"I am sorry. I was sure they would win," said Hester. They had come to the triangle, the place where the sloping walks meet at an angle.
"They would have won, too, if you had been there. You should have been. I, for one, was ready to revolt Wednesday morning, and the other girls would have stood by me. We would have done so if you would have shown any spirit; but you sat there as though the game were nothing to you."
Hester smiled but made no attempt to reply. She was learning to know Berenice and the danger of expressing one's opinion in her presence. Life at Dickinson was teaching her more than what lay between the covers of books. She was learning to meet people, to know them as they were, and to hold her tongue under provocation as she was doing now.
Berenice was not easily put aside. "Why, did you not show some spirit about it, Hester?"
"Spirit? Why should I? If Miss Watson and Helen thought Emma put up a better game than I, why should I complain?"
Berenice shrugged her shoulders. She was about to say more when Erma came down the dormitory steps and crossed the campus toward them. Her fair hair was piled high on her head in puffs and rolls. She was wrapped in a long garnet sweater. She looked like a crimson rose as she moved across the snow.
"Drop the subject," cried Berenice. "Here comes Erma. She takes exception to everything I say. One cannot express an opinion or offer a criticism in her presence unless one is taken to task."
"Perhaps it is just as well to let it drop," said Mellie gently. "It is only a game of basket-ball and not worth a heated discussion."
"Well, peaches," cried Erma cheerily accosting Hester. "Are you really going home? Won't your Aunt Debby be glad to see you. Tell her I send her a thousand hugs and a million kisses. How I wish I were going home to see that dear old daddy of mine. Girls, when you want to see the grandest man in the world, come home with me and I'll show you my daddy."
Berenice looked down over her nose.