Betty Lee, Sophomore Part 21

"Yes. I'll show it to you."

"What is his speciality?" asked Betty, thinking of the tall boy she admired so much.

"Well, in the first game he made some under the basket shots that were just in time to make the score. It beat the other team. It's a shame you didn't see the account of the game. It's all in the paper."

"All I knew was that we beat," said Betty. "I didn't even see the evening paper at home. That was the night I was studying for a test and forgot everything else. It was my only chance, for we were doing things all day Sat.u.r.day."

"Ted has a new girl, Betty, they say."

"Really--who?"

"Oh, one of the junior girls that he is taking all around to the parties and everything. He had her out here at the school for the minstrel show the other night. That was real funny. Did you go?"

"No. I can't go to everything and I just _have_ to go to the musical things. Mother and I went to the Symphony Concert the last time."

"It's funny Chet didn't ask you. He's been hanging around so much of late, Betty." Kathryn gave Betty a roguish glance as she decided that they had practiced enough and sat down to change her shoes, donning the ones fit for the street. Betty, too, took off her gym shoes for the same purpose. The gym was almost empty now, for it was after school hours.

"Oh, Mother wouldn't let me go out at night with the boys yet," answered Betty. "It's all right for parties and picnics and things like that, it seems, but not for shows and things. Mothers are funny; but I have a very nice one and I suppose she knows why she lets me do some things and says no about others."

"My mother says that she hasn't the least idea what to do with me about anything in 'these days,' but she hopes to take care of me, if she has my 'co-operation.'"

Betty laughed at this. "Our poor mothers! Well, I rather guess it's up to us to co-operate then. Why, if you won't tell, Chet did ask me and I couldn't go with him, but he wasn't mad at all. Mother just told me to put the blame on her, so I did, explaining, you know. Then I felt as I told you about choosing the things I can go to myself."

"Chet is a pretty good sort of a boy, of course. Chauncey said the other day he thought he'd cut him out with you, Betty, and I told him to go and do it." Kathryn slipped a foot into a shoe and stood up laughing.

"I'd like you real well as a sister, though I didn't go so far as to say that to Chauncey."

"I should _hope not_!" said Betty, with emphasis. "It's none of it as serious as all that, Kathryn, but I don't mind being liked and being invited, do you?"

"What girl does? But I don't want a real 'case' yet."

"Mercy, no! And Mother says I mustn't accept invitations from boys that I don't know anything about, no matter how nice they seem here. There are some drawbacks to numbers after all."

"Yes, but you can usually tell about boys and girls, too, and it's easy enough to find out about them. Dad says that he is a 'social democrat,'

but I notice that he is terribly particular about my company."

"We have such a lot of things going on at school that it is easy enough to make friends and be with boys and girls you like without bothering about dates any more important than meeting your 'boy friend,' as d.i.c.k calls it, at the picnic or at the ball game. Carolyn's parties are always such fun. I want to have one the spring vacation, though that seems a long way off, doesn't it!"

"I'm having one in two weeks, on Friday night, Betty, so save that date, please. I'll have a time getting ready for it during school, so please come early and help me, will you?"

"Of course I will. It will be fun. What do you want me to do?"

"I'll tell you in plenty of time. I want it a _real_ party and I'm going to invite Lucia, of course, so it must make a good impression on our lady from the Italian n.o.bility."

"Lucia won't be critical, Kathryn. She said that she liked you. You were 'so sincere.'"

"Did she? I like Lucia, too, though some things made me a little tired at first."

"Just think of the handicap, Kathryn, of not being born an American!"

Betty was grinning, but she really felt that Lucia had not had a fair chance to be like a girl who was born in the "land of the free." This was a phase that had crept out with Lucia a time or two in her contact with other girls and had amused that daughter of the Caesars as much as a few of her ways amused the American girls. But they were meeting on common ground in the school room and in the case of the few girls of whom Lucia was becoming fond, friendly adjustments were easy to make.

The matter of being acquainted with boys was natural enough in a large high school, and a large residence district as good as that from which Lyon High drew most of its attendance supplied children of some of the city's best citizens. It was not very likely that boys attracted to Betty and Kathryn would not have a good background, to say the least.

Many of them they had known all through their freshman year. What Betty did not know was that Chet Dorrance was at present going out of his way just to pa.s.s Betty in the hall, whether he had an opportunity to speak to her or not. In a cla.s.s or two in which both recited, he never stared directly at her, but one corner of his eye knew where Betty was and what she was doing. It was his first attack and very acute, Ted would have said. Chet, however, was good at concealing his feelings and would not have had the boys guess how much he liked Betty. Of course, they teased him a little for "hanging around," but Chet, with apparent candor, said that he liked "that bunch of girls" and didn't care who knew it. "You have to have a little social life," said he. "It's a poor soph.o.m.ore that can't take a girl out once in a while."

If it had been Ted, Chet's brother, now, Betty might have been thrilled a little at the frequent meetings and all the excuses that Chet made to speak to her about this or that. But Betty was demurely responsive, or pleasant, interested in what Chet had to say, but not including him in any of her dreams. Chet wasn't the Prince Charming by any means. Yet Chet would be that to some one, doubtless, one of these days.

The names of the basketball squads were posted, that of the freshmen having more extras than those of the other cla.s.ses. The soph.o.m.ores now had only a few more than the two "teams." Betty found that she was a good deal more excited over the coming contests than she had expected to be, since so much responsibility for whipping the soph.o.m.ore team into shape rested upon her.

Dates of games to be played in the girls' gym were also posted, another spur to excellence. Kathryn postponed her party because of the necessity for strenuous practice, but said that she would have one to celebrate, when the soph.o.m.ores "beat the championship game." Betty told her that too much confidence was a "hoo-doo," but Kathryn told her that determination to beat was "one of the greatest a.s.sets" a team could have.

Betty, Kathryn and Carolyn had a front seat at the first game of the contest, played between the seniors and freshmen. It would have been hard to say which were the more excited, the busy players or the rooters who were girls expecting to meet the two cla.s.ses they were watching, in a future game.

"Watch that freshman guarding, Betty. She's rough. We'll look out for her and see that nothing is done that isn't seen! Say--that was a good play! Did you _see that_?"

Betty was watching too closely to say a word. If she could get the tactics, provided there were any special ones, or the important characteristics of the senior girls, it would help, she thought. She early dismissed the freshmen as opponents. They were playing a good game in the main, but not a winning game. They needed practice and more "team-work."

This game was on a Tuesday afternoon, after school. The next day the seniors were to play against the juniors, and the girls of all the teams, as far as possible, were urged by their captains to be present.

The score of seniors versus freshmen was only eleven to six and the freshmen were jubilant over having kept the seniors from scoring as heavily as they had expected. But Betty saw that senior mistakes would be corrected. She still thought that her greatest effort would be in the game against the seniors. Still, some had said that the juniors were playing excellent games.

On Wednesday the gym was again full of interested girls who gave their cla.s.s cheers and cheered for the enemy. The soph.o.m.ores rooted chiefly for the seniors, but to their great surprise, the juniors won! "Well!"

cried Betty. "I'm not a prophet, and that is that!"

"I'm glad we don't meet the juniors or seniors first," said Lucia Coletti, who sat next to Betty this time. Lucia was not playing basketball, but she was interested sufficiently to identify herself with her cla.s.s and attend the games.

"Tomorrow we play against the freshmen, don't we?" she asked.

"Yes, and what did Miss Orme do but give us a test, a last hour test, mind you, just before the game. I told her, but she looked at me in perfect disgust. 'Do you think we should dismiss school on account of the games?' she asked." Betty sighed.

"Oh, well, you'll be less excited for something else to think about.

Perhaps it will not be hard."

"And perhaps it will, Lucia. Be glad you aren't in her cla.s.s. But that is a good idea about thinking of something else. I'm gone if I worry.

And I've been getting that work so far. I'll just take it all as sport.

But I do want my team to play well."

"They'll beat the freshmen, I think, though those freshmen aren't to be despised."

"Indeed they aren't."

Betty was pretty well keyed up before her first game of the cla.s.s compet.i.tion, but Betty never lost her self-control. She set her lips and went through the rather difficult written test as well as she could. The air grew close, and it was with a thrill of actually joyous expectation that Betty hurried to the gym as the time approached, and joked with the freshman captain whom she met on the way. She could breathe in the gym!

"We're going to 'lick' the soph.o.m.ores," jovially the freshman captain informed her.

"Don't be too sure. We're out to win," cheerily answered Betty. She gathered her girls together and told them of some points she had noted about the freshman playing and they entered the game with confidence, though warned not to be too sure. The "rough" freshman was taken out after some too apparent fouls due to her performances, and the final score was eighteen to three in favor of the soph.o.m.ores. They had won their first game at least, Betty said. "Now send up the score, girls, as high as you can with every game. No telling what we can do if we try!"

The inter-cla.s.s games continued, with some intervals due to other important school events, for three weeks. Cla.s.ses were given more than one opportunity to better their score against other cla.s.ses. But finally it narrowed down to a contest between the juniors and soph.o.m.ores, Betty finding the soph.o.m.ore record making her "famous," as Kathryn said.

Senior luck held part of the time only, but that cla.s.s never had done as well in basketball as in other things, Carolyn told Betty.

The championship game was to be played in the boys' gym, which was larger, and the boys were allowed to attend. Betty, her cheeks pink from excitement, saw that her mother with Amy Lou had a good seat. "Look out, Amy Lou, and don't get hit with the ball!" and Betty left them to disappear into the regions of the girls' gym, where the teams were getting ready.