“It will do us good to be beaten occasionally,” laughed Laura. “You begin to think, Bobby, that you must belong to the winning side all the time.”
“Yes. Who doesn’t?” sniffed Miss Hargrew. “It’s all right—all this talk about playing the game for the game’s sake; but right down in the bottom of our hearts, don’t all of us play to win? If we don’t, we never play well, that’s as sure as shooting.”
When the school re-opened, however, on the first Monday in January, the subject uppermost in the minds of the girls of Central High was the prize contest in play-writing for the M. O. R’s. The girls crowded into Assembly that morning, all on the qui vive to hear what the principal would have to say.
But after the opening exercises, when Mr. Sharp came forward to speak, he surprised everybody by saying:
“We are not ready to report upon the matter of the plays. Mr. Monterey will confer with us at noon, and before school is dismissed to-day we will announce the winner.
“It is not often that a committee having in charge the decision of the winner in an amateur play-writing competition has the happiness to be aided by a professional manager of a theater, and a man, too, who has produced plays of importance himself.
“Mr. Monterey’s knowledge of what will act well will make our final decision, I believe, one that will strike all competitors as eminently fair. We have tried to decide upon the prize winner in a way that will satisfy the giver of the prize, too—Mrs. Kerrick. She demanded a play that would act well and that will draw an audience because of its dramatic value as a play—not merely because it is written by a girl of Central High, or is performed by the girls and their friends for the benefit of the M. O. R’s.
“Before the day closes, I can promise you, the decision will be made and the name of the prize-winner, and of the title of the play, will be announced. You are excused to your lessons for the morning.”
The buzz of excitement—especially from the girls’ side—when Mr. Sharp had ceased speaking, could scarcely be controlled. Not even Miss Carrington’s basilisk eye could quell it.
Of course, poor Bobby fell a victim to Gee Gee’s sour temper. She thought the teacher had long since reached the class room, and she was gabbling away to Nell Agnew and Jess “sixteen to the dozen,” as she would have said herself. When out of a door popped the bespectacled Miss Carrington, grimmer and more stern than usual.