As Betty went down the aisle ahead of Lucia, Peggy Pollard caught her eye and coughed discreetly. Selma grinned up at her and Kathryn widened her big eyes purposely. This home room of sophomore girls was the limit!
[CHAPTER VII: LITTLE ADJUSTMENTS]
The next morning Selma joined Betty on the walk from the street-car to the school building. “Betty,” said she, “I’m really in earnest about your being on the hockey team. I’m afraid not enough of the girls are going to take an interest. I mean the kind of girls that count. You are so quick and graceful about your swimming and good at everything you do, and I saw you play hockey once last year.”
“I haven’t a quarter about me, I’m afraid,” said Betty, very soberly, looking in her small purse.
“A quarter—what for?” asked Selma before she sensed what Betty meant. “Oh, that’s all right. You needn’t pay me for the compliments, and I’m not saying it just to get you to be on the team. Miss Fox has charge of the hockey this year and she asked me to keep an eye out for good material. The team is pretty well made up, I guess, and she says that I should be captain, but that is as it may be, Betty. Please don’t mention my speaking of it to you.”
“But I want a second team to play against, and a good one at that. I’d give a lot for the sophomores to beat the other classes at hockey.”
“Hurrah for the sophomores,” remarked Betty. “I can’t get used to our being sophomores, Selma, but isn’t it nice not to be freshmen any longer?”
“Yes, though we were such unusually fine ones!” Selma chuckled. “We’re a good deal of a mob yet, but not like the freshman bunch. Were we really like that last year?”
“I suppose so. Well, Selma, I don’t know what to say about the hockey proposition. I’m pretty sure that Mother thinks hockey too rough. Perhaps not exactly that, either; and I did like to play last year occasionally, just on the side. Possibly, if it is just as a sort of substitute, I might do it. I’m a full-fledged G. A. A. and ought to help out where I can, oughtn’t I?”
“It’s your duty to be a good sophomore, too.”