DOROTHY SCORES
Dora Selwyn was a downright good captain. What she lacked in brilliance
she made up in painstaking. She was always after individual members of
her team when they were playing for practice, and she lectured them with
the judgment and authority of an expert. A lot of her spare time was
taken up in studying hockey as played by the great ones of the game. She
had even gone so far as to write letters of respectful admiration to the
players of most note; and these invariably replied, giving her the hints
for which she had asked with such disarming tact.
The match with the first team of the Ilkestone High School meant a lot
to her. That team had an uncommonly good opinion of themselves, and,
doubtless, they would not have stooped to challenge the senior team of
the Compton Girls’ School but for the fact that they had just been
rather badly beaten by a team of Old Girls, and were anxious to give
some team a good drubbing by way of restoring their self-confidence.
The day of the match came, bringing with it very good weather
conditions. If Dora felt jumpy as to results, she had the sense to keep
her nervousness to herself, and fussed round her team with as much
clucking anxiety as a hen that is let out with a brood of irresponsible
chickens.
The match was to be played at Ilkestone. She would have been much
happier if the fight had been on their own ground; but the arrangement
had been made, and it had to stand.
Dorothy was nervous too, but she would not show it. This was the first
time she had played in an outside match with the team, and she was very
anxious to give a good account of herself.
Her position had been changed at the last minute—that is to say, at
yesterday’s practice. Rhoda had persuaded Dora to give her the outside
right, which left Dorothy the position of outside left, which, as every
one knows, is the most difficult position of the hockey field.
Naturally, too, she smarted at being thrust into the harder task when
she had made such efforts to train for her place.
Still, there is no appeal against the command of the captain, and
Dorothy climbed into the motor charabanc that was taking them to
Ilkestone, seating herself next to Jessie Wayne, and smiling as if she
had not a care in the world.
“My word, you do look brisk, Dorothy, and as happy as if you were going
to your own wedding,” said Daisy Goatby in a grudging tone, as the
charabanc with its load of girls and several mistresses slid out of the
school gates and, mounting the steep hill past the church, sped swiftly
towards Ilkestone.
“Why shouldn’t I look happy?” asked Dorothy. “Time enough to sit and
wail when we have been beaten.”
“Don’t even mention the word, Dorothy,” said the captain sharply; and
she looked so nervy and uncomfortable that Dorothy felt sorry enough for
her to forgive her for the changed position. She was even meek when Dora
went on in a voice that jerked more than ever: “I do hope you will do
your best, Dorothy. I am horribly upset at having to change your
position, but Rhoda declared she would not even try if I left her as
outside left. So what was I to do?”
“Is she going to try now?” asked Dorothy rather grimly. She was
wondering what would have happened if she had done such a thing.
“Oh, she says she will, and one can only hope for the best; but I shall
be downright glad when it is all over, and we are on our way back.” Dora
shivered, looking so anxious that Dorothy had to do her level best at
cheering her, saying briskly,—
“I expect we shall all go back shouting ourselves hoarse, and we shall
have to hold you down by sheer force to keep you from making a spectacle
of yourself. Oh, we are going to win, don’t you worry!”
“I wish I did not care so much,” sighed Dora. Then she turned to give a
word of counsel to another of the team, and did not lean over to Dorothy
again.
The Ilkestone team were on the ground waiting, while the rest of the
High School were drawn up in close ranks to be ready to cheer their
comrades on to victory. Dorothy’s heart sank a little at that sight. She
knew full well the help that shouting gives.
Then Hazel rushed up to her. “Dorothy, your brother Tom has just come;
he says the boys of the Fifth and Sixth are on their way here to shout
for us. Oh! here they come. What a lark it is, for sure!”
And a lark it was. The boys came streaming across the stile that led
into the playing-field from the Canterbury road; and although they were
pretty well winded from sprinting across the fields to reach the ground
in time, they let out a preliminary cheer as an earnest of what they
were going to do later on, when play had begun.
The High School girls, not to be beaten, set up a ringing cheer for
their side. Their voices were so shrill that the sound must have carried
for a long way.
Play was pretty equal for the first quarter, then the High School team
got a bit involved by the fault of the forwards falling back when the
other side passed.
Time and again, when the backs cleared with long hits to the wings,
their skill was wasted, for the wingers were not there.
Suddenly Dorothy’s spirits went up like a rocket. She knew very well
that once falling back of the forwards had begun it was certain to go
on. For herself, she was doing her bit, and a very difficult bit it was,
and there seemed no glory in it; but wherever she was wanted, there she
was, and it was the outburst of shouting which came from the boys that
told her the side was keeping their end up.
The play was fast and furious while it lasted, and the shouting on both
sides was so continuous that it seemed to be one long yell.
Then suddenly, for Dorothy at least, the end came. She was in her place,
when the ball came spinning to her from a slam hard shot. She swung her
stick, and caught it just right, when there was a crashing blow on her
head which fairly knocked her out. She tumbled in a heap on the grass,
and that was the last she remembered of the struggle.
When she came to her senses again she was lying on the table in the
pavilion, and a doctor was bending over her, while the anxious faces of
Miss Groome and the games-mistress showed in the background.
“Why, whatever has happened?” she asked, staring about her in a
bewildered fashion. “Did I come a cropper on the field?”
“Yes, I suppose that is about what you did do,” replied the doctor,
speaking with slow deliberation.
“It is funny!” Dorothy wrinkled her forehead in an effort to remember.
“I thought I hit my head against something—a most fearful crack it
seemed.”
“Ah!” The doctor gently lifted her head as he made the exclamation; he
slid off her hat, and passed his fingers gently through her hair.
“Oh! it hurts!” she cried out sharply.
Then he saw that the back of her hat was cut through, and there was a
wound on her head. He called for various things, and those standing
round flew to fetch them. He and Dorothy were momentarily alone, and he
jerked out a sudden question: “Who was it that fetched you that blow?”
Dorothy looked her surprise. “I am sure I don’t know,” she said
doubtfully; “there was no one quite close to me. I remember swinging my
stick up and catching the ball just right, and then I felt the blow.”
“Some one fouled you, I suppose—a stupid thing to do, especially as
yours was such a good shot.” He was very busy with her head as he spoke,
but she twisted it out of his hands so that she could look into his
face.
“Was it a good shot?” she asked excitedly. “Did we win the game?”
“Without doubt you would have won if it had been fought to a finish,” he
said kindly. “Now, just keep still while I attend to this dent in your
head, or you will be having a fearful headache later on.”
Dorothy did have a headache later on. In fact, it was so bad that she
was taken back to Sowergate in the doctor’s motor, instead of riding in
the charabanc with the others. She felt so confused and stupid that it
seemed ever so good to her to lie back in the car and to have nothing to
think about.
She protested vigorously, though, when the school was reached and she
was taken off to the san, to be made an invalid of for the rest of the
day.
“I really can’t afford the time,” she said, looking at the doctor in an
imploring fashion. “My Form position has been going down week by week of
late, and this will make things still worse.”
“Not a bit of it,” he said with a laugh. “You will work all the better
for the little rest. Just forget all about lessons and everything else
that is a worry. Read a story book if you like—or, better still, do
nothing at all. If you are all right to-morrow you can go to work again;
but it will depend upon the way in which you rest to-day whether you are
fit to go to work to-morrow, so take care.”
Dorothy had to submit with the best grace she could, and the doctor
handed her over to the care of the matron, with instructions that she
was to be coddled until the next day.
“I had been watching the game—that was why I happened to be on the
spot,” he said to the matron as he turned away. “I don’t think I ever
heard so much yelling at a hockey match before. I’m afraid I did some of
it myself, for the play was really very good. I did not see how the
accident happened, though; but I suppose one of the players in lunging
for the ball just caught this young lady’s head instead.”
Dorothy elected to go straight to bed. If her getting back to work
to-morrow depended on the manner in which she kept quiet to-day, then
certainly she was going to be as quiet as possible.
Meanwhile great was the commotion among the hockey team. All the riotous
satisfaction the Compton Schools would have felt at the victory which
seemed so certain was dashed and spoiled by the accident which had
happened just when Dorothy had made her splendid shot. “Who did it?” was
the cry all round the field. But there was no response to this; and
although there were so many looking on, no one seemed to be able to pick
out the girls who were nearest to Dorothy, and there was no one who
admitted having hit her by fluke.
The High School team said and did all the correct things, and then they
suggested that the game should be called a draw. Naturally the Compton
Schools did not like this; but, as Dora Selwyn said, a game was never
lost until it was won, so the High School team had right on their side,
and after a little talking on both sides it was settled to call it a
draw.
Even this raised the Compton team to a higher level in hockey circles;
henceforth no one would be able to flout them as inefficient, and the
High School would have to treat them with greater respect in the future.
“We should not have done so well if the boys had not come to shout for
us,” Dora admitted, when that night she had dropped into the study where
Hazel and Margaret were sitting alone, for Jessie Wayne had hurt her
ankle in getting out of the charabanc, and was resting downstairs.
“Noise is a help sometimes,” admitted Hazel, who wondered not a little
why the head girl had come to talk to them that night, instead of
leaving them free to work in peace.
She did not have to wonder long. After a moment of hesitation Dora burst
out, “Why does Rhoda Fleming hate Dorothy Sedgewick so badly?”
“Mutual antagonism perhaps,” replied Hazel coolly. “Dorothy does not
seem particularly drawn to Rhoda, so they may have decided to agree in
not liking each other.”
“Don’t be flippant; I am out for facts, not fancies,” said the head girl
sharply. She paused as if in doubt; then making up her mind in a hurry,
she broke into impetuous speech. “I have found out that it was Rhoda who
struck Dorothy down on the hockey field. But I am not supposed to know,
and it is bothering me no end. I simply don’t know what I ought to do in
the matter, so I have come to talk it over with you, because you are
friends—Dorothy’s friends, I mean.”
“How did you find it out? Are you quite sure it is true?” gasped Hazel.
“It is a frightfully serious thing, really. Why, a blow like that might
have been fatal!”
“That is what makes me feel so bad about it,” said Dora. “I had a bath
after we came back from the match, and I went to my cubicle and lay down
for half-an-hour’s rest before tea. No one knew I was there except Miss
Groome; she understood that I was feeling a bit knocked out with all the
happenings, so she told me to go and get a little rest. I think I was
beginning to doze when I heard two girls, Daisy Goatby and Joan
Fletcher, come into the dorm, and they both came into Daisy’s cubicle,
which is next to mine. They were talking in low tones, and they seemed
very indignant about something; and I was going to call out and tell
them not to talk secrets, because I was there, when I heard Daisy say in
a very stormy tone that in future Rhoda Fleming might do her own dirty
work, for she had entirely washed her hands of the whole business, and
she did not intend to dance to Rhoda’s piping any more—no, not if next
week found her at the bottom of the Form. Then Joan, in a very troubled
fashion, asked if Daisy were quite sure—quite absolutely positive—that
Rhoda aimed at Dorothy’s head instead of at the ball. Daisy sobbed for a
minute in sheer rage, it seemed to me, and then she declared it was
Dorothy’s head that was aimed at. There was some more talking that I
could not hear, then some of the other girls came up, Joan went off to
her own cubicle, and that was the end of it.”
“Good gracious, what a shocking business!” cried Hazel, going rather
white, while Margaret shivered until her teeth chattered. “Dora, what
are you going to do?”
“What can I do?” cried the head girl, throwing up her hands with a
helpless gesture. “Suppose I went to the Head and made a statement, and
she called upon Daisy to own up to what she knew, it is more than likely
that Daisy would vow she never said anything of the sort. She would
declare she did not see Rhoda strike Dorothy, and in all she said Joan
would back her up. It would be two against one.”
“Daisy would speak the truth if she were pushed into a corner,” put in
Margaret, who had not spoken before.
“She might, and again she might not.” Dora’s tone was scornful. “For all
her size, Daisy is very much of a coward. Her position, too, would be so
unpleasant that really it would take a good lot of real courage to face
it. All the girls would point at her for telling tales, and Rhoda would
pose as a martyr, and get all the sympathy she desired.”
“What are you going to do, then?” asked Hazel.
“I don’t see that anything can be done, except to wait and to keep our
eyes open,” said Dora. “I wish you could find out what it is that
Dorothy has over Rhoda—that might help us a little. It will be rather
fun when this week’s marks come out if Daisy does go flop in her Form
position.”
“Dorothy will have scored then, even though her work may be hindered,”
said Margaret.