Unfortunately the girl she was to check was Georgia Fisher for whom Judith had taken an unreasonable dislike; partly because she disliked the way Georgia giggled, and partly because she thought her impossibly stupid. Judith hadn't much patience with stupid people!

"No, I haven't played much," Judith said loftily in answer to Georgia's question. "I don't care about basket-ball--I'd sooner play tennis. Last year I won the tennis prize." Georgia wasn't to think that she, Judith, couldn't play games if she wanted to.

Esther blew her whistle, and instantly the two centres were leaping for the ball, and before Judith could remember that she was supposed to be on guard Georgia quite easily caught the ball, and pa.s.sed it neatly to Josephine who threw for the basket and made the first score for the Blue scarves.

Judith looked annoyed and Georgia giggled, sympathetically.

"You got to keep your eye on me, _and_ on the ball," she explained good-humouredly, and proceeded to take the ball again in spite of Judith's utmost endeavors to prevent her.

An exhausting half-hour followed. Georgia seemed to be _all_ arms, thought Judith despairingly, trying in vain to check her. Once she did get the coveted ball, and in the excitement of at last outwitting Georgia, she threw it straight into the outstretched arms of Josephine who wore the enemy's Blue scarf. Josephine threw her a kiss of thanks when the ball was safely landed in the net, and Georgia's unfailing giggle helped to heighten the colour in Judith's cheeks.

Up went the ball again and then swiftly it came, pa.s.sed from one Red scarf to another. "I _will_ have it this time," said Judith fiercely to herself, too engrossed in a desire to win from the Blues to remember the most elementary rules of the game; she caught the ball and ran, yes, just ran to the goal and threw. The proverbial good luck which attends the beginner was hers, but instead of the applause which Judith expected there was a burst of good-natured laughter. She had run with the ball and all in order to throw it into the Blues' goal!

Poor Judith, it was all she could do to smile feebly when Georgia met her with a grin, and, "This ain't football, you know." She hated being laughed at, and when the practice was finally over, left the campus humiliated, cross, and hardly able to bear herself or any one else.

On the way back to the beech tree and the story-book, she consulted her time-table to make sure of the time of the gymnasium cla.s.s. Yes! thank goodness, she was free until four o'clock--there was just time to finish the chapter.

Four o'clock found Judith in line, a pair of dumb-bells tucked under her arms, ready to march into the gymnasium as the three-thirty cla.s.s marched out. She had had two lessons already and was beginning to like her cla.s.s. Last year's instructor had been adored by the girls and consequently their work was excellent. Miss Evans, a young teacher, new to York Hill, busy finding out what her new cla.s.ses could do, scarcely realized how much _she_ was on trial. This afternoon she called out a last year's girl to lead the cla.s.s while she stood aside to watch and criticize.

"Wrong, wrong," she cried, and held up her hand as figure five was concluded. Now Miss Evans, as we said, was young and new at her job, and did not count on the adoration which the girls had given her predecessor.

"Quite wrong," she said again.

"That is the way we did last year, Miss Evans," stiffly replied Jane who was leading.

"Indeed!" said Miss Evans, who did not like Jane's tone; "that doesn't make it right. Is there any one here who belonged to another cla.s.s who can do this figure correctly?"

Alas, Miss Evans, your Irish impetuosity will cost you dear!

Condemnation shone forth from thirty pairs of eyes, the hot, unreasoning condemnation of the young. Alas, Miss Evans, it will take you many a day to recapture what you have just lost! Alas, poor Judith, here was the opportunity to regain her lost self-complacency. It happened that she had been taught figure five in a different fashion, and, eager to show that she at least knew how, her hand went up.

"Ah, Judith knows how? Judith, stand out and do the figure."

The music began and Judith went through it accurately and perfectly, entirely to her own satisfaction and to that of Miss Evans.

"Good," said Miss Evans, "that's right. Now once more, Judith, so that the others may follow."

Judith's eyes flew to Nancy's. She loved to see the admiring affection which she had been finding there. But Nancy's eyes were cold and unseeing. Judith, like most clever little girls, was extremely sensitive to public opinion, and she almost dropped her dumb-bells in an agony of shame and humiliation as she saw the coldness of Nancy's eyes faithfully repeated in all the eyes about her. Alas, poor Judith! "Teacher's pet,"

terrible phrase, was whispered as the cla.s.s filed out, and when Nancy and Josephine rushed down to the tuck shop for an ice-cream cone they affected not to see Judith, who at first followed disconsolately, and then fled to her room, where, with head buried under the pillows, she sobbed herself into a misery of self-pity and supposed homesickness.

Five o'clock bell rang. Horrors! She had forgotten that Aunt Nell was to be here at five o'clock to take her out for dinner. Aunt Nell would be cross at being kept waiting. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Would she never find her gloves? Where was her new scarf? She must have left them down in the cloakroom after morning walk. A hurried flight to the cloakroom, another search, and an entirely discomfited Judith presented herself in the drawing-room.

Aunt Nell would look displeased, she thought, as she entered. Judith really did not care that Aunt Nell had been inconvenienced, but merely that disapproval, instead of the approbation for which she thirsted, would be her portion. But Aunt Nell looked amused. Indeed, when they were once in the motor she laughed outright.

"I must say, Judy, considering that you have been in school only a week, you seem to have got rid of any superfluous neatness very quickly." And she pointed to a mirror at the side of the car.

Judith's eyes rounded with horror; she had washed her face, but a grimy streak still outlined one side of her chin, her hair was rough in spite of a hasty brushing, and her hat was comically askew.

"I have been so busy," said Judith, turning scarlet and blinking to keep back the tears of mortification at this last straw.

"Busy!" said Aunt Nell quizzically; "busy learning important things?"

"Very important things," said Judith.

CHAPTER III

DRESSING UP

"GOT your costume ready for to-night, Judy?" asked Nancy one glorious sunshiny morning a few weeks later.

"I have _not_," came from Judith in dismayed tones; "I absolutely forgot about it. Why didn't you remind me? I haven't heard any one mention it all week."

"Well, there hasn't really been time to do anything, has there? And, anyway, we usually concoct something at the last minute. I do love dressing up, don't you?"

"I do if I don't have to make up the dress," said Judith honestly, as she finished making her bed and leaned out of the window to take deep breaths of the glorious October air. "Nancy, do come and look at the maple grove, and the oaks and the beeches against that lovely sky, and isn't the vine on Miss Meredith's house simply a gorgeous colour? I could almost eat the sunshine, it's so good. Tell me what to wear to-night. I don't know what I should have done without your help last Friday."

"Let's think it over," said Nancy, pulling on a sweater and cap and running off to play tennis with Jane; "see you at recess and we'll decide then."

But when recess came Judith confessed to not having given it a thought, she had been kept too busy for the consideration of such frivolities as a Friday party, and Nancy on her part had a doleful tale of returned lessons to be made up during the afternoon.

"Oh, _why_ didn't I prepare that French prose?" she wailed when the crew of the "Jolly Susan" foregathered after luncheon in her room. "I begged Madame to let me make it up _any_ other time, but of course she wouldn't."

"Oh, well, we're not going to dress alike this time," said Sally May, "so it doesn't matter. It _was_ fun, though, wasn't it, making sailor-boy costumes out of sheets and pillowcases, and I never laughed so hard in my life as when North House came in. You really ought to have seen them"--this to Jane who had been away for the week-end--"not one of them looked more than six months old--they pasted paper over their teeth and had on the cutest little bonnets and long dresses and carried bottles--really cold-cream bottles with a glove finger on top--"

"I think the Hindus were the cleverest," said Judith.

"The question before the house is, what are we going to do to-night?"

observed Josephine. "Now my idea"--

But what Josephine's idea was the rest never knew, for Rosamond put her head in at the door and called, "Long distance 'phone for you, Jo; Miss Martin says hurry"--

Judging by the speed with which Josephine vanished down the corridor she was anxious to oblige Miss Martin.

The half-past two bell rang and Nancy and Judith went off to music lessons without deciding anything about the costume for the party, and when Judith came upstairs after an early dinner she was still as undecided as ever. The corridor was as busy as the proverbial beehive, for the "borrowing-rule" had been suspended for the day, and everybody seemed to be making the most of the opportunity.

Judith was besieged with requests the moment she appeared.

"I bag your white slippers, Judy, if _you_ don't want them," called Rosamond.

"And I want your black beads--"

"Your blue scarf, please, Judy," called Catherine from her room, "I'll be awfully careful of it."

Squeals of delight came from the various rooms where tryings-on were proceeding. "Every one seems happy but me," thought Judith dismally when the borrowers had departed.

What would a Southern costume be like, anyway? Africa? No that would be too hard and she hadn't the least idea how the Australians dressed.