In thinking that her troubles were all over except for the September examinations, Barbara had forgotten to reckon with other consequences of her conditions in mathematics and the rest. Indeed, her troubles may be said to have just begun.
In the first place, she found it much harder to study than she had supposed it would be. She had always learned easily enough when she set her mind to it. Her mind, however, had during the last half year fallen into bad ways. Whatever discipline it may once have known had been seriously impaired. It had also failed to contract those new habits of study, peculiar to college work, for the acquisition of which freshman year is especially appointed.
When Barbara sat down with a trigonometry in her hand, her thoughts started on a wishing excursion, and worked up the tally of those things that she would rather be doing. Why should the Latin language invariably suggest Uttley's and college ice, and skates and skis and carnivals? The little lake had not moved from its position under the east window. Even when Barbara turned her back on it, it managed sooner or later to jerk her head around. Sky and air and snow and people called to her as insistently as ever. Concentrate as she would, she could not banish their voices. Barbara did not put her feelings into words, even to herself. She only felt that she had begun a discouraging task.
"Why do I hate it so? She asked Doris once.
"You won't hate it," said Doris, "when you get used to it again."
"Janet Bland says my head is rusty."
"Shine it up."
"Maybe it isn't so good a head as I thought," said Barbara "Maybe it only came from the bargain counter, marked down to ninety-eight cents."
"You don't believe that."
"Oh, I don't know. Here I've been rooming with straight credit for half a year; straight credit across the hall, too. And I'm a dunce. What do you make of that? Just the same, if I weren't rooming with you, Dorry, it would be a lot harder to keep on plugging."
For Barbara had to combat not only her own longing for pleasure, but the desire of a great many people for her company. Often there was a knock at the door of the room, and a voice called:
"Leighton, O Leighton! Syna Martyn wants you in her room!"
"Catch the next car with me, Bab. Please! Jack's home from Yale with his chum, and mother's telephoned for me to come and bring another girl."
"Heard the latest? Tiny-for-Short has just made off with a horse meant for Miss Chemistry Ford. Mistook it for one she'd ordered. And now Miss Ford and that German bigwig of hers have driven nobody knows where in a sleigh that belongs to a man who was calling at Doctor Seaman's. They thought it was theirs, of course. How's that for one of Tiny-for-Short's mix-ups? Come out and watch the third act."
Or else it was Tiny and Fuzz, with triumph on their faces. "Call out the old guard! Chuck work this once, Bobolink! We've found a boy in the village who will rent his double ripper until four o'clock."
If it had been only Tiny, or only Syna Martyn, or only one of a score of people! Or if they had all agreed to let Barbara alone in "quiet hours"!
Tiny and Fuzz and Migs and Nina tried to do that. They were having troubles of their own. Their report cards did not make pleasant reading. But there were girls who had no scruples. They thought more of the pleasure Barbara's presence gave them than of what was good for her. Most of those girls were merely thoughtless; but there were a few, Syna Martyn among them, who cared only to serve their own desires. Hitherto, Barbara had always been ready at a moment's notice to do anything interesting. Why not now? If they found her studying, they teased; if she was not studying, they did not need to tease. Throughout the first semester when they wanted her company, they had carried her off under Doris's nose if Doris happened to be at work. Even very thoughtless girls will not take possession of a room when one of its rightful occupants, who they know means business, is obviously trying to study. Hence, in her own quarters, when Doris was at home - and Doris made it a point to be at home as much as she could, - and when she succeeded in resisting entreaties, Barbara now found sanctuary.
But sometimes she did not want to resist; her will mutinied; she put her books aside, and gave herself entirely to play. Then she said "unprepared" in class, and repented in shame, and vowed that she would never say it again. And she did not - until the next time, which was almost always a little farther away from the last time than had been the time before that.
But to poor Barbara it seemed as if she were not getting on at all.
"I don't know so much as I did last semester," she lamented.
"Yes, you do," said Doris. "You only think you don't, because you are beginning to notice how much you do know. Last semester you didn't care."
If Barbara failed to see progress, other people were aware of the direction in which she was heading. More than one of her instructors gave her what Barbara called "a hand up." Freshmen passing in and out of classrooms beside her began to say, "Working, Leighton? Good for you!"
Such appreciation, and an invitation to usher at the junior "prom," helped to salve the sting of the readjustments after mid-year's. The class met and made its temporary officers permanent; reluctantly it erased the names of a few girls who had conditions; among them was Tiny-for-Short's. The musical clubs invited applications from freshmen who had no conditions. Worst of all, for Barbara, however, was the thought of missing her basketball "H."
"Leighton," said Ethel Conrad, the captain, as they came from Latin together one morning, "I don't need to say how I feel about not having you on the team, do I?"
Barbara stopped short. "Does my getting conditioned cut me out of basket ball, Ethel?"
"It does, worse luck!" the captain replied. "Didn't you know, Leighton?"
"I'd forgotten. I'm no end sorry."
"You'd better believe we are. But we're not blaming you. Only, if you could help us out once in awhile -"
"I'll be on hand for every practice. Count me as one of the regular scrubs."
The captain squeezed Barbara's arm. "You're the stuff, Leighton. It will help a lot."
"The games come next month, don't they?"
"Last three weeks of the term. I'd picked you for goal thrower."
"Whom will you put in now?"
"Search me. What do you think of Sally King?"
"She gets rattled easily."
"That's the worst of her. Got anybody to suggest?"
"Tiny Young wouldn't have to do a thing but reach up and drop balls into the basket. Now that she's out of the running, I suppose that Sally King is the best choice. I can coach her up in a few things, I think."
"See what you can do with her, Leighton. And - better luck next time!"
"Thanks, Ethel. I mean to have it."
"Good. The class needs you."
Not to play in the championship games! After the captain left her, Barbara walked on in a cloud of self-disgust. She had failed the class. There was no other way to put it - she had failed the class. The captain's generous thoughtfulness had pricked for the time her own little bubble of personal ambition. Under her pain crept a glow of gratitude. Ethel had had no hard words for her, no reproaches. It had not been, "Why didn't you work a little harder, Leighton?" It was just, "We're not blaming you," and "Better luck next time." That was college, she thought. No hitting the girl who was down, no useless repining. You accepted facts as they were, and made the best of them until you had changed them.
But she would show Ethel how she felt about it. Her actions should speak for her. "It doesn't matter who does the thing so long as it's done," she thought. "The cat danced - that's the main point." Janet Bland's words repeated themselves in her brain. "I won't miss one single practice," she said to herself, "no matter what anyone wants me to do. I'll have a share in the victory even though I'm not on the team. It will be good for me, awfully good for me, to do something I don't get any credit for."
Barbara kept her word. All the ability that was in her went to the service of the players picked for the freshman team. She took any position assigned her, and played as hard as she knew how. It was excellent practice for her opponent. It uncovered weakness and developed strength.
Barbara said nothing about what she was doing. Few of the class knew that she never missed a practice of the squad. None of them guessed how she felt about it, except Tiny-for-Short and Doris. Yet Barbara was not unhappy.
"You're helping a lot," the captain said to her. "You are making Sally King over."
"She's learned to know some of my ways," Barbara replied, "and they don't rattle her as they did, that's all."
"That's a good deal. Of course she's the same old Sally underneath, but she plays a fifty per cent. better game than she used to."
"Sally's all right when she keeps her head. You're not worrying, Ethel?"
"What good would that do me?"
"Our team's called unusually strong for a freshman team. Even Gay Leavitt acknowledged last night that we might possibly beat the juniors, and the juniors say we've a chance, a bare chance, at the seniors."
"Do you believe that?"
"Why not?"
"A team is no stronger than its weakest player. About where does that place us?"
"I don't believe my not playing makes all that difference. We'll beat the sophomores, anyway."
"Why the sophomores? They're a husky lot."
"Goodness, you are blue! Haven't we got to pay them for springing that class-tree trap last fall?"
"It's a good tree."
"Of course it's a good tree. And we want to celebrate our victory under its spreading branches while the sophomores pass by on the other side with averted faces."
"I get the idea. Put in your best licks on Sally King, then."
Barbara went cheerfully home to refuse an invitation to a "spread" in Janet Bland's room for the following night. She could refuse anything that conflicted with basket-ball practice. The honor of the class demanded it. For the class she could even contemplate watching the victories. Watching! When in every nerve she would tingle to be earning those victories herself!
"My, but you feel good after a game and a shower!" she said to the roomful of girls that waited her. "What have you there, Migs?"
"The new basketball songs. Everybody's to learn the words and report for practice promptly at one-fifteen in the gym to-morrow."
"Listen to this!" cried Frances.
"The freshmen have a little ball,
Oh, what a big din!"
"Just as big a din as we can make," said Tiny.
"It runs with them straight down the hall -"
"Whoever wrote that song didn't know basket ball," interrupted Barbara. "It's a foul to run with the ball."
"It doesn't say they ran with the ball," Nina declared.
"Guilty! Guilty!" cried Fuzz. "You wrote it, Nina."
"Really, Nina?"
"Of course she did!"
"What's the difference between 'they with it,' and 'it with them'?"
"You're dense, Bab."
Frances read on:
"It runs with them straight down the hall,
Up, Johnny, and in!"
"That's cute."
"How about this?" cut in Barbara. "Won't we pound this out!"
"Freshmen, freshmen, it's up to you,
Right this way with the ball, now do!
Class it and pass it -"
"What does class it mean?"
"Don't cavil at a poet, Fuzz. Maybe it's Nina again. Did you write it, Nina?"
"Not guilty."
"It means somebody ran short of rimes," Wally suggested.
"It means to make the ball your own, I think," said Doris. "Don't let any other class get their hands on it."
"Did you write that song, Dorry?"
"No, Bab."
"Class it, and pass it, and dribble it, too
And chuck it in the basket just for luck - oh, do!"
"Hear us on that 'oh, do'!" murmured Tiny.
"I don't care if we don't beat the seniors and juniors," said Frances.
"Why not beat them all?" Migs inquired.
"Migs aims high," said Wally.
"I think it would be fun to win the championship our freshman year, and keep it all through our course."
"There's not much you want, is there, kiddie?"
"Didn't any class ever do that?"
"You couldn't call it a freshman custom, Migs."
"We're the class that makes customs, Nina."
"Any little thing to please," said Tiny-for-Short. "But I'm like Frances. I'll be content if we beat the sophomores."
"They have a strong team."
"What's the matter with ours, Fuzz?" Barbara asked.
"Nothing, Bab. Only whipping them won't be exactly like rolling off a log."
Afterward, when Wally caught Doris alone in the hall, she remarked:
"There's a hole due in the cosmos right under Bab's nose, D. D., if we don't beat the sophomores."
"But we will. Don't you think we will?"
"I know as much about basket ball," said Wally, "as a cat about fiddlestrings. Therefore I don't think."
At no time in the college year do the classes feel their individuality so keenly as in the weeks of the championship games. The zest of sport tingles in the air; the colors, banners, and songs make life bright and gay, indoors and out.
Barbara, always responsive to college moods, was delighted by the excitement. She devised schemes for mascot costumes; she drilled a cheering section; she helped decorate the gymnasium with freshmen colors; she practiced indefatigably with the squad; she talked eloquently of freshman prospects. And then she cheered her team to victory against the juniors, and to defeat against the seniors; and even while she watched them lose that game and the chance for the championship, she knew that the real contest had not yet come.
It came at last in the sophomore-freshman game.
As she slipped out of the gymnasium after the last practice before the game, Barbara realized with a sudden shock that as far as she was concerned the fight was over. Her work was done. Nothing she could do now would change the issue.
She had only to wait with the rest of the class.
Long before the game between the seniors and the juniors was scheduled to begin, she was in her place, mounted on a chair behind the crimson-hung railing of the right-hand gallery. The opposite side of the gymnasium was decorated in green and yellow; there the sophomores were singing their class song.
As soon as the song was finished, Tiny-for-Short's red wand rose, hung poised a moment, and then dipped swiftly. In unison with it moved Barbara's wand; beyond Tiny's swung Fuzz Herron's. The freshman song struck the air gallantly; the freshmen were determined to show that they could sing as well as the sophomores.
Then the faculty appeared, and escorted by white-gowned ushers, walked the length of the gymnasium floor amid the cheers of the two classes. Basket-ball songs echoed from wall to wall. The mascots entered. Four big red numerals toddled the length of the hall, and were wildly cheered. Not once did Barbara's expression change. Her wand held her section to time, but it worked mechanically.
"Seven to five," she heard herself saying to Migs at the end of the first half of the senior-junior game. "It's going to be the seniors' game."
At last the familiar white-kilted, white-jumpered, red-stockinged figures, each with hair tied with a crimson bow, ran out on the floor, and Barbara set her wand to work again, while the freshmen expressed their frantic loyalty in song.
"I wish you were down there, Leighton," said a voice in her ear. "It would make us all feel better."
Then the whistle blew. The galleries fell abruptly silent. Barbara stepped down from her leader's chair. She had eyes only for the seven white figures on the floor below; each figure had a black-suited, yellow-trimmed opponent.
The whistle blew again.
Clean and true the ball sped toward the freshman goal. Ethel Conrad snapped it to Sally King. The forward threw hurriedly, and missed the basket. A tall sophomore guard popped up like a jack-in-the-box, gathered in the ball, and drove it straight into the hands of the yellow's left forward. A minute later the green and yellow wall rose up and wavered dizzily before Barbara's eyes.
"First score," said Migs, unsteadily, at her side.
Again the fourteen figures were in motion. Again the ball was in Sally King's hands. But now a tall figure with thrashing arms danced between her and the basket. The freshman turned, twisted, snapped to Ethel, made as if to run forward, and darting back, received the ball in a momentary space.
"Put it in! Put it in! Put it in!"
But again the tall sophomore scooped the ball out of the air and sped it down the field.
Barbara's hands grew clammy and cold.
"King's rattled."
"She's missed twice now."
"Don't say it. Pretty fair goal thrower generally."
"Not like -"
"Sh! She'll hear you."
"She could get round that sophomore."
Ah! The yellow goal thrower had missed the basket. And here came the ball again. "Now, Sally! Look alive, Sally! Show what you can do. Put it in! Put it in! Put it in!"
And Sally put it in while the freshmen rose as one girl and, in a delirium of joy, set their red streamers dancing.
But as Barbara followed with deep-seeing eyes the course of play, she could not rid herself of a horrible sinking of the heart. It was not that the sophomore seven were cooler or quicker or better players, except at one point. It was not that their team play was very much stronger and speedier. The freshmen offset that advantage with their dash and vigor. But they lost a third of the goals they might have won for lack of a girl to throw them. The freshmen forwards played nobly, but every soaring ball that missed the basket thudded on Barbara's heart.
"Migs!" she murmured. "O Migs!"
The two gripped each other's hands and waited breathlessly.
"Intermission," said Migs. "Nine to six. Maybe we can make it up in the next half."
"We can't," said Barbara. "We can't."
From the middle of the freshman section Tiny signaled that she understood and shared their misery. Barbara made no reply. She sang on; neither her arm nor her voice faltered.
Then the seniors began to hammer at the juniors again, and increased the difference between the scores. That was what the sophomores would do presently, thought Barbara, with a sinking heart. If the freshmen had a goal-thrower -
But they did not have a goal thrower.
Barbara sat through the second half with a face of flint. And at the end of the half the freshmen were beaten.
"We might," she kept saying to herself, "we might even have had the championship. The seniors beat us only by four points."
On the floor the freshman team formed a circle, and with heads together, and their arms laid across each other's shoulders, were cheering the victorious sophomores.
Barbara hurried from the gymnasium. She had turned blindly from Doris's beseeching face; she had managed to lose Migs in the crowd; she had slipped away from Tiny-for-Short. How they must hate her, the freshmen! Never could she meet Ethel Conrad's eyes; never look the team in the face again. It was her doing, this defeat.
She could not go to her room; she could not go where people were; she must get away. When she was halfway up Prospect, she heard singing on the campus below. She turned and looked. Under their tree the freshmen were singing. They spread out, a compact white mass, beyond the spread of its brown branches. No words reached Barbara. What could they find to sing about now? she wondered. Weren't they whipped?
As a matter of fact, the words to this freshman song were very simple. Tiny and Nina had improvised them on the spot.
"Just next year,
Never you fear,
We'll beat 'em,
We'll eat 'em -
Alive!"
Barbara walked on grimly. It might not matter, she thought, who did a thing, but it mattered much if it went undone.
At nine o'clock that night a girl tapped at the door of 64 Mead, and handed in a florist's box. "Bab here?" said the girl. "I found this downstairs, evidently just sent over; so I brought it up."
Barbara put out her hand for the box, and took off the cover. Within lay a mass of red roses.
"Wish I were popular!" grinned the girl at the door.
As Barbara read the card that had come with the flowers, Doris saw her face soften. Silently Barbara held out the card to her.
"'Beat 'em or bust, next year,'" read Doris. "'Them's the sentiments of the team.'"