“There’s worse’n me, lady,” croaked Jerry in her tramp voice, which made them both laugh.
It having been decided by the Nineteen Travelers not to undertake the giving of an entertainment until after Thanksgiving, Marjorie had a fair amount of time to give to basket ball. Professor Leonard had asked her and her three assistants on committee to drop in at the gymnasium occasionally during practice. “It will give you a line on the teams. I am anxious for fair play and no favors. I want the morale of these teams kept up. I recall a time when it was sadly lacking.”
The instructor was brutally candid in referring to the underhanded methods of the departed Sans. He would never get over his utter loathing for their lack of principle.
As for Augusta Forbes, energetic center on her team, her unreasoning dislike for Marjorie and Jerry had not abated. She was greatly displeased to find Marjorie at the head of the sports committee. She talked loudly in the privacy of her room about not expecting a square deal from the “wonderful” committee. She attributed her position on the freshman team entirely to Professor Leonard’s superior judgment. As a matter of fact, the committee had had the deciding word. Contrary to usual custom, the players received notices of their election to the teams the following day instead of on the floor. This gave the director and his committee an opportunity to talk matters over before deciding.
Unlike the rest of her Bertram chums, Gussie had put in a more or less stormy fall on the campus. She was not specially tactful and often gave unnecessary offense. She had a habit of blurting out the truth regardless of whose feelings might suffer. Yet she was quick to praise when something pleased her, and generous to a fault.
Unfortunately, she had made the one mistake of briefly cultivating Elizabeth Walbert. The after effects of that mistake still lingered to disturb her peace of mind. In keeping with her spiteful resolve, Elizabeth had not lost an opportunity to ridicule or annoy Gussie. Her influence among the half dozen freshmen at the Hall with whom she consorted was great enough to incite them to mischief against tall, babyish Gussie.
One evening she returned from dinner to find all her framed pictures turned toward the wall, her bed dismantled, the sheets and covers tied in hard knots, her text books lodged in the wastebasket. Another rainy evening she returned from the dining room to open windows. The rain was beating in the room and no amount of pressure would close them. Wrathful examination discovered nails as the opposing force—cleverly driven in the sashes so as almost to escape notice. On still another occasion, she was decidedly startled to come upon a masked, black-garbed figure stretched on her couch bed. It turned out to be a dummy made of her clothing and attired in an old black domino; one of the very dominos worn by the Sans on the night they had hazed Marjorie. Elizabeth Walbert had found it tucked away on a top closet shelf of her room, where it had escaped the notice of the maid during the summer house cleaning.