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.