“Fine! I’ll support you, Carolyn, in anything you start, only I can’t play on the team myself.”
“Worse luck!” But Carolyn laughed. “I ’spect you’re safer to do what your father wants you to do, and you can’t do everything, crede mihi!”
“‘Crede mihi’—I can’t,” laughed Betty. “Do you suppose ‘mihi’ ought to come before ‘crede’? Oh, yes, imperative first!”
“‘O tempora, o mores!’” replied Carolyn, grinning. “Yes, don’t you remember we looked it up in the vocabulary, after we found it somewhere and then couldn’t find it again? If ‘take my word for it’ isn’t enough like ‘believe me’ then I can’t read Cicero!”
This conversation took place long before “mid-years,” as may be gathered from the fact that basketball was in the early stages. Betty’s special friends had been looking up a few Latin phrases to take the place of slang expressions which their English teacher was urging her pupils to drop, telling them that they would soon think in no other terms. Home influences, however, kept Betty and most of these girl from taking on the coarser expressions which they heard from some of their acquaintances.
Started in this way, it became fun to take out of Cicero, orations or elsewhere, little phrases like ubi est? or Quid loquor?
Quid agis?—O miserabile me!—horribile dictu—age vero—da operam, and other expressions all had possibilities, though sometimes, it must be said that the old Romans would not have recognized some of the uses to which their language was applied. But it was all a part of the very active and happy life led by Betty Lee junior at Lyon High.
Mr. Lee had not asked Betty to curtail any of her pleasures without good reason. Betty’s parents had noted certain effects in the previous year which did not seem good, chief of which was a temporary suffering of Betty’s work during the basketball season and her being more or less nervous and under a strain. Then, as Mrs. Lee watched several games, she saw the possibility of accident in the fast playing, and as Betty thought, the small injury was the final argument.
But this curtailment left Betty more free for other lines of work and her time was too full for many regrets. It was rather pleasant, to be sure, to have certain girls exclaim over her defection and prophesy dire results to the team. And Betty was big enough at heart to be honestly glad when the juniors under Mathilde played well, winning over all the classes except the seniors. There at last came their Waterloo. For the seniors had previous defeat to wipe out. They had the best team that they had ever had in basketball. The girls of that class had never been particularly noted in athletic lines, but as Kathryn declared, they had concentrated on basketball “to beat us.” And beat the juniors they did.
The school paper came out with big headlines over the result. The seniors chortled. Chet at first avoided any comment when with Betty, but his eyes twinkled when she congratulated him as a member of the class. “The girls have been very sure they would win over your class ever since you refused to be captain, Betty.”