The Girls of Central High on Track and Field / Or, The Champions of the School League

by Gertrude W. Morrison

“If you had a spark of pluck you’d get square with that Hargrew girl,” Lily Pendleton had told him, and Purt thought that he was getting square with Bobby and her friends when he turned the key in the lock at the foot of the tower stairs.

At first as he ran out of the school building into the rain that was still falling a little, his only fear was that he had been seen by somebody. But once away from the school building he began to giggle over the joke he had played on the girls.

“They won’t laugh at me so much next time,” he thought.

And then he remembered, with something of a shock, that he could not afford to tell anybody about what he had done. If he owned up to having locked the girls into the tower, he knew very well what would happen to him.

If Chet Belding, or Lance Darby, did not get hold of him, one of the other boys would most certainly take him to task for the trick. And Purt Sweet was no fighter.

He wouldn’t get much fun out of the trick he had played on the girls, after all! Now he wished he had not done it. What was the fun, when he had to keep it a secret?

So Purt continued on this way home with lagging feet. And every yard, the possibilities that might follow his trick grew plainer in his mind. He saw, as he went on, that instead of having done something to create a laugh, he might have been guilty of an act that would start a whole lot’ of trouble.

He knew, as well as did the girls shut up in the tower, that old John, the janitor, would go home to supper soon. And at this time of year, when there were no fires to see to, except the hot water heater, the old man might not come back at all.

For, as far as Purt knew, there were no meetings in the building that evening. At least, he had heard none announced. The girls were likely to be left in the tower until the next day, while their friends were searching the city for them.

Purt went into the square, from which point he could gaze up at the tower. But it was so far away, and so tall, that he could see nothing at the narrow slits of windows up there at the top.