“Did you do that? Oh, I’m so glad you did! Maybe he will not write Uncle Barney.”
“What did he threaten to tell? I’m sure he could not tell anything that would do any harm.”
“Oh you do not know! Harry is horrible! He threatened to write that I have been breaking bounds and going riding with you and other fellows, and he knows how Uncle Barney dislikes Mr. Lawrence, so he just wants to make trouble.”
“Why,” Larry exclaimed indignantly, “I never have seen you outside of this room—he surely wouldn’t write such a lie as that.”
The girl pretended to weep, dabbing at her eyes. She concealed the fact that she, with two of the girls had broken the rules and gone automobile riding with three of the town boys, and that Miss Hazlett had discovered the fact. She cunningly led Larry to believe that Harry Baldwin’s entire tirade of threats had been caused by her friendship for him.
“I’m so glad you and Harry are going to make up and that he can play on that old team,” she said, smiling as she dried her eyes with a bit of lace. “He seems to think that is more important than anything. Maybe he won’t tell those awful tales about me if you let him play. I wanted to ask you to deny them if he wrote Uncle Barney.”
“Of course I’ll deny them,” he answered stoutly. “It’s a muckerish trick to talk that way about a girl. As for playing on the team; he isn’t on it yet. He’ll have to win his place.”
“He said you wouldn’t give him a fair chance,” she replied. “He is just as furious with you as he is with me.”
An hour later Larry Kirkland bade her good-night. His mind was strangely excited as he walked slowly through the drives on the lawn and set forth for the long walk back to his rooms on the campus at Cascade. He was fighting a battle with himself.
He could make a place for Harry Baldwin on the team and, at one stroke he could end the constant warfare with that element of the students that had opposed him from the first. He could put an end to Harry Baldwin’s opposition to everything he did or tried to do. Better, he told himself, he could protect Helen Baldwin from the malice of her cousin and earn her closer friendship—a friendship which was coming to mean more and more to him every day.