The Girls of Central High at Basketball: or, The Great Gymnasium Mystery

CHAPTER XXIII – CLIMBING UP

By the middle of the next week Hester was playing regularly in her old position on the basketball team. Roberta Fish had dropped back into the second team with all the grace of the sweet-tempered girl she was.

“I’m only too glad she’s come back,” said Roberta, referring to Hester Grimes. “It’s much more important that Central High should win that beautiful silver trophy than for me to have the honor of playing on the champion team.”

“You’re a good sort, Roberta,” said Bobby Hargrew, admiringly. “Now, I’d be mad if they’d asked me to step down and let somebody take my place.”

“No,” said Laura. “You’d be loyal, too, Bobby.”

“And that’s the A. B. C. of athletics, child,” said Nellie Agnew, remembering very clearly what the doctor had said to her weeks before on the subject.

“‘A. B. C.,’ indeed!” sniffed Bobby. “You make me feel like a primary kid again, I declare!”

Jess Morse began to laugh. “Some of these primary kids, as Bobby calls them, are pretty smart. Allison Mapes – you know her? – who teaches the first grade, was telling of a little Bohemian boy in her class. He is smart as a whip, but English is quite a paralyzing language to him. She asked him the other day:

“‘Ivan, what is a calf?’

“And the boy answered: ‘Missis, that’s the child of a cow and the back of your leg!’”

When the laugh over this had subsided Laura spoke seriously. They were talking in one of the small offices of the school, having retired to discuss the forthcoming games.

“It isn’t all plum cake and lemonade, girls, even to beat West High and Lumberport – ”

“Oh, my!” croaked Bobby. “See what we did to West High last time without Hester.”

“That was a fluke,” declared the captain.

“Why, they’re babies!” said Josephine Morse, confidently. “And Lumberport as well.”

“Don’t get the idea in your head that we are going to whip any team so easily. That’s when we are going to lose,” urged Laura. “Being too sure is as bad as being careless in your play.”

“Now she is hitting me,” grumbled her chum.

“Well, Jess, if the cap fits, put it on.”

“But do let us encourage ourselves, Mother Wit,” cried one of the twins. “Goodness knows, we need it.”

“That’s right,” said her sister. “We’ve had such bad luck!”

“Aw, she’s a regular old croaker!” shouted Bobby, dancing up and down. “We are going to win every game from now on!”

“Hush!” exclaimed Laura. “We’re making too much noise. Somebody will come and put us out.”

“Nope. Nobody here but John, the janitor. Gee Gee’s gone home, you bet. I wish those other girls would come and we could get down to business.”

“You look out, Bobby. If you get black marks again maybe you’ll be taken off the team for the rest of the term.”

“Oh, oh!” cried the irrepressible. “Don’t say such a thing.”

“That would be too mean!” cried Dora.

“Indeed it would!” added her sister.

They were all making a deal of noise. As Laura said, “one could scarcely hear one’s self think.” And noise was not allowed in the school building, whether in classes, or out. Suddenly, at the height of the revelry, there came a stern knock on the door. Behind the thick oak the startled girls heard a sharp voice exclaim:

“Young ladies!”

“Oh, gee!” gasped Bobby.

“Hush!” commanded Laura.

“Shucks! Somebody’s fooling us,” cried Bobby, springing to the door. “Who’s there?” she shouted.

“It is me – Miss Carrington,” said the muffled voice.

For a breath the other girls were stricken dumb when the name of the strict disciplinarian of the school was spoken. But it was Bobby who recovered her speech first, and she broke into a loud laugh.

“Go ’way!” she cried. “You can’t fool us. If it was Gee Gee she would have said: ‘It is I’!”

“Oh, my goodness! suppose it should be Miss Carrington?” gasped Nellie, in horror.

But the sounds outside the door ceased. Bobby, after a trembling moment, snapped open the lock and unlatched the door. The corridor was empty. But in a moment Hester Grimes appeared from the stairway and approached the meeting place of the team.

“You said you wanted everybody here, Laura,” she said. “But did you have Miss Carrington at your meeting?”

“Miss Carrington!” they shrieked in chorus.

“Yes. I just met her. And she had the funniest look on her face. What was the matter with her?” demanded Hester.

“Oh, my soul!” groaned Jess. “I can tell you what the matter is. Bobby just corrected Miss Carrington’s English. What do you know about that?”

But the occasion was not one for laughter or joking now. That had surely been Miss Carrington at the door, and the reckless Bobby had called her “Gee Gee” to her face, and been saucy into the bargain!

“We’re done for!” Dora Lockwood groaned. “Wait till assembly to-morrow. Bobby will be called out before the whole school.”

“Oh! she’d never be mean enough for that!” almost wept Dorothy.

“But something dreadful will happen to Bobby,” urged Nellie.

“She’ll be forbidden after-hour athletics, as sure as shooting!” declared Jess Morse.

Bobby, for once, was stricken dumb. She saw in an instant all the horrid possibilities of her reckless speech. Barred from the team for the rest of the term would be the lightest punishment she could hope for.

“And Gee Gee is always lying in wait for a chance to spoil our athletics,” wailed Lily Pendleton, who for once felt the sorrows of her fellows.

Hester wanted to know what it all meant, and they told her.

“She certainly did look funny when I met her on the stairs,” admitted the butcher’s daughter. “And you told her she couldn’t be herself because she said, ‘It is me?’ My! that must have been a shock to her. One of her pupils correcting Miss Carrington’s use of the English language!”

“It isn’t any laughing matter!” flared up Bobby.

“And I don’t see that crying over it will help any,” returned Hester, grimly.

The team as a whole, however, was worried a good deal by Bobby’s “bad break.” To be obliged to break in a new girl at Bobby’s place would be almost ruinous now. Just having gotten the team into shape once more, it seemed an awful thing to contemplate.

But assembly passed the next morning without Mr. Sharp saying a word about Bobby. The session dragged on till closing time without Gee Gee’s speaking to Bobby Hargrew. That very day East High was to come to play the girls of Central High on their court.

The uncertainty, however, made Bobby less sure in classes, and she came near to being held to make up her Latin. But she slipped through somehow and ran away from the school building as hard as she could run, for fear that Gee Gee would send for her at the last moment.

“Something’s happened to her. She’s had a change of heart. I’m afraid she isn’t well,” gasped Bobby, once safely in the dressing room of the gym. “She is never going to overlook that awful break of mine – is she?”

“You’d better walk a chalk line from now to the end of the term,” advised Jess. “If she ever does get you on any other matter she will double your punishment. I believe she is ashamed to call you up for what you said to her yesterday, because you caught her using language unbecoming a purist.”

“Be thankful, Bobby – and be good,” advised Laura. “You have certainly escaped ‘by the skin of your teeth,’ as the prophet has it. No, that is not slang; it is Scripture. And do, do be good for the rest of this half.”

“Oh, I’ll be a lamb – a little, woolly lamb,” groaned Bobby. “You see if I’m not!”

The girls of Central High played a splendid game of basketball that afternoon. They beat the East High team fairly and squarely, and their winning this game put them up a notch in the series. They took East High’s place as Number 2. There was still the Lumberport and Keyport teams to whip before Central High could win the trophy.

CHAPTER XXIV – HESTER WINS

The final games of the trophy series between the girls of the High Schools of Centerport, Lumberport, and Keyport were played on the grounds of Central High. It was verging on winter. Thanksgiving was at hand, and the first basketball series must be out of the way before the boys’ big football games on Thanksgiving eve.

Although school athletics was much in the minds of the girls, those who participated in the games had to stand well in their classes to retain their positions on the teams. Books first, athletics afterward. That was the iron-bound rule of the Girls’ Branch Athletic League.

But most of the girls on the team of Central High were bright scholars. Miss Grace G. Carrington was never “easy” on the athletic girls. That wouldn’t be her way. She usually seemed glad to put obstacles in the way of those who she knew were so deeply interested in athletics.

But aside from Bobby Hargrew, that last fortnight she had no chance to demerit any of the basketball team. And – to the wonderment of the girls themselves – she never said a word to Bobby regarding what had happened when she, Miss Carrington, rapped on the office door.

Having whipped East High so decisively, Captain Laura and her mates went at the Lumberport team with greater confidence. Lumberport was not the weakest team in the league; but Central High had managed to beat them in every previous game, and in this last one the home team played such snappy basketball that the visitors never came near them after the first toss-up.

It was a great game and the enthusiasm of the spectators increased with every play. How the boys cheered! There was a big crowd of spectators from Lumberport and they “rooted” for their home team. Despite the excitement, however, there was not a moment’s rough play.

Mrs. Case had watched Hester narrowly during these final games. There had been moments when the big girl was crossed by circumstances, or by her opponents, when – in the past – she might have flared up and said, or done, something unpleasant. But Hester seemed to have gained some control of her temper, and the hard places in the games were passed over successfully.

It was a fact that Hester had very little in common with the rest of her team-mates, save Lily. She did not put herself forward, and as none of them had been her close friends before she was put off the team, she still kept her distance now that she was back in harness again.

At home Hester’s mother was determined to make a heroine of her. Many of the ladies of the Hill, who seldom before this had called on easy-going, slip-shod Mrs. Grimes, came to see her now and praised Hester’s courage and her kindness to Johnny Doyle and his widowed mother. Mrs. Grimes was, naturally, pleased at all this praise.

“I’ve a mind to give a party, so I have!” she said to Hester, one day. “Your father could easy pay for as nice a party as was ever given on the Hill. He needn’t be stingy. And we could get to be friends with all these nice folks – ”

“Oh, Mother!” sighed Hester. “Don’t be foolish. These people don’t really care a thing for us. They’d only laugh. Their houses are not even furnished like ours – ”

“I should say not!” cried Mrs. Grimes. “We have some of the most expensive furnichoor you could buy at Stresch & Potter’s – ”

“Yes. At a department store. Nice people do not furnish their homes in that way. The varnish smells too new on our chairs and tables. We are too new. We never should have come to live on the Hill when father made money.”

“How ye talk!” exclaimed the astonished Mrs. Grimes. “Where would ye have us live – at the Four Corners still?”

“Perhaps we wouldn’t be so much like fish out of water there,” grumbled Hester.

“I’m no fish, I’d have ye understand!” exclaimed Mrs. Grimes. “And Mrs. Belding axed me to join a club – the New Century ‘tis called. ’Tis all women and our husbands haven’t a livin’ thing to say in it. I’m goin’ to join.”

“The New Century!” exclaimed Hester, indeed surprised.

“Yes. I’d be glad to be in something that Henry couldn’t poke his finger into and boss,” sighed the much harassed lady.

“But it’s never the New Century?” cried Hester.

“Why not?”

“That’s the most select club on the Hill. Lily’s mother belongs, and Mrs. Agnew, and all those folk.”

“And why not me?” demanded her mother. “We’ve got as much money – ”

“Hush! Stop talking about money if you want to be popular in the New Century Club,” said her daughter, who had learned a thing or two herself of late. “That is what is the matter with us – we’re proud of our money.”

“And why not? When Henry began with a shoestring.”

“Well, don’t be telling of it!” cried Hester. “These other people got their money so long ago that they’ve forgotten how they got it. We want to forget, too.”

But Hester was learning lessons fast. It had amazed her to see how people – and nice people, too – thought that what she had done for Johnny Doyle was of serious importance; while her lavish expenditure of money among her mates had heretofore won her few friends.

The fact that she had saved a man from the burning woods and carried the warning of the forest fire, had made her friends, too. When she had jumped into the sewer-basin after Johnny, Dr. Agnew seemed for the first time pleased with her.

It was unselfishness that counted!

Hester Grimes had never thought of it before. She had never thought out logically why Laura Belding was so popular, why Nellie Agnew was liked so well, and what made the other girls cluster about harum-scarum Bobby Hargrew. They were all unselfish girls, thoughtful in their several ways for the comfort of others.

Hester was learning what really paid in life – especially in the life of school and athletics. A good temper, a tongue without a barb to it, and thoughtfulness for the comfort of others. Those attributes won out among the girls of Central High – as they are bound to win out in every walk in life.

And Hester Grimes had begun to conduct herself accordingly.

The final game of the series for the cup was slated for a certain Friday afternoon. Colonel Richard Swayne – Laura Belding’s very good friend, and a liberal supporter of girls’ athletics – had invited the contesting basketball teams from all five High Schools to partake of a collation in the big upper hall of Central High’s new gymnasium, after the final game. That was to be played between the Keyport and Central High teams.

Whichever of the two teams won would stand highest in the schedule of the league, and to such winning team would be presented the trophy by the president of the Board of Education.

There would be such a crowd to see the game that tickets had to be issued, and those tickets went mostly to the girls who had competed in the basketball series, for distribution among their parents and friends. There was not so much cheering by the spectators at this game, for the boys were cut out of it. There wasn’t room for the regular “rooters.”

Many parents, however, who had not been attentive to the game before, were in the seats provided now, to criticise the sport of which they had heard so much. And everybody admitted that the two best teams of the schools were now struggling for the trophy.

From the first toss-up the girls played with a snap and vigor that amazed and delighted even their instructors. Trained as they had been all the fall, there were few fouls to record, and very little retarding of the game. The signals were passed silently and the girls indulged in little talking. Unnecessary talking and laughter mars basketball.

It was a pleasure to watch the lithe, vigorous young girls. They were untrammeled by any foolish fashions, or demands of dress. Their bodily movements were as free as Nature intended them to be. They jumped, and ran, and threw, with a confidence that none but the well trained athlete possesses.

The first half included a series of fierce rushes upon the Keyport side for baskets; but Central High held them down. Hester played brilliantly. Not once did she lose her temper, nor foul her opponent. She blocked the attempts of the Keyport players to make goals, but the referee did not catch her over-guarding or otherwise playing foul basketball.

She really won the onlookers with her splendid form in playing. They began cheering her particularly. Where Roberta Fish had been weak in the mass plays, Hester was strong. The Keyport captain, remembering that weak place in the former Central High line-up, forced the play into Hester’s territory.

“Oh, you Hester!” yelled Bobby, beside herself at last, with enthusiasm. “You’re a bear! Shoot it, Hessie! Let it come!”

But each time that the ball was shot for the basket, something intervened. Once it went straight for the basket, rolled around the rim, and dropped – to the floor without entering the receptacle!

The Central High rooters met this failure with a groan. But it was not Hester’s fault. She had done her best, and her shooting was as clean as it could be.

The timekeeper’s whistle called the play at the end of the half without either side having made a point.

It had been a rasping game. Many times Hester Grimes had been tempted to say something or do something that would be counted as “rough play”; but she had restrained herself, and when she walked to the dressing room she found Mrs. Case walking beside her with a hand upon her shoulder.

“Good girl!” exclaimed the physical instructor of Central High. “Keep it up, my dear, and you’ll be the best player we have on the roll.”

“But I didn’t get a chance to do a thing!” grumbled Hester, shaking her head.

“That is why I am praising you,” said Mrs. Case, drily. “For what you didn’t do. Keep it up. Restrain yourself as well for the rest of the game. Your chance may come for a brilliant play; but if it doesn’t, keep a grip on yourself just the same.”

Hester was secretly strengthened by this praise. She went out into the field at the call of the gong for the second half with the determination to deserve Mrs. Case’s good word, whether the team won or lost. And almost at first chance came Hester’s way and she was permitted to display a brilliant bit of play. It brought a goal for Central High – the first scored in the game.

But the girls could not stop to cheer her. Laura nodded and smiled at her, however, as the ball was brought back from the basket to be tossed up. For some reason Hester began to feel a warm glow about her heart. Her captain’s commendation had never meant much to her before.

Up went the ball and Laura and the other jumping center did their best to get it. The ball went from girl to girl, first in the hands of one team, then in the other. The Keyport team almost made a goal; but they were foiled by good guarding on Central High’s part.

Up and down the field went the ball and the excitement grew moment by moment. Two to nothing in favor of the home team! That was a situation bound to create excitement both in the field and on the benches.

Suddenly the captain of the visiting team got the ball. She passed it swiftly to her back center. Signaling one after the other of her team-mates, the Keyport captain sent the ball from hand to hand until – to the startled amazement of her opponents, the ball was in hand for a clear throw. In another moment it was in the basket and the score was tied again!

Four minutes more to play!

When the referee threw the ball up again every one of the eighteen girls playing was on the qui vive. The subordinate players watched their captains for signals. Central High got the ball. They rushed it down the field. But the guarding of the Keyport team was too much for them. They could not reach the basket.

Again and again was the ball passed back and forth. Once more the Keyport captain shot it back for a clear throw. But Hester managed to halt it. There were but a few moments of play left. It is not good basketball to oppose other than one’s immediate opponent; but for once Hester went out of her field to stop the ball.

A side swipe, and the ball was hurtled directly into Laura’s hands. She turned and threw it swiftly, making the signal for the famous massed play which was the strongest point in the game as played by Central High.

Down the field the ball shot, from one to the other. Hester’s quick break in the Keyport plan had rattled the latter team for a moment. And before the visitors recovered, the ball was hurtling through the air straight for the basket.

The whistle blew. But the ball sped on. It struck the edge of the basket; but the next breath it slid in and —the game was won!

Central High had outstripped its strongest opponent. The game won, so was the series, and the beautiful cup would remain in the possession of Central High.

“And all because of you, Hessie!” shouted Bobby, when they got back to the dressing room. “You’re a bully good sport! Isn’t she, girls?”

“She won the game,” declared Laura, coming forward to shake Hester’s hand.

They all had something nice to say to her. Hester couldn’t reply. She stood for a moment or two in the middle of the room, listening to them; then she turned away and sought her own locker, for there were tears in her eyes.

CHAPTER XXV – THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED

The boys, as has been said, were shut out from seeing the last basketball game of the series. Chet Belding was at the hospital that afternoon, having taken up some fruit to Hebe Pocock and Billson. The latter would soon go out and would return to his burned-over clearing in the woods.

“Guess that fire helped me as much as it hurt me. I’ll have to build a new shanty; but Doc Leffert was in here and said he’d rode over my piece, and that my heaps of rubbish had burned clean and all I’d have to do to clear my acres for corn would be to tam-harrow it.”

“Hebe isn’t getting along as fast as you do, Mr. Billson,” said Chet, in a low voice, for the Four Corners fellow was having a hard time to even move about on crutches.

“Dunno as he deserves any better than he’s got,” said Billson, grumpily.

“What you so cross about?” laughed Chet. “Surely you’re not sore over the way folks are treating Hester Grimes now? She comes pretty near being the heroine of the Hill section.”

“Ya-as. They praise her because she done what she did for little Johnny Doyle. But many of ‘em still think she set that foolish boy onto raiding the girls’ gymnasium.”

“I don’t know about that,” confessed Chet, slowly. “Although we may believe that Rufe had something to do with it, perhaps he did it, after all, because he’s not quite right in his head.”

“Oh, shucks!” exclaimed Billson. “All because he was crying to be let out of the gym. the night of the first raid?”

“Well, Jackway admits he was there,” repeated Chet.

“And Jackway is a good deal of a fool, too,” snarled Billson. “Say! there’s Rufe and his mother in the corridor now, going to see Johnny in the children’s ward. You bring Rufe into this ward for a minute. I want to show you something.”

Much puzzled, Chet Belding did as he was bid.

“Come here, Rufie,” said Billson, beckoning to the gangling youth. “I want to show you somebody. Come here.”

Billson swung back a section of the screen that hid Hebron Pocock’s bed. The big fellow was lying there with his eyes closed, but he opened them quickly when Rufe appeared, and scowled.

“Watcher want here, gooney?” he demanded.

Rufus sprang back and looked about for escape, his weak face working pitifully. But Chet and Billson barred the way of escape. Rufe began to snivel.