Hazel looked at her with troubled eyes. All at once she felt cold and sick, as if something terrible had happened.
“It looks that way,” agreed the girl on her left. “Well, every man has his price. Sometimes it’s money, sometimes business politics, and sometimes a woman. I wonder——” And she glanced at Hazel out of the tail of her eye.
“He—he wouldn’t sell out,” Hazel told the girl weakly. “He isn’t that kind.”
The other laughed meaningly. “Isn’t he? Oh, I don’t——Look! Look! What do you think now?”
Vern had been clear for once. The ball came to him waist-high—and he dropped it! Like a flash, the captain of the Landon five caught it up and shot it half the length of the court to another player near the boundary line. He passed it to a third, who scored a neat goal on a side diagonal pass that gave him the ball directly in front of the basket.
The score was now: Bloss, 4; Landon, 2.
“A goal at last,” said one of the girls, sighing, “thanks to Mr. Judd.”
“It was an accident,” defended Hazel, angry without reason. “Anybody is apt to drop the ball now and then.”
Both teams scored again from the field before the end of the first half, and, during the last minute, Landon crept closer on a palpable body-check and free throw. When the whistle blew, the score was: Bloss, 6; Landon, 5.
The teams changed goals. The Bloss basket was now at the balcony end, where Hazel Wayne could lean forward and look straight down into it.