If it veers around it will drive the
+fire directly up this road," said Chet.
+
+"What's burning?" demanded the girl, sharply.
+
+"The whole forest back yonder through the cut. We came through a big
+cloud of smoke."
+
+"If you got through I guess I can," Hester said, ungratefully, and the
+next moment started her car, which rolled swiftly away along the
+turnpike.
+
+The fact was, she did not want to try to turn the machine while they
+were watching her. She knew she should be awkward about it. And Laura
+Belding had displayed her superiority over her once already--and that
+was enough!
+
+The big car purred again joyously, and the roadway slipped behind like
+a ribbon running over a spool. In half a minute Hester and her car had
+dipped into the valley and were running through the cut between the
+hills. The Belding car was out of sight.
+
+But suddenly she became aware that the smoke was thick here. This deep
+cut was filled with it. And the fumes were not only choking; there was
+heat with the smoke.
+
+A shift of wind drove a thick cloud out of the forest and she had to
+shut her eyes. This was dangerous work. She knew better than to try to
+run the car on high speed when she could not see twenty feet beyond
+it.
+
+When she reduced speed she was cognizant of a roaring sound from the
+forest. For a moment she thought a big wind was coming.
+
+Then she knew better. It was the fire. Not far away the flames were
+devouring the forest hungrily--and the wind was behind the flames!
+
+There must have already been a change in the air-current, as Chet had
+prophesied. The forest fire was driving right into this narrow cut
+between the hills. To be caught here by the flames would not only mean
+the finish of this brand new car, but Hester knew that there would be
+no escape for her from such a situation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+RACING THE FLAMES
+
+
+Hester's car jarred down to a complete stop. The smoke stung her eyes
+and it began to be difficult for her to breathe. She knew that she had
+come too far on this road. She should have heeded Chet Belding's
+warning.
+
+But now she needed all her courage and coolness to get her out of the
+hot corner into which she had so heedlessly driven the automobile. The
+road was not more than thirty feet wide and the thick woods bordered
+it on either hand. Out of the covert dashed a flash of rusty brown
+that was gone in an instant. Hester knew it to be a fox. Already she
+had seen the rabbits running, and not a bird was in sight.
+
+The fire was coming--and coming by leaps and bounds!
+
+It smote upon Hester Grimes's mind that not alone were she and the
+innocent animals of the wood in peril; but there were lonely farms,
+deep in the forest, where the houses were so near the woods that the
+fire was sure to destroy them.
+
+Who would warn those squatters and small farmers of the danger down
+here in the cut? When once the flames rose over the ridge, with the
+wind behind them, they would descend the other side with the swiftness
+of an express train.
+
+Crops, orchards, outbuildings, and dwellings would all be sacrificed
+to the demon of flame. And some of the families along that far road on
+which the Sitz farm lay would scarcely have time to flee.
+
+But Hester, as she often said herself, "was no namby-pamby girl." She
+made a deal of fun of her chum, Lily, because the latter was always so
+helpless--or appeared to be--in time of trouble.
+
+She was alone, at the edge of this burning forest, with this big car.
+It had to be turned around, and then she must run it out of the line
+of the fire. Her father would have something to say--and that to much
+purpose--if she lost this brand new car, which he had not even paid for
+as yet.
+
+She started the car on the reverse, and twisted the wheel. The car
+backed, and shook, and she stopped it just as a rear tire collided
+with a stump. She must go ahead, and back, and go ahead again, and
+reverse once more, and repeat the operation half a dozen times before
+the car would be headed in the proper direction.
+
+The smoke grew thicker and thicker--and more choking. Her eyes were
+half blinded by tears, for the smoke stung them sadly. But soon she
+was free. The car could fly back over the road which it had lately
+descended, and once out of the cut her peril would be past.
+
+But on the very moment of starting ahead again Hester heard a great
+crashing in the bushes. Out into the road ahead of the car sprawled on
+hands and knees a man--or the semblance of one. For the instant Hester
+scarcely knew what to make of the figure sprawling there before the
+car. But she shut down again so as not to run over it.
+
+Then the individual arose to his knees and waved his arms weakly. His
+clothing was in rags. Indeed, he had only half a shirt and the remains
+of his overalls left upon his body, besides his shoes. His hair had
+been singed from his head. A great angry burn disfigured one side of
+his face, while the beard was crisped to cinders on the other side. He
+was without eyebrows and eyelashes, and his eyes stared from deep
+hollows in his face--or so it seemed.
+
+"For heaven's sake, help me!" he gasped. "Take me aboard! Take me away
+from here!"
+
+He struggled to his feet and fell again. He had come as far as he
+could. Had the road not been right where it was, the man must have
+fallen in the woods and been swept again by the flames.
+
+Hester sprang up, caught him around the waist and half dragged him to
+the car. She was thoroughly scared now; but she was courageous enough
+to aid this man who was more unfortunate than herself.
+
+"Get in! Get in!" she cried, flinging open the door of the tonneau.
+"We must hurry."
+
+"You bet we gotter hurry!" gasped the man, as he crawled into the car
+and she banged to the door so that he would not fall out.
+
+Into her own seat Hester sprang. The car was jarring with the throb of
+the engine. If it should balk now, what would become of them?
+
+The frightened girl turned the switch carefully. The car rolled on. It
+moved faster and faster along the narrow road. The smoke was now so
+thick that she was running the car blindly. At any moment the wheels
+might hit a stump at the side of the road, for she could not be sure
+that she was keeping in the main-traveled path.
+
+While they were in the cut she heard nothing from the man behind. But
+when the car shot up the hill out of the cut to the ridge-ground, and
+left the smoke behind, the man struggled up into the seat and leaned
+over to speak to her.
+
+"You air a brave gal!" he gasped. "Woof! my lungs is burnt to a
+crisp--I swallered so much smoke. Ye jest erbout saved my life, Miss."
+
+Hester made no reply. She was winking the tears out of her eyes, and
+the pressure in her own lungs hurt.
+
+"But there air a lot of folks goin' to be caught similar over the
+ridge, if we can't warn 'em."
+
+"What's that?" she demanded, quickly, but without looking around at
+him.
+
+"My name's Billson. I live back in the bottoms yonder. I got an acre
+or two cleared around my cabin; but the bresh warn't burned up. It is
+now, by jinks!" added Mr. Billson, with a grim cackle.
+
+"When the wind veered thar so suddent, it caught me. I had to run
+through a wall of fire at one place. Then I got acrost the crick and
+that saved me for a while. But the fire would have caught me again if
+it hadn't been for you. I am sure mighty much obleeged to ye."
+
+"I--I'm glad I was there with the car," faltered Hester.
+
+"And we've got to warn those other folks over the hill," cried the
+man, coughing. "Gee! I guess I'll never get this smoke out o' my
+lungs."
+
+"But how can we get to those other farms?" gasped Hester.
+
+"I'll show ye. There's a crossroad along here a spell. An automobile
+can git through it on a pinch. And there's two families live on that
+road, too."
+
+"Do you s'pose they'll be in danger?" asked Hester, slowly.
+
+"In course they are. Say! you ain't afraid, are you?" demanded the
+man. "I tell ye the fire is coming. It's going to sweep this whole
+ridge."
+
+"Won't--won't they see it?"
+
+"Did _I_ see it?" demanded the squatter. "Not soon enough, you bet.
+Drive on, Miss. Surely you ain't goin' to show a yaller streak now?"
+
+"But my--my chauffeur is waiting for me along the road here toward
+town."
+
+"Let him wait. He's out of danger. There are plenty of open fields in
+that direction. _He_ won't get into no trouble. You drive through this
+side road like I tell you, and we'll get clear around by Sitz's farm
+ahead of the fire. But drive hard!"
+
+Inspired by the man's excitement, Hester did as she was told. They
+came to the crossroad, which she remembered, and turned into it. There
+was little smoke here beyond the ridge. Nobody would have suspected
+the raging pit of flame down there in the cut to the southeast.
+
+Yet the flames were advancing on the wings of the wind. Hester had
+seen enough to assure her that the case was serious indeed. Once the
+fire topped the ridge the whole northern slope would be swept by a
+billow of flame!
+
+The picture of these farmsteads burning and the people being unable to
+escape with their livestock and sundry possessions began to take form
+in Hester's mind. She speeded up the car and it rushed through the
+gathering twilight like a locomotive of a fast express.
+
+At the first house they stopped for only a moment. Hester turned on
+the car lamps, for the shadows were gathering in the narrow places
+along the road now. The squatter did not have to urge the danger upon
+the farmers. A look at his condition told its own story. A forest fire
+is a terrible thing, and once it gets under way usual means of
+fire-fighting are of no avail.
+
+On and on raced the motor car. Along the summit of the wooded ridge
+behind them the glow of the fire spread to a deep rose--then to a
+crimson--against the sky. It was an angry light and the smoke that
+billowed up from it began to canopy the heavens.
+
+From certain heights Hester could see far down into the city of
+Centerport, with its countless twinkling lights. The forest fire must
+burn out long before it reached the edge of the city; but detached
+houses, here and there, were in peril--and many farmers got out their
+teams and ploughed fresh furrows around their stacks and buildings.
+
+They rushed through Tentorville at a speed that made the dogs howl and
+the women run to the doors of their houses, leaving their suppers to
+burn. Beyond this straggling little settlement there were better
+farms. The village was not endangered by the flames, for there were
+open fields all around it.
+
+At the next house the occupants had been warned by telephone; for news
+of the advancing fire had been wired from beyond the ridge, toward
+Keyport.
+
+The better class of farmers were supplied with 'phones, and they were
+warned; but the man who had been burned out of his own place was
+interested in the other poor people--the tenant farmer and squatter
+class.
+
+"Them fellers can't stand the expense of telephones," he told Hester.
+"And they work moughty hard and will go to bed airly. If they haven't
+kalkerlated on the veering of the wind they won't know anything about
+it till the fire's upon 'em."
+
+Thirty-seven of such farmers and settlers did the rushing auto visit.
+Hester and her comrade must have startled some of these people
+dreadfully, for the auto dashed up to the little farmsteads with the
+noise of an express train, and the scorched man yelled his loudest to
+the inmates:
+
+"Git up! Git up! The fire's comin'. It'll be over the ridge before
+midnight and this hull mountainside'll crackle in flames. Git out!"
+
+Then, at the first word in reply from the aroused inmates, the girl
+and her companion rushed on in their car, and sometimes before the
+people in the house realized what had passed, the car was out of
+sight.
+
+For nearly two hours from the time Hester had helped the man into her
+car did she speed about the country. By that time both he, and the
+girl--and the gasoline--were about exhausted.
+
+They pulled up at a country store where they sold gasoline, and Hester
+refilled her tank. There she telephoned home to her family, too.
+Joseph had come in on another auto and Hester's father was about to
+send out a general alarm for his absent daughter.
+
+"What in thunder are you doing, riding over the country alone?" her
+father demanded over the telephone.
+
+"Now, don't you mind. I'm all right," said Hester, tartly. "I'm coming
+home now--by the way of the Sitz place and Robinson's Woods. We've done
+all we can to rouse up the farmers."
+
+And she shut her angry father off before he could say more, and ran
+out to the car--to find her companion senseless in the bottom of the
+tonneau, and a local doctor bending over him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE KEYPORT GAME
+
+
+"These are bad burns," said the physician, looking up at the wide-eyed
+crowd. "And I believe he is hurt internally. Where did he come from?"
+
+"This gal brought him in her car, Doc," said the storekeeper, who had
+forgotten trade for the moment.
+
+"Who is he?" asked the physician, with his hand on the man's pulse,
+but looking curiously at Hester.
+
+"I don't know--oh, yes! I remember! He said his name was Billson."
+
+"Jeffers-pelters!" ejaculated the storekeeper. "I'd never ha' knowed
+him. His whiskers is burned off, that's a fac'."
+
+"Then you know all about him, Carey?" pursued the medical man.
+
+"Not much! not much!" exclaimed the storekeeper, hastily. "He's jest a
+squatter. Come from one of the lower counties, I b'lieve.
+Holler-chested. Bad lungs, he said. Goin' to live in the open an' cure
+'em."
+
+"He ought to go to the hospital at once," growled the doctor.
+
+"I can take him," said Hester, quietly. "He's a very brave man, I
+believe. He warned all the people through the section back of
+Tentorville----"
+
+"I guess you druv the car, Miss," cackled Carey, the storekeeper.
+
+"But I should have driven it home in a hurry after finding him on the
+road without knowing anything about the people in danger," said the
+girl, honestly. "He did it."
+
+"No matter who did it. I want to get him to the hospital. I'll go to
+Centerport with him, Miss, if you'll take us."
+
+"Of course," said Hester.
+
+"You know him, Carey," said the doctor, turning to the storekeeper.
+"Can I use your name at the hospital in Centerport?"
+
+"No, you can't," said the other, quickly. "I can't stand no 'nearest
+friend' game for a man that never spent fo' bits a week in my store
+for groceries. No. I dunno him."
+
+"We'll stand sponsor for him, sir," said Hester, hastily. "Come on.
+You'll have to tell me how to drive. I don't know these roads very
+well."
+
+"What's your name, Miss?" asked the physician, climbing into the car
+as Hester touched the electric starter.
+
+Hester told him, and the medical man nodded. "Henry Grimes's gal, eh?"
+he said. "Well, he's well able to be sponsor for this poor fellow.
+Drive on."
+
+He was a shabby old man, this country doctor. His name was Leffert,
+and he seemed none too blessed with this world's goods. But he was
+kindly and he eased the senseless man into a comfortable position in
+the tonneau with the gentleness of a woman.
+
+The car started on the long run to Centerport with a plentifully
+filled tank. And the engine worked nicely. When they passed the Sitz
+place Hester saw that the farmer and Otto were out ploughing along the
+edge of the woods by lantern light. But the sky above the ridge glowed
+like a live coal. The forest fire was sweeping on.
+
+When they came down the hill past Robinson's Woods the doctor nudged
+Hester from behind.
+
+"Hadn't you better take that left-hand turn, Miss?" he demanded.
+
+"What for? This is the nearest way," returned the girl, slowing down a
+bit.
+
+"But it goes through the Four Corners. They have a habit of setting on
+automobiles there."
+
+"They won't dare bother us," declared Hester. "Most of those people
+work for father."
+
+"Aw--well," said the doctor, and sat down again.
+
+The car roared through the settlement of shacks about the Four Corners
+like a fast express. Nobody tried to bother them. In twenty minutes
+thereafter the car stopped at the City Hospital. The patient was
+carried in on a stretcher, and one of the interns took Hester's name
+and address. Dr. Leffert evidently had no standing at the institution,
+and he merely handed the patient over to the hospital authorities and
+hurried away. Hester drove the car home and found both her mother and
+father excitedly awaiting her coming.
+
+"Now, don't you bother about me--or the car!" she said, sharply, when
+her parents began to take her to task for worrying them so. "I haven't
+had a bite to eat, and I'm tired, too. Your old car isn't hurt any----"
+
+"But you can't ride that car all over this country alone, Hess! I
+swear I won't have it!"
+
+"But I _did_ drive it alone, didn't I? And it isn't hurt any. Neither
+am I," she replied, and it was several days before her parents learned
+the particulars of their daughter's wild ride over the mountainside
+with the squatter, Billson, warning the small farmers of the coming
+fire.
+
+"I declare for't!" her mother then said. "You're the greatest girl,
+Hess! The folks say you're a heroine."
+
+"They say a whole lot beside their prayers, I reckon," snapped Hester.
+
+"But one of the country papers has got a long article in it about you
+and that Mr. Billson. Only they don't know your name."
+
+"No. I told Doc. Leffert to keep still about it," said Hester. "Now!
+there's been enough talk. I want two dollars, Ma. I want to send that
+Billson some jelly and some flowers. He's having a mighty hard time at
+the hospital. And there isn't a soul who cares anything about
+him--whether he lives or dies."
+
+"Ain't that just like you, Hessie?" complained her mother. "You throw
+that poor fellow good things like you was throwing a bone to a dog!
+I--I wish you wasn't so hard."
+
+But events were making Hester seem harder than usual these days. She
+was completely cut off from the society of her school fellows. She had
+no part in the after-hour athletics. Nobody spoke to her about the
+fine time expected at Keyport when the basketball team went over to
+battle with the team of the Keyport High.
+
+And when that day arrived, fully a carload entrained at the Hill
+station of the C. K. & M. Railroad, bound for the neighboring city.
+These were all the girls of Central High interested in the game and
+their friends among the boys.
+
+It was not a long run by train to Keyport, but they had a lot of fun.
+Chet and Lance were full of an incident that had occurred in Professor
+Dimp's class that morning, and Chet was telling his sister and a group
+of friends about it.
+
+"Short and Long got one on Old Dimple again to-day," said Chet. "You
+know he's forever hammering the Romans into us. We ought to call him
+'The Old Roman'--we really had! There's that Roman lad who was such an
+athlete and all-around pug----"
+
+"'Pug!'" gasped Laura. "Wait till mother hears you say _that_."
+
+"Ha! I'm going to watch to see that she doesn't hear me, Sis,"
+returned her brother. "Well, Old Dimple was telling us about this lad
+who used to swim across the Tiber three times before breakfast. And
+when he'd expatiated on the old boy's performance, Short and Long put
+up a mitt----"
+
+"'A mitt!'" groaned Laura again.
+
+"Aw, well! His hand, then. Dimple perked right up, thinking that Short
+and Long was really showing some interest, and says he:
+
+"'What's your question, Mr. Long?'
+
+"And Billy says: 'What's puzzling me, is why he swam it _three_
+times?'"
+
+"'Eh?' says Dimple. 'How's that, young man?'"
+
+"'Why didn't he swim it _four_ times,' says Billy, grave as a judge,
+'and so get back to the bank where he'd left his clothes?' And not a
+smile cracked Short and Long's face! Dimple didn't know whether to
+laugh or get mad, and just then the gong sounded 'Time' and Dimple got
+out of it without answering Billy's question."
+
+"Tickets!" cried Lance, as the girls laughed at the story. "Here comes
+the conductor. Get your pasteboards ready."
+
+"Who says that's the conductor, Lance?" demanded Chet.
+
+"Huh! It's Mr. Wood, isn't it? He's the conductor of this train."
+
+"Impossible," sighed Chet "Wood is a non-conductor."
+
+But the crowd wouldn't stand for puns like that and shouted Chet down.
+
+When they debarked at the Keyport station they formed in marching
+order and, the boys with canes and the girls with flags, marched two
+by two to the Keyport girls' athletic field. The game was called for
+four o'clock, and Mrs. Case got her team out and "warmed them up" with
+ten minutes' practice before the referee called both teams to the
+court selected for the match game.
+
+The boys in the audience droned out the Central High yell, with its
+"snap-the-whip" ending of, "Ziz--z--z--z----Boom!" and the ball was thrown
+into play. Right at the start the home team got the best of the
+visitors. There were excellent players on the Keyport team. Indeed, in
+all athletics the Keyport girls had excelled for years. Our friends
+from Central High were outmatched at several points.
+
+But they fought hard. Laura and her mates battled every moment, and
+when the whistle ending the first half sounded, the Keyport team was
+only two points ahead. But the visitors ran to their dressing room in
+no hopeful frame of mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+UPHILL WORK FOR THE TEAM
+
+
+"I declare!" ejaculated Bobby Hargrew; "we're being whipped out of our
+boots!"
+
+"I'm doing the best I can!" wailed Roberta Fish.
+
+"Nobody's blaming you, child," Jess Morse hastened to say.
+
+"Not at all," added Laura. "I haven't a single complaint to make about
+your work, Roberta."
+
+"But there's something lacking somewhere," declared Dorothy Lockwood.
+
+"We might as well admit that these Keyport girls are better at
+basketball than we are," said her twin.
+
+"My gracious!" cried Bobby. "They're better than we ever _dared_ to
+be!"
+
+"No!" cried Laura. "That is not so."
+
+"What's the answer, then, Miss Captain?" demanded the irrepressible.
+
+"We must play up to each other, that's all," said the captain. "Our
+playing is loose."
+
+"We're weak in spots," admitted Nellie Agnew, slowly.
+
+"And I'm the worst spot," groaned Roberta.
+
+"Pshaw! you're not, either," said Eve Sitz, kindly.
+
+"You do your very best, Roberta," said Laura, again.
+
+"But that isn't as good as Hester's best," responded Roberta, quickly.
+
+"Hessie is certainly one mighty good player," grumbled Bobby.
+
+"And we got rid of her rather hastily," sighed Nellie.
+
+"Don't wail about that now!" cried Josephine Morse, with some
+asperity. "My goodness! I'm only glad she's out of it. And I reckon
+Laura is."
+
+"I am sorry it seemed best to ask her to get out," admitted the
+captain.
+
+"Bah! she was more trouble than she was good," declared Jess. "Let's
+not weep and wail over what we did."
+
+"But have you heard what she did last week, girls?" asked the doctor's
+daughter, earnestly.
+
+"What now?" returned Bobby, with curiosity.
+
+"Remember the day we found her broken down in that new car of her
+father's on the Keyport road?"
+
+"Sure!" cried several of the team together.
+
+"That was the day of that big forest fire. You know, Chet warned her
+that the wind was likely to change and blow the fire across the road.
+Well, she rescued a man from the burning woods and then ran that car
+all over the hill country up there, warning farmers and other people
+that the fire was coming. She is a very brave girl," concluded Nellie,
+softly.
+
+"Pshaw! don't you weep over Hess Grimes," exclaimed Bobby. "You're too
+tender-hearted, Nell."
+
+"But she _is_ brave," said Laura, hastily.
+
+"And just as ill-tempered as she can be," put in Jess Morse. "We're
+well rid of her."
+
+"I guess nobody in this world is quite perfect--nor all bad, either,"
+suggested the doctor's daughter. "And as for Hester, she never let us
+see her good points."
+
+"But some mighty mean ones!" exclaimed Dora Lockwood.
+
+"Just the same," sighed Laura, "if she had only stuck to the rules of
+basketball in playing she would have been a great help to us right
+now!"
+
+Lily had been "prinking up" at the other end of the room while this
+conversation was going on. Now she flung them one malicious "I told
+you so!" as the gong rang and they hurried out to their places in the
+basketball court.
+
+"All ready?" cried the referee.
+
+"Do your best, girls!" begged Laura.
+
+The whistle sounded long and loud at the toss-up and the game was on.
+At first, although the play was fast and furious, neither side scored.
+Then came the umpire's shout:
+
+"Foul on Central High for over-guarding!"
+
+It rattled Laura and her team mates. Their opponents got the ball and
+shot it basketward. Right from the field Keyport made a basket. And
+then, in little over half a minute they made another!
+
+"Break it up, guards! Break it up!" begged Laura.
+
+But although the girls of Central High fought hard, and there were
+some brilliant plays on the part of Laura and Jess, it was all to no
+avail. Nor did the "rooting" of their boy friends help. The Keyport
+team forged ahead steadily and at the end of the game they were six
+points in the lead. It was as bad a beating as the girls of Central
+High had ever received in a trophy game.
+
+Roberta was in tears in the dressing room when Mrs. Case came in to
+cheer them up.
+
+"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 associate so much with
+her. She does come of such common people. Why, Mrs. Grimes is
+impossible!" sighed Mrs. Pendleton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+HEBE POCOCK 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 Saturday 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 class 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 passed 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
+Pocock--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 glasses. But when he opened school he took off the
+glasses 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!"
+
+"And did they?" asked Jess, interested.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you. He was taking the names of all us children, and
+he got along all right till he came to Hebe. Hebron was the ring
+leader. He always gave the sign for trouble. When the master asked his
+name Hebe leaned back in his seat, put his feet up on the desk, and
+looked cross-eyed at the new teacher. Of course, all the little
+follows thought it was funny--and some of the girls, too, I guess.
+
+"'Please tell me your name,' said the master, without seeming to
+notice Hebe's impudence.
+
+"'Wal,' drawled Hebe, 'sometimes they call me Bob, and sometimes Pete,
+and sometimes they call me too late for dinner. But don't you call me
+nothin', Mister!'
+
+"The teacher listened until he got through," said Eve, her eyes
+flashing at the remembrance of the scene, "and then he doubled his
+fist and struck Hebe a blow between the eyes that half stunned him.
+Hebe was the bigger, but that teacher was awfully strong and smart. He
+grabbed Hebe by the collar and hauled him headlong over the desks and
+seats, stood him up before the big desk with a slam, and roared at
+him:
+
+"'What is your name?'
+
+"'He--Hebe Pocock,' exclaimed the fellow, only half sensing what had
+happened to him.
+
+"'Hebe?' repeated the master, with a sneer. 'You look like a 'Hebe.'
+Go take your seat.'
+
+"And do you know," laughed Eve, "that Hebe was almost the best behaved
+boy in the school all that term?"
+
+"Oh!" laughed Jess, "it must be lots of fun to go to an ungraded
+school like that one."
+
+"It's all according to the teacher," Eve said. "When we had a poor
+teacher it was just a scramble for the scholars to learn anything. The
+big ones helped the little ones. But our present teacher, Miss Harris,
+is a college girl and she is fine. But some funny things happen
+because we have the old-fashioned district system of government, with
+'school trustees' elected every year. This year at the far end of the
+district they put in old Mr. Moose, a very illiterate man, for
+trustee. And one of the girls was telling me about the day he visited
+school to 'examine' it. That is the method, you know; each trustee
+makes an official visit and is supposed to find out in that visit how
+the teachers are getting along."
+
+"Tell us about it, Eve," urged Laura.
+
+"Why," laughed Eve, "Mr. Moose came in and sat on the teacher's
+platform for a while, listening and watching, and showing himself to
+be dreadfully uncomfortable. But he thought he had to make some
+attempt to examine the school, so when Miss Harris called the spelling
+class he reached for the speller and said he'd put out a few words. So
+he read to the first boy:
+
+"'Spell "eggpit."'
+
+"'E--double g--p--i--t,' says the boy.
+
+"'Nope,' says Mr. Moose. 'Next.'
+
+"Next scholar spelled it the same way and that didn't suit Mr. Moose,
+and so it went on down the line, everybody taking a shy at 'Eggpit.'
+Finally Miss Harris asked to see the book.
+
+"'These young 'uns of yourn air mighty bad spellers,' said Mr. Moose.
+
+"'But they have all spelled 'eggpit' right,' said Miss Harris. 'Where
+is the word?'
+
+"And what do you suppose Moose pointed out?" chuckled Eve.
+
+"Give it up!" was the chorus of her listeners.
+
+"'Egypt!'"
+
+"My goodness!" cried Jess, choked with laughter. "Can you beat that
+for a school trustee?"
+
+They arrived at the sloping hollow at the end of Peveril Pond, where
+they proposed to picnic, very soon after this. It was a pretty glade,
+and the smooth road went down to the shore and skirted it for half a
+mile.
+
+Off on a rocky point were several boys or men fishing; but they were
+not near enough to disturb our friends. Of course the boys clamored
+for lunch at once; but while the girls prepared it the boys were
+shooed off to begin the nut gathering.
+
+Lance Darby, with a perfectly solemn face, set Pretty Sweet to work
+thumping an oak tree with a huge club to "rattle off the nuts;" and he
+might have been whaling away at the trunk of the tree until luncheon
+had not Chet taken pity on him and showed him that neither chestnuts
+or shell-barks grew on oak trees, and that that particular oak didn't
+even have an acorn on it!
+
+Suddenly, just as the girls had the good things spread on the seats of
+the two cars, a chorus of screams arose from the fishermen. There were
+three of them, and when our friends' gaze was attracted by the shouts
+they saw that the bigger one was down in the water and the other two
+were leaping about on the sands.
+
+"Guess they've caught a whale," said Chet.
+
+"They are in trouble--serious trouble," declared his sister, leaving
+the car herself to start for the scene of the difficulty.
+
+"That's little Mike Pocock," said Eve, grabbing her arm. "And I
+believe the fellow in the water is Hebe."
+
+"Never mind. He's in some difficulty. See! he can't stand up," cried
+Laura.
+
+"But weally!" gasped Prettyman Sweet. "The lunch is just weady----"
+
+"Come on, you cannibal!" ejaculated Lance. "Let's see what's wanted
+over there."
+
+The whole party, girls as well as boys, trooped along the shore of the
+pond toward the rock where the fishermen had been standing. They saw
+in a moment that this boulder had rolled over--probably while Hebe
+Pocock was standing upon it to make a cast--and that Hebe was caught by
+the rock and held down to the bottom of the pond. He was barely able
+to keep his head out of water as the boys and girls of Central High
+approached.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+MOTHER WIT TO THE RESCUE
+
+
+The young ruffian who was so notorious about the Four Corners was
+really in a serious predicament. In making a long cast the boulder had
+rolled under him and, being precipitated into the pond, he was pinned
+to the bottom by his legs. The two boys with him had sprung into the
+pond, and were now wet to their necks; but they could not roll back
+the heavy boulder.
+
+Just as Laura and Chet, with their school mates, arrived Hebe sank
+back with a gurgle, and the water went over his head. He had been
+barely able to keep his mouth and nostrils out of water until that
+moment.
+
+"Hebe's gettin' drowned! Hebe's gettin' drowned!" yelled Mike, the
+victim's young brother, dancing up and down on the shore.
+
+"Get in there at once and hold his head up!" commanded Laura Belding.
+"Then we'll roll away the stone. But he _will_ drown if you don't hold
+him up."
+
+Mike did as he was bid. When Hebe got his breath again he began to use
+language that was unfit for the girls to hear, at least.
+
+"Say!" exclaimed Chet, his eyes blazing, "you stop that or I'll hold
+your head under the water myself. What kind of a fellow are you,
+anyway?"
+
+Hebe gasped and kept still. Perhaps he had scarcely realized who the
+people were about him. Laura said:
+
+"Can't you boys, all together, roll away that stone?"
+
+"We'll try," said Lance, already beginning to strip off his shoes and
+stockings. "Come ahead, Chet."
+
+They made even Purt Sweet join them, bare-footed and with their
+trousers rolled up as far as they would go. They waded in and got
+around the rock. Hebe was in a sitting posture, and the weight of the
+stone bore both his legs down into the muddy bottom. But there was
+hard-pan under the mud, and it was impossible to drag the victim from
+beneath the huge rock.
+
+But the boys couldn't even jar the rock. It had slipped from the bank
+and rolled a little, and now it was settling slowly into the ooze,
+bearing Hebe's legs down under it.
+
+The situation was serious in the extreme. Slowly, as Hebe settled
+beneath the rock, the water was creeping up about his lips and nose.
+Although he held his head back the water would, in time, rise above
+his mouth. And the rise was as steady as a tide.
+
+Again and again Chet Belding and his comrades tried to push the huge
+rock over. But, as at first, they could not even budge it. Mike began
+to cry again. Hebe said, gruffly:
+
+"I reckon I gotter croak, eh? This ain't no nice way to die, you bet!"
+
+"Die--nothing!" cried Laura.
+
+She ran back to the car and tore the piece of rubber pipe away from
+the bulb of the horn. Handing this to Hebe, she showed him how he
+could lie back in a more comfortable position, if he wished, and
+breathe through the tube. She produced some cotton, too, so that he
+could stop his ears and nostrils.
+
+"Now, you keep up your courage," Mother Wit told him. "We'll soon find
+a way of getting you out of this. You're not dead yet."
+
+Hebe said nothing, but he watched her, when his eyes were above water,
+with a grateful air.
+
+"But I tell you, Laura, we can't begin to start this stone even,"
+growled Chet, in her ear. "You will have to think of something better
+than _this_."
+
+"So I will," cried Laura. "I'll think of a rope."
+
+"A rope?"
+
+"Yes. A good, strong one. One that will go around that rock and then
+be plenty long enough to hitch to one of the cars--the big car. I
+believe we can start the rock that way."
+
+"Hurrah!" cried Lance. "She's got the idea! What do you say, Chet?"
+
+"Looks like it. But how about the rope? Where'll we get it?"
+
+"We got a goot one at our house," said Otto, who was sitting down,
+puffing, after having strained at the rock. "Dot hay rope, he be juist
+de t'ing."
+
+"The hay rope for ours, then," cried Chet. "Come on, Otto. We'll go
+after it!"
+
+He started for the machines, the Swiss youth after him. They got in
+the Belding car immediately and started the engine. Purt Sweet sprang
+up with a yell and ran along the shore of the pond after the car.
+
+"Oh, oh! Stop!" he shrieked.
+
+But Chet did not hear him. Lance caught Pretty by the arm and demanded
+to know what he was yelling about.
+
+"Why," gasped Purt, "they've driven off with a whole lot of the lunch
+the girls spread on the seats. And look at them go! Why! it'll all be
+joggled onto the floor of the tonneau before they get back."
+
+"Oh--_you_!" exclaimed Lance, balked for words with which to express
+his contempt.
+
+The Belding car was quickly out of sight. The boys and girls gathered
+around the spot where Hebe Pocock had met with his accident. Nobody
+could help him, and he began to be in extreme pain. His head was under
+water a good deal of the time; but the piece of rubber pipe allowed
+him to breathe, and Mike, or the other smaller boy from the Four
+Corners, held Hebe's face above water as much as possible.
+
+Chet and Otto were not gone an hour; but it seemed, as Lance said, "a
+creation of time." Pocock was pretty weak when the rope was brought.
+Meanwhile the chauffeur had run the big car along the road and backed
+it near the rock and headed in the proper direction. They passed the
+heavy cable around the boulder and then wrapped it around the car so
+that the strain would not come in any one place and perhaps do the car
+damage.
+
+"You bigger boys get in there," said Laura, "and take Hebe under the
+arms. As soon as the rock moves pull him out. For the rope may slip
+and the rock slide back deeper into the water than it is now. That
+would kill him, perhaps."
+
+"You're right, Laura," said her brother, gravely. "We'll take care."
+
+Chet and Lance went to the aid of the unfortunate youth. Otto managed
+the rope. The chauffeur started his engine and got into his seat.
+
+"Ready! start easily," called Laura, when the boys were placed
+directly behind Hebe.
+
+The car lurched forward; the rope strained and creaked; then--slowly
+but surely--the rock began to move.
+
+"Easy, boys!" commanded Laura.
+
+Hebe shrieked with pain. The boulder rolled and the rope slipped. But
+the two boys darted back into deeper water, dragging the victim of the
+accident with them.
+
+It was all over and Hebe was released in a few seconds. But he had
+lost consciousness and they carried him out and put him into the
+Belding car.
+
+"Shall we take him home?" Chet demanded.
+
+"He ought to have a doctor at once," said Laura. "Better still, he
+ought to be taken to the hospital."
+
+"That's what we'll do," said Chet, quickly. "Lance, you and Purt come
+with me. We'll make him easy in the tonneau. And gee! here's the
+luncheon all in a jumble."
+
+"What did I tell you?" wailed Prettyman.
+
+"Oh, get in! get in!" exclaimed Chet. "You can stuff your face with
+all those goodies while we ride into town. And maybe this poor fellow
+will come to his senses and try Nellie's lemon meringue pie--it's a
+dandy, Nellie!"
+
+By the shortest road they could take--through the Four Corners--the ride
+to the City Hospital was bound to occupy an hour--and another to
+return. Meanwhile the remainder of the party had their lunch and then
+went after the nut harvest. Despite the incident of the wounded
+Pocock, the day ended happily enough and they went home at dusk with
+stores of chestnuts and shellbarks.
+
+The Beldings were late, of course, and Mammy Jinny, their old black
+cook, held back dinner for them, but with many complaints.
+
+"It's jest de beatenes' what disher fambly is a-comin' to," she
+grumbled, as she helped wait at table when the family had gathered for
+the belated meal. "Gits so, anyhow, dat de hull on youse is out 'most
+all day long. Eberything comes onter Mammy's shoulders."
+
+"That's all right, Jinny. They're good and broad," said Mr. Belding,
+for she was a privileged character.
+
+"Ya--as. Dat's wot youse allus say, Mars' Belding. Den dere was de
+watah man come ter bodder we-uns. Sech a combobberation I never do
+see. I tol' him we nebber drink no tap watah, but has it bro't in
+bottles, same as nice fo'ks does----"
+
+"The water man?" repeated Mrs. Belding, curiously. "I can't imagine
+who that could be."
+
+"Ya--as, ma'am!" exclaimed Mammy Jinny, who certainly loved the sound
+of long words, and hard words. "He come yere enquiratin' erbout de
+tuberculosis in de watah."
+
+"Crickey jacks!" gasped Chet, choking. "What's that?"
+
+"My son!" begged his mother. "Please do not use such awful
+expressions. You are worse than Jinny."
+
+"Ain't nothin' de matter wid wot I sez!" declared the old black woman.
+"Dat's wot he wanted ter know erbout--de tuberculosis in de watah."
+
+Mr. Belding recovered his breath. "Was by chance the man asking about
+the _consumption_ of water, Jinny?" he asked.
+
+"Dat's it," said the black woman. "Same t'ing, ain't it? Miss Laura
+say so. 'Consumption' an' 'tuberculosis' jes de same--heh?"
+
+"That's one on you, Laura!" shouted Chet, as Mammy Jinny indignantly
+waddled out. "Shouldn't teach Mammy words of more than one 'syllabub.'
+You've been warned before.
+
+"By the way," he added, for they had told their parents about the
+adventure of the afternoon, "that Pocock is in the ward with the man
+Hester Grimes saved from the forest fire--right in the next bed to
+Billson. Pocock had both legs broken, the doctors told me--one above
+the knee and the other below. He's going to have a bad time of it."
+
+"Pocock, eh?" said Mr. Belding. "Hebron Pocock is the name of the
+person who applied to the Board of Education for the job of watchman
+at the girls' gymnasium. I believe he gave Henry Grimes as reference.
+But I think we shall keep Jackway. He's a faithful soul and, whoever
+got into the gym. and did that damage, I am convinced that it was not
+Jackway's fault."
+
+"No; it wasn't Jackway's fault," muttered Chet to Laura. "But I guess
+we could find the person at fault pretty easily, eh?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AT LUMBERPORT
+
+
+The girls of Central High were not neglecting other athletic work
+through their interest in basketball; but just as the boys were giving
+most of their spare time to football, so their sisters, during the
+fall weather, were mainly interested in their own game.
+
+As a whole, the girls' classes of Central High were given practice at
+the game at least twice a week; and of course the representative team,
+to which our particular friends belonged, was on the court almost
+daily. There were games between the less advanced teams, too, which
+brought the parents of the girls to the athletic field; and as the
+season advanced the courts were marked out in the large upper room of
+the gymnasium building, so that the game could be played under cover
+on stormy days.
+
+With the handicap against it at the beginning, of having been roughly
+played in the city clubs, and the record of several girls having been
+hurt who played without the oversight of a proper instructor, the game
+gradually grew in favor at Central High until even such old-fashioned
+folk as Mrs. Belding spoke approvingly of the exercise.
+
+The girls themselves, even the "squabs" and "broilers," as Bobby
+Hargrew called the freshmen and sophomores, were more and more
+enthusiastic over basketball as the days passed. Although their
+champion team was being beaten or tied in the trophy inter-school
+series, they went to see each game, from week to week, and cheered the
+Central High team with unflagging loyalty.
+
+The very next week Laura's team went to Lumberport, a small steamboat
+being chartered. It was filled with Central High girls and their
+friends, and they went over to the game, intending to have a collation
+aboard after the game and return down the lake by moonlight.
+
+"Whether you girls beat the Lumberport girls, or not," chuckled Chet,
+"we're bound to have a fine time. But I _do_ hope you'll lead your
+team to victory at least _once_ this season, Laura. It looks as if you
+girls couldn't beat an addled egg!"
+
+"Nor anybody else, Mr. Smartie!" snapped Jess Morse. "You don't know
+much about eggs, I guess."
+
+"Nor you girls don't seem to know much about basketball," chuckled
+Chet.
+
+"What's the fight about?" demanded Bobby, coming up to the group on
+the upper deck of the steamer.
+
+"We ought to all pitch into him," said Jess, pointing to Chet. "He is
+maligning the team."
+
+"All right I'll help--if it's to be 'battle, murder, and sudden
+death,'" chuckled Bobby. "We ought to get our hands in, anyway, for
+to-morrow."
+
+"What's to-morrow?" cried the girls.
+
+"Didn't you hear what Gee Gee said to the English class to-day when
+the gong rang?"
+
+"Go on, Bobby. What's the joke?" urged Dora Lockwood.
+
+"Why, Gee Gee said, 'Now, young ladies, that we have finished this
+present subject, to-morrow we shall take the life of Carlyle. Come
+prepared.' If Jess really wants us to help her draw and quarter Chet,
+it might be good practice for what we're going to do to Mr. Carlyle."
+
+"Poor Gee Gee," said Nellie, shaking her head. "She has her hands full
+just now. Some of the squabs are as bad as ever you were, Bobby, when
+you were a freshie."
+
+"I like that!" exclaimed the irrepressible. "Me bad!"
+
+"But what's happened to Miss Carrington?" asked Laura.
+
+"She's got some mighty smart scholars in the freshman class," said
+Nellie. "The other day she asked them what two very famous men were
+boys together, and what do you suppose was the answer she got?"
+
+"Give it up!" exclaimed Jess. "What was it?"
+
+"One of those fresh squabs put up her hand and when Gee Gee nodded to
+her, she squeals: 'Oh, I know, Miss Carrington! The Siamese Twins!'"
+
+There were enough old folk aboard the steamboat to keep the exuberance
+of the boys and girls within bounds. Short and Long had brought with
+him his famous piratical wig and whiskers, and with these in place and
+an old red sash-curtain draped about him, he looked more like a gnome
+than ever, he was so little. The girls dressed up a stateroom for him,
+into which he retired and told fortunes. And as Billy Long did not
+lack in wit he told some funny ones.
+
+This was one of the few occasions when Alice Long, Billy's busy
+sister, had escaped from her manifold home duties to join in the "high
+jinks" of her schoolmates. When they were all laughing at Billy's
+antics and prophecies, Laura said to Alice:
+
+"How do you ever manage to get along with those children, Alice? Tommy
+is as full of mischief as Billy, isn't he?"
+
+"He's worse," sighed the big sister; yet she smiled, too. "Tommy's
+pretty cute, just the same. He had a birthday last week, and Dr. Agnew
+came through our street going to see Johnny Doyle.
+
+"'Hullo, Doctor!' Tommy called to him. 'I gotter birfday.'
+
+"'You have!' exclaimed the doctor, apparently very much
+astonished.'How many birthdays does that make?'
+
+"'I'm five, I am,' says Tommy.
+
+"'Five years old! Well,' ruminated the doctor, stopping at the gate as
+though he contemplated coming in, 'what had I better do to a boy
+that's got a birthday?'
+
+"And Tommy speaks right up promptly: 'You can't! I'm sitting on it!'"
+
+They had a lot of fun on the boat; but when the basketball team of
+Central High got into their gymnasium suits in the Lumberport High
+School dressing-room, they came down to serious thoughts again.
+
+"We really _must_ beat these girls," said Laura, Mrs. Case being out
+of the room. "It's all right to talk about being 'good losers' and all
+that. But we don't want to be either good, or bad, losers all the
+time. We've lost enough in the past. It's up to us to put Lumberport
+on the shelf!"
+
+"Hear! hear!" cried Bobby. "That's the talk."
+
+"We have usually been able to handle Lumberport at basketball,"
+continued Laura. "Let's not make this an exception to a good rule."
+
+Even Roberta felt the inspiration of coming success before the game.
+The team had been practicing faithfully and there was no real reason
+why every member of it should not make a good showing. Mrs. Case
+encouraged them as they went on to the court, and the Central High
+crowd lined out the "yell" to greet them. There was a big audience,
+for the Lumberport school had a good field and the parents of the
+girls engaged were enthusiastic over basketball.
+
+The ball was tossed up and Laura shot it over to Lily. Lily was a
+pretty sure player when she was not excited. It was safe to trust her
+during the first of any game. She now passed it quickly according to
+her captain's signal, and to the right girl. The girls of Central High
+kept the ball in play for a couple of minutes, and entirely away from
+their opponents. Then Nellie got it for a good throw and--pop! the ball
+went into the basket.
+
+"First goal--hurrah!" yelled the boys from Central High.
+
+For despite the insistence of the League rules, and the advice and
+preachments of physical instructors, there was bound to be a spirit of
+rivalry in the games. How else would the interest be kept up? Playing
+for the sake of the game is all right; but the personal desire to win
+is, after all, what inspires any player to do his, or her, best.
+
+There was no ugly playing, however; tense as was the interest, the
+opposing teams played fair and there was not an unpleasant word or
+look indulged in by a member of either. With Hester Grimes off the
+team from Central High there could be no complaint that they played
+too hard, or unfairly. The whistle in this first half sounded very
+seldom for fouls. And the game was played with a snap and vigor that
+was delightful.
+
+Central High had somewhat the best of it from that very first goal.
+They won point after point. Half way through the first half Central
+High was three points in the lead. When there were five minutes still
+to go they made another clean goal, putting them up two more points.
+
+But the Lumberport girls played well, too; they did not "go to pieces"
+because the visitors' efforts were crowned with success. They fought
+steadily and made a goal during that last five minutes.
+
+Then the girls of Central High got the ball and made a run with it
+down the field. Nellie seized it again and turned swiftly to throw. As
+she did so her ankle turned under her and she came down upon one knee
+with a little cry. The umpire was about to sound the whistle for time;
+but the doctor's daughter sprang up instantly and threw the ball
+straight into the basket. As she did so the timekeeper sounded her
+whistle. The half was over.
+
+Two of the girls ran to help Nellie, who stood, as Bobby said, "on one
+leg like a stork!" She hobbled to the dressing-room between them.
+
+"Oh, dear me! who'll we put in, Laura?" wailed Jess.
+
+"You sha'n't put in anybody," cried Nellie, gritting her teeth to keep
+back a cry of pain as she set the injured foot to the floor again.
+"This will be all right in a moment."
+
+"Looks like it!" cried Dorothy.
+
+"You're knocked out, Miss," said Dora. "You know you are."
+
+"I'm not!" replied Nellie.
+
+Mrs. Case came hurriedly in. "You'll have to rest that ankle, child"
+she said. "Captain Belding will have to put in a substitute."
+
+"No, Mrs. Case. I'm going to play out the game," declared Nellie. "You
+must not forbid it. I've only twisted my ankle. It will be all right
+to-morrow. I'll show you!" she cried, and began stripping off her shoe
+and stocking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+WINNING ALL ALONG THE LINE
+
+
+"I Can't allow you to take risks, Nellie Agnew," cried the physical
+instructor. "What would the doctor say to me?"
+
+"I'll tell you what Daddy Doctor would say," returned Nellie, grinning
+grimly to answer the shoot of pain that went through the injured
+ankle.
+
+"And what is that, Miss?"
+
+"He'd say: 'Grin and bear it! Play up!'" laughed Nellie, yet with a
+choke in her voice. "Bring me my bag, Bobby. I want my 'first-aid'
+kit."
+
+"Nellie!" gasped Laura, amazed to see the gentle girl so firm. "We can
+find somebody else to put in instead of you----"
+
+"Yes, but you're not going to," cried Nellie. "Give me that bandage,
+Bobby. There, Mrs. Case! you know how it ought to be used.
+Tight--tight, now! That will hold me up. And, really, half an hour's
+rest would cure the ache, anyway. Daddy Doctor admires pluck. He
+admires Hester's bravery. I guess I wouldn't be his daughter if I
+didn't have just a bit of pluck myself."
+
+"Hurrah for Nell!" squealed Bobby, waving a second bandage over her
+head, and the pin coming out, the strip of muslin soon became a tangle
+of ribbon-like cloth.
+
+"Can she do it, Mrs. Case?" asked the doubtful Laura.
+
+"She _shall_ do it!" returned the instructor. "It won't hurt the
+ankle--bound up like that. Now, on with her stocking--and her shoe. Does
+it hurt, Nellie?"
+
+"It's all right," declared the doctor's daughter.
+
+"Does the shoe hurt it?"
+
+"It's all right, I tell you," insisted Nellie, standing up.
+
+Then the gong rang. The girls started for the door. Nellie was not the
+last one to reach her position. At first the audience was amazed to
+see her in place after she had hobbled off the field between two of
+her mates. Then, understanding, they cheered her--the boys deafeningly.
+
+"You're all right, Nellie Agnew!" yelled Chet from where the boys of
+Central High were massed.
+
+And how those girls of Central High played! Perhaps it was the
+inspiration of Nellie's courage. Perhaps it was the inspiration of the
+cheering spectators. But never before had Laura and her team-mates
+played better basketball than in that second half with the Lumberport
+team.
+
+Nor did the latter team "go to pieces." Every point was fought for.
+
+Suddenly the ball reached Nellie's hands again. Her guard was in front
+of her. She dashed quickly back, as light of foot as she had been
+before her injury. Her guard was after her, but Nellie dodged to the
+right and then caged the ball from almost the center line!
+
+"Good for you, Nell Agnew!" shouted the spectators.
+
+Again the ball was at center and was tossed up.
+
+"Shoot it to Nell, Laura!" advised some boy in the audience. "She'll
+know what to do with it!"
+
+"Quick, there, center! don't be all night!" yelled another.
+
+But the girls of Central High kept their heads about them. They
+watched their captain's signals. The Lumberport jumping center threw
+the ball the wrong way. Again Nellie jumped for it, and almost fell
+again; but she shot the ball true and fair to the basket.
+
+By this time Nell was the heroine of the whole crowd. Her opposing
+guard was putting up a splendid game, but she was always just a breath
+too late. Laura saw that the doctor's daughter was keyed up for fine
+work, and she let her have the ball once more.
+
+Nell dashed first to the left, then to the right; she completely lost
+her guard, and the guard from the other side ran in to intercept her.
+This is not altogether good basketball, and it gave Nell a splendid
+opening.
+
+"Shoot it here, Nell!" cried Laura.
+
+The ball passed through the hands of three Central High girls--a triple
+play often practiced on their own court--and then--plop! into the
+basket! Another goal to their score.
+
+Time and again the Lumberport team came near to making a goal; but at
+the end the tally stood with the visitors eight points ahead of their
+opponents, after a fifteen-minute session that abounded in good plays
+and vigorous action.
+
+The crowd from Central High certainly were in fine fettle when they
+marched down to the dock and went aboard their steamer. There was a
+fine spread in the cabin and Chet Belding made a speech. That was
+arranged for beforehand and most of Chet's speech dealt with "Why
+Prettyman Sweet Eats So Much." Pretty was used to being joked, and
+didn't mind it much as long as Chet was talking and _he_ could
+continue to graze at his pleasure upon the good things on the table.
+
+"Only, I say!" he exclaimed, when Chet's speech was concluded, "I
+don't see why I am always selected to point a mowal and adorn a tale.
+Weally, I don't eat so much more than anybody else--according to my
+height."
+
+"That's right, Purt!" cried Lance. "There's a lot of you--lengthwise!"
+
+"And just think what a thin shell you've got," cackled Billy Long.
+"That's why it takes so much to fill you up, old boy."
+
+"Don't carp and criticise, Billy-boy," said his sister, Alice. "I
+notice that a good deal goes onto your plate, too--and you haven't
+arrived at Purt's age yet."
+
+"Don't talk to Billy about ages," giggled Bobby. "He can't remember
+anybody's age. I bet he couldn't tell how old Methuselah was."
+
+"Give it up! Didn't know the gentleman. What team did _he_ play on?"
+asked Billy, with his mouth full.
+
+"Methuselah was 969 years old," declared Purt, seriously.
+
+"Pshaw, Purt! was that it?" demanded Billy.
+
+"I always thought that was his telephone number."
+
+The moon was up in all her October glory when the young folk crowded
+upon the upper deck. There was a big gramophone on the boat and they
+had music, and singing, and the trip home was as enjoyable as it could
+be. The day, too, was a red letter one for the basketball team of
+Central High. From that time they began to win all along the line in
+the inter-school series.
+
+They won from both East and West Highs during that month, and tied
+Keyport when that team came to the Hill to play them. The score of
+games played that fall showed Central High third on the list at the
+end of October, whereas they had been fifth. Keyport was in the lead
+and East High second; for in playing with other teams these two
+schools almost always won.
+
+Chet Belding kept in touch with Hebe Pocock's condition at the
+hospital and occasionally sent the injured fellow some fruit and other
+delicacies. Once when he went to ask after Hebe the doctor told the
+boy to go up to the accident ward and see him.
+
+"He's been asking after you. Wants to thank you for the stuff you've
+sent in. He's a pretty tough citizen, is Hebe," laughed the doctor.
+"But he has some gratitude in his make-up."
+
+Chet went up and found that Hebe and the man Billson were pretty good
+friends, being in neighboring beds. In fact, Billson was now up and
+about the ward and would soon be allowed to leave the hospital; but it
+would be some time yet before Hebe could walk.
+
+"It jest dishes me about gittin' that job at the young ladies'
+gymnasium, heh?" said Hebe. "Did they put that Jackway out?"
+
+"Why, no," said Chet, puzzled a bit by the young man's manner and
+look. "Why should they?"
+
+"He warn't no good," grunted Hebe. "You bet, if I'd had his job,
+nobody would have got in there and cut up all that stuff without my
+knowin' who did it."
+
+"Perhaps he _does_ know who did it," said Chet, slowly.
+
+Pocock flashed him a sudden look of interest. "He ain't said so, has
+he?"
+
+"Well--no."
+
+"And they ain't give him the bounce?"
+
+"My father says he doesn't think Jackway is to blame."
+
+"Huh!" grumbled Hebe. "Maybe I'll git that job yet."
+
+"How do you expect to do it?" demanded Chet.
+
+"Never you mind. Henry Grimes has got some influence, I reckon, an' he
+said I should have it."
+
+"I guess they'll keep on Jackway. I wouldn't think of it, if I was
+you," said Chet, seriously.
+
+"Say! that fellow's a dub!" growled Hebe, and became silent.
+
+Chet talked with the squatter, Billson, as they walked down the long
+ward together.
+
+"He's always goin' on about that job at the gym.," chuckled Billson,
+with a hitch of his shoulder toward Hebe's bed. "He was talkin' to
+Miss Grimes about it when she was in to see me the other day. That's a
+fine gal--Miss Grimes."
+
+"I'm glad you find her so," returned Chet, but with considerable
+surprise.
+
+"Nobody really knows who did that mean job in the girls' gymnasium,
+eh?"
+
+"Well--some of us suspect pretty hard," said Chet, slowly.
+
+Billson looked at him, screwing up his eyes tight. "Mebbe I could find
+out, Mr. Belding."
+
+"How could you?" demanded Chet, quickly.
+
+"That's telling. Perhaps I know something. I'd do a good deal to clear
+Miss Grimes of all this suspicion. Oh, I've heard the doctors and
+nurses talking about it."
+
+"Say! do you think it would help clear her of suspicion if you found
+out the truth?" demanded Chet, in wonder.
+
+"Huh! why not?" returned Billson. "I guess you're one of these crazy
+folk that think she did it?"
+
+"No. But I bet she knows who _did_ do it," blurted out Chet.
+
+"Good-day, young man!" snapped Billson. "I guess you ain't interested
+in what I know," and he turned on his heel and limped away up the
+ward.
+
+But Chet went out, feeling very much puzzled, and proceeded to take
+Mother Wit into his confidence. If Hester was innocent of even the
+smallest part in that affair, the whole school--and people outside the
+school, too--were treating Hester very unfairly.
+
+For by this time Hester Grimes scarcely had a speaking acquaintance
+with the other girls of Central High, and she was welcome only at Lily
+Pendleton's home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+WHAT HESTER DID
+
+
+Dr. Agnew was very much troubled over his little patient down in the
+tenements, and he told Nellie about it one evening after supper.
+
+"I have had to insist that the child be taken to the hospital," said
+the good doctor. "That almost broke his mother's heart; but their
+rooms were not sufficiently airy. And then, the child is suffering
+from pernicious anaemia, and unless he mends he will die, anyway."
+
+"That is an awful hard name to call little Johnny, Daddy Doctor," said
+Nellie.
+
+"It is awfully hard for little Johnny, that's a fact," said the
+doctor, thoughtfully. "It is awfully hard for his mother, who, like
+the plucky widow she is, has struggled so hard to bring those children
+to where they are. Bill, of course, has helped her; but Bill isn't
+much smarter in some ways than silly Rufe. The widow's done it all;
+and she's just wrapped up in Johnny."
+
+"How cruel for anything to happen to him!" sighed Nellie.
+
+"It looks so. We can't see things in their true light very often, I
+suppose. It takes a Divine Eye to see straight," and the doctor wagged
+his head. "Here's this poor woman would give her heart's blood--that's
+the expression she uses--to save the little fellow. But her blood won't
+do. She is not in a healthy condition herself. And Johnny needs
+perfectly healthy, normal blood----"
+
+"My goodness, Daddy Doctor!" exclaimed Nellie, with a shiver. "How you
+do talk!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"As though anybody's blood could help poor Johnny."
+
+"Ah! but that's just it, Nellie. Somebody's blood _would_ help poor
+little Johnny. A pint or so of somebody's healthy, red blood----"
+
+"How horrid!" cried the girl, trying to jump off the chair; but her
+father's big hand held her.
+
+"Wait. Don't be a ridiculous Miss Nancy!" he said, with a chuckle.
+"You are as much a surgeon's daughter as a doctor's daughter, I hope."
+
+"I'm proud that you heal folk of diseases, Daddy Doctor," she said,
+laughing faintly. "But you talk now just like a butcher."
+
+"No. The transfusion of blood is one of the most wonderful and blessed
+discoveries of recent years. Perhaps not a discovery; but the proper
+way to do it is a recent discovery. And that is what we want to try on
+little Johnny at the hospital."
+
+"Oh, Daddy!" gasped Nellie, at last seeing that he was in earnest.
+
+"Johnny's condition is such that he needs good, red corpuscles pumping
+through his veins, and without a proper amount or a proper quality of
+blood, he cannot live. The nourishment he can take is insufficient to
+make this blood. What he must have is now in the possession of some
+other person. We must find that person very quickly--or not at all."
+
+"Oh, Daddy Doctor!" she whispered. "_I_ could never do a thing like
+that!"
+
+"I should say not," responded her father, quickly. "Don't make this a
+personal matter, Kitten. You need every ounce of blood you've got for
+yourself. You have been perilously near the anaemic state yourself in
+times past. This athletic business and the resultant hearty appetite
+you maintain has been the salvation of you, Nellie girl.
+
+"Ah! we need a robust, healthy young person who would be willing to
+give a quantity of blood and not miss it. And I venture to say it's
+healthy blood that gives her that color, despite the fact that you
+Miss Namby-pambies consider it 'coarse' and 'horrid' to have a red
+face."
+
+"Hester!" exclaimed Nellie.
+
+The doctor nodded, then fell into silence again.
+
+It was the next afternoon that they proposed taking little Johnny
+Doyle to the hospital. The good doctor was at the widow's waiting for
+the ambulance when Hester Grimes came in. The widow was wailing as
+though her heart were broken; for with people of this degree of
+intelligence, to take a patient to the hospital is equal to signing
+his death warrant.
+
+"Ochone! Ochone! I'll never see me little Johnny runnin' around the
+flure again," she said to Hester. "He's goin' jest like his poor
+feyther."
+
+"What nonsense you're talking, Mrs. Doyle!" cried Hester, cheerfully.
+"He'll come back to you as chipper as a sparrow. Won't he, Dr. Agnew?"
+
+"So I tell her--if God wills," added the physician in a lower tone.
+
+Hester glanced at him sharply and then walked to the front room window
+where Dr. Agnew sat.
+
+"What is it he needs, Doctor?" she asked, in a low voice. "His
+mother's always talking so wild I cannot make head nor tail of it. She
+says you want to put new blood in him."
+
+"That is it exactly," said Dr. Agnew, his eyes twinkling. "A pint of
+blood such as your veins carry in such abundance might save Johnny's
+life."
+
+"Do you mean that, Doctor?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Hester."
+
+"Then he can have it," returned the girl, quietly. "You can take it
+now, for all I care."
+
+The doctor jumped up and walked back and forth across the room. Then
+he saw Hester stripping up her sleeve.
+
+"No, no," he said. "It isn't as easy as all that. And I'm not sure I'd
+be doing right to let you do it----"
+
+"I guess you're not _my_ conscience, Dr. Agnew," said Hester, in her
+usual brusque way.
+
+"No; but I have a conscience of my own," said the doctor, grimly.
+"This isn't a thing to be done in a minute, or in a corner, young
+lady. It includes one of the very nicest of surgical operations. It
+will keep you out of school for some time. It will keep you at the
+hospital. It will, indeed, keep you in bed longer than you care to
+stay, perhaps."
+
+"Is it dangerous?"
+
+"To you? No. Not in any appreciable degree. You are a full-blooded
+girl. You can spare much more than Johnny needs----"
+
+"Then let it be done," said Hester, firmly.
+
+"We'll have to see what your mother and father say."
+
+"You leave that to me," said Hester. "I know how to manage them."
+
+Dr. Agnew looked at her for a moment with his brow wrinkled and his
+lips pursed up. "I'm not sure whether, if you were my daughter, I
+should be most proud of you, or afraid for you," he said.
+
+She only looked puzzled by his speech. "What do you want me to do?"
+she asked, finally.
+
+"Come here to the light," the doctor said, rummaging in his kit for a
+tiny instrument. He held her thumb firmly. "It will only be a needle
+prick."
+
+"Go ahead," said Hester.
+
+He shot the needle into the ball of her thumb and drew out a drop or
+two of blood in the glass bulb of the syringe.
+
+"We'll just find out what _this_ tells about you in the laboratory,"
+said the doctor. "I'm much mistaken if it doesn't tell a good story,
+Hester Grimes. Then I'll come and see your father and mother this
+evening."
+
+"You needn't bother if you're going to be busy," observed Hester,
+coolly. "They will give their permission. When will you want me at the
+hospital?"
+
+"You will sleep there to-night under the care of one of our very
+nicest nurses--Miss Parraday," said the doctor, smiling again. "And our
+little boy here--God willing--shall have a chance for life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+WHAT MR. BILLSON COULD TELL
+
+
+The champion basketball team of Central High was holding its own, and
+even gaining a point or two now and then in the trophy series; but it
+seemed impossible for the hard-working girls to change their standing
+in the schedule of the teams. They remained Number 3.
+
+They could beat West High and Lumberport High School teams every time
+they played with them; but it was a hard struggle for Laura and her
+mates to break even with East High or Centerport, and the Keyport
+girls almost always downed them.
+
+"It's a boiling shame!" cried Bobby Hargrew, one day at Laura's, when
+some of the team were talking matters over. "We're getting swiped----"
+
+"Goodness me, Bobby!" gasped Laura.
+
+"_Don't_ let poor mother hear you use such dreadful language. It
+positively hurts her to have Chet use slang; and you are worse than he
+is."
+
+"One would think that you had never been under the benign influence of
+Miss Carrington," chuckled Jess Morse.
+
+"Bah!" retorted Bobby. "I don't know but I feel a good deal like my
+little cousin Effie about education. You know, Effie is only six. The
+other day her mother had company and her mother and the other lady
+were talking about something that they didn't want 'little pitchers'
+to understand. So they spelled some of the words instead of speaking
+them out, and Effie listened with both eyes and mouth wide open. But
+she couldn't catch the meaning of the spelled words. Finally she got
+mad and went out to her papa on the porch and says she:
+
+"'Daddy, there's altogether too much education in this house!'
+
+"And I'm getting so saturated with Gee Gee's English and Dimple's
+Latin, and Miss Gould's French, that positively I _have_ to let off
+steam by using slang," concluded Bobby.
+
+"Just keep your slang for other places then, Bobby," said Laura.
+"Mother is likely to overhear you----"
+
+"And Laura's pretty prim and particular herself," laughed Dora
+Lockwood.
+
+Jess began to giggle. "She's getting literary, I understand," she
+said. "So Mammy Jinny says. I heard her grumbling to herself only this
+morning when Jinny was 'ridding up' the living room here. She says:
+
+"'Dese yere literary folk is suah a trouble. Leabin' books, an'
+papers, an' pen an' ink eroun' fo' odder folks to pick up.'"
+
+"'Is Laura literary, Mammy?' I asked her.
+
+"'Suah is,' says Mammy Jinny. 'Littahs t'ings all ober de house!'"
+
+When the laugh against her had subsided, Laura said:
+
+"But what good is it to boil, Bobby, if we can't win games? To reach
+the top and win the trophy, we must win every game of the series from
+now on."
+
+"And a fat chance we've got to do that!" exclaimed Bobby, scornfully.
+
+"Four of them are as good as won," said Dora, confidently. "Those with
+the West High and Lumberport teams."
+
+"Don't be too sure of the Lumberport team," advised Laura. "It
+improves all the time."
+
+"We can beat it if Roberta keeps up her end," declared Jess.
+
+"But how about Keyport and East High?"
+
+"Keyport has outplayed us all but one game," complained Dorothy
+Lockwood. "East High has beaten us two games and one was a draw. But
+we _have_ beaten them and we ought to be able to do it again."
+
+"That's when Hester was on the team," said Laura, quietly.
+
+Bobby stood up and smote her two hands together loudly.
+
+"If we only had Hester back!" she cried.
+
+"Why, Bobby!" cried Jess.
+
+"I don't care. It's so. I don't like Hester; but I hate to see Central
+High lose the trophy for the need of another good player."
+
+Nellie Agnew was just coming in and she heard part of what Bobby said.
+
+"Oh, girls!" she cried. "Do you know where Hester is?"
+
+"She wasn't at school to-day," said Dora.
+
+"Nor yesterday," added her twin.
+
+"Nor the day before that," cried Laura. "What's happened to her?"
+
+"She is in the hospital," said Nellie, solemnly.
+
+"My goodness me! what for?" gasped Bobby Hargrew.
+
+Nellie told them. Indeed, she expatiated on the affair to the full.
+Hester had displayed a quality of courage that appealed strongly to
+the doctor's daughter. It was no brave act inspired by impulse, and
+"of the minute." It took right down moral courage to do what Hester
+had done.
+
+"The transfusion of blood was accomplished yesterday. The operation
+was entirely successful. Hester and Johnny are side by side in little
+narrow beds in the children's ward of the hospital. Daddy Doctor let
+me in to peek at them," said Nellie, her eyes full of tears.
+
+"That girl's just splendid! Johnny is going to live and be strong
+again, the doctors say. Oh! I feel so _little_ when I think of Hester.
+I'm so sorry I signed that round robin, or said anything against her
+being on the team. I--I wish we had her back."
+
+"So--so do I," exclaimed Dora, and Dorothy echoed her twin's desire.
+
+"I wouldn't mind if old Hess was playing with us," said Bobby, with a
+grin. "Huh! I guess I was the first one to say so."
+
+And this last incident marked the further--and stronger--interest the
+boys and girls of Central High had centered in the City Hospital.
+
+Laura and Chet had not forgotten Mr. Billson's odd remarks about the
+gymnasium mystery and Chet had gone again and again to the hospital to
+sound the man who had been so badly injured in the forest fire. But
+Billson was hard to approach. He considered Chet one of those who
+believed Hester Grimes guilty of instigating the raid on the
+gymnasium. Billson had acquired a fierce admiration for Hester, and it
+made him angry with anybody who expressed a doubt of her entire
+innocence of the crime which Rumor laid at her door.
+
+But suddenly public opinion veered clear around. The story of little
+Johnny Doyle's necessity and how Hester had volunteered to come to his
+aid spread about the Hill section of Centerport almost as quickly as
+had the story of the gymnasium mystery.
+
+"What do you think?" Billson asked Chet Belding, when the boy visited
+him and Hebe Pocock again--but this was out of Hebe's hearing. "What do
+you think--that a girl like this would hire a foolish boy to do such
+dirty work? If Miss Grimes had wanted to bust up that gymnasium, you
+bet she'd have had the pluck to go and do it herself! That's my
+opinion."
+
+"Well, Rufe was there," said Chet, quietly.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the gym. The first night the things were disturbed. Bill Jackway
+admits that. They've got time-clocks for him and he goes all over the
+building several times a night, now; and they have let him hire
+another man to help him on the field during the day. But he says that
+he let Rufe out at midnight because the boy was scared and wanted to
+go home. And the second time, Rufe could have slipped in when Bill had
+the door ajar, and afterward got out of the window and walked backward
+to the field fence. Oh, he could have done it."
+
+"But why mix Hester Grimes up with it?" growled Billson.
+
+"Rufe would never have thought of the thing himself, I don't believe.
+And Hester threatened to 'fix' all the girls, and said she hated them,
+and the gym., and the whole thing."
+
+"Guess she was mad," said the man.
+
+"Quite likely. She sure wasn't _glad_," returned the boy, drily.
+
+"And I suppose you think," said Mr. Billson, scowling, "that she is
+doing all this for the Doyles to pay Rufus for his monkey-shines, eh?"
+
+"No I never said such a thing," cried the indignant Chet.
+
+"Then what? If folks have really got anything against Miss Hester, why
+don't they come out square and say so? This hinting at things--going
+'all 'round Robin Hood's barn'--gets my goat--it does so!"
+
+"I guess the girls of Central High feel a whole lot differently toward
+Hester than they did," admitted Chet. "At least, they talk
+differently."
+
+And it was a fact. While Chet and Billson were talking the basketball
+team had gathered at the Belding house and had concocted another
+"round robin." But this one was couched in quite different language
+from the first that had been presented to their physical instructor.
+This time both Lily Pendleton and Roberta Fish signed the paper, which
+was an unequivocal request that Hester Grimes be invited to take her
+old position on the team.
+
+Hester had not come back to school yet; the doctor would not allow it.
+But she was taking her lessons at home. Johnny Doyle was well on the
+way to recovery and all Hester needed was a little rest, the doctor
+said, to put her in as good condition as usual.
+
+The round robin went to Mrs. Case and, after an interview with the
+principal, Mrs. Case went again to call on Hester at her home.
+
+"Ain't she the greatest girl you ever heard of, Mis' Case?" demanded
+Mrs. Grimes, fluttering about as she ushered the teacher into Hester's
+presence. "Me and her father can't do a thing with her when Hess is
+set on doing anything she wants to do. And this at the hospital--well,
+if we say a thing about it she gets that mad!"
+
+"How-do, Mrs. Case?" yawned Hester, who had been reading, curled up in
+the window-seat. "Do take that easy chair. Mother! I declare--you have
+got a grease spot on that wrapper."
+
+"Oh, excuse me!" exclaimed the simple Mrs. Grimes. "I'll go change it
+for a fresh one."
+
+Thus her daughter got her out of the room before Mrs. Case began to
+talk. And, indeed, it was Hester herself who began the conversation in
+her usual abrupt way.
+
+"I don't know how you feel towards me, Mrs. Case, but I know I was
+impudent to you when you were here before. But you said you could show
+me how to get back on the basketball team, and I guess I _do_ want to
+get back--if it isn't too late?" she concluded, wistfully.
+
+"That's what I've come to talk about," said Mrs. Case, promptly. "The
+girls want you back----"
+
+"Oh, no!" exclaimed Hester, in surprise.
+
+"Oh, yes!" returned the teacher, smiling, and bringing out the paper
+the members of the team had signed. She put it into Hester's hand; the
+girl read it quickly and then turned her face away so that Mrs. Case
+should not see her eyes for a moment.
+
+"They say they need me!" Hester said, in a choked tone.
+
+"Yes," returned the teacher, simply.
+
+"That they can't win the trophy without me," added Hester, devouring
+the writing again.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And they don't say a word about that foolish business at the
+hospital. Folks talk too much about that," said Hester, recovering her
+usual manner. "If these girls really want me to help the team, I'll
+play."
+
+"They want you, Hester, for just that purpose. If they have more
+kindly feelings toward you than they have had of late, that is between
+them and you. But as for your joining the team again----"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Case?"
+
+"You must remember the rules and play the game in a sportsmanlike
+manner," declared the instructor firmly. "You understand me?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Case," returned the girl, hanging her head.
+
+"Then I shall expect you to appear for practice just as soon as Dr.
+Agnew allows you to take up that work," said the teacher, rising
+briskly. "And I shall be glad to have you back on the first team," she
+added, giving Hester's hand a hearty squeeze.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+CLIMBING UP
+
+
+By the middle of the next week Hester was playing regularly in her old
+position on the basketball team. Roberta Fish had dropped back into
+the second team with all the grace of the sweet-tempered girl she was.
+
+"I'm only too glad she's come back," said Roberta, referring to Hester
+Grimes. "It's much more important that Central High should win that
+beautiful silver trophy than for _me_ to have the honor of playing on
+the champion team."
+
+"You're a good sort, Roberta," said Bobby Hargrew, admiringly. "Now,
+I'd be _mad_ if they'd asked me to step down and let somebody take my
+place."
+
+"No," said Laura. "You'd be loyal, too, Bobby."
+
+"And that's the A. B. C. of athletics, child," said Nellie Agnew,
+remembering very clearly what the doctor had said to her weeks before
+on the subject.
+
+"'A. B. C.,' indeed!" sniffed Bobby. "You make me feel like a primary
+kid again, I declare!"
+
+Jess Morse began to laugh. "Some of these primary kids, as Bobby calls
+them, are pretty smart. Allison Mapes--you know her?--who teaches the
+first grade, was telling of a little Bohemian boy in her class. He is
+smart as a whip, but English is quite a paralyzing language to him.
+She asked him the other day:
+
+"'Ivan, what is a calf?'
+
+"And the boy answered: 'Missis, that's the child of a cow and the back
+of your leg!'"
+
+When the laugh over this had subsided Laura spoke seriously. They were
+talking in one of the small offices of the school, having retired to
+discuss the forthcoming games.
+
+"It isn't all plum cake and lemonade, girls, even to beat West High
+and Lumberport----"
+
+"Oh, my!" croaked Bobby. "See what we did to West High last time
+without Hester."
+
+"That was a fluke," declared the captain.
+
+"Why, they're babies!" said Josephine Morse, confidently. "And
+Lumberport as well."
+
+"Don't get the idea in your head that we are going to whip any team so
+easily. That's when we are going to lose," urged Laura. "Being too
+sure is as bad as being careless in your play."
+
+"Now she is hitting _me_," grumbled her chum.
+
+"Well, Jess, if the cap fits, put it on."
+
+"But do let us encourage ourselves, Mother Wit," cried one of the
+twins. "Goodness knows, we need it."
+
+"That's right," said her sister. "We've had _such_ bad luck!"
+
+"Aw, she's a regular old croaker!" shouted Bobby, dancing up and down.
+"We are going to win every game from now on!"
+
+"Hush!" exclaimed Laura. "We're making too much noise. Somebody will
+come and put us out."
+
+"Nope. Nobody here but John, the janitor. Gee Gee's gone home, you
+bet. I wish those other girls would come and we could get down to
+business."
+
+"You look out, Bobby. If you get black marks again maybe _you'll_ be
+taken off the team for the rest of the term."
+
+"Oh, oh!" cried the irrepressible. "Don't say such a thing."
+
+"That would be too mean!" cried Dora.
+
+"Indeed it would!" added her sister.
+
+They were all making a deal of noise. As Laura said, "one could
+scarcely hear one's self think." And noise was not allowed in the
+school building, whether in classes, or out. Suddenly, at the height
+of the revelry, there came a stern knock on the door. Behind the thick
+oak the startled girls heard a sharp voice exclaim:
+
+"Young ladies!"
+
+"Oh, gee!" gasped Bobby.
+
+"Hush!" commanded Laura.
+
+"Shucks! Somebody's fooling us," cried Bobby, springing to the door.
+"Who's there?" she shouted.
+
+"It is me--Miss Carrington," said the muffled voice.
+
+For a breath the other girls were stricken dumb when the name of the
+strict disciplinarian of the school was spoken. But it was Bobby who
+recovered her speech first, and she broke into a loud laugh.
+
+"Go 'way!" she cried. "You can't fool us. If it was Gee Gee she would
+have said: 'It is I'!"
+
+"Oh, my goodness! suppose it _should_ be Miss Carrington?" gasped
+Nellie, in horror.
+
+But the sounds outside the door ceased. Bobby, after a trembling
+moment, snapped open the lock and unlatched the door. The corridor was
+empty. But in a moment Hester Grimes appeared from the stairway and
+approached the meeting place of the team.
+
+"You said you wanted everybody here, Laura," she said. "But did you
+have Miss Carrington at your meeting?"
+
+"Miss Carrington!" they shrieked in chorus.
+
+"Yes. I just met her. And she had the funniest look on her face. What
+was the matter with her?" demanded Hester.
+
+"Oh, my soul!" groaned Jess. "I can tell you what the matter is. Bobby
+just corrected Miss Carrington's English. What do you know about
+_that_?"
+
+But the occasion was not one for laughter or joking now. That had
+surely been Miss Carrington at the door, and the reckless Bobby had
+called her "Gee Gee" to her face, and been saucy into the bargain!
+
+"We're done for!" Dora Lockwood groaned. "Wait till assembly
+to-morrow. Bobby will be called out before the whole school."
+
+"Oh! she'd never be mean enough for that!" almost wept Dorothy.
+
+"But something dreadful will happen to Bobby," urged Nellie.
+
+"She'll be forbidden after-hour athletics, as sure as shooting!"
+declared Jess Morse.
+
+Bobby, for once, was stricken dumb. She saw in an instant all the
+horrid possibilities of her reckless speech. Barred from the team for
+the rest of the term would be the lightest punishment she could hope
+for.
+
+"And Gee Gee is always lying in wait for a chance to spoil our
+athletics," wailed Lily Pendleton, who for once felt the sorrows of
+her fellows.
+
+Hester wanted to know what it all meant, and they told her.
+
+"She certainly _did_ look funny when I met her on the stairs,"
+admitted the butcher's daughter. "And you told her she couldn't be
+herself because she said, 'It is me?' My! that must have been a shock
+to her. One of her pupils correcting Miss Carrington's use of the
+English language!"
+
+"It isn't any laughing matter!" flared up Bobby.
+
+"And I don't see that crying over it will help any," returned Hester,
+grimly.
+
+The team as a whole, however, was worried a good deal by Bobby's "bad
+break." To be obliged to break in a new girl at Bobby's place would be
+almost ruinous now. Just having gotten the team into shape once more,
+it seemed an awful thing to contemplate.
+
+But assembly passed the next morning without Mr. Sharp saying a word
+about Bobby. The session dragged on till closing time without Gee
+Gee's speaking to Bobby Hargrew. That very day East High was to come
+to play the girls of Central High on their court.
+
+The uncertainty, however, made Bobby less sure in classes, and she
+came near to being held to make up her Latin. But she slipped through
+somehow and ran away from the school building as hard as she could
+run, for fear that Gee Gee would send for her at the last moment.
+
+"Something's happened to her. She's had a change of heart. I'm afraid
+she isn't well," gasped Bobby, once safely in the dressing room of the
+gym. "She is _never_ going to overlook that awful break of mine--is
+she?"
+
+"You'd better walk a chalk line from now to the end of the term,"
+advised Jess. "If she ever _does_ get you on any other matter she will
+double your punishment. I believe she is ashamed to call you up for
+what you said to her yesterday, because you caught her using language
+unbecoming a purist."
+
+"Be thankful, Bobby--and be good," advised Laura. "You have certainly
+escaped 'by the skin of your teeth,' as the prophet has it. No, that
+is not slang; it is Scripture. And do, _do_ be good for the rest of
+this half."
+
+"Oh, I'll be a lamb--a little, woolly lamb," groaned Bobby. "You see if
+I'm not!"
+
+The girls of Central High played a splendid game of basketball that
+afternoon. They beat the East High team fairly and squarely, and their
+winning this game put them up a notch in the series. They took East
+High's place as Number 2. There was still the Lumberport and Keyport
+teams to whip before Central High could win the trophy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+HESTER WINS
+
+
+The final games of the trophy series between the girls of the High
+Schools of Centerport, Lumberport, and Keyport were played on the
+grounds of Central High. It was verging on winter. Thanksgiving was at
+hand, and the first basketball series must be out of the way before
+the boys' big football games on Thanksgiving eve.
+
+Although school athletics was much in the minds of the girls, those
+who participated in the games had to stand well in their classes to
+retain their positions on the teams. Books first, athletics afterward.
+That was the iron-bound rule of the Girls' Branch Athletic League.
+
+But most of the girls on the team of Central High were bright
+scholars. Miss Grace G. Carrington was never "easy" on the athletic
+girls. That wouldn't be her way. She usually seemed glad to put
+obstacles in the way of those who she knew were so deeply interested
+in athletics.
+
+But aside from Bobby Hargrew, that last fortnight she had no chance to
+demerit any of the basketball team. And--to the wonderment of the girls
+themselves--she never said a word to Bobby regarding what had happened
+when she, Miss Carrington, rapped on the office door.
+
+Having whipped East High so decisively, Captain Laura and her mates
+went at the Lumberport team with greater confidence. Lumberport was
+not the weakest team in the league; but Central High had managed to
+beat them in every previous game, and in this last one the home team
+played such snappy basketball that the visitors never came near them
+after the first toss-up.
+
+It was a great game and the enthusiasm of the spectators increased
+with every play. How the boys cheered! There was a big crowd of
+spectators from Lumberport and they "rooted" for their home team.
+Despite the excitement, however, there was not a moment's rough play.
+
+Mrs. Case had watched Hester narrowly during these final games. There
+had been moments when the big girl was crossed by circumstances, or by
+her opponents, when--in the past--she might have flared up and said, or
+done, something unpleasant. But Hester seemed to have gained some
+control of her temper, and the hard places in the games were passed
+over successfully.
+
+It was a fact that Hester had very little in common with the rest of
+her team-mates, save Lily. She did not put herself forward, and as
+none of them had been her close friends before she was put off the
+team, she still kept her distance now that she was back in harness
+again.
+
+At home Hester's mother was determined to make a heroine of her. Many
+of the ladies of the Hill, who seldom before this had called on
+easy-going, slip-shod Mrs. Grimes, came to see her now and praised
+Hester's courage and her kindness to Johnny Doyle and his widowed
+mother. Mrs. Grimes was, naturally, pleased at all this praise.
+
+"I've a mind to give a party, so I have!" she said to Hester, one day.
+"Your father could easy pay for as nice a party as was ever given on
+the Hill. He needn't be stingy. And we could get to be friends with
+all these nice folks----"
+
+"Oh, Mother!" sighed Hester. "Don't be foolish. These people don't
+really care a thing for us. They'd only laugh. Their houses are not
+even furnished like ours----"
+
+"I should say not!" cried Mrs. Grimes. "We have some of the most
+expensive furnichoor you could buy at Stresch & Potter's----"
+
+"Yes. At a department store. Nice people do not furnish their homes in
+that way. The varnish smells too new on our chairs and tables. We are
+too new. We never should have come to live on the Hill when father
+made money."
+
+"How ye talk!" exclaimed the astonished Mrs. Grimes. "Where would ye
+have us live--at the Four Corners still?"
+
+"Perhaps we wouldn't be so much like fish out of water there,"
+grumbled Hester.
+
+"I'm no fish, I'd have ye understand!" exclaimed Mrs. Grimes. "And
+Mrs. Belding axed me to join a club--the New Century 'tis called. 'Tis
+all women and our husbands haven't a livin' thing to say in it. I'm
+goin' to join."
+
+"The New Century!" exclaimed Hester, indeed surprised.
+
+"Yes. I'd be glad to be in something that Henry couldn't poke his
+finger into and boss," sighed the much harassed lady.
+
+"But it's never the New Century?" cried Hester.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"That's the most select club on the Hill. Lily's mother belongs, and
+Mrs. Agnew, and all those folk."
+
+"And why not _me_?" demanded her mother. "We've got as much money----"
+
+"Hush! Stop talking about money if you want to be popular in the New
+Century Club," said her daughter, who had learned a thing or two
+herself of late. "That is what is the matter with us--we're proud of
+our money."
+
+"And why not? When Henry began with a shoestring."
+
+"Well, don't be telling of it!" cried Hester. "These other people got
+their money so long ago that they've forgotten how they got it. We
+want to forget, too."
+
+But Hester was learning lessons fast. It had amazed her to see how
+people--and nice people, too--thought that what she had done for Johnny
+Doyle was of serious importance; while her lavish expenditure of money
+among her mates had heretofore won her few friends.
+
+The fact that she had saved a man from the burning woods and carried
+the warning of the forest fire, had made her friends, too. When she
+had jumped into the sewer-basin after Johnny, Dr. Agnew seemed for the
+first time pleased with her.
+
+_It was unselfishness that counted!_
+
+Hester Grimes had never thought of it before. She had never thought
+out logically why Laura Belding was so popular, why Nellie Agnew was
+liked so well, and what made the other girls cluster about
+harum-scarum Bobby Hargrew. They were all unselfish girls, thoughtful
+in their several ways for the comfort of others.
+
+Hester was learning what really paid in life--especially in the life of
+school and athletics. A good temper, a tongue without a barb to it,
+and thoughtfulness for the comfort of others. Those attributes won out
+among the girls of Central High--as they are bound to win out in every
+walk in life.
+
+And Hester Grimes had begun to conduct herself accordingly.
+
+The final game of the series for the cup was slated for a certain
+Friday afternoon. Colonel Richard Swayne--Laura Belding's very good
+friend, and a liberal supporter of girls' athletics--had invited the
+contesting basketball teams from all five High Schools to partake of a
+collation in the big upper hall of Central High's new gymnasium, after
+the final game. _That_ was to be played between the Keyport and
+Central High teams.
+
+Whichever of the two teams won would stand highest in the schedule of
+the league, and to such winning team would be presented the trophy by
+the president of the Board of Education.
+
+There would be such a crowd to see the game that tickets had to be
+issued, and those tickets went mostly to the girls who had competed in
+the basketball series, for distribution among their parents and
+friends. There was not so much cheering by the spectators at this
+game, for the boys were cut out of it. There wasn't room for the
+regular "rooters."
+
+Many parents, however, who had not been attentive to the game before,
+were in the seats provided now, to criticise the sport of which they
+had heard so much. And everybody admitted that the two best teams of
+the schools were now struggling for the trophy.
+
+From the first toss-up the girls played with a snap and vigor that
+amazed and delighted even their instructors. Trained as they had been
+all the fall, there were few fouls to record, and very little
+retarding of the game. The signals were passed silently and the girls
+indulged in little talking. Unnecessary talking and laughter mars
+basketball.
+
+It was a pleasure to watch the lithe, vigorous young girls. They were
+untrammeled by any foolish fashions, or demands of dress. Their bodily
+movements were as free as Nature intended them to be. They jumped, and
+ran, and threw, with a confidence that none but the well trained
+athlete possesses.
+
+The first half included a series of fierce rushes upon the Keyport
+side for baskets; but Central High held them down. Hester played
+brilliantly. Not once did she lose her temper, nor foul her opponent.
+She blocked the attempts of the Keyport players to make goals, but the
+referee did not catch her over-guarding or otherwise playing foul
+basketball.
+
+She really won the onlookers with her splendid form in playing. They
+began cheering her particularly. Where Roberta Fish had been weak in
+the mass plays, Hester was strong. The Keyport captain, remembering
+that weak place in the former Central High line-up, forced the play
+into Hester's territory.
+
+"Oh, you Hester!" yelled Bobby, beside herself at last, with
+enthusiasm. "You're a bear! Shoot it, Hessie! Let it come!"
+
+But each time that the ball was shot for the basket, something
+intervened. Once it went straight for the basket, rolled around the
+rim, and dropped--to the floor without entering the receptacle!
+
+The Central High rooters met this failure with a groan. But it was not
+Hester's fault. She had done her best, and her shooting was as clean
+as it could be.
+
+The timekeeper's whistle called the play at the end of the half
+without either side having made a point.
+
+It had been a rasping game. Many times Hester Grimes had been tempted
+to say something or do something that would be counted as "rough
+play"; but she had restrained herself, and when she walked to the
+dressing room she found Mrs. Case walking beside her with a hand upon
+her shoulder.
+
+"Good girl!" exclaimed the physical instructor of Central High. "Keep
+it up, my dear, and you'll be the best player we have on the roll."
+
+"But I didn't get a chance to do a thing!" grumbled Hester, shaking
+her head.
+
+"That is why I am praising you," said Mrs. Case, drily. "For what you
+_didn't_ do. Keep it up. Restrain yourself as well for the rest of the
+game. Your chance may come for a brilliant play; but if it doesn't,
+keep a grip on yourself just the same."
+
+Hester was secretly strengthened by this praise. She went out into the
+field at the call of the gong for the second half with the
+determination to deserve Mrs. Case's good word, whether the team won
+or lost. And almost at first chance came Hester's way and she was
+permitted to display a brilliant bit of play. It brought a goal for
+Central High--the first scored in the game.
+
+But the girls could not stop to cheer her. Laura nodded and smiled at
+her, however, as the ball was brought back from the basket to be
+tossed up. For some reason Hester began to feel a warm glow about her
+heart. Her captain's commendation had never meant much to her before.
+
+Up went the ball and Laura and the other jumping center did their best
+to get it. The ball went from girl to girl, first in the hands of one
+team, then in the other. The Keyport team almost made a goal; but they
+were foiled by good guarding on Central High's part.
+
+Up and down the field went the ball and the excitement grew moment by
+moment. Two to nothing in favor of the home team! That was a situation
+bound to create excitement both in the field and on the benches.
+
+Suddenly the captain of the visiting team got the ball. She passed it
+swiftly to her back center. Signaling one after the other of her
+team-mates, the Keyport captain sent the ball from hand to hand
+until--to the startled amazement of her opponents, the ball was in hand
+for a clear throw. In another moment it was in the basket and the
+score was tied again!
+
+Four minutes more to play!
+
+When the referee threw the ball up again every one of the eighteen
+girls playing was on the _qui vive_. The subordinate players watched
+their captains for signals. Central High got the ball. They rushed it
+down the field. But the guarding of the Keyport team was too much for
+them. They could not reach the basket.
+
+Again and again was the ball passed back and forth. Once more the
+Keyport captain shot it back for a clear throw. But Hester managed to
+halt it. There were but a few moments of play left. It is not good
+basketball to oppose other than one's immediate opponent; but for once
+Hester went out of her field to stop the ball.
+
+A side swipe, and the ball was hurtled directly into Laura's hands.
+She turned and threw it swiftly, making the signal for the famous
+massed play which was the strongest point in the game as played by
+Central High.
+
+Down the field the ball shot, from one to the other. Hester's quick
+break in the Keyport plan had rattled the latter team for a moment.
+And before the visitors recovered, the ball was hurtling through the
+air straight for the basket.
+
+The whistle blew. But the ball sped on. It struck the edge of the
+basket; but the next breath it slid in and--_the game was won_!
+
+Central High had outstripped its strongest opponent. The game won, so
+was the series, and the beautiful cup would remain in the possession
+of Central High.
+
+"And all because of you, Hessie!" shouted Bobby, when they got back to
+the dressing room. "You're a bully good sport! Isn't she, girls?"
+
+"She won the game," declared Laura, coming forward to shake Hester's
+hand.
+
+They all had something nice to say to her. Hester couldn't reply. She
+stood for a moment or two in the middle of the room, listening to
+them; then she turned away and sought her own locker, for there were
+tears in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED
+
+
+The boys, as has been said, were shut out from seeing the last
+basketball game of the series. Chet Belding was at the hospital that
+afternoon, having taken up some fruit to Hebe Pocock and Billson. The
+latter would soon go out and would return to his burned-over clearing
+in the woods.
+
+"Guess that fire helped me as much as it hurt me. I'll have to build a
+new shanty; but Doc Leffert was in here and said he'd rode over my
+piece, and that my heaps of rubbish had burned clean and all I'd have
+to do to clear my acres for corn would be to tam-harrow it."
+
+"Hebe isn't getting along as fast as you do, Mr. Billson," said Chet,
+in a low voice, for the Four Corners fellow was having a hard time to
+even move about on crutches.
+
+"Dunno as he deserves any better than he's got," said Billson,
+grumpily.
+
+"What you so cross about?" laughed Chet. "Surely you're not sore over
+the way folks are treating Hester Grimes _now_? She comes pretty near
+being the heroine of the Hill section."
+
+"Ya-as. They praise her because she done what she did for little
+Johnny Doyle. But many of 'em still think she set that foolish boy
+onto raiding the girls' gymnasium."
+
+"I don't know about that," confessed Chet, slowly. "Although we may
+believe that Rufe had something to do with it, perhaps he did it,
+after all, because he's not quite right in his head."
+
+"Oh, shucks!" exclaimed Billson. "All because he was crying to be let
+out of the gym. the night of the first raid?"
+
+"Well, Jackway admits he was there," repeated Chet.
+
+"And Jackway is a good deal of a fool, too," snarled Billson. "Say!
+there's Rufe and his mother in the corridor now, going to see Johnny
+in the children's ward. You bring Rufe into this ward for a minute. I
+want to show you something."
+
+Much puzzled, Chet Belding did as he was bid.
+
+"Come here, Rufie," said Billson, beckoning to the gangling youth. "I
+want to show you somebody. Come here."
+
+Billson swung back a section of the screen that hid Hebron Pocock's
+bed. The big fellow was lying there with his eyes closed, but he
+opened them quickly when Rufe appeared, and scowled.
+
+"Watcher want here, gooney?" he demanded.
+
+Rufus sprang back and looked about for escape, his weak face working
+pitifully. But Chet and Billson barred the way of escape. Rufe began
+to snivel.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" demanded Chet.
+
+"Are you afraid of this man?" asked Billson.
+
+Rufe nodded, and tried to crowd farther away from the bed.
+
+"What you doing to that kid?" demanded Hebe, sitting up. "What's the
+matter? Why! that's the softy I saw----"
+
+"He's a bad man. He said he'd kill me if I told!" gasped Rufus.
+
+"Where was that?" asked Billson, with his hand on the boy's arm. "Tell
+us all about it. He sha'n't touch you, Rufie."
+
+"Aw! I wouldn't have really hurt the gooney," growled Hebe.
+
+"He was in the place where Uncle Bill watches. I hate that old
+gymniasium! I wish it would burn down, so I do."
+
+"And when you were in there that night this fellow was there?" asked
+Billson, shaking the boy a little by the arm.
+
+"Yes. And he broke things. And Uncle was worried afterward. But I
+never told," Rufe urged, looking fearfully at Hebe. "I said I
+wouldn't----"
+
+"Aw, drop it! You've told on me now, haven't you?" demanded the fellow
+from the Four Corners. "Well, it don't much matter, I reckon. I wanted
+to queer that Jackway so he'd lose his job. Henry Grimes told me that
+if he was discharged he'd speak a good word for me and I'd get it.
+That's what I was after."
+
+"Yah!" said Billson, with scorn. "You certainly are one mean
+scoundrel, Pocock. And lettin' folks think mebbe Miss Hester was mixed
+up in it. Nice feller, you are!"
+
+"Well! I don't see where it's any of _your_ funeral," growled Pocock.
+"You make me tired!"
+
+But the result of Rufe's confession and Pocock's admission changed the
+latter's place of abode rather suddenly. Both Chet and Billson decided
+that the truth about the gymnasium raids should be made known at once,
+and the Board of Education took the matter up promptly. Pocock found
+himself in the infirmary of the county prison, with the chance of
+serving three months at hard labor when the prison doctors pronounced
+him able to work.
+
+His attempt to work Jackway out of the job of watchman, so that he
+could be appointed to the position, had acted like a boomerang. Hebron
+Pocock was most thoroughly punished.
+
+And Chet Belding hurried to spread the tidings of the discovery among
+the girls of Central High, too. He got hold of Laura before the spread
+the basketball teams were to enjoy, and she told Principal Sharp, who
+was present. When he made his usual speech of welcome, he tacked onto
+it a paragraph regarding the gymnasium mystery.
+
+"Which is," said Mr. Sharp, "a mystery no longer. As I said when first
+the matter was brought to my attention, no pupil of Central High,
+either male or female, could be guilty of such an abominable crime.
+Such a malicious piece of mischief had to be originated in a perverted
+mind; and we have no such minds at Central High."
+
+"But it has furnished excitement enough for us all to last for the
+rest of the winter," said Laura, later, to her immediate friends. "I'm
+so glad for Hester! But we've all been stirred up enough about it, I
+guess. No more excitement this term, girls!"
+
+Whether Laura's wish came true, or not, the reader will be able to
+find out for herself in the perusal of the next volume of this series,
+entitled "The Girls of Central High on the Stage; Or, The Play That
+Took the Prize."
+
+None of them looked forward to a really "tame" winter, however. There
+would be other basketball games, and plenty of out-of-door sports as
+well. As Bobby Hargrew said:
+
+"It's all right to say that school takes up all our time; but it's the
+fun we get out of school that makes Latin, and French, and
+mathematics, and--and--Gee Gee bearable! My! suppose we didn't have
+athletics at all?"
+
+"That would certainly be a state of existence perfectly unbearable--for
+you, Bobby," Nellie Agnew said, gravely. "You'd burst, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Into flinders!" agreed Bobby. "Athletics is the 'scape-valve for
+me--and I guess it is for some of the rest of you. Now, tell the
+truth!"
+
+And her friends had to admit the truth of her declaration.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+THE NAN SHERWOOD SERIES
+
+By Annie Roe Carr
+
+12 mo, cloth, illustrated, and colored jacket
+
+In Annie Roe Carr we have found a young woman of wide experience among
+girls--in schoolroom, in camp and while traveling. She knows girls of
+to-day thoroughly--their likes and dislikes--and knows that they
+demand almost as much action as do the boys. And she knows
+humor--good, clean fun and plenty of it.
+
+  NAN SHERWOOD AT PINE CAMP
+    or The Old Lumberman's Secret
+
+  NAN SHERWOOD AT LAKEVIEW HALL
+    or The Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse
+
+  NAN SHERWOOD'S WINTER HOLIDAYS
+    or Rescuing the Runaways
+
+  NAN SHERWOOD AT ROSE RANCH
+    or The Old Mexican's Treasure
+
+  NAN SHERWOOD AT PALM BEACH
+    or Strange Adventures Among the Orange Groves
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+Original publication data:
+  Publisher: The World Syndicate Publishing Co., Cleveland, O.
+  Copyright: 1914, by Grosset & Dunlap
+  Printer: The Commercial Bookbinding Co., Cleveland, O.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Girls of Central High at Basketball, by
+Gertrude W. Morrison
+
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