“If ‘our crowd’ can play even half as well as the scrub teams could at Sanford High they can whip this aggregation of geese, Robin Page excepted,” Jerry asserted scornfully to her chums on the evening before the game. The next day’s recitations hastily prepared, the Lookouts had gathered in Ronny’s room for a spread.
“I feel sorry for Miss Page,” remarked Ronny, without lifting her eyes from their watch on the chafing dish in which the chocolate had begun to bubble.
“So do I. I told her so yesterday,” confessed Muriel. “I met her in the library and we had quite a long talk. She said she would have resigned after the first day of practice, but she felt that it would be cowardly. She knows the game as it should be played, but the other four girls are quite shaky on some points of it and they won’t let her correct them when they make really glaring mistakes. She tried it twice. Both times she just escaped quarreling with them. So she quit.”
“I think she is so plucky to stay on the team under such circumstances.” Marjorie looked up from her sandwich-making labors, her face full of honest admiration for Robin. “She is such a delightful girl, isn’t she?”
“She makes me think of a small boy,” was Jerry’s comparison. “Tell you something else about her when I get this tiresome bottle of olives opened. If I don’t extract the treacherous old cork very gently, I’m due to hand myself a quarter of a bottle of brine in the eyes or in my lap or wherever it may happen to land. There!” She triumphantly drew forth the stubborn cork without accident. “Now about Robin Page. She asked me to ask you girls to go to the game with the Silverton Hall crowd. Then she wants us to be her guests at dinner at the Hall and spend the evening with her and her pals. I’ve accepted for us all, so make your plans accordingly.”
“I’ve already asked Moretense to go to the game with us.” Muriel looked briefly perplexed. “I don’t think anyone will care if I ask her to go with us to meet the Silverton Hall girls. I can’t go with you folks to dinner, for my estimable room-mate has invited me to the Colonial and engaged a table ahead. I am to meet Miss Angier and Miss Thompson, juniors and friends of hers.”
“When did you make all these dates and right over our heads?” Jerry quizzed, trying to appear offended and failing utterly.
“Oh, the other day,” returned Muriel lightly. “It shows you that I am well thought of, too, in high-brow circles.” She cast a sly glance toward Lucy. The latter was happily engaged in cutting generous slices from a fruit cake which had come by express that day. Mrs. Warner had made it early in the fall and had put it away to season. It had arrived at an opportune time, and Lucy had gladly contributed to the feast.
She chuckled softly over Muriel’s good-natured thrust, but made no reply. It was her chief pleasure to listen to her chums, rather than talk. While she had expanded wonderfully as a result of association with a fun-loving, talkative quartette of girls who had taken pains to draw her out, she still had spells of the old reserve. She was gradually growing used to the gay badinage, which went on constantly among her chums, and on rare occasions would convulse them by some dry remark of her own.
While the Five Travelers were preparing their little feast in the utmost good fellowship, in a room two doors farther up the hall five other girls sat around a festal table, arguing in an anything but equable manner. Four of them were members of the sophomore team. The fifth was Leslie Cairns.