The girls of Central High had something of more moment than Hester Grimes’s “tantrums” to think of the next day. Bobby Hargrew came flying up the path to the doctor’s porch long before school time. Nellie saw her and ran out to see what she wanted.
“What do you s’pose?” cried Bobby.
“Couldn’t guess, Chicken-little,” laughed Nellie. “Has the sky fallen?”
“Almost as bad,” declared Bobby, twinkling, but immediately becoming grave. “The gymnasium——”
“Not burned!”
“No, no! But it’s been entered. And by some awfully mean person. The apparatus on the upper floor has been partly destroyed, and the lockers broken into downstairs and lots of the field materials spoiled. Oh, it’s dreadfully mean, Nellie! They even sawed through the rungs of the hanging ladders a little way, so that if anybody swung on them they’d break.
“And with all the harm they did, nobody can tell how they got into the building, or out again. The watchman sleeps on the premises. You know, he’s not supposed to keep awake all night, for the same man keeps the field in repair during the day. But my father says that Jackway, the watchman, must have slept like the dead if he didn’t hear the marauders while they were damaging all that apparatus.
“It’s just too mean,” concluded Bobby. “There isn’t a basketball that isn’t cut to pieces, and the tennis ball boxes were broken open and the balls all thrown into the swimming pool. Tennis rackets were slashed, hockey sticks sawed in two, and other dreadful things done. It shows that whoever did it must have had a grudge against the athletic association and us girls—must have just hated us!”
“And who hates us?” cried Nellie, the question popping out before she thought.
Bobby turned rather white, though her eyes shone. She tapped Nellie on the shoulder with an insistent index finger.