So, at the very moment Prettyman Sweet tried the basement door, the girls on whom he had played his trick were about to come out. Purt was scared and ran away. Later, when he escaped from Margit, the Gypsy girl, and ran to the foot of the tower stairs, Purt was scared again.
He found the door open and the girls gone. Who could have released them? He slunk home in the darkness, taking the back alleys instead of Whiffle Street, and the next day he scarcely dared go to school for fear the girls had found out who played the trick on them.
But Laura and her mates all thought that either John, the janitor, or one of the teachers had chanced to close the tower door and lock it. And, as they had been where they were forbidden to go, they said very little about their fright and anxiety.
But Eve was quite a heroine among them. The girl from the farm was a deal more muscular than most of her mates; perhaps no girl at Central High could have climbed out of that tower window and worked her way down the wire in just that manner.
And Eve was showing herself, as time went on, to be the best girl at the broad jump and at putting the twelve-pound shot, too. Lou Potter, of the senior class, did well; but after a time she seemed to have reached her limit in both the jumping and shot-putting.
Then it was that Eve took a spurt and went ahead. She left all other competitors but Lou far behind.
Mrs. Case did not approve of inter-class competition in athletics; but the managing committee of the June meet had made such competition necessary to a degree. The upper classes of Central High had to choose their champions, and those champions in the foot races, from the 100-yard dash to the quarter-mile, had to compete the first week in June to arrange which should represent the school on the big day.
In other trials it was the same—broad jump, shot-putting, relay race teams, and all the rest. There was developed in the freshman class a sprinter who almost bested Bobby Hargrew at first; but the freshmen had little, after all, to do when the big day came.
The main contestants for athletic honors were bound to be drawn from the junior and sophomore classes. It was a fact that the present senior class of Central High had not been as imbued with the spirit of after-hour athletics, or with loyalty to the school, as had the younger classes.
And the seniors had awakened too late to the importance of leaving a good record in athletics behind them when they were graduated. There was not a girl in the class the equal of Mary O’Rourke, or Celia Prime, who had been graduated the year before.