School went on the next day much as usual. Betty met Marcella in the hall and received a friendly smile, though Marcella was preoccupied. As the next few weeks went by, Betty almost forgot how important the sorority matter had seemed. They did not see as much of Peggy, that was all. And it was probable that Carolyn and Betty did not confide such intimate affairs to Peggy as before. It made a difference to feel things might be passed on to others with whom Peggy was now intimate. The girls wondered how she “stood” Mathilde, but Peggy never mentioned Mathilde.

The weeks sped on with the customary tests and the welcome Holiday season. Betty did not see anything of her old friends, Janet and Sue, who could not visit her at any time suggested. But they all went to the farm on Christmas, for Grandma was well and longing for them to come once more. There was plenty of snow there and hills for sledding. Dick tried to make some skis, without remarkable success, but Doris and Betty enjoyed trying them.

The spread of white, snow-covered fields, the freedom from the city’s noise and traffic and the great open fires of the old farmhouse were a joy to everybody. But Mr. Lee made plans about how a furnace could be put in for Grandmother, since she refused to leave the home place. That should be done before another winter. The children had brought their various reports to show Grandmother, who asked Betty, “Still on the honor roll in spite of athletics?”

“Yes’m,” said Betty, with an engaging smile. “You see, hikes and swimming and practice games are in the nature of recreation. I go home and rest and eat good meals and then I can get my lessons all right.”

“Aw, Betty is just smart, Grandma,” said Dick. “Couldn’t all of them do it.” And Betty, surprised at this brotherly tribute, made Dick a sweeping bow.

Betty was on the regular class basketball team now. There were about two hundred girls who had “gone out” for basketball on the call for the inter-class contest teams, though the contest would not start until February. But the teams were organized before Christmas and Betty was chosen captain. How that had happened she claimed not to know and was really surprised, for she thought that one of the athletic teachers had been influenced by Mathilde and did not like her.

But Betty had played good hockey and in basketball practice games she was light, active, showed powers of leadership, and best of all, could make baskets, an important ability in basketball, it would seem! In consequence she found herself in command of the Sophomore Jumping-Jacks, a name for which Betty was not responsible. But some one had watched them and declared that several of the girls were “regular jumping-jacks” when it came to lifting the ball to and through a basket. Some one who overheard called them the Jumping-Jacks and the name stuck till the girls considered it “cute” enough to be adopted. The “squad” was a large one, with a number of girls who played nearly as well as those on what was considered the “team.” There were a few jealousies to be handled, as Betty well knew. How she had made the position of captain she scarcely knew yet. Carolyn told her that she was the “dark horse,” as she said her father called it in politics. “Sort of a compromise?” queried Betty, who had not even sought to be captain and dreaded it.

“Yes. Everybody knew you weren’t after it, and there was such a mess this time, sorting out for the first and second team. So you’re it. Now see that we beat everybody. I’m only playing basketball on your account, Betty.”

“Don’t you really like it?”

“Yes, but I don’t enjoy a big contest. I’ll do my best, though, to make my part of the second team so good that I’ll get called in to help out the first squad.”

“Good for you. If I have anything to say, you’ll get a chance to play with me!”

Kathryn was on the first team and a good player. She was as quick as Betty and with her practiced on the floor to make long shots from different angles. “It sometimes saves the day Betty,” said Kathryn. “Do you remember last year how Freddy Fisher had a chance to put the ball through that basket from ’way across the floor! We certainly have missed Freddy this year, haven’t we? But Ted Dorrance is playing basketball and he’s good.”

“Is that so? He wasn’t on the football squad.”

“No. His mother draws a line on football and said she’d take him out of school, or send him away somewhere to school if he played. But he’s grand in basketball. Didn’t you see that write-up of him in the Roar last week?”

“I missed getting that number, Kathryn. Have you a copy?”

“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 Saturday.”

“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 Dick 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 nobility.”

“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 pass Betty in the hall, whether he had an opportunity to speak to her or not. In a class 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 sophomore 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 classes. The sophomores 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 sophomore 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 sophomores “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 assets” 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 classes 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 class cheers and cheered for the enemy. The sophomores 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 class 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 class. 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 class competition, 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 sophomores,” 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 sophomores. 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-class games continued, with some intervals due to other important school events, for three weeks. Classes were given more than one opportunity to better their score against other classes. But finally it narrowed down to a contest between the juniors and sophomores, Betty finding the sophomore record making her “famous,” as Kathryn said. Senior luck held part of the time only, but that class 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.

Dick and Doris were there and all the girls of the G. A. A. who could come, to say nothing of various boys, particularly those of the sophomore and junior classes. “Forget the crowd, girls, and whether your nose gets shiny or not,” advised Betty. “You’re a graceful lot anyhow and usually succeed in avoiding a terrible scramble. But remember that we have to beat those juniors!”

Betty was distrustful of Mathilde, who had gotten on the first team by no wish of hers. She would be playing against Marcella and the other juniors of Kappa Upsilon and Betty thought, though she could not be sure, that she surprised a message between Mathilde and one of the junior players at the other game they played with that class. Mathilde’s play had been a failure. Could it have been that she wanted to give the game to the junior captain, her sorority sister?

Betty told her worries to no one but Kathryn. She did not want to worry Carolyn, who could not imagine that any one would be as mean as that and was too unsuspicious to see anything but the most flagrant acts. “I’ll keep an eye out, Betty,” said Kathryn. “Mathilde doesn’t care for the sophomores or anything but that old sorority, and she doesn’t like your being captain, though I hate to tell you that.”

“Don’t worry. I know it. We’ll just keep awake and I’m glad to say that it’s Miss Fox who’s keeping an eye out this time, besides the referee. But it’s going to be a fast game and no telling what may happen.”

First with applause, then with silence, the little audience in the gym greeted the two teams as they came out, without the preliminary stunts that sometimes marked school affairs, and started right in. Amy Louise stood straight up when she saw for the first time the big ball, tossed from one to another, going across the floor, in the hands of Betty’s girls, to be popped into the proper basket. That was after the “tip-off,” as a freshman girl told Mrs. Lee. She knew few of the correct expressions, but enough to indicate results. “The point is to put the ball through their own basket, Mrs. Lee and they ‘make the goal’ and ‘score.’”

But there was little opportunity to explain. As had been predicted, the game was a fast one. The sophomores had the advantage at the first and scored several times. Then the juniors succeeded in keeping the sophomores from scoring, put up a clever defense of their own, carried the ball with bewildering speed from one to another and passed the score of the sophomores with their own. The sophomores came back with a series of successful plays after disaster temporarily visited the juniors; and Kathryn covered herself with glory by making the long shot, for which she had been practicing, and saved the day in a bad situation which had occurred. Advantage now on this side and now on that, the first two quarters ended with an equal score.

“If we can do that, Betty,” whispered Kathryn, “we stand a good chance to beat.”

But Betty was too engrossed to heed. Miss Fox was talking to Mathilde, who was answering loudly. The referee was called to the conference. Then Miss Fox came to Betty, who was watching. “I—we—are taking Mathilde out, Betty. She is not guilty of any foul, but we think that she purposely lost an advantage. I’m not going to risk it. Put in Mary Emma Howland for the rest of the game. If the juniors beat us they want to do it fairly.”

Mary Emma was only too glad to play. The other girls wondered a little, but the game was too engrossing, when again they were in the midst of it, to care who was playing. Betty gave Mary Emma a few instructions, but Mary Emma was one of the best on the second team and had been hoping for a chance to play the Championship game. Mathilde was very angry, as Betty could see. She came up to Betty and said, “You put Foxy up to that, I know!”

“I didn’t even see what you did, or didn’t do, Mathilde,” replied Betty, but she turned away. It would not do to get into a discussion now.

Again the contest waxed hard and fast, each side to put the ball through their own basket, each side to keep the other from doing the like. It took quick thinking and quick action and keeping the rules. Betty had an opportunity at showing what she could do in scoring, getting away from her guard and making two beautiful “shots” from unfavorable angles. The juniors felt that it would be a disgrace to let the sophomores beat the contest and began to grow excited. Betty never was more cool within, though physically she was warm from the action. It wouldn’t be so terrible to be beaten by juniors—but oh, how good to beat them—even Marcella, who was playing a good game.

But personal relations were forgotten on the floor. Marcella was kept from sending the ball through the junior basket and Mary Emma starred as guard in that occasion. The quarters,—the halves—passed, and the pistol shot rang out for the close of the game with the score even.

No one was satisfied, of course, but many were the compliments for the playing of both teams. Few fouls, clean playing, fast playing, enough baskets, the comments declared. “It’s so stupid when nobody can score,” said one. “These girls managed to do it some way in spite of good interference.”

Twenty-five to twenty-five the score stood, said Marcella caught up with Betty as they went back to the girls’ gym to change costumes again. “The idea that you beat us, Betty,” said Marcella with a smile. “I just declared that you never would!”

“Why, we didn’t beat you!” cried Betty.

“You might as well. We couldn’t beat you, anyhow, which was terrible! I think we were a little better in our guarding, but you overcame that disadvantage by those long shots that we did not dream you could make. You and Kathryn are stars, Betty. I’m sorry we did not get you in Kappa Upsilon. What was the trouble with Mathilde, Betty?”

“I don’t know, Marcella. You’ll have to ask Miss Fox or the referee. I didn’t see anything.”

“I imagine you have an idea, though,” said Marcella. “Well all hail to the Jingery Jumping Jacks! The Lucky Leapers are forced to give them credit, though we don’t want to do it.”

“Aren’t you a great jollier, Marcella Waite! I’m glad it’s over, but I’d rather somebody would beat. Still, there are things to be said in favor of a tie, provided a body couldn’t win the championship outright. Oh, do you suppose they’ll make us play another game?”

“Let us have another chance, you mean,” winked Marcella. “No, the big excitement is over and they’ll not do it, though I’d love to.”

“The sophomore team will be ready,” said Betty, “though just now I’m for a good dip in the pool and a square meal at home!”

“Sensible idea. You make me hungry at the thought. Oh, Mathilde! Wait!”

Betty watched Marcella follow Mathilde, who neither turned around nor waited, but hurried into the other gym.