A bevy of girls were lingering on the steps and in the portico of the
High School building. Mr. Sharp had given permission for the girls
interested in the formation of the athletic association to meet in the
small hall--"the music room" it was called,--on the third floor of the
building, next to the suite given up to the teachers' offices and
studies.
Laura and her dearest friend, Josephine Morse, were welcomed
vociferously by many of the waiting girls. Among them was Bobby Hargrew,
but Laura did not tell her of the result of her practical joke in the
window of the grocery store. Indeed, there was no opportunity to speak
privately to Miss Harum-scarum. She came running to meet the chums just
as Dora and Dorothy Lockwood, who were twins, crossed their path, arm in
arm.
"There!" cried Jess Morse, "which of you two girls did I lend my pencil
to yesterday in chemistry class? I declare I meant to mark the one I
lent it to somehow; but you were dressed just alike then, and you're
dressed just alike now. How do you ever tell each other apart?" she
added, shaking both twins by their arms.
"Only one way there'll ever be to tell 'em apart," broke in Bobby
Hargrew. "When they get good and old, mebbe one will lose her teeth
before the other does--like the twins back in the town my father lived
in."
"How was that, Bobby?" asked Jess.
"Why, those two twins, Sam and Bill, were just like Dora and Dorothy.
Their own fathers and mothers didn't know them apart. But Bill lost all
his upper teeth and wouldn't buy store teeth. So folks that knew got to
telling them apart. You see, if you put your finger in Bill's mouth and
he bit you, why 'twas Sam!"
A rather tall, stately looking girl--taller, even than Jess Morse--drew
near the group while the girls were laughing over Bobby's story.
"Oh, Nellie!" cried Laura. "I'm glad to see you here. What does the
doctor say about the scheme of our forming an athletic association?"
"I don't know what he thinks about the proposed association," returned
the physician's daughter; "but I'm sure he approves of athletics for
girls. He told mother only yesterday that I ought to do at least half
the sweeping, and so relieve mother and the maid," and Nellie Agnew
laughed. "What do you think of that? Father says I am getting round
shouldered and flat chested. I do hope we'll go in for athletics. I
don't like housework."
"Lazy girl!" said Laura. "That is the way it will be with lots of them--I
know. If it is play, they'll like it; but anything like real work----"
"There goes Laura Belding again--telling us all how we should be good and
proper," said a sneering voice behind Laura. "Really, I should think
you'd be tired of telling us all how to conduct ourselves. You ought to
run a 'Heart to Heart Talks' department in the _Evening Awful_."
"Hessie Grimes! Mean thing!" hissed Jess in Laura's ear. But the latter
turned an unruffled countenance upon the rather overdressed, red-faced
girl whose strident voice had broken in upon the good-natured
conversation of the group.
"Oh, no, Hester. I don't think my forte is journalism. We'll let Jess
take that position," Laura said. "I see you and Lily Pendleton are both
here, so there is nobody else to wait for. We can go upstairs, I guess."
"Oh, I don't know as I want to join the silly old society," giggled
Lily, who was a slender, white faced girl, who always clung to Hester
and instead of giving the more assertive girl the benefit of her
support, "clung like the ivy to the oak-tree's branch."
"Lil and Hessie expect to be 'touched' for the M. O. R.'s," said Jess,
quickly.
"Huh!" exclaimed Bobby Hargrew. "Perhaps they've another guess coming.
The Middle of the Road Girls are not taking in many Sophs--we can make up
our minds to that."
"And do Hessie and Lily wish to join such a solemn conclave as the
Mothers of the Republic," demanded Nell Agnew, laughing, and making
another play upon the initials of the most popular society of Central
High. "I wouldn't believe it."
"You don't know whether I wish to join or not, Miss!" snapped Hester
Grimes.
"Say!" cried Bobby. "Heard the latest? Know what Chet and Lance and
Short and Long call the M. O. R. girls?"
"What is it?" asked the twins, in chorus.
"The Mary O'Rourkes! And Mary O'Rourke is a member--she's a senior, you
know, and just the nicest girl! But her initials are the same as the
society's--and nobody knows what the initials stand for. That is, nobody
outside the society."
There had begun a general advance into the school building and up the
broad stairway, ere this. Chattering and laughing, in little groups and
by couples, the girls mounted the two flights and advanced slowly into
the hall, or into the main office next to it. The windows of this office
were over the front entrance of the building, and although the room was
a very long one, it was brilliantly lighted, the windows reaching almost
from ceiling to floor.
A large globe of water with goldfish and some aquatic plants and coral
in it had the post of honor on a stand in the center of the bowed
windows. Before the window was Principal Franklin Sharp's great
table-desk, and a big rubbish basket beside it. The janitor had not yet
dusted and cleaned these rooms for the week, knowing that the girls were
to hold their meeting there.
"Mrs. Case and Gee Gee are here already, girls," whispered Bobby
Hargrew, after peering in somewhat cautiously at the door of the music
room.
Laura and her chum, with the doctor's daughter and some of the older
girls, approached the hall where the meeting was to be held. There were
already fifty or more girls gathered in the music room and as many more
were strolling through the corridors, or in the office.
Suddenly a burst of half-stifled laughter arose from the office. A crowd
of the more mischievous girls were about Bobby Hargrew. Miss Carrington
stepped down from the platform at the end of the music room and marched
steadily toward the office.
"Oh! Bobby's going to catch it again!" whispered Jess in Laura's ear.
But there was no opportunity for her friends to warn the sprightly Clara
of the approach of her nemesis. And when Miss Carrington, otherwise Gee
Gee, came to the doorway and through her eye-glasses beheld the heinous
offense of Bobby the teacher was, indeed, very much horrified.
Bobby was perched on the corner of Mr. Sharp's desk, in a most
unladylike attitude, and apparently just removing a burning cigarette
from her rosy lips! The blue smoke curled away from the horrid thing,
and Bobby was leaning back, with her roguish glance following the
smoke-rings, and apparently enjoying the weed immensely.
"Miss Hargrew!"
The awful voice startled everybody but Bobby herself. Perhaps the wicked
one had been expecting it.
"What do I see, Miss Hargrew?" demanded Gee Gee, in a tone of cold
horror.
"I really do not know, Miss Carrington," replied Bobby, as the girls
shrank away from her vicinity, and she herself hopped down to the floor,
hiding her hands behind her. "I never did know just how far you could
see with your glasses."
"Miss Hargrew, come here!" snapped the teacher, in no mood for
frivolity.
Bobby approached slowly. She held her hands behind her back like a
naughty child.
"Let me see what is in your hand, Miss!" commanded the teacher
Bobby brought forth her right hand--empty.
"Your other hand, Miss!"
Back snapped the culprit's right hand and then her left hand
appeared--likewise empty.
"Miss Hargrew! I demand that you give me what you are hiding in your
hand, at once!" cried Miss Carrington.
Slowly, and with drooping mien, the culprit brought forth both hands. In
the fingers of one still smoked the brown object the teacher had spied.
"A vile cigarette!" she gasped.
"No, ma'am," replied Bobby, quite bravely. "Only a piece of Chinese
punk-stick left over from last year's Fourth of July celebration. I
wouldn't smoke a cigarette, Miss Carrington. I don't think they're
nice--do _you_?"
It was impossible for the other girls to smother their laughter. A
ripple of merriment spread back to the music room. Now, Miss Carrington
was a very unfortunate woman. She had no sense of humor. There should be
a civil service examination for educational instructors in the line of
"sense of humor." For those who could not "pass" would never make really
successful teachers.
"Clara Hargrew!" snapped Miss Carrington, her glasses almost emitting
sparks. "You will show me a five hundred word essay upon the topic
'Respect to Our Superiors' when you come to the classes, Monday morning.
And you may go home now. Until your standing in deportment is higher,
you can have no part in athletics, save those gymnastic exercises
catalogued already in the school's curriculum. After-school athletics
are forbidden you, Miss Hargrew."
Bobby at first paled, and then grew very red. Tears stood in her usually
sparkling eyes.
"Oh, Miss Carrington!" she cried. "I was only in fun. And--and this is
not a regular school session. This is Saturday."
"You are in the precincts of the school, Miss." said Gee Gee. "Do as you
are bid. And throw that nasty thing away."
She swept back to the platform at the upper end of the music room, and
those girls who had not already gone ahead of her were quick to leave
the culprit to herself. Hester Grimes smiled sneeringly at poor little
Bobby.
"Got taken up that time pretty short, didn't you, Miss Smarty?" she
jeered.
Miss Grimes had often been the butt of Bobby Hargrew's jokes. And
then--Bobby was Laura Belding's friend and eager supporter. The door was
closed between the music room and the office and Bobby was left alone.
Mrs. Case, the girls' athletic instructor, was a very different person
from the hated Gee Gee. She was a fresh-colored, breezy woman, in her
thirties, whose clear voice and frank manner the girls all liked. And
then, in the present instance, her proposals anent the athletic
association fitted right into the desires and interests of most of the
pupils present.
"The work of the Girls' Branch Athletic Association is spreading fast,"
Mrs. Case said. "Centerport must not be behind in any good thing for the
education and development of either her boys or girls. This is something
that I have been advocating before the Board for several years. And
other teachers are interested, too.
"An association will be formed among the girls of East High and West
High, as well. I understand that the school authorities of both
Lumberport and Keyport are to take up the subject of girls' athletics,
too. So, although inter-class athletics is tabooed, there will be plenty
of rivalry between the girls of Central High and those of our East and
West schools, and those of neighboring cities. A certain amount of
rivalry is a good thing; yet we must remember to cheer the losers and
winners both. This is true sport.
"I want my girls," continued Miss Case, with a smile, "to be all-round
athletes, as well as all-round scholars. You may be rivals for all
honors with those of your own age in other schools. There are most
fascinating games and exercises to take up, as well as Folk Dancing. The
boys have a splendid association in our school----"
Suddenly Miss Carrington sprang up, interrupting her fellow-teacher. She
stood upon the platform a moment, looking toward the office, and sniffed
the air like a hound on the scent.
"Wait!" she commanded. "I smell smoke!"
She was a tall woman, and she darted down the room with long strides.
She flung open the office door. Then she shrieked and fell back, and
half the girls in the music room echoed her cry.
Flames rose half way to the ceiling, right near the principal's desk,
and the office itself was full of smoke!