CHAPTER XXIII

CLIMBING UP

By the middle of the next week Hester was playing regularly in her old position on the basketball team. Roberta Fish had dropped back into the second team with all the grace of the sweet-tempered girl she was.

"I'm only too glad she's come back," said Roberta, referring to Hester Grimes. "It's much more important that Central High should win that beautiful silver trophy than for _me_ to have the honor of playing on the champion team."

"You're a good sort, Roberta," said Bobby Hargrew, admiringly. "Now, I'd be _mad_ if they'd asked me to step down and let somebody take my place."

"No," said Laura. "You'd be loyal, too, Bobby."

"And that's the A. B. C. of athletics, child," said Nellie Agnew, remembering very clearly what the doctor had said to her weeks before on the subject.

"'A. B. C.,' indeed!" sniffed Bobby. "You make me feel like a primary kid again, I declare!"

Jess Morse began to laugh. "Some of these primary kids, as Bobby calls them, are pretty smart. Allison Mapes--you know her?--who teaches the first grade, was telling of a little Bohemian boy in her class. He is smart as a whip, but English is quite a paralyzing language to him. She asked him the other day:

"'Ivan, what is a calf?'

"And the boy answered: 'Missis, that's the child of a cow and the back of your leg!'"

When the laugh over this had subsided Laura spoke seriously. They were talking in one of the small offices of the school, having retired to discuss the forthcoming games.

"It isn't all plum cake and lemonade, girls, even to beat West High and Lumberport----"

"Oh, my!" croaked Bobby. "See what we did to West High last time without Hester."

"That was a fluke," declared the captain.

"Why, they're babies!" said Josephine Morse, confidently. "And Lumberport as well."

"Don't get the idea in your head that we are going to whip any team so easily. That's when we are going to lose," urged Laura. "Being too sure is as bad as being careless in your play."

"Now she is hitting _me_," grumbled her chum.

"Well, Jess, if the cap fits, put it on."

"But do let us encourage ourselves, Mother Wit," cried one of the twins. "Goodness knows, we need it."

"That's right," said her sister. "We've had _such_ bad luck!"

"Aw, she's a regular old croaker!" shouted Bobby, dancing up and down. "We are going to win every game from now on!"

"Hush!" exclaimed Laura. "We're making too much noise. Somebody will come and put us out."

"Nope. Nobody here but John, the janitor. Gee Gee's gone home, you bet. I wish those other girls would come and we could get down to business."

"You look out, Bobby. If you get black marks again maybe _you'll_ be taken off the team for the rest of the term."

"Oh, oh!" cried the irrepressible. "Don't say such a thing."

"That would be too mean!" cried Dora.

"Indeed it would!" added her sister.

They were all making a deal of noise. As Laura said, "one could scarcely hear one's self think." And noise was not allowed in the school building, whether in classes, or out. Suddenly, at the height of the revelry, there came a stern knock on the door. Behind the thick oak the startled girls heard a sharp voice exclaim:

"Young ladies!"

"Oh, gee!" gasped Bobby.

"Hush!" commanded Laura.

"Shucks! Somebody's fooling us," cried Bobby, springing to the door. "Who's there?" she shouted.

"It is me--Miss Carrington," said the muffled voice.

For a breath the other girls were stricken dumb when the name of the strict disciplinarian of the school was spoken. But it was Bobby who recovered her speech first, and she broke into a loud laugh.

"Go 'way!" she cried. "You can't fool us. If it was Gee Gee she would have said: 'It is I'!"

"Oh, my goodness! suppose it _should_ be Miss Carrington?" gasped Nellie, in horror.

But the sounds outside the door ceased. Bobby, after a trembling moment, snapped open the lock and unlatched the door. The corridor was empty. But in a moment Hester Grimes appeared from the stairway and approached the meeting place of the team.

"You said you wanted everybody here, Laura," she said. "But did you have Miss Carrington at your meeting?"

"Miss Carrington!" they shrieked in chorus.

"Yes. I just met her. And she had the funniest look on her face. What was the matter with her?" demanded Hester.

"Oh, my soul!" groaned Jess. "I can tell you what the matter is. Bobby just corrected Miss Carrington's English. What do you know about _that_?"

But the occasion was not one for laughter or joking now. That had surely been Miss Carrington at the door, and the reckless Bobby had called her "Gee Gee" to her face, and been saucy into the bargain!

"We're done for!" Dora Lockwood groaned. "Wait till assembly to-morrow. Bobby will be called out before the whole school."

"Oh! she'd never be mean enough for that!" almost wept Dorothy.

"But something dreadful will happen to Bobby," urged Nellie.

"She'll be forbidden after-hour athletics, as sure as shooting!" declared Jess Morse.

Bobby, for once, was stricken dumb. She saw in an instant all the horrid possibilities of her reckless speech. Barred from the team for the rest of the term would be the lightest punishment she could hope for.

"And Gee Gee is always lying in wait for a chance to spoil our athletics," wailed Lily Pendleton, who for once felt the sorrows of her fellows.

Hester wanted to know what it all meant, and they told her.

"She certainly _did_ look funny when I met her on the stairs," admitted the butcher's daughter. "And you told her she couldn't be herself because she said, 'It is me?' My! that must have been a shock to her. One of her pupils correcting Miss Carrington's use of the English language!"

"It isn't any laughing matter!" flared up Bobby.

"And I don't see that crying over it will help any," returned Hester, grimly.

The team as a whole, however, was worried a good deal by Bobby's "bad break." To be obliged to break in a new girl at Bobby's place would be almost ruinous now. Just having gotten the team into shape once more, it seemed an awful thing to contemplate.

But assembly passed the next morning without Mr. Sharp saying a word about Bobby. The session dragged on till closing time without Gee Gee's speaking to Bobby Hargrew. That very day East High was to come to play the girls of Central High on their court.

The uncertainty, however, made Bobby less sure in classes, and she came near to being held to make up her Latin. But she slipped through somehow and ran away from the school building as hard as she could run, for fear that Gee Gee would send for her at the last moment.

"Something's happened to her. She's had a change of heart. I'm afraid she isn't well," gasped Bobby, once safely in the dressing room of the gym. "She is _never_ going to overlook that awful break of mine--is she?"

"You'd better walk a chalk line from now to the end of the term," advised Jess. "If she ever _does_ get you on any other matter she will double your punishment. I believe she is ashamed to call you up for what you said to her yesterday, because you caught her using language unbecoming a purist."

"Be thankful, Bobby--and be good," advised Laura. "You have certainly escaped 'by the skin of your teeth,' as the prophet has it. No, that is not slang; it is Scripture. And do, _do_ be good for the rest of this half."

"Oh, I'll be a lamb--a little, woolly lamb," groaned Bobby. "You see if I'm not!"

The girls of Central High played a splendid game of basketball that afternoon. They beat the East High team fairly and squarely, and their winning this game put them up a notch in the series. They took East High's place as Number 2. There was still the Lumberport and Keyport teams to whip before Central High could win the trophy.