“She’s had ’em. Dick Lee said so,” replied the sophomore boy, grinning. “But I’ll not mention it to the girls.”
“You forget about Doris,” suggested Mickey. “I don’t want to mention anything else discouraging, but it isn’t impossible for the sophomores to get the mumps playing this way with the seniors, you know.”
“Forget it! Mumps, indeed!” But the next day he did not come to school. Mumps had struck even a sophomore.
Fortunately the little epidemic spread no farther, once recognized. Betty, neglecting other things temporarily, practiced basketball till the championship game, the center of so much interest, was on. Cool outwardly, but tense within and alert to every play, Betty as captain almost prayed for success. This year was her farewell to competitive athletics. Her mother, saying that she could not stand the excitement and hoped that Betty would not get hurt, refused to attend the game. Betty did not know whether she spoke in earnest or was joking; but the ticket she had for her mother she gave to Amy Lou, who had begged to go and was now in a state of high delight, saying that one of her school chums had a cousin on the squad and that she was to be taken over from school in an automobile, if she could only have an excuse to get out early.
That matter was attended to and Doris shook her finger at Amy Lou with a comical expression, asking her which team she “would root for.” “Will it be Betty’s class or mine?” she cried, shaking, her head to suggest dire consequences if Amy Lou chose Betty’s.
“Well, but Betty is playing,” decided Amy Lou on the spot.
The hour arrived and a game fast and furious was on, closely watched, well played by both sides. Never before had it seemed so difficult for any senior on the team to make a basket. The sophomores were “set against it,” said Doris Lee to Amy Lou and her friend, both of whom would ask questions at the most exciting moment!
Again swift passing and long shots were employed by the seniors. There was little scoring on either side till almost the last of the game. And then it was Betty, who at the last minute made another basket and gave the seniors what was necessary to win over the sophomores by one point!
Both teams were due for congratulations. “Now that was what we call a good game,” said Doris decidedly to Amy Lou. “Of course, whoever wins would like to win with a higher score, but it makes more excitement this way.”
“My oldest sister,” explained Amy Lou to her schoolmate, “is president of the G. A. A. and the best swimmer in school, that is, of the girls. That was her, captain of the senior team. She gets prizes and things, too.”