It pleased Rhoda to be quite kind, even friendly, to Dorothy, who did not approve the change, and was not disposed to profit by it.
Two days before the hockey match Rhoda, encountering Dorothy who was lacing her hockey boots, offered to help with her work.
“I can’t bear to see you slipping back week by week,” she said with patronizing kindness. “Of course you are new to things. There is that paper on chemistry that we have to do for to-morrow’s lab work—can I help you with that?”
Dorothy stared at her in surprise, but was prompt in reply. “No, thank you; I would rather do my work myself.”
“Yet you use cribs,” said Rhoda with an ugly smile.
Dorothy felt as if a cold hand had gripped her. “I do not!” she said quietly, forcing herself to keep calm.
Rhoda laughed, and there was a very unpleasant sound in her mirth. “Well, you don’t seem able to prove that you don’t, so what is the good of your virtuous pose? If your position drops again this week, don’t say I did not try to help you.”
The incident caused Dorothy to think furiously. She was sure that Rhoda had, somehow, a hand in her position dropping. Was it possible that she was boosting Joan Fletcher along in order to lower Dorothy, and so make it appear that there could not be smoke without a fire in the matter of that old book?
She broke into a sudden chuckle of laughter as she sat on the low form in the boot-room lacing up her second boot. Rhoda had departed, and she believed herself alone. Then along came Margaret, wanting to know what the joke was; and leaning back with her head against the wall and her boot laces in her hand, Dorothy told her of Rhoda’s kind offer, and the threat which followed.
“Bah! it is a fight, is it?” cried Margaret. “Well, let them rise above us week by week if they want to. But, mind you, Dorothy, we have got to keep our end up somehow. Hazel and I have been going through the marks—dissecting them, you know—and we find that both you and I have made our steady average week by week; we have not fallen back—it is the others who have pulled up. Hazel says she is pretty sure that Rhoda will pull above her next week. There is one comfort—it is awfully good for Miss Groome; and I am sure the poor thing looks as if she needs a little something to cheer her up, for she does seem so uncommonly miserable this term—all the fun is clean knocked out of her.”