Marianne lifted her finely arched black eyebrows ever so slightly as she glanced across the net to the spot near the evergreens where the five opponents were gathered.
“Have they chosen Muriel Storm for substitute?” she inquired, her voice expressing her mingled surprise and amazement. “They must be courting defeat.”
“But how can she play at all?” This from Adelaine Stuart. “I have never seen her practicing on these courts and surely before she came she had no opportunity to learn.”
Marianne shrugged her shoulders. “Let us rejoice that they have chosen her, although, of course, they may not need a substitute; but if they do, it will mean an easy victory for us.”
“More honor, though, if we had good players to defeat, I should think,” Phyllis Dexter ventured.
But there was no time for further conversation as Miss Widdemere, who was to keep score, had arrived and was calling the names of the first four who were to take their places and select the server.
Five games were to be played and the side winning three out of five would be proclaimed champion.
Although Jane Wiggin was a fairly good player, she had not practiced with Catherine and was greatly handicapped thereby and the opponents easily won the first game. Marianne scarcely noticed when her few admirers among the watchers clapped and shouted. The victory had been too easy to be flattering, she thought.
The next game was played by Gladys and Faith on one side and by two of Marianne’s friends on the other and there was far more enthusiasm among the spectators when Catherine’s side won a victory.
Jane Wiggin, knowing that it was her poor teamwork that had lost the first game, sincerely wished that she had not agreed to play at all; but it was too late to withdraw. Though she did her best and though it was a hard-fought game, Catherine’s side lost. The score stood two games for Marianne and one for Catherine.