“Jan, if you go in, and get a half-way decent score, and Phyl does, too, we won’t be so badly licked after all,” Gladys said.
Janet nodded. There was a lump in her throat and she could not trust herself to speak.
“If I don’t stop trembling, my arrows will land over there among the faculty,” Phyl pointed to the right of the target, where the faculty sat out of range of any but the wildest shot.
Daphne looked at her, and saw that she really was trembling.
“Well, goodness knows I love all the faculty at Hilltop,” she said in her peculiar drawl. “But if you must shoot one of them, please choose Miss Jenks, for I haven’t my history prepared for tomorrow.”
The one thing that Phyllis needed was to laugh, and she did heartily, with the result that when she took her place at the tape, her nerves were steadied, and her thoughts were on Daphne’s last remark. She could see Miss Jenks out of the corner of her right eye. She hardly gave the target a thought, until her arrow was in her bow.
Her total score was five, for though she did some fancy shooting, around the legs of the target, only two of her arrows scored.
She came back to the girls, a little crestfallen.
“You mean thing!” Daphne said, “you made two more than I did.”
Phyllis smiled in spite of herself.