The Girls of Central High on Track and Field Part 11

"Surely the little lady will not be unkind to the poor Romany," she whined. "She does not forget what Queen Grace told her?"

"I want to forget it," declared Bobby, with flushed face. "I have nothing for you. Go away--do!"

"Ah-ha, little lady!" chuckled the woman, with a leer. "You are mistress here now--and you can send us away. But remember! Your father will bring home another mistress before mid-summer."

The two women laughed harshly, and turned away, going slowly out of the yard. Bobby remained upon the porch until she had winked back the tears--and bitter tears they were, indeed--and so went slowly in to breakfast.

"Those horrid 'Gyptians," Mrs. Ballister was saying. "I caught them out there trying to tell Sally's fortune. They'd make her believe she was going to fall heir to a fortune, or get a husband, or something, and then we'd lose the best kitchen girl we ever had."

But Bobby felt too serious to smile at the old lady's sputtering.

Despite what Laura Belding said, there _must_ be something in the fortunes the Gypsy queen told! How did she know so much about _her?_ Bobby asked herself.

She knew that Bobby had no mother and that she was sure to get into trouble with her teachers. And now the prophecy she had made that her father would bring home a new wife before mid-summer rankled in Bobby Hargrew's mind like a barbed arrow.

For Bobby loved her father very dearly, and had been for years his confidante. It had long been agreed between them that she was going to be his partner in the grocery business, just as though she had been born a boy. And as soon as the little girls were big enough they were to go away to boarding school, Mrs. Ballister should be relieved of the responsibility of the house, and Bobby was going to be the real mistress of the Hargrew home.

And suppose, instead of all these things Father Tom should bring home a new mother to reign over them? The thought was ever in Bobby's mind these days. Not that she had any reason to fear the coming of a step-mother. The only girl at Central High whom she knew that had a step-mother loved her very dearly and made as much of her as though she had been two real mothers. Sue Blakesley had been without a mother long enough to appreciate even a subst.i.tute.

But Bobby and Mr. Hargrew had been such close friends and comrades that the girl was jealous of such a possibility as anybody coming into her father's life who could take her place in any degree. She worried over the Gypsy's prophecy continually; she wet her pillow at night with bitter tears because of it, and it sobered and changed her to her schoolmates, as we have seen.

It was a very serious and imminent trouble indeed to the warm-hearted, impulsive girl.

On her way to school that morning she chanced to turn the corner into Whiffle Street just as a dark-browed, shuffling fellow crossed from the other side and trailed along ahead of her toward the schoolhouse. Bobby knew that black face, and the huge gold hoops in his ears, at once. It was the husband of the Gypsy queen.

"Oh, I wonder if the whole encampment is in town hunting for that poor girl, Margit?" thought Bobby. "They are such strange, wicked folk. And look at him--why, that's Gee Gee!"

The lady ahead on the walk, behind whom the Gypsy was walking so stealthily, was none other than Miss Carrington herself. Instantly Bobby's thought flashed to the mysterious inquiries of the girl, Margit Salgo, about the teacher at Central High.

Bobby involuntarily quickened her steps. She was afraid of these Gypsies; but she was curious, too. The whole block was deserted, it seemed, save for herself, Gee Gee, and the man.

Suddenly he hastened his long stride and overtook the teacher. Bobby knew that the fellow accosted Miss Carrington. The lady halted, and shrank a little. But she did not scream, or otherwise betray fear.

"No, lady. Ah'm no beggar. Ma nyme's Jim Varey an' ah'm honest man, so I be. Ah come out o' Leeds, in Yorkshire, an' we be travelin', me an'

mine. Wait, lady! Ah've summat tae show ye."

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a card. He held this card so that Miss Carrington could read what was printed, or written, on it. And she did so, as was evident to Bobby, for she started back a little and uttered a murmured exclamation.

"Ah sees ye knaw ye'r awn nyme, lidy," said Jim Varey, shrewdly. "Yer the lady we're lookin' for, mayhap. 'Tis private business----"

"I can have no business with you, man," exclaimed Miss Carrington. "Why, you're a Gypsy!"

"Aye. I'm Gypsy. An' so was ma fawther an' mither, an' their fawthers an' mithers before 'em. We'm proud of the Romany blood. An' more'n 'us, lady, has mixed with the Romany--an' in other climes aside Yorkshire.

But all Romany is one, wherever vound. Ye knaw that, lidy."

"I don't know what you mean! I don't know what you are talking about!

What do you want of me?" cried Miss Carrington, quite wildly.

The man drew closer. Bobby was really frightened, too. She opened her own mouth to shriek for help. But the Gypsy did not touch the teacher.

Instead, he said in a low, but perfectly clear, voice, so that Bobby heard it plainly:

"I would speak to you, lidy, of the child of Belas Salgo."

Miss Carrington uttered a stifled shriek. Bobby sprang forward, finding her own voice now, and using it to good purpose, too. A door banged, and a gentleman ran out of his house and down to the gate, where the Gypsy had stopped Miss Carrington.

It chanced to be Franklin Sharp, the princ.i.p.al of Central High. Jim Varey saw him coming, glanced swiftly around, evidently considered the time and place unfavorable for further troubling the teacher, and so broke into a run and disappeared.

Mr. Sharp caught Gee Gee before she fell. But she did not utterly lose consciousness. Bobby had caught her hand and clung to it. The girl heard Gee Gee murmur:

"There was no child! There was no child! Oh! Poor Anne! Poor Anne!"

"Let us take her into the house," said Mr. Sharp, kindly. "That ruffian has scared her, I believe. Could you identify him, do you think, Miss Hargrew?"

"Yes, sir," declared Bobby, tremblingly.

But Miss Carrington cried: "Oh, no! Oh, no! Don't go after him--do nothing to him."

And she continued to cry and moan while they took her into the house and put her in the care of Mrs. Sharp. That forenoon Gee Gee did not appear before her cla.s.ses at Central High. But she was present at the afternoon session and Bobby thought her quite as stern and hard as ever. Nor did the teacher say a word to the girl about the Gypsy, or mention the occasion in any way.

CHAPTER X--EVE'S ADVENTURE

Eve Sitz had plenty to do out of school hours when she was at home.

n.o.body could afford to be idle at the Sitz farm. But she found time, too, to put on an old skirt, gym. shoes, and a sweater, and go down behind the barn to practice her broad jump and to throw a baseball at the high board fence behind the sheepfold.

She grew expert indeed in ball throwing, and occasionally when Otto, her brother, caught her at this exercise, he marvelled that his sister could throw the horsehide farther and straighter than he.

"Dot beats it all, mein cracious!" gasped Otto, who was older than Eve by several years, had never been to school in this new country, and was one who would never be able to speak English without a strong accent.

"How a girl can t'row a pall like dot. I neffer!"

"You wait till June, Otto," replied his sister, in German. "If you come to the big field the day of the Centerport High Schools, you will see that girls can do quite well in athletics. You know how we can row, and you saw us play basketball. Wait till you see the Central High girls on track and field!"

"A lot of foolishness," croaked Otto. "You go to the school to learn to be smart, no?"

"No," replied Eve, laughing at him. "I am smart in the first place, or I would not go. And don't I help mother just as much--and milk--and feed the pigs and chickens--and all that? Wait till you see me put the shot.

I am going to win a whole point for the school if I am champion shot-putter."

"Ach! It is beyond me," declared Otto, walking off to attend to his work.

The family--plain Swiss folk as they were--thought Eve quite mad over these "foolish athletics." They had no such things in the schools at home--in the old country. Yet Father and Mother Sitz were secretly proud of their big and handsome daughter. She was growing up "American." That was something to be achieved. They had come of peasant stock, and hoped that their girl, at least, would mix with a more highly educated cla.s.s of young folk in this new country.

So, if Eve thought that the tasks which usually fell to her nights and mornings, and on Sat.u.r.days, were not sufficient to keep her in what she called "condition," her parents made no objection to her throwing baseb.a.l.l.s, or jumping, or taking long walks, or riding on the old gray mare's back over the North pasture.

And it was upon one of these rides that she fell upon her second adventure that Spring with the Gypsies--or, at least, with one of the tribe.

It occurred on the Sat.u.r.day morning following Miss Carrington's meeting with Jim Varey, husband of the Gypsy queen. Of course, Bobby Hargrew had said nothing about this mysterious connection of the martinet teacher with the roving band of "Egyptians"; it was not her secret, and although Bobby might be an innocent gossip, she was no tale-bearer.