"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. n.o.body 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 cla.s.ses, 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 m.u.f.fled 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 a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.ses, 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 partic.i.p.ated in the games had to stand well in their cla.s.ses to retain their positions on the teams. Books first, athletics afterward.