The Kooringal boarders formed up presently, and marched away, still bearing their banner proudly.
“Just you wait until next year!” said Eva Severne, shaking a threatening fist merrily at the twins.
“Yes, next year!” echoed Mona. “I shall have left then, but I hope we shall have somebody less fat to meet you.” She sighed. “Certainly, no one who plays against you should be fat!”
“We may be fat ourselves!” said the twins—a remark greeted with derisive cheers. “At any rate we’ll work up ever so much science.”
“Sure you’ll be here next year?” asked a Kooringal girl.
“Oh, certain. Two more years of school, at least—perhaps three. So there’s lots of tennis ahead,” Jo uttered, happily. “Next year we must take it up in earnest and learn all the technical part. Then I suppose we’ll find out why your balls go straight through one’s racquet, Eva!”
“I wish they had done so a bit more to-day!” said Eva ruefully. “Well, it’s time we took our battered remnant to the tram. Good-bye—and it was a very jolly game, even if you did beat us!”
The Merriwiggians escorted them to the gate, and they marched down the road, in excellent formation for “battered remnants.” Then the school closed round the Weston twins, and, lifting them shoulder-high, carried them up the path to the house, asserting loudly and more or less tunefully, that they were jolly good fellows. The sudden appearance at a window of Miss Dampier disorganized the procession, and those responsible for the twins dropped them. Miss Dampier disappeared as quickly as she had come. She was that pearl among women, a headmistress who realized that teachers should occasionally have no official existence.
Jean and Jo picked themselves up, remarking that the consequences of winning a match seemed to be more strenuous than the game itself! They turned scared eyes on an attempt to revive the procession, and, ducking under admiring arms, fled to their dormitory. No one was there, and they sat down and looked at each other. In each look there was a sudden access of respect.
“Well, I didn’t think you had it in you!” remarked Jean.