“I—that is——” she began, stopped, then said with as much of an attempt at offended dignity as she could muster: “I cannot talk further with you concerning this matter tonight. I have an engagement with two members of the faculty and am already late. If you will come to the gymnasium at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon I will see what I can do to pacify the freshman class. I would prefer resigning all interest in basket ball rather than be the center of a freshman quarrel.” She rose from her chair, as though determined to end the uncomfortable interview.
“Very well,” Portia coldly inclined her head. “We shall expect to see you in the gymnasium at four o’clock. We will not detain you longer.”
She rose. Her companions immediately followed suit. Portia’s “good evening” was echoed by the others as they filed through the door, their soft, young faces set in cold contempt.
Not a word passed among them until they were well away from the house. Elaine Hunter was the first to speak. “Did you ever see anyone more upset than Miss Reid was toward the last?” she asked her companions in general.
“She had good reason to be,” returned Portia grimly. “We have won our point. I hope she does resign basket ball management. A senior told me recently that she has always been a bugbear to the teams. She insists on managing everything and everybody who will let her. Miss Reid has had the reputation for years of favoring money and fighting principle. She has repeatedly used basket ball favors as means of ingratiating herself with wealthy students. If she really makes good what she said about resigning it will be the first important victory for democracy at Hamilton.”
CHAPTER XXV.—A NEW CONSPIRACY.
Not daring to break the appointment she had made with the freshman committee, Miss Reid met them the next afternoon in the gymnasium at the time she had set. She had been very careful, in the meantime, not to come in contact with Leslie Cairns or Lola Elster. Deep in her soul, she was raging at the choice which had been forced upon her. Fear of losing her position of years’ standing at Hamilton, and the even more active fear that perhaps her connivance with Leslie Cairns was known in college, urged her to shun campus publicity. Resignation was the one way out of her difficulties with both parties. It would check all freshman activities against her. As for Leslie, what could she say or do in the face of it? She would be angry, of course, and insulting. Insults, however, broke no bones. Leslie could not circulate malicious reports about her without implicating herself. To resign also meant a saving of dignity. Miss Reid determined, therefore, to resign, but without appointing a time for a new try-out. She would slide from under and let the freshmen straighten the snarl as best they might.
A plan is not a success until it has been carried out. This Miss Reid learned at her second interview with the committee. Portia, backed by the other members of the committee, insisted that Miss Reid should sign a notice of her own composition, announcing a new try-out.
“You may say, if you choose, that, owing to the dissatisfaction of the preponderance of the freshman class with the work of the present basket ball team, you have been requested by a committee, representing freshman interests, to call another try-out for the purpose of selecting another team, composed of players, adequate to the work.”
“But no such thing has ever been heard of, much less done, here at Hamilton,” objected Miss Reid, when Portia coolly outlined the notice.