Although Sidney Thorne would like to have done so, she could not very well dismiss Shirley and all her works. Shirley was too bright in her lessons and making too much of an impression upon both girls and teachers. Shirley was a little more reserved than was quite natural to her because of these unusual circumstances, but she tried not to notice some of the little things that happened. Then that little fighting reserve, that is in most of us, came to the rescue, not to push her way, but to resist any influence that would quietly relegate her to the rear, so far as lessons or ordinary activities were concerned. She possessed the same qualities of leadership that Sidney had, though whether they were exercised among her classmates or not did not matter to her. Indeed, Shirley scarcely knew that she possessed it.
Other activities followed the picnic launch ride. Shirley played tennis, outdoor basketball and other active games, taking care not to join a group or team in which Sidney might be playing. But there were other girls, some of whom in the excitement of the games would call her Sidney and perhaps not know till the game was over that they had been playing with Shirley. Several times, when Shirley thought that some girl was speaking more freely of something than she would have done except before Sidney, Shirley smilingly reminded her with, “I am Shirley, remember.”
All this and the keen, though unobtrusive, interest which Shirley showed in everything connected with the school’s activities made the girls like her and trust to her sense of honor. She was fair in the games, though she tried to win, and she had the advantage over some of the girls in having come from a school where a spirit of real sportsmanship was fostered. Shirley knew that and it made her less ready to resent any lack of it in the girls with whom she played.
But volley ball and all the other kinds of ball in the courts were played less as it grew colder and the fun of Hallowe’en drew near.
“Is the Double Three going to repeat the stunt of last year, Sidney?” asked Caroline Scott, the room-mate of the girl who thought that she and Caroline ought to make the Double Three into a Double Four.
Caroline and Sidney had never known each other very well in Chicago, though their fathers were associated somewhat in a business way and their mothers were in certain club work or church activities together. They had become better acquainted, though not intimately so, since they came to the same school.
“The Double Three never repeats,” laughed Sidney. “It’s the rest of you girls that’s made a club of us anyhow. We don’t acknowledge that the Double Three exists.”
“I see,” said Caroline, not believing that Sidney was at all in earnest. “Then you are going to get up your costumes each one on her own, I suppose.”
“I suppose so. I’ve sent to Mother for ideas, but the dean says that she’ll not allow any expensive costumes to be sent in and if we have any, we’ll have to make them, or use something we have. I’m very much provoked about it.”
“Couldn’t you have something simple made in Chicago, Sidney?”