“Secrets! Rot!” laughed Josy. “Come and push, you two kids!” she called again. “It’s not fair to leave this for the team to do; they’ll need every jolly scrap of strength they’ve got for this afternoon.”
“If you mean us,” said Sybil, turning and surveying the breathless quartette with what Josy called “the most utter cheek!” in her face, “we’re not kids, and we’re not coming! You can just roll your old grass yourselves!”
“All right, just wait till Helen comes along, young lazy-bones,” shouted Josy cheerily, and bent herself energetically to the task in hand.
“I can’t think what’s come over Sybil lately,” said Gretta to Margot. “She’s so frightfully cross.”
“Oh, mother’ll put her right,” declared her cousin with assurance, pushing manfully, “just wait till she comes.”
But things were to prove very different that afternoon from what was expected. The girls met at dinner—the team sedulously avoiding all puddings, while speaking longingly of the evening’s feast—and listened at the close of the meal to Miss Read’s final announcement.
“All of you are free after dinner,” she said, “to watch the match. The Redford girls get here at two o’clock, and Helen, you, as captain, must see that they are made at home by our team. The rest of you had better be on the field. Tea will be ready in the hall, nurse says, as soon as the match is over—that will be about a quarter to four, I expect, as the first whistle sounds at two-thirty. Those of you who have friends must look after them and see that they have tea; the team must look after the Redford girls, and all the rest of you must look after yourselves all the afternoon. Nurse and I shall both be busy the whole time with all kinds of preparations.”
If anyone had glanced in Sybil’s direction during the utterance by the house-mistress of her final remark they might have noticed a flush of excitement rise suddenly to her cheeks; but nobody did, and her face had resumed the rather peevish expression that it had worn for the last few days by the time grace had been said and it was time for the girls to leave the dining-room.
“Come on, Gretta and Margot!” exclaimed Josy, as soon as they were free; “let’s go to the window that looks on the side gate and watch for the Redford girls. They always drive over from their school, you know; it’s about four miles along the coast beyond this.”
The two friends agreed rapturously. Mrs. Fleming wouldn’t arrive just yet, Margot declared, since the time of the match had, by mistake, been omitted from her daughter’s letter, and Miss Slater would not sanction the sending of a wire to repair the mistake. Besides which, all the non-players were exceedingly anxious to view the rival team, and to decide from their appearance by methods of their own whether the antagonists were likely to prove victors or victims of to-day’s match.