Marjorie Dean Part 18

"I--something awfully queer has happened!" She glanced nervously about her, but Mrs. Dean had already vanished through the doorway, leading into the dining room. She rarely intruded upon Marjorie's callers longer than to welcome them.

"What is it, Harriet?" fell wonderingly from Marjorie's lips. Her friend's early call, coupled with her agitated manner, betokened something unusual.

"Read this!" Harriet thrust a sheet of pale gray note paper into Marjorie's hand. "It's the strangest thing I ever heard of!"

Marjorie swept the few scrawling lines of which the paper boasted with a keen, comprehensive glance. As its import dawned upon her, her brown eyes grew round with amazement. She re-read it twice. "Where did you receive it?" came her sharp question, as she continued to hold it in her hand.

"I don't know when it came. Mother found it on the floor in the vestibule this morning. I was still in bed. She sent Nora, our maid, upstairs with it. You can imagine I didn't stop to finish my nap. I hurried and dressed, ate about three bites of breakfast and started for your house as fast as I could travel. I thought you ought to see it first. What do you make of it?"

"I hardly know what to think." Marjorie's glance strayed from Harriet's perturbed face to the mysterious letter of warning. "Somehow, I don't believe it was written for a joke. Do you?"

"No, I don't." Harriet shook her head positively. "I think it was intended for just what it is, a warning to be on our guard to-day. I'll tell you something, Marjorie. I never mentioned it before because--well--you know I've never liked Mignon La Salle since she nearly broke up basket ball at Sanford High last year, and I was afraid it might sound hateful on my part, but the girls of Mignon's squad are as tricky as can be. Twice, in the first practice game we played, I had my own troubles with them. Once Daisy Griggs nearly knocked me over. She pretended it was an accident, but it wasn't. Then, in the second half, Mignon poked me in the side with her elbow. We were bunched so close that not even the referee saw her. I almost had the ball, but my side hurt me so that I missed it entirely. Susan Atwell was awfully cross about something that day, too. I asked her what had happened, but she only muttered that she hoped she'd get through the game without being murdered. She wouldn't say another word, but you can guess from what I've told you that she must have had good reason for getting mad. Did she say anything to you?"

"No; I wish she had." A flash of anger darkened Marjorie's delicate features. "The girls of Mignon's team have played fairly enough with me.

They are rough, I'll say that, but, so far they've not overstepped the rules."

"They know better than to try their tricks on _you_!" exclaimed Harriet hotly, "or on Muriel, either. Mignon's afraid of you because you are everything that's good and n.o.ble!"

"Nonsense," Marjorie grew red at this flattering a.s.sertion.

"It's true, just the same. She's afraid of Muriel, too, because she knows that Muriel would report her to Miss Archer in a minute. She thinks she can hara.s.s Esther and Susan and me and that we won't dare say anything for fear Miss Archer will make a fuss. She knows how crazy we are to play and that we'd stand a good deal of knocking about rather than spoil everything. It's different with Muriel. If _she_ got mad, she would walk off the floor and straight to Miss Archer's office, and those girls know it."

Marjorie was silent. What Harriet said in regard to Muriel was undoubtedly true. Since the latter had turned from Mignon La Salle to her, she had been the soul of devotion. She had never forgiven Mignon for her cowardly conduct on the day of the cla.s.s picnic. Muriel reverenced the heroic, and Mignon had disgraced herself forever in the eyes of this impulsive, hero-worshipping girl.

"We had better show this letter to the other girls," Marjorie said with sudden decision. "Come upstairs to my house. I'll hurry and dress.

Suppose you have a few more bites of breakfast with me. Your early morning rush must have made you hungry, and you ought to be well fed, if you expect to do valiant work on the field of battle this afternoon."

"I _am_ hungry," conceded Harriet, "and I won't wait to be urged. I'd love to take breakfast with you." Then, lowering her voice, she asked: "Is Mary going to the game?"

A faint wistfulness tinged Marjorie's voice as she said slowly. "I don't know. I haven't asked her. I suppose she is, though."

Although it was whispered among Marjorie's close friends that the unpleasant scene at her party had left a yawning gap between the two friends, never, by so much as a word, had Marjorie intimated the true state of affairs to any one except Constance and Jerry Macy. Not even Susan Atwell and Muriel Harding knew just how matters stood. Harriet remembered this in the same moment of her question, and, flushing at her own inquisitiveness, remarked hurriedly, "Everyone in school is coming to see us play."

"I'm glad of that." Marjorie had recovered again her usual cheerfulness, and answered heartily. She kept up a lively stream of talk as she completed her dressing. Tucking the letter inside her white silk blouse she led the way downstairs to the dining room. She was slightly relieved to see Mary's place at the table vacant. She guessed that the latter had heard Harriet's voice and had purposely remained in her room. She had not gone astray in this supposition. Mary _had_ heard Harriet speak and knew only too well what had brought her to the Deans' house so early that morning.

It was nine o'clock when Marjorie and Harriet left the house to call on Susan Atwell, who lived nearest. Susan read the mysterious warning and was duly impressed with its significance. She was equally at sea as to the writer. It soon developed, however, that Harriet had been correct in a.s.suming that Susan's wrath at the first game played against Mignon's team had been occasioned by their unfair tactics. She had been slyly tripped by Louise Selden, she a.s.serted, and had fallen heavily.

"All this is news to me," declared Marjorie, frowning her disapproval.

"It must be stopped."

"How?" inquired Susan almost sulkily.

"If necessary, we must have an understanding with our opponents," was the quiet response.

"That is easy enough to say," retorted Susan, "but if we were to accuse those girls of playing unfairly, they would simply laugh at us and call us babies."

"I'd rather be laughed at and called a baby than allow such unfairness to go on." There was a ring of determination in Marjorie's reply.

"Let us hurry on to Muriel and hear her views," suggested Harriet. "She lives next door to Esther Lind, so we can call them together and show them the letter."

Once the team were together they spent an anxious session over the letter left by an unseen hand. Discussion ran rife. With her usual impetuosity Muriel announced her intention of taking Mignon to task before the game. "I'm not afraid of her," she boasted. "I'd rather not play than to feel that at any minute I might be laid up for repairs. I'm much obliged to the one who wrote this. He or she must have had a troubled conscience."

Marjorie cast a startled glance at Muriel. Could it be possible that Mary had written the note? And yet something about the gray stationery had seemed familiar. She was not sure, but she thought she had at some time or other received a letter from her chum written on gray note paper. She resolved to look through Mary's letters to her as soon as she reached home. If Mary had, indeed, sent the warning, it was because she felt constrained to do the only honorable thing in her power.

a.s.sociation with Mignon had not entirely deadened her sense of right and wrong. A wave of love and longing brought the tears to Marjorie's eyes.

She winked them back. She must not betray herself to her schoolmates.

"Listen to me, girls," she began earnestly. "We mustn't say a word to our opponents before the game. I know I just said that we ought to have an understanding, and I meant it. But we had better wait until the end of the first half. If everything is all right, then so much the better.

If it isn't--well--we shall at least have given them their chance."

The players lingered in the Hardings' living room to discuss the coming contest, go over their signals and prepare themselves as effectually as possible for the fray. It was almost noon when Marjorie sped up the stairs to her room, there to put into execution the search she had decided to make. Mary's letters to her, tied with a bit of blue ribbon, reposed in a pretty lacquered box designed especially to hold them.

Marjorie untied the ribbon and fingered them with a sigh of regret for the happy past. Most of them were written on white paper, a few were on pale blue, Mary's color. Almost at the bottom of the box was one gray envelope. The searcher drew a quick breath as she separated it from its fellows. Drawing the envelope from her blouse, she compared the two.

They were identical. The mysterious warning was no longer a mystery to her.

CHAPTER XIX

A BOLD STAND FOR HONOR

Thrilled with the discovery she had just made, Marjorie's first impulse was to seek admittance to the room so long denied her and confront Mary with the knowledge of her good deed. Remembering her General's injunction, "Let her alone," she refrained from yielding to that impulse. Her pride, too, a.s.serted itself. It was not her place to make advances, all too likely to be rebuffed. No, she must keep her secret until time had done its perfect work. Reconciliation lay in Mary's hands, not hers. She decided, however, that the girls must never know who had been the author of the warning. So far as she was concerned, it must remain a mystery to them.

"Where is Mary?" she inquired of her mother, as they sat down to luncheon a little later. Mary's place at the table was vacant.

"Oh, she was invited to luncheon at her friend Mignon's home," returned Mrs. Dean, frowning slightly. "I suppose she is hoping that Mignon's team will win the game this afternoon."

"I suppose so," returned Marjorie absently. Her mind was still on her discovery. Should she tell Captain about it? Perhaps it would be best.

Briefly she acquainted her mother with what she had so recently found out.

"I am not greatly surprised," was her mother's quiet comment. "Mary is too good a girl at heart to persist for long in this ridiculous stand she has taken. I am glad you said nothing of it to her. She must clear her own path of the briars she has sown. When she does, she will have learned a much-needed lesson."

"But, Captain, it's dreadful to think of Christmas coming and Mary and--I--not--friends," faltered Marjorie. "I can't give her a present, and I'd love to. I suppose she doesn't care to give me one. We've always exchanged gifts ever since we were little tots."

"Perhaps everything will be all right by that time. If it isn't--well, I have a plan--but I'm not going to say a word about it yet. Wait until nearer Christmas. Then we shall see."

"Oh, Mother, if only you could think of something that would make us friends again, just for a day, I'd be so happy!" Marjorie clasped her hands in fervent appeal.

"Wait and see," smiled Mrs. Dean enigmatically.

As Marjorie set out for the high school that afternoon she hummed a jubilant s.n.a.t.c.h of song, due to the bright ray of sunlight that had pierced the gloom. She could afford to wait, if waiting would bring about the miracle that her mother had hinted might be wrought. She quite forgot basket ball until she reached the steps of the high school.

There her mind reverted to the coming contest and she set her lips in silent determination. Her team must win to-day. She could not endure the thought that Mignon's team should be the one to play against the freshmen for soph.o.m.ore honors.

It was half past one o'clock when she entered the building and hurried to the dressing room at one side of the gymnasium, which was reserved for her squad. The first to arrive, she hastily prepared for the game.

Meanwhile, she kept up an earnest thinking as to the course she had best pursue if Mignon and her supporters overstepped the bounds of fair play.

But she could make up her mind to nothing. Mere contemplation of the subject was so disagreeable she hated to face it.

While she pondered, Susan Atwell bustled in with Muriel Harding. The two remaining members of the team appeared soon after and a lively dressing and talking bee ensued. The soph.o.m.ore team, which Marjorie captained, had chosen to wear their black basket ball regalia of the year before, but instead of the violet "F" that had ornamented their blouses, a scarlet "S" now replaced it. Black and scarlet were the soph.o.m.ore colors. Should their team win, they could wear the same suits in the more important game to come. It was reported, however, that Mignon's team would shine resplendently in new suits of gray, ornamented with a rose-colored "S," which Mignon had provided at her own expense. If they won, she had promised her adherents the prettiest black and scarlet suits that could be obtained for the Thanksgiving Day contest. It is needless to say that they had also set their minds on carrying off the victor's palm.