Portia had gone on talking, without giving Marjorie a chance to agree with her. She now laughingly apologized and again solicited an opinion.
“I think a new team should be chosen,” Marjorie said evenly. Her eyes were sparkling in the darkness like twin stars. Here, at last, were girls like the Lookouts. She was so glad that the matter was to be taken up and threshed out she could have shouted. A definite blow for democracy was about to be struck at Hamilton. “My friends and I thought the try-out very unfair. We are considered good players at home, but we were not even chosen to sub.”
She went on a little further to explain why, in her estimation, the team chosen were so unfit for the responsibility. Her short talk proved conclusively that she understood basket ball as only an expert could.
“Won’t you and Miss Harding please enter the lists again, when we have the new try-out?” coaxed Elaine Hunter.
“No.” Marjorie’s refusal was quietly emphatic. “Not this year. I am willing to do all I can to help the good work along, but I don’t care to play. Muriel feels the same. Next year we hope to make the team. There are some good players among the freshmen who had no chance at the try-out. I would like to see them play. I would like to see Miss Page play center. She plays a wonderful game.”
“Thank you.” Walking beside Marjorie, Robin gave her arm a grateful little squeeze. “You and I are going to be great friends,” she laughed. “How did you guess my pet ambition?”
“I didn’t guess it. I only said what I thought about it. You deserve the position.”
“Yes; and she is going to have it, if there is any such thing as fair play at Hamilton, and I think there is.” Portia Graham spoke with a sternness that presaged action. “After dinner, tonight, I am going to call a meeting in the back parlor. We can all get into that room without crowding. Then we will see what happens.” True to her word, Portia saw to it, the moment she reached the Hall, that every freshman in the house was notified of the meeting.
The ringing of the dinner gong shortly afterward was a pleasing sound to the hungry girls. Dinner at Silverton Hall was served at two long tables set lengthwise in a pretty green and white dining room. The Lookouts found the meal as appetizing as any they had eaten at Wayland Hall, though no better. They liked the line-up of merry girls, with most of whom they now had some acquaintance.
Dessert did not receive its usual attention that night. The excited freshmen finished their dinners in some haste and promptly repaired to the back parlor. The same thirty-five who had walked five abreast across the campus were gathered again for action. While the murmur of conversation, mingled with frequent laughter, went on until Portia Graham took up her station near the old-fashioned fireplace where she could be seen and heard. Immediately the buzzing subsided, to be succeeded by a total silence.