“Oh, not as bad as that,” said Nan, smiling.
“Stop trying to make excuses for her, Nan Sherwood,”
commanded the red-haired girl sharply. “I
won’t have it. She never saw a basketball
game before. She can scarcely lift herself waist-high
on the parallel bars. Couldn’t chin herself
five times in succession on the trapeze to save her
life. Why! she might as well be her own grandmother,
she knows so little about athletics.”
“Huh!” added Bess Harley with equal disgust,
“I heard her tell Mrs. Gleason she thought such
things were only for boys. She’s a regular
sissy!” But this made her hearers laugh.
Nan joined in the laughter, but she added:
“You get into a wrestling match with her and
see if she’s a sissy. She has developed
her muscles by other means than gymnasium tricks.
She is so very wiry and strong—you have
no idea!”
“But she walks so funny,” remarked Lillie
Nevins.
“Perhaps that is because she has walked so little,”
said Nan, wisely.
“Humph!” Amelia Boggs commented, “has
she been used to being pushed in a baby carriage?”
“Distances are long out in the cattle country.
Everybody rides, I guess,” Nan observed.
“Well,” one of the older girls remarked,
“she’s no material for basketball, or
any other team. She can’t even run, it seems.
I guess we’ll have to pass her up.”
Nor did Rhoda seem to mind being “passed up.”
At least, if she missed the companionship of her schoolmates,
she did not show it. Perhaps Nan Sherwood worried
more about Rhoda than Rhoda did about herself.
There came a day, however, when the girls of Lakeview
Hall saw something in the girl from Rose Ranch that
they were bound to admire. Rhoda Hammond possessed
one faculty that raised her, head and shoulders, above
most of her schoolmates who so derided her.
THE MEXICAN GIRL
The schoolwork was in full swing by this time, and
almost every girl seemed to be doing well. “Dr.
Beulah,” as her pupils lovingly called the head
of the school (though not, of course, to her face),
went about with a smile most of the time; and even
Mrs. Cupp was less grim than usual.
There was an early January thaw that spoiled all outdoor
sport for the Lakeview Hall girls. Skating, bobsledding,
skiing, and even walking, was taboo for a while, for
there was more mud in sight than snow. The girls
had to look for entertainment on Saturday in other
directions.
Therefore it was considered a real godsend by the
girls of Corridor Four when Lillie Nevins told them
of the new shop at Adminster. Adminster was about
ten miles from Freeling, the little town under the
cliff, where the Lakeview Hall girls usually shopped.
“It must be a delightfully funny store,”
said the flaxen-haired Lillie. “It’s
full of those Indian blankets, and bead-trimmed things,
and Mexican drawn-work, and pottery. Oh! ancient
pots and pitchers—”
