Chapter IX: Mainly About Hockey

“What, _Sybil_!” Gretta laughed outright. “She’d be _far_ too frightened; she’s even terrified of the dark; and think what Stella told us about it! I’d be afraid to go there, myself.”

“You mean that night when she told us about the miser that lives there, whom no one sees, and whom everyone thinks is mad? You see, Sybil doesn’t know all that; she only saw the house from the train with us, and we all talked about it then--don’t you remember? It would be a jolly adventure, of course, but she’s too small to go alone. Would it be all right, do you think, if _I_ went with her?”

“Why, _Margot_!” exclaimed Gretta, surveying her cousin with wide-open eyes.

“If she’s set on it, I mean; for the prize, you know; she asked me to come, and I said I’d think it over.”

“But Miss Read said we weren’t to, and it’s out of bounds, and--and----” Gretta was beginning to realize that Margot’s independent spirit had only been sleeping, and that now it was about to reassert itself. “The _rules_, you know,” she ventured as staunchly as she could.

“Oh--_rules_!” exclaimed Margot, tossing her short pigtail. “Gretta, I’m sick of rules. Can’t we _ever_ break them? There’s nothing to do but keep different kinds of them all day long. How are we _ever_ to do a brave thing if we’re kept in so!”

“There’s hockey,” said Gretta; “that’s not keeping us in. You know Helen says you’ll make a good player, and I know you will.”

“Yes, there _is_ hockey,” agreed Margot. During the three weeks that had elapsed since the beginning of term the school games had appealed more and more strongly to the athletic out-of-door little Australian girl; she had hitherto, of course, been unused to anything like this organized playing with other girls, and had found it difficult, at first, to conform to the hockey regulations enforced so carefully by the games-mistress and by Helen, the captain. Before long, however, she was as keen on strokes, goals and matches as any of the Cliff School girls, and would soon, so the captain said, be a jolly good player.

The fact of keeping the rules at hockey, though she didn’t realize it, was helping her to understand and keep the school rules also, and Margot unconsciously enough was shaking down into the ordinary school-girl life with far less difficulty than Miss Slater had at first deemed possible. The thought of hockey now changed the current of her thoughts, and she turned a very interested face in Gretta’s direction.

“You like games, too, don’t you? Of course I shall miss hockey to-morrow, as I’m going home with Stella, but there’s that match next Saturday week against the Redford School. I’m longing to watch it. Oh, I wonder if I shall ever be in the team!”

“Of course you will,” replied her cousin in all good faith. “I love games, too, of course, but I know I’ll never be much good. I’m not half so fast a runner as you are, Margot; and then your wrists are so strong and you’re so much quicker in every sort of way than I am.”

“Well, you’ve got your fiddle; that’s your sort of thing, I suppose. No, I dare say it wouldn’t do, Gretta, to go to the ‘Little House’; I’ll tell Sybil I can’t go, and she’s not to, either. Just for a minute I thought what fun it would be, as well as being a most ripping way of trying for that prize. But I suppose we can’t; I’d forgotten we were at school. There she is. I’ll tell her now. Sybil! Sybil!”

The damsel addressed, who was emerging from the cloak-room door that opened on to the playground, came running up.

“Have you seen Adela?” she inquired in rather a fretful voice. “She’s simply _got_ to tell me what the French preparation is; I didn’t write it down.”

“No, I haven’t. Why didn’t you take it down yourself?” replied her cousin, who had no sympathy with Sybil’s lazy ways. “And look here, why aren’t you at hockey? Helen’s coaching all the little ones, and Adela’s sure to be there. Hurry up; you’ll be late.”

“I _hate_ hockey,” said the child, shrugging her shoulders; “it’s a most stupid game!”

“Stupid! Well, I like _that_,” rejoined Margot; “if there’s anything it’s _not_, it’s that! It’s just the most ripping fun.”

“Well, perhaps at first. When I hit the ball the first day Miss Carter said ‘Bravo!’ and Helen said I’d be in the team some day, and _now_--why, they don’t even smile at me!”

“You juggins!” laughed Margot. “Why, you couldn’t see them if they did.”

“I could, because I look to see--_always_,” complained Sybil, “and everybody’s always looking at the ball; and once, yesterday, when I’d nearly got a goal, Helen said I oughtn’t to have hit the ball so hard, but that I ought to have passed it to someone else. They can just hit their old ball themselves; I’m tired of hockey!”

“That’s because you always want to be top,” said Margot sagely; “and you can’t in hockey; you have to play for your side. And look here, Sybil, I’ve talked to Gretta about the ‘Little House,’ and I’m not going; it’s not allowed, you know, and I’d somehow forgotten it was term-time. We’ll do something else instead; and I’m not sure that it would be exactly brave after all, as it’s against the rules, you see.”

“Well, then, I’m going, anyway,” declared Sybil, growing crimson and turning angrily in her cousin’s direction; “and Gretta’s a horrid grandmother to have made you break your promise. You said you’d come; you know you did, Margot; and I’m going, anyway. I’ve simply got to win that prize to show to dad and Ann.”

“Well--go then,” said Margot, equally angrily; “and see how you like it.”

“I’m going, and you’re both sneaks,” was Sybil’s parting shaft; “and see how _you_ like it when I get the shield, and wear it every day.”

She hastened towards the hockey field as she spoke, in desperate fear, for all her assertions to the contrary, of being late at the practice. The others stood and looked after her.

“She won’t go to the ‘Little House,’ will she?” asked Margot rather anxiously. “It’s partly my fault, because at first I thought it would be all right.”

“Oh, _she_ won’t go,” said Gretta confidently; “she’s just angry; that’s why she says it.” They dismissed the subject from their minds, and did not think of it again for some time, as during supper that evening a fresh interest arose, and that a most absorbing one.

“What are the prospects of winning the Redford School match, Helen?” inquired the house-mistress, as she served out liberal helpings of pudding to the rows of waiting girls.

“Well, we didn’t manage to last year, Miss Read, but we mean to this year, if we can. It’ll take all our strength, though; they’re most awfully strong.” The head girl surveyed the members of her team as she spoke. “I’m not sure that we oughtn’t to give up sugar and some of the puddings till then; it makes such a difference.”

“Why?” inquired Gretta of Josy. “What does she mean?”

“The Redford School match nearly always falls on half-term, and it’s our biggest match,” replied her friend, with her mouth full. “The team always goes into special training the last week for it. It’s only _them_ who stop puddings and things, of course. I’m glad _we_ don’t have to; though it would be jolly well worth it a thousand times over to be going to play, wouldn’t it? That’s the reason, partly, why the dormer feasts always come that night.”

“Why?” asked Margot. “That night! Saturday week! Is there really going to be one then!”

“Oh, rather!” returned Josy. “It’s partly to make up for the puddings that the team have missed, nurse says; and, besides, it’s an awfully ripping finish to the day, if we win; and it’s rather decent and comforting if we don’t. So Miss Slater always lets us have it; all but the little ones--they don’t have one now.”

“How about the dormitory lists this time, Helen?” inquired the house-mistress.

“Well, there’s more than a week left, Miss Read; if I collect them and give them in to you by the Wednesday before, will that do?”

“_What!_” Sybil’s shrill voice was heard from the other table; “a _feast_! How perfectly _lovely_!”

“You’ll have to wait till you’re a bit older, Sybil,” replied nurse briskly. “No feasts in the babies’ dormitory, you know. Next year, perhaps.”

“I’m _not_ a baby,” began Sybil, as crossly as she dared; “and I don’t see why other girls should be greedier than me just because they’re bigger.” Her protests died away unheeded into a rather sulky mumble.

Gretta turned to Josy, feeling sorry for her little sister, who had been endowed with such a very sweet tooth. “Why don’t the little ones have a feast, too?”

“Well, they _did_ until one year when three of them out of that dormer were all sick the next day. But they always have something else just as ripping before the end of term. Nurse arranges it, so it’s sure to be decent. None of them is in the team, of course.”

The combined excitement of the prospective match and the dormitory feast provided plenty of material for conversation during the ensuing three weeks. As they undressed in their cubicles the girls of Dormitory 3 found much to say on these topics; and one and all combined in pitying Stella, who was to be absent from the second of the entertainments.

“That’s the worst of being a weekly boarder,” moaned the martyred one; “but you may be sure I’m coming up to watch the match. Dad’s coming, too, if he can. If not, the boy’ll bring me in the trap. I wouldn’t miss the Redford School match for anything.”

“I say,” Margot said suddenly to Gretta, “I wonder if _mother_ would come?”