Following the basket ball try-out, which the Sanford five agreed was the tamest attempt at playing basket ball that they had ever witnessed, little of moment befell them as the days slipped by and the Thanksgiving holiday drew near. As they would have four days’ vacation, all were determined on spending them in Sanford. Ronny was going to Miss Archer’s, as she had promised her God-mother this holiday before leaving for college.

Lucy Warner was the only one of the Five Travelers who intended to remain at Hamilton during the holiday. She had flatly refused to allow Ronny to defray her expense home.

“There is no use in my going home. I would not see Mother except for a very short time. She is nursing a fever patient and won’t be able to leave her for at least three weeks. Yes, I know I could be with you girls. I’d love to, but Katherine has no place to go. I might better stay here with her. I am going home for Christmas and she has promised to spend those holidays with me.” This was Lucy’s view of the matter.

The day of their departure for home was typical Thanksgiving weather, fairly cold, and marked by snow flurries. If the trip to Hamilton had seemed long, the journey home was longer. With all four impatiently counting the miles between Hamilton and Sanford, time dragged. Their train having left Hamilton at eleven o’clock that morning, it was after dark when it pulled into Sanford. A fond company of home folks were on the station platform to greet the travelers, who for the first time since leaving for college, separated, to go in different directions.

Marjorie thought the most beautiful sight she had ever looked upon were the lights of her own dear home. Encircled by her captain’s arm, they blinked her a mellow, cheery welcome as the automobile sped up the drive. She never forgot the wondrous happiness she experienced in returning to her father and mother after her first long absence from them.

It was after dark on the Sunday evening following Thanksgiving when four of the Five Travelers alighted from the train at Hamilton station. Tired though she was, and a little sad, Marjorie thrilled with an odd kind of patriotism as the lights of the campus houses twinkled on her horizon. There was, after all, a certain vague joy in having returned to college.

Ronny, Jerry and Muriel all agreed with her in this, as the Lookouts gathered in hers and Jerry’s room after Sunday night supper to tell Lucy the news of home. Mrs. Warner had called at the Deans on Saturday and intrusted a letter and package to Marjorie for Lucy. The package, when opened, revealed a pretty knitted sweater and cap in a warm shade of blue. Lucy’s mother had knitted them during intervals while her patient slept.

“How have things been here?” queried Jerry, after the admiring comments relative to Lucy’s cap and sweater had subsided.

“It has been so blissfully quiet,” sighed Lucy. “There were only five girls here over Thanksgiving. Miss Remson says she has experienced a spell of heavenly calm. We had a fine Thanksgiving dinner. Two of Miss Remson’s nephews were here for the day. They brought their violins and Miss Remson plays well on the piano. We had music Thanksgiving evening. Friday evening we were both invited to Professor Wenderblatt’s home. Mr. Henry Arthur Bradburn, a friend of his, who has made a number of Arctic journeys is visiting him. There were about twenty-five guests. You can imagine how proud Kathie and I were. Lillian came over on Friday morning and invited us.”

“You may go to the head of the class,” commented Jerry. “You’re graduated from the stay-in-your-shell period. I never before heard of such a sudden and unparalleled blossoming into the high-brows’ garden.”

The Five Travelers lingered to talk that evening until the last minute before the ten-thirty bell rang. The next day was not characterized by particularly brilliant recitations on the part of any of the returned students.

On the third day of December notices appeared on the bulletin board announcing the first basket ball game of the season. The sophomores had challenged the freshmen to meet them on the second Saturday in the month, which fell on the fourteenth. The sophomore team was composed entirely of Sans Soucians. Natalie Weyman, Dulcie Vale, Joan Myers, Adelaide Forman and Evangeline Heppler were the select five who were to wrestle with the freshmen for the ball.

“Can they play basket ball?” was Muriel Harding’s pertinent question put to her room-mate, Miss Barlow, who had just finished naming the players on the sophomore team. The two girls had met outside Hamilton Hall and stopped as was their wont to consult the main bulletin board.

“They are fairly fast players, but,” Miss Barlow’s eyebrows went up, “they are so tricky. They composed the freshman team, last year. Gratifying, isn’t it, to be able to head basket ball two years in succession?” The question was freighted with sarcasm.

“Very,” returned Muriel, inwardly amazed at this new attitude on the part of her reserved room-mate. It was the first time Moretense had ever grown personal in regard to any of the students.

“I am positive the juniors won’t play them this year,” Hortense continued. “They had enough of them last. Really, the umpire nearly wore herself out shrieking ‘foul’ during that game. My word, but they worked hard—cheating. It did them not a particle of good. They lost by ten points.”

“Do you like basket ball?” Muriel was further astonished at her companion’s apparent interest in the sport.

“Yes, I do, when it is well and fairly played. I have never yet seen a really clever game played at Hamilton.”

Similar information drifted to the Lookouts concerning the sophomores’ work at basket ball, during the few days that preceded the game. Far from the usual amount of enthusiasm which attends this sport was exhibited by the upper class students. The freshmen, however, were duly excited over it. While many of them had disapproved the partiality shown at the try-out, they could only hope that the freshman team would rally to their work on the day of the game and vanquish the sophs. The team was practicing assiduously. That was a good sign. The sophomores were not nearly so faithful at practice.

“If ‘our crowd’ can play even half as well as the scrub teams could at Sanford High they can whip this aggregation of geese, Robin Page excepted,” Jerry asserted scornfully to her chums on the evening before the game. The next day’s recitations hastily prepared, the Lookouts had gathered in Ronny’s room for a spread.

“I feel sorry for Miss Page,” remarked Ronny, without lifting her eyes from their watch on the chafing dish in which the chocolate had begun to bubble.

“So do I. I told her so yesterday,” confessed Muriel. “I met her in the library and we had quite a long talk. She said she would have resigned after the first day of practice, but she felt that it would be cowardly. She knows the game as it should be played, but the other four girls are quite shaky on some points of it and they won’t let her correct them when they make really glaring mistakes. She tried it twice. Both times she just escaped quarreling with them. So she quit.”

“I think she is so plucky to stay on the team under such circumstances.” Marjorie looked up from her sandwich-making labors, her face full of honest admiration for Robin. “She is such a delightful girl, isn’t she?”

“She makes me think of a small boy,” was Jerry’s comparison. “Tell you something else about her when I get this tiresome bottle of olives opened. If I don’t extract the treacherous old cork very gently, I’m due to hand myself a quarter of a bottle of brine in the eyes or in my lap or wherever it may happen to land. There!” She triumphantly drew forth the stubborn cork without accident. “Now about Robin Page. She asked me to ask you girls to go to the game with the Silverton Hall crowd. Then she wants us to be her guests at dinner at the Hall and spend the evening with her and her pals. I’ve accepted for us all, so make your plans accordingly.”

“I’ve already asked Moretense to go to the game with us.” Muriel looked briefly perplexed. “I don’t think anyone will care if I ask her to go with us to meet the Silverton Hall girls. I can’t go with you folks to dinner, for my estimable room-mate has invited me to the Colonial and engaged a table ahead. I am to meet Miss Angier and Miss Thompson, juniors and friends of hers.”

“When did you make all these dates and right over our heads?” Jerry quizzed, trying to appear offended and failing utterly.

“Oh, the other day,” returned Muriel lightly. “It shows you that I am well thought of, too, in high-brow circles.” She cast a sly glance toward Lucy. The latter was happily engaged in cutting generous slices from a fruit cake which had come by express that day. Mrs. Warner had made it early in the fall and had put it away to season. It had arrived at an opportune time, and Lucy had gladly contributed to the feast.

She chuckled softly over Muriel’s good-natured thrust, but made no reply. It was her chief pleasure to listen to her chums, rather than talk. While she had expanded wonderfully as a result of association with a fun-loving, talkative quartette of girls who had taken pains to draw her out, she still had spells of the old reserve. She was gradually growing used to the gay badinage, which went on constantly among her chums, and on rare occasions would convulse them by some dry remark of her own.

While the Five Travelers were preparing their little feast in the utmost good fellowship, in a room two doors farther up the hall five other girls sat around a festal table, arguing in an anything but equable manner. Four of them were members of the sophomore team. The fifth was Leslie Cairns.

“It’s not fair to the kid if you girls don’t give her a chance to win.” Leslie Cairns’ shaggy eyebrows met in a ferocious scowl. “Don’t be stingy. You won enough games last year. Have a heart!”

“Honestly, Les, you talk like an idiot!” exclaimed Natalie Weyman impatiently. “You have a crush, and no mistake, on that little Elster simpleton. I don’t care whether you like what I say or not. You think she is a scream because she behaves more like a jockey than a student. I think she is so silly. You will get tired of her swaggering ways before long. See if you don’t.”

“She’s a game little kid, and I like her,” flung back Leslie with belligerent emphasis. “Why did you put me to all the trouble to fix things so that she could make the team if you didn’t intend to give her a showing. That cost me time and money.” Her voice rose harshly on the last words.

“Shh!” Dulcie Vale held up a warning finger. “You are almost shouting, Les. Lower your voice.”

“I should say so.” Natalie Weyman’s face was a disagreeable study. Before the arrival of Lola Elster at Hamilton, she and Leslie had been intimate friends. Now Leslie had in a measure deserted her for the bold little freshman she so detested.

“Beg your pardon.” Leslie’s tones dropped back to their usual drawl. “Sorry you girls have decided you must break the record tomorrow. Why so strenuous? You haven’t Beauty and her gang to fight. They haven’t had even a look-in. I hear they are really players, too. The trouble with you, Nat, is you are two-faced. You pretended that you were anxious for Lola to make the team because you thought she would make a fine record for herself on the floor. You said her pals ought to be on the team, too. So they are, the three of them. I worked that. Now you didn’t say that you wanted these three freshmen on the team so as to keep those Sanford upstarts off. I caught that, too, and fixed it. I didn’t mind. I can’t see them. What you wanted was a crowd of freshmen your team could whip easily.”

“That is absolutely ridiculous and unkind in you, Leslie!” Natalie’s face was scarlet. “How could I possibly know beforehand just how well the freshmen we—that is—you——” Natalie stammered, then stopped.

Leslie Cairns’ upper lip drew back in a sneering smile. “How could you know? Well, you dragged them over to the gym and set them at work with the ball. This was before the try-out. What? You took good care not to ask me along that day. Joan is as deep in it as you are. Then you came back puffing about what wonderful players these kids were and so forth. Would I fix it for them. I did. The day of the try-out I was pretty sore. You can’t fool me on a basket ball. They are not much more than scrubs; except Lola. She is O. K. I saw you and Joan had put one over on me, but it was too late to make a fuss. Think I don’t know you, Nat? Ah, but I do!”

Natalie sat biting her lip, her eyes narrowed. She was well aware that Leslie knew her traitorous disposition. For selfish reasons she did not wish to quarrel with her.

“All right, Leslie,” she shrugged. “Have it your own way. Go on thinking that, if it will be any satisfaction to you. You must remember we have our own end to hold up as sophomores. Why, if we tried to favor Lola during the game, it would be noticed and we would have trouble over it. Ever since that Beauty contest, I’ve noticed a difference in the way I am treated. I used to be It on the campus. I’ve lost ground, somehow. We Sans have worked too hard for first place here to give way now. We must keep up our popularity or be at the dictation of the common herd. Our team simply has to make good tomorrow.”