Marjorie's inflection was slightly bored. She felt that she had small cause for interest in Rowena. She had never told her mother of the latter's attack on herself and Jerry. She preferred not to think of it, much less talk of it. To her it had seemed utterly senseless, as well as cheap.

"And how is Mignon La Salle doing?" questioned Mrs. Dean. "I haven't heard you mention her, either. I must say I am very glad that you and she are not likely to be thrown together again. Poor little Mary made a bad mistake last year. It is wonderful that things ever worked out as well as they did." Mrs. Dean's face grew stern as she recalled the tangle in which Mary's obstinacy had involved her daughter.

"Oh, Mignon has found a friend in Rowena Farnham. They go together all the time. Jerry says they will soon fall out. I am sure they are welcome to chum together, if they choose." Marjorie shrugged her shoulders as though desirous of dismissing both girls from her thoughts.

"Jerry is quite likely to be a true prophet," commented Mrs. Dean. "She is a very wise girl, but decidedly slangy. I cannot understand why a girl brought up in her surroundings should be so thoroughly addicted to slang."

"She's trying awfully hard not to use it." Recalling Jerry's recent efforts to speak more elegant English, Marjorie laughed outright. "She's so funny, Captain. If any other girl I know used slang as she does, I wouldn't like it. But Jerry! Well, she's different. Next to Connie and Mary I love her best of all my friends. I don't know what I'd do without her."

"She is a very fine girl, in spite of her brusque ways," praised Mrs.

Dean. "General is fond of her, too." She added this little tribute lest Marjorie might feel that she had been unduly critical. She understood the fact that Marjorie's friends were sacred to her and on that account rarely found fault with them. Marjorie could be trusted to choose her a.s.sociates wisely. Those to whom her sympathies went out usually proved themselves worthy of her regard. Motherly anxiety alone had prompted Mrs. Dean to draw her daughter out with a view toward learning the cause of Marjorie's recent air of wistful preoccupation. Daily it had become more noticeable. If a repet.i.tion of last year's sorrows threatened her only child, Mrs. Dean did not propose to be kept in the dark until it became well-nigh impossible to adjust matters.

Secretly Marjorie was aware of this anxiety on her mother's part. She felt that she ought to show her Captain the sinister letters she had received, yet she was loath to do so. Her mother's inquiry concerning Mignon had caused her to reflect uneasily that now if ever was the moment for unburdening her mind. "Captain," she began, "you know that something is bothering me, don't you?"

"Yes. I have been hoping you would tell me." Mrs. Dean laid an encouraging hand on the drooping, brown head against her knee.

"Wait a minute." Imbued with a desperate energy, Marjorie sprang to her feet and ran from the room. She soon returned, the disturbing letters clutched tightly in one hand. "I wish you to read these," she said.

Tendering them to her mother, she drew up a chair opposite Mrs. Dean and sat down.

Silence hung over the cheerful room while Mrs. Dean acquainted herself with the cause of Marjorie's perturbation. Contempt filled her voice as she finally said: "A most despicable bit of work, Lieutenant. The writer had good reason to withhold her true name. So this explains the solemn face you have been wearing of late. I wouldn't take it very deeply to heart, my dear. Whoever wrote these letters must possess a most cowardly nature."

"That's just what I think," nodded Marjorie. "You see it really started with the letter Miss Archer received. You know, the one about the algebra problem. The only person I can really suspect of writing any of them is Mignon. But she's not this sort of coward. Besides, I don't believe she'd write just this kind of letter. What sort of person do you think would, Captain?"

Before answering, Mrs. Dean thoughtfully reread both letters. "It is hard to say," she mused. "It looks to me as though the writer of them might have been prompted by jealousy. The second one in particular is full of jealous spite. I suppose you don't care to let Miss Archer see them."

"No." Marjorie shook a vehement head. "I'd rather worry through without that. Perhaps there won't be any more of them. I hope not. Anyway, I'm glad I told you about them. If another does come, I can bring it to you and not feel so bad over it as if I had to think things out alone. Even if I knew this very minute who wrote them, I don't know what I'd do about it. It would depend upon who the girl was, whether or not I'd say anything to her. It's all very mysterious and aggravating, isn't it?"

she added wistfully.

"It's far worse than that." Mrs. Dean's lips set in a displeased line.

"Sanford High School appears to harbor some very peculiar girls. I can't imagine any such thing happening to you at Franklin High. I don't like it at all. If the rest of your junior year is going to be like this, you might better go away to a good preparatory school."

"Oh, Captain, don't say that!" Marjorie cried out in distress. "I couldn't bear to leave you and General and Sanford High. I'd be terribly unhappy away from home. Please say you didn't really mean that." Tears lurked in her pleading tones.

"Now, now, Lieutenant," came the soothing reply, "don't be so ready to run out to meet calamity. I only suggested your going away as a means of taking you out of these pits you seem always innocently to be tumbling into. You know that General and I could hardly get along without our girl. It is of your welfare I am thinking."

Marjorie slipped to her mother's side and wound coaxing arms about her.

"I was afraid this would hurt you. That's why I hated to tell you. Don't worry, Captain. Everything will come out all right. It always has, you know. So long as I keep a clear conscience, nothing can really hurt me.

I hope I'm too good a soldier to be frightened, just because I've been fired upon by an unseen enemy. If I ran away now I'd be a deserter, and a deserter's a disgrace to an army. So you see there's only one thing to do; stand by and stick fast to my colors. I've got to be a soldier in earnest."

CHAPTER XV-AN UNWILLING FOLLOWER

Marjorie's confidential talk with her Captain brought to her a renewal of faith in herself, which carried her along serenely through various small difficulties which continually sprang up in her junior path. One of them was Miss Merton, who seemed always on the watch for an opportunity to belittle the girl she so detested. Still another was the hostile interest Mignon La Salle had again begun to take in her. Hardly a day pa.s.sed without an angry recital on Jerry's part of something she had heard against Marjorie, which had originally come from Mignon or Rowena Farnham. Mignon's ally, Charlotte Horner, was an equal source for provocation. Although she had no special right to do so, she often dropped in on junior basket ball practice merely to find food for adverse criticism of Marjorie. She watched the latter with a hawk-like eye, only to go forth and make capital of any small imperfection in Marjorie's playing, which she saw or fancied she saw.

The fact that Rowena Farnham was a member of the soph.o.m.ore team did not add to Marjorie's happiness. She had no wish to come into such close contact with her, which the approaching games between the two teams would necessitate. From Jerry, the indefatigable news-gatherer, she had learned that Rowena was a skilful, but rather rough player. Knowing her to be utterly without scruple, Marjorie had small reason to believe she could be trusted to play an absolutely fair game against her opponents.

Rowena was already becoming an insolent power in the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s.

Her extreme audacity, coupled with her good looks and fine clothes, brought her a certain amount of prestige in Sanford High School. She possessed to a marked degree that impudent quality of daring, which is so peculiarly fascinating to school girls.

Although she was not sincerely liked she was admired and feared. She had a fund of clever sayings at her command, which gave her a reputation for brilliancy. The frequent reproof of her teachers rolled off her like water from a duck's back. She made public sport of whomever she pleased, whenever it pleased her to do so, with a conscienceless air of good humor that rendered her a dangerous foe. She never hesitated to forge her way to whatever she wanted, in a hail-fellow-well-met manner which changed like a flash to insolence with the slightest opposition offered.

She was a bully of the first water, but with the glamor of her newness still upon her, the worst side of her nature was yet to be revealed to many.

Marjorie Dean and Jerry Macy, at least, entertained no illusions concerning her. Neither did Mignon La Salle. For once in her life, Mignon was beginning to find herself completely overshadowed by a nature far more hatefully mischievous than her own. True she was Rowena's most intimate friend. Yet there were times when she inwardly regretted having rushed blindly into such a friendship. Striving ever to rule, now she was invariably overruled. Instead of being leader, she became follower.

Rowena criticized, satirized and domineered over her, all in the name of friendship. Had she been anyone else, Mignon would not have borne long with her bullying. She would have speedily put an end to their a.s.sociation. Rowena, however, was one not thus easily to be dropped. In Mignon she glimpsed powers for mischief-making only secondary to her own. She preferred, therefore, to cling to her and was clever enough never to allow Mignon's flashes of resentment against her high-handedness to mature into open rebellion. Those who knew the French girl for exactly what she was agreed that Mignon had at last met her match. They also agreed that a taste of her own medicine would no doubt do her a great deal of good.

The approach of Thanksgiving also brought with it a stir of excitement for the coming basket ball game, the first to be played in a series of four, which were scheduled to take place at intervals in the school year. The soph.o.m.ore team had already played the freshman and given them a complete white-washing. Now they were clamoring to meet the juniors and repeat their victory. The junior team had attended the freshman-soph.o.m.ore game in a body, thereby realizing to the full the strength of their opponents. Reluctantly, they were forced to admit the brilliancy of Rowena Farnham as a player. She knew the game and she went into it with a dash and vigor that marked her as a powerful adversary.

Naturally, it won her an admiration which she determined should grow and deepen with each fresh achievement.

Her doughty deeds on the floor of contest merely imbued the junior team with stronger resolution to win the coming game. They practised with stubborn energy, sedulously striving to overcome whatever they knew to be their weak points. Though manager of all the teams, Ellen Seymour's heart was secretly with them. This they felt rather than knew.

Outwardly, Ellen was impartial. She made them no show of favoritism, but they divined that she would rejoice to see them win. There was no doubt of the smoothness of their team work. Having played basket ball on the freshman and soph.o.m.ore teams, Marjorie Dean herself knew that the squad of which she was now a member excelled any other of past experience.

Fairly confident that it could hold its own, she looked impatiently forward to the hour of action.

To set one's heart too steadfastly on a particular thing, seems sometimes to court disappointment. On the Thursday before the game an unexpected state of affairs came to pa.s.s. It started with a notice on the bulletin board requesting the presence of the junior team in the gymnasium at four o'clock that afternoon. It was signed "Ellen Seymour, Manager." Naturally, the juniors thought little of it. They were accustomed to such notices. Ellen, no doubt, had some special communication to make that had to do with them. But when five minutes after four saw them gathered in the gymnasium to meet their manager, her sober face warned them that the unusual was afoot.

"Girls, I have something to ask of you which you may not wish to do. I am not going to urge you to do it. You are free to choose your own course. As it especially concerns you, yours is the right to decide. Two girls of the soph.o.m.ore team are ill. Martha Tyrell has come down with tonsilitis, and Nellie Simmons is threatened with pneumonia. Both are in bed. They can't possibly play on Sat.u.r.day. The sophs are awfully cut up about it. They wouldn't mind using one sub, but two, they say, is one too many. They have asked me to ask you if you are willing to postpone the game until these girls are well again."

"I don't see why we should," objected Captain Muriel Harding. "I don't believe they'd do the same for us. Of what use are subs, if not to replace absent players?"

"That's what I think," put in Daisy Griggs. "It's too provoking.

Everyone is looking forward to the game. If we don't play we'll disappoint a whole lot of people. It's very nervy in the sophs to ask us to do such a thing. Besides, we are crazy to wear our new suits."

Ellen smiled quizzically. "Remember, you are to do as you please about it," was all she said, betraying neither pleasure or displeasure at the ready protests.

"I suppose the soph.o.m.ores will think us awfully mean if we don't do as they ask," ventured Rita Talbot.

"Oh, let them think," declared Susan Atwell impatiently. "It's the first time I ever heard of such a thing. They must be terribly afraid we'll beat them."

"That's just the point." At this juncture Marjorie broke into the discussion. "If we insist on playing and win, they might say we won because we had them at a disadvantage. That wouldn't be much of a victory, would it?"

"That's so." Muriel reluctantly admitted the force of Marjorie's argument. "I know at least one of them who would say just that."

"Mustn't be personal," gently chided Ellen. Nevertheless, there was a twinkle in her blue eyes. The soph.o.m.ore who had come to her had insinuated what Marjorie had voiced. "I'll give you ten minutes to talk it over. I promised to let the soph.o.m.ores know to-night. The girl who came to me is waiting in the senior locker room for your answer."

"I'm ready to decide now," a.s.serted Marjorie. "For my part I'm willing to postpone the game."

"We might as well," conceded Captain Muriel ruefully. Marjorie's point had gone home. "If we win we want it to be a sweeping victory."

One by one the three other interested parties agreed that it seemed best to yield gracefully to the plea.

"Now that you've all spoken I'm going to tell you my opinion," announced Ellen. "I am glad that you are willing to do this. It becomes you as juniors. No one can say that you have been anything but strictly generous. You deserve a crown of victory for being so nice about this."

Ellen's conclusion brought a smile to five faces. Her remark might be construed as a declaration of favor toward them.

"I believe you'd love to see us win the whole four games, Ellen Seymour," was Muriel's frank comment.

"As your august manager, my lips are sealed," Ellen retorted laughingly.

"Now I must leave you and put an anxious soph.o.m.ore out of her misery.