Hester kept away from the gym. She told herself she did not care what happened to the “old place.” She hated it. She would not go there and see another girl practice in her place on the basketball team.
A game with the West High girls was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. It was not until after that that her mother learned that she no longer played on the Central High team. And Mrs. Grimes wanted to know why.
“Never you mind!” snapped Hester, who was not above being saucy to her mother at times. “It doesn’t concern you.”
“Don’t you want to play any more?” insisted Mrs. Grimes.
“No, I don’t! Now, that’s finished!” cried Hester, and flounced out of the room.
Her father had agreed to buy the new auto, and she telephoned for the man at the garage to bring it up. Nobody ever crossed Hester, if he could help it, and when she said to the man that she wanted to learn to run the car he supposed that her father was willing.
He did not ask her age, although the Centerport Board of Aldermen had established a rule that no person under sixteen should be given a license or be allowed to run a motor car. At any rate, he did not expect to be requested to let her run the car without his guidance.
But this is exactly what Hester demanded when they were out of town. It was a warm, smoky fall day. There were brush fires somewhere over the ridge to the south of Centerport; or else some spark from a railroad locomotive had set the leaves in the ditches afire. It had been dry for a week and the woods were like tinder.
They had run far out the road past the entrance to Robinson’s Picnic Grounds, and there Hester demanded to manage the car alone, while the man sat in back.
“You make me nervous!” she exclaimed. “I’ll never learn anything with you nudging my elbow all the time. There! get along with you.”