“I wish we could work harder,” grumbled Dorothy. “Oh, this hockey match is a nuisance! Just think what a lot of time it wastes.”
“Don’t you believe it, old thing,” said Margaret. “It is hockey, and the gym, and things of that sort that make it possible for us to swot at other things. It makes me mad to hear the piffle folks talk about the time at school that is wasted on games. If the people who talk such rot had ever worked at books as we have to work they would very soon change their tune.”
“Oh! I know all that.” Dorothy’s tone was more than a trifle impatient, for she was feeling quite fed-up with things. “My complaint is that hockey makes me so tired; I am not fit for anything but to go to sleep afterwards.”
“Just so. And isn’t that good for you?” Margaret wagged her head with an air of great understanding. “Before I came here—when I was working for the scholarship—I should as soon have thought of standing on my head in the street as wasting my precious time on games. The result was that I was always having bad headaches, and breaking down over my work; and I used to feel so wretched, too, that life seemed hardly worth living. Indeed, I wonder that I ever pulled through to win the scholarship.”
“All the same, this match is an awful nuisance,” grumbled Dorothy; and then she was suddenly ashamed of her ill-temper and her general tendency to grouch.
CHAPTER XI
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.