If Eve Sitz had been outside of the schoolhouse tower, being held by the
girls all of this time, she must certainly have been by now at the point
of exhaustion, and so must they.
But Eve had dropped just right, had caught the wire with her gloved
hands just as she had expected to, and then swung down and hung from the
steel strand for a few seconds to get her breath.
Nellie and Bobby, leaning out of neighboring windows, cheered her on.
"Hurrah, girls!" declared the irrepressible. "She's going to do it.
There she goes--hand under hand!"
"Oh, if she doesn't slip," wailed Nellie.
"She's not going to slip," cried Bobby. "Hurrah! She's on the roof."
Once on the main building Eve did not waste time. She ran to the door,
which she knew would be open, and so darted down the stairs to the
corridor out of which the tower stairway opened. There was the key in
the lock as they had expected, and in a few moments she was calling the
other four girls down.
"My goodness!" exclaimed Nellie, kissing Eve when she reached the foot
of the stairs. "Aren't you just the brave, brave girl! And whatever
should we have done without you?"
"I guess one of the others would have done the same had I not first
thought of it," returned Eve, modestly.
"Hush!" exclaimed Laura, suddenly. "I hear somebody."
A door opened below, and then somebody came up stairs. The girls crowded
back into the corner and waited.
"I know that step," whispered Jess.
"Fee, fi, fo, fum!" murmured Bobby.
"And well may you say it is your 'foe,' Bobby," giggled Jess. "It's Miss
Carrington."
"Never!" gasped Nell.
"Yes, it is. I am sure," agreed Laura.
"Oh, dear! if she catches us here we'll have to tell where we have been
and all about it," groaned Eve.
"And demerits to work off to-morrow," moaned Bobby.
"Back into the stairway and keep still," whispered Laura.
They all crowded back. Miss Carrington came along the gloomy corridor
and entered a classroom. She did not turn the corner.
"Good! Now let's creep down and make our escape," whispered Bobby.
"But not by the front door. She came in that way."
"But the other doors will be locked--both the boys' and ours," urged
Jess.
"I know the way out through the basement," spoke Bobby, with
determination. "I can open John's door. Come on."
So, at the very moment Prettyman Sweet tried the basement door, the
girls on whom he had played his trick were about to come out. Purt was
scared and ran away. Later, when he escaped from Margit, the Gypsy girl,
and ran to the foot of the tower stairs, Purt was scared again.
He found the door open and the girls gone. Who could have released them?
He slunk home in the darkness, taking the back alleys instead of Whiffle
Street, and the next day he scarcely dared go to school for fear the
girls had found out who played the trick on them.
But Laura and her mates all thought that either John, the janitor, or
one of the teachers had chanced to close the tower door and lock it.
And, as they had been where they were forbidden to go, they said very
little about their fright and anxiety.
But Eve was quite a heroine among them. The girl from the farm was a
deal more muscular than most of her mates; perhaps no girl at Central
High could have climbed out of that tower window and worked her way down
the wire in just that manner.
And Eve was showing herself, as time went on, to be the best girl at the
broad jump and at putting the twelve-pound shot, too. Lou Potter, of the
senior class, did well; but after a time she seemed to have reached her
limit in both the jumping and shot-putting.
Then it was that Eve took a spurt and went ahead. She left all other
competitors but Lou far behind.
Mrs. Case did not approve of inter-class competition in athletics; but
the managing committee of the June meet had made such competition
necessary to a degree. The upper classes of Central High had to choose
their champions, and those champions in the foot races, from the
100-yard dash to the quarter-mile, had to compete the first week in June
to arrange which should represent the school on the big day.
In other trials it was the same--broad jump, shot-putting, relay race
teams, and all the rest. There was developed in the freshman class a
sprinter who almost bested Bobby Hargrew at first; but the freshmen had
little, after all, to do when the big day came.
The main contestants for athletic honors were bound to be drawn from the
junior and sophomore classes. It was a fact that the present senior
class of Central High had not been as imbued with the spirit of
after-hour athletics, or with loyalty to the school, as had the younger
classes.
And the seniors had awakened too late to the importance of leaving a
good record in athletics behind them when they were graduated. There was
not a girl in the class the equal of Mary O'Rourke, or Celia Prime, who
had been graduated the year before.
Lou Potter, however, had many supporters, not alone among her own class.
The freshies and sophs of course were jealous of the prominence of the
juniors in athletics, so they centered their loyalty upon Lou.
Eve could do nothing that Lou Potter couldn't do! That was the cry, and
the feeling ran quite high for a while. Besides, another thing came to
make Eve rather unpopular with a certain class of girls.
"Touch Day"--that famous occasion when candidates for membership in the
M. O. R.'s were chosen--came in May, and Eve was one of the lucky girls
to receive the magic "touch." The fact that she had not been attending
Central High a year aroused bitter feeling, although Eve was a junior in
good standing.
"Say!" cried Bobby Hargrew, "if they had kicked about _me_ being an M.
O. R. there would have been some sense in it. For I never really thought
I'd arrive at such an honor."
For Bobby had really been drawn as a member of the secret society, and
she never ceased to be surprised at the fact. But this school
year--especially since early spring--Bobby Hargrew had been much
changed. Not that she was not cheerful, and full of fun; but she had
settled down to better work in her classes, and there was a steadiness
about her that had been missing in the old Bobby Hargrew.
They were talking this change over one evening around the Belding dinner
table.
"Bobby wouldn't be herself if she got too strait-laced," remarked
Chetwood. "That's the main good thing about her--the ginger in her."
"Chetwood!" exclaimed his mother, admonishingly. "You speak of the girl
as though she were a horse--or a dog. 'Ginger' indeed!"
"Well, Little Mum," said her big son. "That's exactly what I mean. She's
no namby-pamby, Miss Sissy kind of a girl; but a good fellow----"
"I cannot allow you to talk that way about one of your young lady
friends," declared Mrs. Belding, with heat. "I am surprised, Chetwood."
Mr. Belding began to chuckle, and she turned on him now with some
exasperation.
"James!" she said, warmly. "I believe you support these children in
their careless use of English, and in their other crimes against the
niceties of our existence. Chet is as boisterous and rough as--as a
street boy. And Laura uses most shocking language at times, I declare."
"Oh, Mother Mine! why drag me into it?" laughed Laura, while her father
added:
"Isn't 'crimes' a rather strong word in this instance, Mother?"
"I do not care!" cried the good lady, much disturbed. "Chetwood uses
language that I know my mother would never have allowed at Her table.
And Laura is so taken up with these dreadful athletics that she cares
nothing for the things which used to interest me when I was a girl. She
really doesn't like to pour tea for me Wednesday afternoons."
"I admit it," said Laura, _sotto voce_.
"Do you blame her?" added Chet, grumblingly.
"Thank goodness! I was brought up differently," declared Mrs. Belding,
sternly. "We girls were not allowed to do such awful things-even in
private--as you do, Laura, in your gymnasium----"
"Hear! hear!" cried Father Belding, finally rapping on the table with
the handle of his knife. "I must say a word here. Mother, you are too
hard on the young folks."
"No I am not, James," said the good lady, bridling.
"You force me to say something that may hurt your feelings; but I
believe you have forgotten it. You complain of Laura's athletics and
gymnasium work. Don't you see that it is an escape valve for the
overflow of animal spirits that the girls of our generation, Mother,
missed?"
"I deny that the girls of _my_ day possessed such 'animal spirits,' as
you call them," declared Mrs. Belding, vehemently.
"You force me," said Mr. Belding, gravely, yet with a twinkle in his
eyes, "to prove my case. Children! did I ever tell you about the first
view I had of your dear mother?"
"No, Pop! Tell us," urged Chet, who kept on eating despite his interest
in the discussion.
"Mr. Belding!" gasped his wife, suddenly. "What are you----"
"Sorry, my dear; you force me to it," said her husband, with continued
gravity. "But the first sight I ever had of your mother, children, was
when she was six or seven years old. I was working for old Mr. Cummings,
whose business I finally bought out, and I came to your mother's house
on an errand."
"James!" cried Mrs. Belding. "I cannot allow you to tell that foolish
thing. It--it is disgraceful."
"It is indeed," admitted her husband, nodding. "But if you and your
school girl friends had been as much devoted to athletics as Laura and
her little friends, I doubt if you would have needed the front stairs
bannisters as an escape valve for your animal spirits.
"For, children," added Mr. Belding, as his wife, her face very rosy, got
up to come around the table to him, "my first view of your mother was
her coming down stairs at express train speed, a-straddle of the
bannisters!"
Mrs. Belding reached him then, and any further particulars of this
"disgraceful" story, were smothered promptly. But Laura and Chet enjoyed
immensely the fact that--once upon a time, at least--there had been some
little element of tomboyishness in their mother's character.