At last Miss Gatehead called order, and the dripping candidates retired from their water carnival to await the judging. The scores were rapidly added up, and the result was announced.
"Winona Woodward and Elsie Parton equal. They will therefore swim the length of the bath to decide the championship."
Planks and tubs were hastily cleared away from the field of action, and the rival candidates started on their final contest. The sympathies of the gallery went strongly with Winona; the girls wanted their Games Captain to win, and they cheered her vigorously. But Winona was tired, Elsie Parton was lithe and active, and had made fast swimming her specialty. Winona did her sporting best, but by the middle of the bath Elsie had distanced her, and reached the winning post a whole length ahead.
There was dead silence from the girls in the gallery. Their Captain had failed, and they did not mean to applaud her opponent. Winona, looking upwards, saw the popular feeling in their faces. All her generous spirit rose in revolt. She was standing close to Miss Bishop, Miss Gatehead and Miss Medland, and therefore it was certainly a breach of school etiquette for her to do what she did, but acting on the impulse of the moment she shouted: "Cheer, you slackers! Three cheers for Elsie Parton!" and waving her hand as a signal, led off the "Hip-hip-hip hurrah!" A very volume of sound followed, and the roof rang as Miss Bishop presented the winner with the cup for the Championship.
"Thanks awfully, Winona!" said Elsie, as the girls walked away to the dressing-rooms. "I'm afraid I've disappointed the school—but I did want to win!"
"Of course you did—and why shouldn't you? I hope I can take a beating in a sporting way! I think I made them ashamed of themselves. Fair play and no favoritism is the tradition of this school, and I mean to have no nasty cliquey feeling in it so long as I'm Games Captain, or my name's not Winona Woodward! That's the law of the Medes and Persians!"
CHAPTER XX
The Red Cross Hospital
Winona received constant letters from Percy in the trenches "somewhere in France," all, of course, carefully censored. They had arranged a cryptogram before he left England, however, and by its aid he was able to tell her the name of the place near which he was fighting. It was a tremendous excitement for her when his letters arrived to fetch her key to the cryptogram and reckon out the magic little word that let her know his whereabouts. She would find the spot on the big war-map that hung in the dining-room and would mark it with a miniature flag, feeling in closer touch with him now she knew exactly where he was located. She kept a special album in which she placed photos of him in khaki, all his letters and postcards, and any newspaper cuttings that concerned his regiment. The book was already half full; she looked it over almost daily, and kept it as, at present, her greatest treasure.