THE BITTERNESS OF DEFEAT.
What "Bean" intended to do in the matter of her recent hazing was a
question which worried the Sans considerably during the next few days.
The very fact that they had escaped, thus far, without even having been
quizzed by any of the students regarding that fateful evening puzzled
them. True, they suspected Marjorie's four chums and Leila and Vera as
having been among those who broke up the hazing party. They cherished an
erroneous belief, however, that there were at least fifteen or twenty of
the invaders.
It was gall and wormwood to those of the Sans who attended the dance in
its closing hour to see Marjorie, radiantly pretty, enjoying herself as
though she had never been through a trying experience only three hours
before. By common consent the rescue party, as well as Marjorie, paid no
more attention to the Sans than if they had not been present. The dance
had been such an unusually pleasant affair! More than one girl remarked
early in the evening to her closest friends that things went along so
much better when a certain clique of girls were absent. The Sans' junior
classmates were not pleased at their late attendance of the masquerade.
They criticized the Sans as selfish and lacking in proper class spirit.
Thus the Sans fashioned a new rod that night for their backs of which
they were destined later to feel the sting.
The day following the masquerade the sophomore team sent the junior team
an acceptance of their challenge. This mystified the Sans five even
more. Under the circumstances they had expected and even hoped their
challenge would be declined. A refusal on the part of the sophomore team
to play them would give them an opportunity to intimate that their
opponents were afraid to meet them for fear of being beaten. Deep in
their hearts the Sans five were the real cowards. They dreaded playing
against Marjorie and Muriel in particular. As Leslie gloomily said to
Natalie, "Bean and that Harding snip will certainly get back at you if
they can. I imagine Robina Page was one of that crowd who gave us the
run."
Leslie had been terribly out of sorts since the failure of her plot. She
did not know where she stood at Hamilton as regarded safety. She was
highly disgruntled by the lack of cordiality shown her and her chums by
many students whom she had considered friendly to her. It was being
forced upon her, little by little, that the Sans were losing ground.
They had sworn to win back their lost power of the previous year. They
had not done this. Now the game with the sophomores must be played and
she was not in the mood to coach her team, nor were they in the mood to
play. She doubted if they would dare make use of "the soft talk." The
freshman team had expressed themselves quite openly on that subject
about the campus. When taxed with it once or twice by juniors who had
learned of it and deferred judgment, Leslie had replied with sarcastic
bravado that the freshies had evidently "heard things" during the game
which no one else heard.
The game being scheduled for the twenty-seventh of February, Leslie
allowed her bruised and shaken team three days' rest. After that time
she fairly drove them to private practice. She pestered Ramsey, the
coach, for new and sure methods of winning points from an antagonist
until he resolved within himself to "beat it" for New York on the day of
the game and leave no address. He had received a lump sum in advance for
his coaching, so he had no scruples about deserting the ship.
Her five satellites complained bitterly at having to practice every day.
All of them had received warnings in one subject or another and needed
their time for study. Leslie was adamant. "Just this one game," she said
over and over again. "After that we will settle down to work. I am not
doing as well as I ought in my subjects. But you must play the sophs and
beat them if you can. Don't try any of those new stunts Ramsey showed
you unless you can put them over so cleverly no one will know the
difference. You will have to be careful. You have a touchy proposition
to tackle."
Alarmed at the gradual decrease in their own popularity, the Sans five
practiced assiduously during the week preceding the game. They hoped to
make a good showing on their own merits. The coach glibly assured them
that they were doing wonderful work with the ball. Toward the last of
their practice they began to believe it themselves.
They continued to believe thus until after the first five minutes of the
game on the following Saturday. With the gymnasium filled by a clamorous
aggregation of students, the toss-up was made and the game begun. The
sophomore five took the lead from the first and put the Sans five
through a pace that made them fairly gasp. All thought of cheating
abandoned, they fought desperately to score. They were not allowed to
make a single point. Behind the resolution of the sophs to win they
demonstrated a peculiarly personal antagonistic force which their
opponents felt, dimly at first, keenly afterward. It was the fastest
game that had been played for many a year at Hamilton and it ended in a
complete whitewash for the juniors. They retired from the floor too
utterly vanquished to do other than indulge in a dismal cry in concert
once the door of their dressing room had closed upon them.
Thus Leslie found them. Signally discouraged, she experienced a
momentary desire to cry with them. She fought it down, gruffly advising
her chums not to cry their eyes out in case they might need them later.
"Don't be so simple," was her barren consolation. "You don't see me
bathed in salt weeps, do you? No, sir. Forget basket ball. I swear I'll
never have anything more to do with it. I'll send that Ramsey packing
tomorrow. From now on, I'm going to keep up in my classes and after
classes enjoy myself. If we can't run the college _now_, that's no sign
we never will. We can be exclusive. There are enough of us to do that. I
don't believe Bean and her crowd are going to tell any tales on us. For
the rest of the year we'll just amuse ourselves in our own way."
"It's almost a year since we started to rag Miss Dean and had so much
trouble over that affair," half-sobbed Dulcie Vale. "You are always
making plans to get even with someone you don't like, Leslie Cairns, and
dragging us into them. You never win. You always get the worst of it. I
don't intend to go into any more such schemes with you. My father said
if ever I was expelled from college he would make me take a position in
his office. Think of that!" Dulcie's voice rose to a scream.
"He did? Well, don't tell everybody in the gym about it," Leslie
advised, then laughed. Her laughter was echoed in quavering fashion by
the other weepers. Under their false and petty ideas of life there was
still so much of the eagerness of girlhood to be liked, to succeed and
to be happy. Only they were obstinately traveling the wrong road in
search of it.
Out in the gymnasium the winning team were being carried about the great
room on the shoulders of admiring and noisy fans. Marjorie smiled to
herself as she reflected that this was a pleasant ending of her
basket-ball days. She had firmly determined not to play during the next
year. Standing among her teammates afterward, surrounded by a circle of
enthusiastic fans, it was borne upon her that she knew a great many
Hamilton girls. She had not thought her friendly acquaintances among
them so large.
"You did what Muriel said you folks would do," Jerry exulted, when,
congratulations over, Muriel and Marjorie were free to join their chums.
"You laid the junies up for the winter. That team must have been crazy
to challenge you. They played well, for them. Against your five--good
night! A whitewash! Think of it!"
"They deserved it." Marjorie's eyes lost their smiling light. The curves
of her red lips straightened a trifle. "We paid them for ragging the
freshies. They have had two hard defeats inside of two weeks. They ought
to retire on them. They are lucky in that we haven't made trouble for
them. Between you and me, Jeremiah, the Sans are not gaining an inch at
Hamilton. The juniors are peeved with them for not taking proper
interest in the Valentine dance. Many of the seniors disapprove of them,
particularly since the game they won dishonestly from the freshies. Only
a handful of the sophs cling to them. The freshies--I don't know. They
are still about half Sans-bound. Just the same, democracy at Hamilton
isn't on the wane. It's on the gain."