“She’s a star player,” praised Jerry. “I can’t help but admire her for the way she plugs along under such stress. Yes, Marj, l’enfant terrible will turn out well, I predict, even if she never learns to appreciate us.”
“It seems to be Marj’s duty to wind up this snarl,” commented Marjorie satirically. “I do not relish the task. I wish the freshies would not jangle. The soph team is positively seraphic.”
While Marjorie was casting about in her fertile brain for a good opening toward adjusting matters on the freshman team, the way opened with amazing celerity. She had attended practice on Thursday. The following Monday she had not. It being a rainy afternoon there were almost no spectators. An altercation rose between a girl on the scrub team which the freshies were pitted against, and Augusta. The scrub player claimed a foul on Gussie which the latter hotly contested. Gussie’s team-mates stood up for the scrub. The end of her patience reached, she turned on them all in a fury of words, stinging and truthful.
“The whole trouble with you four girls is you want to see me off the team,” she concluded. “Sorry I can’t oblige you, I mean glad. I play fairly. But you say, I do not. In your hearts you know I do. You had best tend to your own playing instead of picking flaws with me. I play a better game than any of you. If we lose the first game of the season, it won’t be my fault.”
“Nothing conceited about you, is there?” sneered Alma Hurst, the most disagreeable of the four objectors.
“I know what I can do on the floor,” composedly retorted Gussie.
“Yes, and I know what I can do off the floor,” threatened Alma. “We would have a fine team if it weren’t for you. It’s a case of four against one. I think our word will stand. I shall see that it does.”
“Go as far as you like,” scornfully dared Gussie. “You can’t bother me.”
“We’ll see about that,” asserted Alma, and walked away, accompanied by her three irate supporters.
Gussie left the gymnasium that afternoon with a heavy heart. She had defied the quartette of oppressors, but she had no faith in herself.