the fringe of her parasol with great apparent interest; "but of course
I knew your invitation was not to be taken too seriously."
"Oh, bother!" the young man cried, slashing viciously at the head of a
late-blooming daisy. "Why do you always insist on quarrelling with me?"
"Are we really quarrelling?" she laughed back with her most exasperating
lightness of manner. "How delightful! If there is one thing that I enjoy
more than I do tennis, it is a good quarrel."
"Tennis!" Granton retorted, the last shreds of his patience giving way.
"It must be allowed that you can quarrel better than you can play. No
girl," he went on, with increasing acerbity, "can ever really play
tennis: she only plays at playing it; and it spoils any man's game to
play with her. For my part, I cannot see why they are to be admitted to
the tournament at all."
"_Merci!_" exclaimed Mistress Betty, stopping in the sun-dappled way to
make him a profound courtesy. "Now I know what your true sentiments are,
and how much your invitation was worth. Thank you for nothing, Mr. Nat
Granton. I wish you luck of your partner,--when you get one. It is a
cruel shame that by the rules of the tournament it must be a girl!"
And before Granton was able to reply or knew what she intended, pretty
Miss Mork, with her tripping gait, her bright eyes, ugly name, and all,
had whisked through a turnstile and was half-way across the lawn of the
cottage where her particular bosom-friend Miss Dora Mosely was spending
the summer.
II.
While Granton continued his perturbed way down the lovely village street
to the Elm House, which for the time being was the home of a pleasant
colony of summer idlers seeking rest and diversion in Maugus, Miss Betty
flitted lightly over the lawn and joined her friend, whom she found
reposing in a hammock swung under the cool veranda.
"Oh, Dolly," was her breathless salutation, "I've got the awfullest
thing to do! But I'll do it, or perish in the attempt!"
"Halloo, Betty!" was Miss Mosely's response and greeting; "how like a
whirlwind you are! What is the matter? What have you got to do?"
"Beat Mr. Granton at tennis in the tournament."
"You and Mr. Bradford, you mean?"
"No; I mean all by myself,--in a single. I sha'n't play in the double at
all, if I can get out of it without sneaking."
"What in the world has happened to bring you to this desperate frame of
mind?"
"Well, Dolly, the fact is, Mr. Granton has been making himself
particularly odious because I wouldn't throw over Frank Bradford to
play with him, and--"
"I told you," her friend interrupted judicially, examining the toe of
her slipper with much interest and satisfaction, "that you'd be sorry
you agreed to play with Frank."
"But I'm not sorry," protested the other, with spirit. "Do you think I'm
so bound up in Nat Granton that I can't get on without him? If he wanted
me to play with him why didn't he ask me, instead of taking it for
granted, in that insufferably conceited way of his, that I'd stand about
and wait on his lordship's leisure? Oh, I'll pay him off! I shall go
over to grandmother's every blessed day from now until the tournament
and practise, so as to take down his top-loftical airs."
At which exhibition of spite and determination Miss Mosely fell to
laughing, and said Betty's manner suggested pickled limes, which in turn
reminded her of the chocolate-creams they had at boarding-school, and
that brought to mind some particularly delicious marshmallows which had
been saved until Betty should come over; and she added that it would be
a very good plan to go into the house and devour them.
Over the flabby and inane confection with which the two friends regaled
themselves, it was arranged that Dora should devote herself with
Machiavelian shrewdness to bringing about a reconciliation between Frank
Bradford and his betrothed, Flora Sturtevant, whose quarrel had led to
the invitation which had involved Betty in her present difficulties. In
the meantime, Mistress Mork was to give herself with great assiduity to
the practice of cutting, volleying, and such devices of skill or cunning
as would make possible the realization of her bold plan of conquering
Mr. Granton in the tennis tournament, over which all the young people
were just then much excited.
These conclusions were not reached without much digression,
circumlocution, and irrelevant discourse upon various matters, with a
good deal of consideration of the dress which would be both convenient
and becoming for the important games.
"I have almost a mind to try a divided skirt," Betty said thoughtfully.
"George saw one at a tournament in England, and it could be fixed so as
not-- Oh, Dora, if George were only here! He knows all the new English
rules and cuts, and all sorts of quirks. Oh, why did you have to quarrel
with him just now? Now I shall lose my tennis just because you drove
him away from Maugus."
"Why, Betty Mork! You said yourself you wouldn't stand his lordly ways;
you know you did."
"Of course," returned her friend illogically; "but we both agreed that
you'd have to make up with him some time; and I didn't know then that I
should want him."
"But what could I do?" demanded Dora, divided between a sense of being
deserted by her friend and a desire to have difficulties smoothed over.
"Any girl with decent pride would have _had_ to send George away. You
know how I hated to do it."
"But you might send for him now."
"Oh, I couldn't. That would be too awfully humiliating. I wonder you can
propose it."
"Men are so dreadful," sighed Betty.
The two forlorn victims of masculine perversity pensively ate
marshmallows in silence for a moment, revolving, no doubt, the most
profound reflections upon the vanity of human affairs.
"I'll tell you what I will do," Betty said at length, reflectively.
"I'll write to George and make him visit grandmother. He hasn't been
there for a year, to stay; and, as grandmother says, she 'admires to
have him.' I'll tell him if he'll stay there, out of sight, I think I
can fix things with you."
"Oh, you delicious, darling hypocrite!" exclaimed her friend, embracing
her rapturously. "You are a perfect treasure, Bet! I'll do anything to
help you,--anything. I've been perfectly wretched ever since George went
away; but of course I couldn't say so, if I'd died."
III.
"So you are not going to play with Bradford, after all?" Nat Granton
said, flinging himself on the turf at Miss Mork's feet as she sat
watching the tennis-players practising for the tournament.
"No," she answered. "He and Flora have recovered from their temporary
alienation, and I was generous and took myself out of the way."
"Will you play with me?"
"Thank you; no. I shall not go into any team; and in any case, I know
too well your sentiments on the subject of girls' playing to trespass
on your good nature."
"Then I shall not play," he said, rather crossly.
"And pray what do I care if you don't?"
"It would be polite to pretend to, at any rate."
"'The slightest approach to a false pretence
Was never among my crimes;'"
she quoted, twirling her gay parasol swiftly on its handle. "Do see Tom
Carruth serve. That cut is my despair."
"It is simple enough to return," Granton answered, "if you know when it
is coming: you've only to run up."
"Yes, but how is one to know when it is coming?"
"One always can tell when I give it," he replied, laughing, "for I
always fling my head back."
There came a wicked sparkle of intelligence into Betty's eyes as she
made a mental note of this confession for future use. Then the long
lashes fell demurely over her cheeks as she gathered together her
belongings and rose.
"I must go over to grandmother's," she said. "Never spend the summer
near your grandmother's, Mr. Granton: she may be ill and absorb all your
spare time."
And away sped the deceitful damsel, on nefarious schemes intent, to play
tennis with her cousin George, who had responded with celerity to her
summons. She was really improving with a good deal of rapidity. She had
been a sad romp in her day, and every prank of her tomboy girlhood stood
her in good stead now. Every fence and tree she had climbed, to the
unspeakable horror and scandal of elderly spinster aunts, every game of
ball for which she had been lectured by an eminently proper governess,
every stolen fishing-expedition and hoydenish race whose improprieties
my lady buried with overwhelming scorn in the oblivion of the past, had
been a preparation for the struggle into which she now threw herself
with the whole force of mind and body.
Her cousin George Snow, who was sufficiently fond of his mischievous
cousin, and duly grateful for her supposed good offices in arranging the
difficulties between himself and Dora, was an invaluable ally. He was
taken into full confidence, and embraced the project most heartily.
Granton was a right nice fellow, he admitted, but it certainly would not
hurt him to be taken down a peg. Snow had just returned from England,
where he had seen some of the finest tennis-players perform.
"You play too near the net," he said. "All American players do. Play
well back, and above everything, put all your force into the return."
"But I shall send the ball out of the court," Betty protested.
"You mustn't. Drive it down as hard as ever you can. Strength--or rather
swiftness--tells; if your service is swift enough it is worth all
the fancy cuts in the world. The Renshaws make half their points by
volleying from the service-line, and the rest by swift service."
"Swiftness is the word," Betty returned gayly. "Anything more?"
"Get used to striking back-handed; don't try to turn your thumb down;
make a business of an out-and-out back-handed, wrong-side-of-the-racquet
stroke."
How sound all this advice was, tennis players may determine for
themselves; but it certainly served its purpose well. Betty was a
promising pupil. Morning, noon, and night she played, working with an
assiduity which nearly fagged her cousin out.
"You are plucky, Betty," he declared one day. "I'm afraid for my own
laurels. And by the way, am I to be allowed to be present at this great
tournament in which you are to cover yourself and your sex with glory?"
"Oh, yes; you are to challenge Mr. Granton if he beats me,--though he
sha'n't! Anybody can challenge the winner, you know. That's a provision
I had put in myself to cover my own case."
"Poor Granton!" George laughed. "Little does he dream of the awful
humiliation in store for him."
Betty set her lips together and nodded her head in a determined way.
"George," she declared, with tragic earnestness, "if I get beaten I
shall go straight home and die of--"
"Baffled stubbornness," interpolated her cousin.
"Thwarted vengeance," suggested Dora.
"No, of righteous indignation. Come, one set more before we drive back
to Maugus. Only two days left, you know."
IV.
The morning of the second day of the tournament dawned clear, and what
was quite as much to the purpose, unusually cool. A little breeze from
the northwest crept over the hills,--just enough to fan the heated
players without disturbing the flight of the balls; while to make the
weather perfect for tennis, by ten o'clock a light veil of clouds had
comfortably covered the sun, cutting off all troublesome rays.
"It is a perfect day," Betty remarked to Dora, as they took their places
among the spectators. "I've put my things ready so I can dress in two
minutes. Here comes George."
The affair was an event in quiet Maugus. It had been talked about as the
most important event could not have been discussed anywhere but in the
idle hours of summer leisure, and had come to be regarded as quite the
event of the season. The tennis-court was laid out near the Elm House,
and was surrounded by superb old trees that in all the slow years of
their growth had never over-arched a prettier sight than that afternoon
showed, with its groups of nice old ladies, and charming young damsels
in all the picturesque bravery of their nineteenth-century costume.
The contest of the first day of the tournament had disposed of all the
four-handed games but the final match, and the afternoon of the second
day was left free for the single games. Granton had entered for the
latter, and was looked upon as the probable victor. He won easily his
first rubber, and came over to where Betty sat to wait his turn again.
"It is lucky for me, Mr. Snow," he said to George, who in the happiness
of full reconciliation sat by Dora's side, "that you are not playing,
or I shouldn't have the ghost of a chance."
"I'm resting on the laurels I won last year," was the light response.
"It's far easier than to risk one's reputation and defend it."
"Are you so sure of winning, as it is, Mr. Granton?" asked Betty coolly.
"Sure? Of course not; but I have hopes now, which I shouldn't indulge
if Mr. Snow, with the glory of his victories at Newport last year, were
counted in."
"I wish you success," she said, with a certain trace of satire in her
tone. "Isn't Mr. Howard playing remarkably well to-day? What a splendid
volley? That gives him the game."
"Sets: two, love," called the scorer, and Mr. Howard's victory was
saluted with applause, which Mistress Betty took great satisfaction in
leading.
"You seem to be greatly pleased at Howard's good luck," Granton
observed, remembering that when his success had been clapped, just
before, Miss Mork had refrained from lending a hand.
"Why shouldn't I be?" she returned. "I've bet him a pair of gloves he
wins."
"What will you bet me I lose?" demanded he, not especially pleased at
any sort of understanding between the young lady before him and Howard.
"Anything you like."
"I should like nothing so much as--"
"As what?"
"No; upon reflection I don't think I dare mention it," Granton said
coolly, looking at her with an expression in his big brown eyes which
made her flush in spite of herself.
"Don't be impudent," she replied. "That is my province."
"Time!" called the umpire, a little later. "Howard and Granton,
concluding set."
"Wish me luck," Granton murmured, bending toward Betty as he rose.
"I'm sure I do, for my own sake," she responded, with an ambiguity he
afterward had reason to understand.
"What shall I do if Mr. Howard beats him?" Betty said to George and
Dora, as the set began. "There'd be no fun playing him instead of Mr.
Granton."
"Oh, Howard hasn't the ghost of a chance," George responded
reassuringly. "You are all right, Bet, if you don't get nervous."
But Betty did get nervous. The color came and went in her cheeks almost
as swiftly as the flying balls were thrown, whose skilful service and
returns soon proved Snow to be right in asserting that Howard had no
chance against his antagonist.
"Oh, George," she whispered, in an agony of apprehension, "can I do it?
Won't he beat me? It would be too horrible to challenge him and then
fail!"
"Do it?" retorted her cousin; "of course you can do it! See that short
serve. That's what's breaking Howard up: it's easy for you to return if
you'll run up to it. His swift service doesn't begin to be as good as
yours."
"Love set," called the scorer; and as Betty looked at the supple,
muscular figure of Nat Granton while the players exchanged courts, her
fears almost overcame her resolve.
"My heart is thumping against my very boot-heels, Dolly," she confided
to her friend. "It's no sort of use."
"Are you going to give up?" demanded Dora curiously, and perhaps a
little tauntingly.
"Give up!" cried Mistress Mork stoutly. "Do I ever give up? I'll die
first! But I do wish he wouldn't get so many love games! It's dreadfully
discouraging."
Granton was, in truth, having everything his own way. Howard, although a
good player, had somehow lost his coolness, and was soon demoralized by
a peculiar short, cutting service, of which his opponent had complete
mastery, and which he was unable to return. His play became wild and
uneven, and the contest was quickly decided against him.
The master of ceremonies came forward with the announcement that the
prize racquet belonged to Mr. Nathaniel Granton, but that, according
to the provisions of the tournament, any person had now a right to
challenge the winner to play for the prize, by the best two games in
three.
There was a rustle, and then a pause, as many eyes were turned toward
George Snow, who had won in the Newport games the summer before. But
that gentleman sat quiet in his place, a smile of amusement stealing
over his comely features as Dora said, in the most tragic of whispers,--
"Oh, Betty, how can you?"
But Betty, her head thrown a trifle back, and the color flaming hotly
into her face, rose with a charming mixture of dignity and shyness, and
walked, before them all, straight up to the judges.
"I challenge the winner to a match," she said, steadily enough, although
she confided to Dora afterward that she felt as if every word had to be
dragged out by main force. "I should like five minutes to change my
dress."
Granton uttered a low, sharp whistle, and doffed his cap.
"All right," the master of ceremonies returned. "Be as quick as you
can."
"I'll not keep you waiting long," she assured him, and turned to beckon
Dora to her.
As the two girls disappeared into the hotel, the bustle and chatter
began again with renewed vigor, and swelled and buzzed in the liveliest
fashion. Here was a genuine sensation for Maugus. Betty was too lovely
and too great a favorite with the men wholly to escape the censure of
the young ladies, who now had a string of pretty things to say of her
boldness and presumption. But the gentlemen rallied to a man in her
support, and, by the time she reappeared, public opinion, as represented
by the spectators of the tournament, if not wholly in her favor, was so
in outward expression.
She was dressed in a dark-blue jersey of silk, which fitted her in
that perfect combination only possible with a faultless figure and an
irreproachable jersey; and below that a skirt of navy-blue flannel
fell in straight plaits to her ankles, where one caught, as she moved,
occasional glimpses of a crimson stocking, the exact shade of her flat
sash and of the close wing-tip in her trig little blue silk cap. There
was nothing of the nature of tags and ends about her costume. Her hair
was closely coiled, and even her ear-rings had been removed. The crimson
handkerchief about her white throat was fastened into its place so
securely as scarcely to be less smooth when the playing was over than
when the first game began.
She was very sober,--so grave, indeed, that George went over to her just
as she took her place, to say some absurd thing to make her laugh.
"Don't be nervous," he added, having succeeded in his object so far as
to call a fleeting smile to her face. "And don't look as if assisting at
your own obsequies. You are all right, if you'll only think so."
"Will she do it?" Dora asked anxiously, as he took his seat again.
"I'm sure I don't know," he answered. "I've told her she will, and I
hope so; but it isn't going to be so easy."
They talked of that tennis tournament for many a long day in Maugus.
Opinion was divided at first as to the probable result. There was a
quiet concentration in Betty's manner which soon began to awake
confidence in her ultimate success, although at first she lost. Even the
most envious of the girls soon found themselves applauding every lucky
hit she made; and Betty, whose senses were keenly alive that day, felt
the stimulating consciousness that the general sympathy was with her.
She threw her whole soul into her playing, every point she lost arousing
her to new exertions.
"By Jove! Dora," George said, "Granton's bound to get a lesson. Betty's
blood is getting up. I'm convinced now that she'll win, and I'll bet you
the gloves that she beats him a love set before she's done."
Dora was too excited to answer him. She hoped he might be right, but
just now Betty was losing. She had been beaten three games out of five,
and the present one, on Granton's service, was going hard against her.
Granton was harassing her with his short cut, which fell before her
racquet reached it nearly every time.
"What's got into her?" George muttered uneasily. "Ah, that was better.
Good return."
And he led the hand-clapping which greeted the difficult stroke by
which Betty brought the score up to deuce. The game went against her,
however, and soon after, the set.
"I'll do it, George," Betty said under her breath, as she passed him in
changing courts. "Don't be discouraged. The Mork blood is up."
"It's all on his cuts, Bet. Run up to them. Watch his service, and you
can tell when they are coming. Nat could never serve a decent swift
ball."
Betty nodded and went on to her place.
"Play!" called Granton.
Watching him, his opponent noticed him throw his head back, and
remembered his telling her that he always betrayed his cutting. She ran
toward the net as the ball came down, and returned it like a cannonball.
"She's got it!" cried Snow, with great glee, in his excitement calling
so loudly that both the players heard him. "She's all right now. Oh,
that's beautiful!"
Granton tried a couple of swift balls and faulted them both.
"Love; thirty," called the scorer.
Another cut; again cleverly intercepted; then a fault and an easy,
round-hand service.
"Love; game."
The applause was really quite tremendous.
"They are all against me," Granton observed to Betty, handing her the
balls over the net and laughing rather ruefully. "Public opinion would
be positively outraged if you should fail."
"I've no intention of failing, thank you," she returned, with spirit;
and away she swept to her position. "Play!"
Granton was himself on his mettle, yet he did not play his best.
He could not fully recover from his surprise at the style of his
adversary's play. The swiftness of her service and returns was so
different from what was expected of a girl that he was scarcely on
his guard against it up to the very end. He felt the sympathy of the
spectators, too, to be against him, and this was not without its
influence. He lost the set, and with it, by an unfortunate chance, his
good nature.
"Sets, one all," the scorer announced; and something in the saucy toss
of Betty's lovely head, as, flushed and panting, she stood talking with
George and Dora, jarred upon her lover's nerves with sudden irritation.
An unreasonable madness took possession of him. How much was wounded
vanity, it might not be easy to say; but under the circumstances, with
all his mates grinning at his failure, it was not at all strange that
his feelings were not wholly placid. His play in the third and decisive
set became rash and excited. He lost his head a little, and before he
fairly knew how it happened the score was called on Betty's service:--
"Games; five, love"
"Good!" was George Snow's comment. "I told you she'd beat a love set
before she was done.--Oh, keep your head, Bet!"
Betty delivered a ball swift as a bullet and just clearing the net.
"Fifteen; love."
A fault, and then another swift ball, which skimmed like a swallow over
the net and struck the ground only to cling to it in a swift roll.
"Thirty; love."
The next ball was beaten back and forth until Granton dashed it to the
ground at Betty's very feet.
"Thirty; fifteen."
The excitement was at its height. Even those who did not appreciate the
finer points of the play caught the interest and somehow understood
pretty accurately how matters stood, and were as earnest as the rest.
Small-talk was forgotten, heads were craned forward, and all eyes were
fixed upon the players. Betty grasped her racquet by the extreme end of
its handle, and held the ball as high above her head as she could reach.
"Play!"
She struck it with all her force.
"Forty; fifteen," was the scorer's call; and Nat Granton understood that
only one stroke lay between him and defeat by a love set.
George Snow deliberately turned away his face.
"I never supposed I could be such a consummate fool," he said afterward,
"but I positively could not look at your last service, Bet. I felt as if
the whole universe were at stake."