The Girls of Central High at Basketball: or, The Great Gymnasium Mystery

CHAPTER I – HESTER IS MIFFED

The referee’s whistle sounded sharply, and the eighteen girls of Central High engaged in playing basketball, as well as an equal number strung along the side lines, stopped instantly and turned their eyes on Mrs. Case, the physical instructor.

“Hester Grimes! you are deliberately delaying the game. I have reprimanded you twice. The third time I will take you out of the team for the week – ”

“I didn’t, either!” cried the person addressed, a rather heavily built girl for her age, with a sturdy body and long arms – well developed in a muscular way, but without much grace. She had very high color, too, and at the present moment her natural ruddiness was heightened by anger.

“You are breaking another rule of the game by directly addressing the referee,” said Mrs. Case, grimly. “Are you ready to play, or shall I take you out of the game right now?”

The red-faced girl made no audible reply, and the teacher signalled for the ball to be put into play again. Three afternoons each week each girl of Central High, of Centerport, who was eligible for after-hour athletics, was exercised for from fifteen to thirty minutes at basketball. Thirty-six girls were on the ground at a time. Every five minutes the instructor blew her whistle, and the girls changed places. That is, the eighteen actually playing the game shifted with the eighteen who had been acting as umpires, judges, timekeepers, scorers, linesmen and coaches. This shifting occupied only a few seconds, and it put the entire thirty-six girls into the game, shift and shift about. It was in September, the beginning of the fall term, and Mrs. Case was giving much attention to the material for the inter-school games, to be held later in the year.

Hester Grimes had played the previous spring on the champion team, and held her place now at forward center. But although she had been two years at Central High, and was now a Junior, she had never learned the first and greatest truth that the physical instructor had tried to teach her girls:

“Keep your temper!”

Since spring several of the girls playing on the first team of Central High had left school, graduating as seniors. The work now was to whip this team into shape, and finally Mrs. Case and the girls themselves, voting upon the several names in their capacity as members of the Girls’ Branch Athletic League, had settled upon the following roster of names and positions as the “make-up” of the best-playing basketball team of Central High:

Josephine Morse, goal-keeper

Evangeline Sitz, right forward

Dora Lockwood, left forward

Hester Grimes, forward center

Laura Belding, jumping center

Lily Pendleton, back center

Dorothy Lockwood, right guard

Nellie Agnew, left guard

Bobby Hargrew, goal guard

The basketball court of Central High was located in the new Girls’ Athletic Field, not far from the school building itself, and overlooking beautiful Lake Luna and the boathouses and rowing course. At the opening of Central High this fall the new field and gymnasium had first come into use.

The athletic field, gymnasium and swimming pool were the finest in the State arranged for girls’ athletics. They had been made possible by the generosity of one of the very wealthy men of Centerport, Colonel Richard Swayne, and his interest in the high school girls and their athletics had been engaged by one of the girls themselves, Laura Belding by name, but better known among her schoolfellows and friends as “Mother Wit.”

The play went on again under the keen eye of the instructor. Mrs. Case believed most thoroughly in the efficiency of basketball for the development and training of girls; but she did not allow her charges to play the game without supervision. Lack of supervision by instructors is where the danger of basketball and kindred athletics lies.

The game is an excellent one from every point of view; yet within the last few years it has come into disfavor in some quarters, and many parents have forbidden their daughters to engage in it. Like bicycling in the past, and football with the boys, basketball has suffered “a black eye” because of the way it has been played, not because of the game itself.

But the Girls’ Branch played the game under sound rules, and under the keen oversight of the instructor engaged by the Board of Education of Centerport for that purpose. Basketball is the first, or one of the first vigorous team games to become popular among women and girls in this country, and under proper supervision will long remain a favorite pastime.

The rules under which the girls of Central High played the game were such as brought into basketball the largest number of players allowed. Whereas there were often in the games on Central High courts only right forward, left forward, center, right guard and left guard, with possibly a jumping center – these games being engaged in by the girls for their own amusement – in the regular practice and when the representative team played the teams of other schools, the girls on the field numbered nine upon a side.

Thus conforming with the new rules, Mrs. Case, and the physical instructors of the other highs of Centerport and the neighboring cities, made the interest in basketball more general and enabled a greater number of ambitious girls to gain coveted positions on the first team.

Suddenly Mrs. Case’s whistle stopped the play again. And as the bustle and activity subsided, two girls’ voices rose above all.

“You just see! It’s only Hester who gets scolded – ”

“It’s not so! If she’d play fair – ”

“Miss Pendleton and Miss Agnew are discussing something of much importance – much more important than the game,” said the referee, tartly.

“Well, she said – ” began Nellie Agnew, who was usually a very quiet girl, but who was flushed and angry now as she “looked daggers” at Lily Pendleton, who was Hester Grimes’s chum.

“That will do, Nellie!” exclaimed the instructor. “You girls evidently have not taken to heart what I have been telling you. The only way to play this – or any other team game – is to work together and talk as little as possible. And by no means allow your tempers to become heated.

“We have formed a new line-up for the fall series of games with East and West High, and the highs of Keyport and Lumberport. It would be too bad to change the make-up of the team later; but I want girls on our champion team, who play the first class teams of other schools, who know how to keep cool and to keep their mouths shut. Now! don’t let me have to repeat this again to-day at least. Time!”

Hester Grimes turned and gave Nellie Agnew an angry look and then went on playing. The girls officiating at the lines changed with the actual players. Later they shifted again, which brought the first team into the field once more with the ball.

When the practice was over Mrs. Case stopped Hester Grimes before she could run off the field. She spoke to her in a low voice, so that no other girl could hear; but she spoke firmly:

“Hester, you are making a bad impression upon the teachers as well as on the minds of your fellow pupils by your indulgence in bad temper.”

“Nobody else calls me down for it but you, Mrs. Case,” declared the big girl, bitterly.

“You are a good scholar – you do not fail at your books,” Mrs. Case continued, quietly. “You do not have occasion in the classroom to often show your real disposition. Here, in matters of athletics, it is different. Your deportment does not suit me – ”

“It never has, Mrs. Case,” exclaimed the red-faced girl. “You have criticized me ever since you came here to Central High – ”

“Stop, Hester! How dare you speak that way to a teacher? I shall certainly report you to Mr. Sharp if you take my admonition in such a spirit. I have finished with you. If you do not show improvement in deportment on the athletic field I shall shut you out of practice entirely.”

The instructor spoke sharply and her face was clouded. She was a very brisk, decisive woman, and she considered that she had been patient with Hester Grimes long enough.

Hester was the only daughter of a very wealthy wholesale butcher, and from her babyhood had been indulged and given her way. She was one of those girls who fairly “boss” their parents and everybody around their homes. She had bought the friendliness of some weak girls by her display and the lavish use of spending money. Perhaps, however, Lily Pendleton was really the only girl who cared for Hester.

Most of the girls who had been relieved from basketball practice had run in to change to their street clothing. On the lower floor of the gymnasium building was the swimming pool, shower baths, and dressing room, besides the lockers for field materials, the doctor’s and instructor’s offices, and the hair-drying room. Above was the gymnasium proper with all the indoor apparatus allowed by the rules of the Girls’ Branch.

Each girl had her own locker and key, the key to be handed in at the instructor’s office when she left the building. When Hester came into the long dressing room there was a chatter of voices and laughter. There was no restriction on talking in here.

Lily met her chum at the door. The former was naturally a pale girl, rather pretty, but much given to aping fashions and frocks of grown women.

“I’d like to box that Bobby Hargrew’s ears,” she said, to her angry chum. “She was just saying that you’d queer the team again before you got through. She’s always hinting that you lost that last game we played East High last spring.”

“I’ll just fix her for that – the mean little thing!” snapped Hester, and being just in the mood for quarreling she stalked over to where little Clara Hargrew was talking to a group of friends, among whom were Nellie Agnew and the Lockwood twins.

“So you’re slandering me, as usual, are you, Miss?” demanded Hester, her face very fiery and her voice very loud.

“Meaning me?” demanded Bobby, shaking her curly head, and grinning impishly at the bigger girl.

“Who else would I mean, Miss?” pursued Hester.

“I couldn’t slander you, Hessie,” said the mischief-loving Bobby.

“You are a trouble-maker all the time, Bobby Hargrew – ” began the older girl, but Bobby broke in with:

“If I made anywhere near as much trouble as you do about this gymnasium, Hessie, I’d talk soft.”

“Now, Bobby,” cautioned Nellie Agnew, laying a quick hand upon the smaller girl’s arm and drawing her away.

But Hester, quite beside herself, lifted her palm and struck at Bobby. Perhaps the agile girl dodged; or maybe Nellie deliberately stepped forward. Anyhow, the stroke intended for Bobby landed full upon Nellie’s cheek. Hester was strong and her hand heavy. The print of her palm left a white patch for a moment upon the plump cheek of the doctor’s daughter.

“Now you’ve done it, Hessie!” cried Bobby, angrily. “See what you’ve done!”

“I didn’t – ” began Hester, rather startled by the result of her blow; but the tears of anger and pain had sprung to Nellie’s eyes and for once the peacemaker showed some spirit.

“It served you just right! You’re always interfering,” flashed out Hester.

“You are a bad and cruel girl,” said Nellie, sobbing, but more in anger than pain.

“Bah! you run and tell Mrs. Case now. That will be about your style.”

“I shall tell my father,” said Nellie, firmly, and turned away that her enemy might not exult longer in her tears.

“And he’s our physician and I guess he’ll have something to say about your actions, Hessie!” cried Bobby Hargrew. “You’re not fit to play with nice girls, anyway.”

“And you’re one of the ‘nice’ ones, I suppose, Miss?” scoffed Hester.

“I hope I am. I don’t lose my temper and queer my team-mates’ play. And nobody ever caught me doing mean things – and you’ve been caught before. If it wasn’t for Gee Gee favoring you, you’d have been asked to leave Central High before now,” cried Bobby.

“That’s so, too,” said one of the twins, quite as angry as Bobby, but more quietly.

“I should worry!” laughed Hester, loudly and scornfully. “What if I did leave Central High? You girls are a lot of stuck-up ninnies, anyway! I hate you all, and I’ll get square with you some day – you just see if I don’t!”

It was perhaps an empty threat; yet it was spoken with grim determination on Hester Grimes’s part. And only the future could tell if she would or would not keep her promise.

CHAPTER II – THE KERNEL IN THE ATHLETIC NUT

The Girls’ Branch Athletic League of Central High had been in existence only a few months. Gymnasium work, folk dancing, rowing and swimming, walking and some field sports had been carried to a certain point under the supervision of instructors engaged by Centerport’s Board of Education before the organization of the girls themselves into an association which, with other school clubs, held competitions in all these, and other, athletics for trophies and prizes.

Centerport, a lively and wealthy inland city located on the shore of Lake Luna, boasted three high schools – the East and West Highs, and the newer and large Central High, which was built in “the Hill” section of the town, the best residential district, on an eminence overlooking the lake and flanked on either side and landward, as well, by the business portions of the city. The finest estates of the Hill district sloped down to the shore of the lake.

Public interest had long since been aroused in the boys’ athletics; but that in girls’ similar development had lagged until the spring previous to the opening of our story.

In the first volume of this series, entitled “The Girls of Central High; Or, Rivals for All Honors,” was related the organization of the Girls’ Branch, and the early difficulties and struggles of a group of girl sophomores, most of whom were now on the roster of the basketball team as named in our first chapter. Laura Belding was the leading character in that first volume, and her quick-wittedness and loyalty to the school and to the athletic association really brought about, as has been intimated, the building of a fine gymnasium for the girls of Central High and the preparation of the athletic field connected therewith.

In “The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna; Or, The Crew That Won,” the second volume of the series, was narrated the summer aquatic sports of the girls and their boy friends; and in that story the Lockwood twins, Dora and Dorothy, came to the fore as champion canoeists among the girls, as well as efficient members of the crew of the eight-oared shell, which won the prize cup offered by the Luna Boat Club to the champion shell rowed by high school girls.

Lake Luna was a beautiful body of water, all of twenty miles in length, with Rocky River flowing into it from the west at Lumberport, and Rolling River carrying off her overflow at the east end of the lake, where stood the third of the trio of towns – Keyport. Both Lumberport and Keyport had a well conducted high school, and the girls in both were organized for athletics as were the three chief schools of Centerport.

South of Centerport was a range of low hills, through which the two railroads which tapped the territory wound their way through deep cuts and tunnels. In the middle of the lake was Cavern Island, a very popular amusement park at one end, but at its eastern end wild and rocky enough. The northern shore of the lake was skirted by farms and deep woods, with a goodly mountain range in the distance.

The girls who had been in the first class at basketball practice began to troop out of the gymnasium in their street apparel. Chetwood Belding and his chum, Lance Darby, were waiting for Laura and Jess Morse. With them was a gangling, goose-necked youth, dressed several degrees beyond the height of fashion. This was Prettyman Sweet, the acknowledged “glass of fashion and mould of form” among the boys of Central High.

“Hullo! here’s Pretty!” cried Bobby Hargrew, dancing out behind Laura and Jess. “You’re never waiting to beau me home, are you, Mr. Sweet?”

“I – oh – ah – ” stammered Purt, in much confusion. “It weally would give me pleasure, Miss Bobby; but I weally have a pwior engagement – ah!”

Just then Hester and Lily came out of the door. Bobby dodged Hester in mock alarm. Lily stopped in the shelter of the doorway to powder her nose, holding up a tiny mirror that she might do it effectively, and then dropping both mirror and “powder rag” into the little “vanity case” she wore pendant from her belt.

Purt Sweet approached Miss Pendleton with a mixture of diffidence and dancing school deportment that made Bobby shriek with laughter.

“Oh, joy!” whispered the latter to Nellie, who appeared next with the Lockwood twins. “Purt has found a shrine before which to lay his heart’s devotion. D’ye see that?” pointing derisively to Lily and young Sweet turning the first corner.

Hester was strolling away by herself. Nellie said, quickly:

“Let’s not go this way. I don’t want to meet that girl again to-night.”

“Much obliged to you, Nell, for taking my slapping. But Hester never really meant to hit me, after all. You got in the way, you know.”

“You’d better behave,” said one of the twins admonishingly. “You made this trouble, Bobby.”

“There you go!” cried Bobby, with apparent tears. “Nobody loves me; Hester tried to slap me, and Pretty Sweet wouldn’t even walk with me. Oh, and say!” she added, with increased hilarity, “what do you suppose the boys are telling about Pretty now?”

“Couldn’t say,” said Dora Lockwood. “Something ridiculous, I venture to believe.”

“It’s funny,” giggled Bobby. “You see, Purt thinks he’s really getting whiskers.”

“No!” exclaimed Dorothy.

“Sure. You watch him next time you have a chance. He’s always feeling to see if his side-tapes have sprouted. He has got a little yellow fuzz on his upper lip – honest!

“Well, Purt went into Jimmy Fabro’s shop the other day – you know, that hair-cutting place right behind Mr. Betting’s store, on the side street? Well, Purt went in and took a chair. Jimmy was alone.

“‘What you want – hair cut again this week, Pretty?’ asked Jimmy.

“‘No – o,’ says Purt. ‘Sh – sh – shave.’

“Jimmy grunted, dropped back the chair, muffled Purt up in the towels, and then squinted up and down his victim’s cheeks. Finally he mumbled something about being ‘right back’ and ran into Mr. Belding’s and came back with a watchmaker’s glass stuck in his eye. Then he squinted up and down Purt’s face some more and finally mixed a big mug of lather – and lathered Purt’s eyebrows!”

“Oh! what for?” demanded Dora Lockwood.

“That’s what Purt asked him,” giggled Bobby. “Jimmy said in his gruff way:

“‘I’m hanged if I can see hair anywhere else on your face, Pretty. You want your eyebrows shaved off, don’t ye, Pretty?’ So, Chet says, Purt’s been trying to shave himself since then in a piece of broken mirror out in the wood shed, and with a jack-knife.”

Although Nellie Agnew laughed, too, at Bobby’s story, she was in no jolly mood when she parted from the other girls and entered Dr. Agnew’s premises.

The doctor, Nellie’s father, was a broadly educated physician – one of the small class of present day medical men who, like the “family doctor” of a past generation, claimed no “specialty” and treated everything from mumps to a broken leg. He was a rather full-bodied man, with a pink, wrinkled face, cleanly shaven every morning of his life; black hair with silver threads in it and worn long; old-fashioned detachable cuffs to his shirts, and a black string tie that went around his collar twice, the ends of which usually fluttered in the breeze.

There had long since been established between the good doctor and his daughter a confidential relation very beautiful to behold. Mrs. Agnew was a very lovely woman, rather stylish in dress, and much given to church and club work. Perhaps that is why Dr. Agnew had made such a comrade of Nellie. She might, otherwise, have lacked any personal guide at a time in her life when she most needed it.

It was no new thing, therefore, that Nellie should follow the doctor into the office that evening after dinner, and perch on the broad arm of his desk chair while he lit the homely pipe that he indulged in once a day – usually before the rush of evening patients.

When Nellie had told her father all about the unpleasant quarrel at the gymnasium the doctor smoked thoughtfully for several minutes. Then he said, in his clear, quiet voice – the calm quality of which Nellie had herself inherited:

“Do you know what seems to me to be the kernel in the nut of these school athletics, Nell?”

“What is it, Daddy Doctor?”

“Loyalty. That’s the kernel – loyalty. If your athletics and games don’t teach you that, you might as well give ’em up – all of you girls. The feminine sex is not naturally loyal; now, don’t get mad!” and the doctor chuckled. “It is not a natural virtue – if any virtue is humanly natural – of the sex. It’s only the impulsive, spitfire girls who are naturally loyal – the kind who will fight for another girl. Among boys it is different. Now, I am not praising boys, or putting them an iota higher than girls. Only, long generations of working and fighting together has made the normal male loyal to his kind. It is an instinct – and even our friends who call themselves suffragettes have still to acquire it.

“But this isn’t to be a lecture, Nell. It’s just a piece of advice. Show yourself loyal to the other girls of Central High, and to the betterment of basketball and the other athletics, by – ”

“By what?” cried Nellie.

“By paying no attention to Hester Grimes, or what she does. After all, her shame, if she is removed from your basketball team, is the shame of her whole class, and of the school as well. Ignore her mean ways if you can. Don’t get in the way of her hand again, Nell,” and his eyes twinkled. “Remember, that blow was not intended for you, in the first place. And I am not sure that Clara Hargrew would not sometimes be the better for the application of somebody’s hand – in the old-fashioned way! No, Nell. Say nothing. Make no report of the affair. If Hester is disloyal, don’t you be. Keep out of her way as much as possible – ”

“But she spoiled our games with the other schools last spring, and she will do so again,” complained Nellie.

“Then let Mrs. Case, or somebody else, be the one to set the matter in motion of removing Hester from the team. That’s my advice, Miss.”

“And of course I shall take it, Daddy Doctor,” said Nellie slowly. “But I did think it was a chance for us to get rid of Hester. She is such a plague.”

The doctor’s eyes twinkled. “I wonder why it is that we always want to shift our burdens on other folks’ shoulders? Do you suppose either the East or West Highs would find Hester any more bearable if she attended them instead of Central?”

The girls of Central High had something of more moment than Hester Grimes’s “tantrums” to think of the next day. Bobby Hargrew came flying up the path to the doctor’s porch long before school time. Nellie saw her and ran out to see what she wanted.

“What do you s’pose?” cried Bobby.

“Couldn’t guess, Chicken-little,” laughed Nellie. “Has the sky fallen?”

“Almost as bad,” declared Bobby, twinkling, but immediately becoming grave. “The gymnasium – ”

“Not burned!”

“No, no! But it’s been entered. And by some awfully mean person. The apparatus on the upper floor has been partly destroyed, and the lockers broken into downstairs and lots of the field materials spoiled. Oh, it’s dreadfully mean, Nellie! They even sawed through the rungs of the hanging ladders a little way, so that if anybody swung on them they’d break.

“And with all the harm they did, nobody can tell how they got into the building, or out again. The watchman sleeps on the premises. You know, he’s not supposed to keep awake all night, for the same man keeps the field in repair during the day. But my father says that Jackway, the watchman, must have slept like the dead if he didn’t hear the marauders while they were damaging all that apparatus.

“It’s just too mean,” concluded Bobby. “There isn’t a basketball that isn’t cut to pieces, and the tennis ball boxes were broken open and the balls all thrown into the swimming pool. Tennis rackets were slashed, hockey sticks sawed in two, and other dreadful things done. It shows that whoever did it must have had a grudge against the athletic association and us girls – must have just hated us!”

“And who hates us?” cried Nellie, the question popping out before she thought.

Bobby turned rather white, though her eyes shone. She tapped Nellie on the shoulder with an insistent index finger.

“You and I know who says she hates us,” whispered the younger girl.