CHAPTER XX--INTER-CLASS RIVALRY

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.