PLAYING THE GAME
It was a wonderful relief to Dorothy to have her burden of responsibility lifted. She could give her whole mind to her work now, without having to suffer from that miserable see-saw of doubt and fear about her right to work for the Lamb Bursary.
So good was it, too, that she had no longer to pretend to be cheerful. She could be as happy as the other girls now, and the week that followed was one of the happiest she had ever spent at the Compton School. As was natural, her work gained a tremendous advantage from her care-free condition, and when the marks for the week were posted up on the board she found that she was top again, a long way ahead of Rhoda this time, while Hazel and Margaret were lower still.
“It looks—it really does—as if Dorothy Sedgewick was going to cart off the Mutton Bone,” said Daisy Goatby with a tremendous yawn, as she came sauntering up to the board to have a look at the week’s marks. Dorothy had already gone upstairs, and for the moment there was no one in the lecture hall except Daisy and Joan Fletcher.
“There is one thing to be said for her—she will have earned it,” answered Joan. “Dorothy must work like a horse to get in front of Rhoda—and she hasn’t had Rhoda’s chances, either, seeing that she only came here last autumn. I think she is the eighth wonder of the world. It makes me tired to look at her.”
“Won’t Rhoda just be in a wax when she sees how much she is down?” Daisy gurgled into delighted laughter, her plump cheeks fairly shaking with glee.
“I don’t mind what sort of a wax she is in, if it does not occur to her to coach us into getting ahead of Dorothy,” said Joan with a yawn. She was tired, for she had been playing tennis every available half-hour right through the day, and felt much more inclined for bed than for study. But she was in the Sixth—she was, moreover, a candidate for the Lamb Bursary—so it was up to her to make a pretence of study at night, even if the amount done was not worth talking about.
“I don’t think Rhoda will try that old game on again—at least I hope she won’t,” said Daisy, as the two turned away to mount the stairs to the study. “I never had to work harder in my life than at that time. I expected to have nervous breakdown every day, for the pace was so tremendous. If she had kept it up, I believe I should have stood a chance of winning the Mutton Bone—that is to say, if Dorothy had not been in the running. Rhoda is a downright good coach; she has a way of making you work whether you feel like it or not. The trouble is that she gets tired of it so soon. She dropped us all in a hurry, just as I was beginning to feel I had got it in me to be really great at getting on.”
“I know why she dropped us.” Joan shrugged her shoulders and glanced round in a suddenly furtive fashion, as the two went side by side up the broad stairs, and the June sunshine streamed in through the open windows.
“Why?” sharply demanded Daisy, scenting a mystery, and keen to hear what it was.