“You certainly are a picture,” said Sydney, “and I’m proud of you! Shall we let them score a few points?”
“Just a few, to add to the interest,” laughed Jan. “But ‘“they’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.’”
Sydney echoed her laugh with a mind at rest, and the cousins stepped out on the hard clay court.
They found that their opponents were in fine form. Jan and Sydney fought hard, but do what they would they could not keep them from getting the winning ten after they had held them tied at “forty all” some exciting minutes.
But the second game Sydney and Janet won, and took their places ready to make the third theirs by any heroic effort. Unfortunately the boy and girl opposing them were of the stuff that soldiers are made from—or rather fortunately, for Syd and Jan wanted to win gloriously. But they had hard work to win at all. Once more the game halted at “forty all,” and the ball was volleyed back and forth without pausing, each side and both partners of each side playing nobly. Once Sydney played a back stroke that nearly settled it, but the girl across the net saved the day, and immediately on the ball’s return her partner gave a swift cut that made it skim the net and fly out to the right corner of the service-line. With a bound Jan pursued it. It had been a clever stroke, for neither she nor Syd was near that spot at the moment. How she got there Jan did not know, but get there she did, and, swinging her racket without more than time for instinctive planning, she smashed the ball, and it crossed the net, barely clearing it, sped close to the ground out to the outer court of their opponents, and stopped before either raised racket could get down to its level or either player on the opposite side could pursue the ball. A ringing cheer announced the game won and Jan the victor. Sydney shook her violently by both hands, while cries of: “Well played!” “Splendid!” “What a stroke!” fell on the ears of happy “Miss Lochinvar.”
A ringing cheer announced Jan the victor.
“It was the prettiest sight I ever saw,” said Mrs. Graham, kissing Jan on her return, and more inclined to regard the affair as a spectacle than a sport. “You are sweet in that crimson, Janet, and Sydney is delicious! I am so proud of you both!”
Gwen hugged her cousin breathless, Jack and Viva trying vainly to get at her the while. Even Gladys was swept away by the glory to her family, to which for the first time Jan had contributed, into something like cordiality toward “Miss Lochinvar.” All the girls Jan liked at the Misses Larned’s congratulated her jubilantly, and the other faction was forced into silence. Altogether Jan enjoyed a little triumph, and came home blissful, to dream of the theater-party to which Mrs. Graham was to take her, Gwen, Gladys, Sydney, his most intimate chum, and Dorothy Schuyler, in celebration of the victory, on the following day.
It was the more shocking that she ran up the stairs later to visit Drom, full of these anticipations for Jan to find Sydney with his head bowed on his arms across his table and to meet the tragic face which he raised as he tried to smile at her.