CHAPTER XIX
NAN TRIUMPHS
It was a hard-fought set.
Nan won the first two games, catching Kate off her guard by the fury of her offensive.
In the third Kate rallied and won a game. But when Nan won the next three in succession her adversary began to crumple.
"The sun's in my eyes," she complained.
"I had it during the first set," Nan reminded her; and added, as she returned to her position behind the net: "Pull your eyeshade lower."
Kate glowered and fussed with her shade. But there were already impatient, half-jeering cries of "play ball" from the sidelines, and Kate could delay no longer.
She was playing in a petulant mood, and she fairly gave that last game to Nan.
"Game and set!" cried Nan, and a frenzy of cheering broke from the crowd of girls.
Nan ventured a word of caution to Kate as they passed each other in changing courts.
"Don't let yourself get mad," she said, in a low tone. "It's spoiling your game."
"You let my game alone!" snapped Kate. "The sun was in my eyes, that's what was the matter! I'll beat you this time or know the reason why!"
Nan shrugged her shoulders and flexed her racket.
"Try and do it!" was her challenge, for Nan was once more sure of herself.
The first game justified her confidence.
Unlike Nan, who was at her best when losing, Kate, when losing, was at her worst. As one of the girls had remarked about her once:
"It's mighty hard to get Kate running down hill in a tennis game, but when you do, she seems in an all-fired hurry to reach the bottom!"
And so it seemed now. Nan won three games without half trying.
Kate came back in a flash of fury in the third, brought the game to forty love, and then succumbed to Nan's superior coolness.
Toward the end of the fifth game—and Nan's fifth victory—Sadie, Jo and Jessie Robinson exchanged glances.
"This isn't a match," grinned Jessie, putting the general thought into words. "This is slaughter!"
Toward the end of the sixth game when the score stood love forty and Nan was still working in fine form, Kate went to pieces. In a rage, she flung the racket from her, ran to the grassy bank that bordered the court, sank down upon it and burst into loud sobs.
IN A RAGE SHE FLUNG THE RACKET FROM HER.
IN A RAGE SHE FLUNG THE RACKET FROM HER.
IN A RAGE SHE FLUNG THE RACKET FROM HER.
"I'm sick! That's what's the matter with me!" she cried to the girls who crowded around her in consternation. "How can I play when I'm so sick I can hardly stand on my feet."
Here was a nice how-to-do!
Nan pushed her way through the crowd and looked down upon her fallen enemy.
"I'm sorry you're sick," she said gravely. "I'll wait if you like until you can get a drink of water and pull yourself together."
"A drink of water! That's what the whole trouble is!"
The strident voice belonged to Lottie Sparks, and the spectators crowded closer, sensing battle.
"There's been some shady work going on here," cried Lottie, and even Kate lifted a furious, tear-stained face to stare at her chum.
Nan took a quick step forward.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked quietly of Lottie Sparks.
"I mean that some one put something in a glass of water Kate took before she came out," said Lottie, carrying her bluff through with a bravado that hid a tremor of fright. "And the girl who did it is the one I'm looking at just now!"
Every one turned to follow the direction of Lottie's suddenly fixed gaze. She was staring straight at Sadie Appleby!
There was a moment of complete silence, the silence of stupefaction. Then several of the girls turned vengefully upon Lottie Sparks.
"The sneak! Make her eat her words!"
"A ducking in the lake is what she ought to have!"
Lottie, casting one terrified glance at the unfriendly, scowling faces of her schoolmates, realized that she had gone too far and, turning, broke through the ring of outstretched hands.
She raced toward the lake with practically the whole school after her!
Lottie reached the dock at the shore of the lake, ran down it breathless, with a number of girls in hot pursuit.
A rowboat lay moored at the end of the dock, and toward this she raced. Her pursuers guessed her intention.
"Don't let her get away!" they cried. "Catch her before she cuts the boat loose!"
Probably the cries of her pursuers, so close upon her, rattled Lottie. At any rate, in reaching to untie the knot in the rope that held the boat to the dock, she lost her balance and plunged heels over head into the lake.
The other girls stood aghast at this mishap.
It was probably lucky for them, if not for Lottie, that things turned out this way. For as Lottie, sputtering and blowing, came to the surface, the girls noticed that several teachers were hurrying from the direction of the Hall.
Certainly, it was no laughing matter now!
Lottie dragged herself into the rowboat that she had missed by a few inches. She was a sorry spectacle indeed, with her hair matted close to her head and her clothes dripping lake water.
As the teachers—there were three of them, Miss Blitz, Miss Tully and Madame Briais—reached the dock, the girls stepped back respectfully and Lottie set up a loud wail.
"They pushed me over! They tried to drown me! They'd like to see me drowned, the horrid old things!"
This would have sounded funny to the girls if the accusation had not verged on the truth. They had no thought of drowning Lottie, of course. That accusation was absurd. Nor had they pushed her into the lake. But they had been pursuing her in no friendly spirit.
Miss Tully, who rather dominated the other teachers of the school when Miss Romaine was not present, commanded the girls sharply:
"You will all go to the Hall and to your rooms until we learn the truth of this disgraceful proceeding. Lottie Sparks," turning to the girl who was trying to wring some of the moisture from her sodden garments, "go up to the house and change your clothes. Then report at Miss Romaine's office. She will hear your story."
Madame Briais started forward as though she intended to speak, but Miss Tully silenced her with a grim look.
Smarting under a sense of injustice, the girls trooped back to the Hall, talking gloomily about the episode and wondering what the outcome would be. The one bright spot was Lottie's ducking.
"She deserved a good horsewhipping for saying such a thing!" Jo cried heatedly. "The idea of accusingyou, Sadie! Now if she had said it of me——"
"She has hated me especially ever since I hit her with that muddy tennis ball," said Sadie. "I suppose this was her chance to get even."
Other girls grouped themselves about Nan and Sadie, sympathizing with them both.
"Anyway, you won the match," Gladys Holt said to Nan. "The last game went to you by default and gave you the set 6-0."
"I don't like taking games by default," Nan said, frowning. "If she had played for a few minutes longer I could have honestly claimed the match. As it is—" she shrugged her shoulders and did not finish the sentence.
When they reached their room the three chums were in a gloomy frame of mind.
"I suppose we'll receive a summons from the office soon," said Jo, walking excitedly up and down the floor. "And, moreover, we'll have to answer to all sorts of trumped up charges. I wish Lottie Sparks and Kate Speed could be run out of Laurel Hall!"
The chums had not long to wait for the expected summons from the office.
Nan and Sadie alone were wanted. Jo, it seemed, was not implicated this time.
"I wonder what made her leave me out," said the latter dryly. "Lottie and Kate usually try to get the three of us in a jam together. This must be an oversight!"
"Wish us good luck, anyway," Sadie said, as she and Nan prepared to answer the summons. "We may not come up alive!"
But in Miss Romaine's office the two girls found a very different spectacle from the one they had expected.
Miss Romaine was sitting behind her desk and there was an unusual gravity on her handsome face.
Kate was there, looking subdued and sullen. Jessie Robinson and Doris Maybel were standing beside the desk. But what surprised Nan and Sadie most was the sight of Lottie Sparks cowering in one of the mahogany chairs, dissolved in tears.
Miss Romaine greeted the newcomers and motioned them to her.
"I have investigated the charge brought against you by Lottie Sparks," she said quietly. "I thought it best to do so before sending for you girls at all. There are many witnesses—in fact, almost all the girls in the school," she added, with a slight smile, "who are not only willing but eager to testify in your behalf. These were eye witnesses, and they declare that you had nothing to do with Lottie's mishap. That she slipped and fell in the lake herself."
"But they were chasing me! They made me fall in," cried Lottie, through her tears.
"And why?" cried Miss Romaine, so sternly that even Sadie and Nan stepped back from her and Lottie actually trembled, cowering back in her chair. "Because you made a contemptible—a wicked—accusation which you have also confessed to me was false! I will not repeat it here for the sake of Sadie Appleby whom I know to be an honest, upright girl.
"And now," the teacher added briskly, "I want you to apologize to Sadie, and to Nan Harrison also for implicating her in your charge. Come, Lottie," as the latter made no move to obey. "I am waiting!"
There was a ring in the last words that compelled obedience.
Lottie Sparks wiped her eyes and looked up sullenly.
"I—I'm—sorry," she said, as though the words choked her. "I was—mad about Kate's losing the match. I hardly knew what I was saying."
"That's all right," Sadie could be generous to a fallen enemy. "As long as you're sorry, I don't care. I guess none of the girls believed what you said, anyway."
"They certainly didn't act as though they did," Jessie said, with a grin.
Miss Romaine raised her hand.
"I would be sorry to believe any of my girls lacking in good sportsmanship," she said gravely. "Games should not be played so much for the sake of winning as for the sake of the game itself. I hear that you two girls," she looked from Nan to the sullen, fuming Kate, "played some excellent tennis this afternoon. You lost, Kate, but you must learn to take defeat with a smile. I want you to shake hands with Nan and congratulate her on her success."