Part 9 (2/2)
”Bother!” said Muriel, as she and Monica and one or two other members of the Pink team walked off the field together. ”That means we'll have to play it again. We ought to have won easily, too. I messed up an easy shot for goal in the first half--if I'd only got that we should have been all right.”
”_Or_ if that little a.s.s, Gerry Wilmott, hadn't funked,” remarked Monica, rather bitterly. It was she who had given the casting vote in favour of Gerry's inclusion in the team, and she was feeling more or less responsible for the fiasco.
”Oh, well, I don't know,” said Muriel leniently. ”The kid didn't want to play, I will say that for her. I practically forced her to. It was my fault, I suppose, really, for making her do it against her will.”
”_You_ weren't to know that she was such a little coward, though,” said Monica. Curiously enough it was Monica who was the more down upon Gerry for her exhibition of fright--Monica, who might have been expected to have had some sympathy with the shy new girl whom, up to now, she had rather taken under her wing. As it was, it was Muriel, brilliant, splendid Muriel, who had never known what it was to have an attack of funk in her life, who was the more inclined to make excuses for her. Ever since the mouse episode in the dormitory, which Muriel had since recognised to have been real terror and not merely affectation, as she had at first suspected, upon Gerry's part, the head girl had been observing Gerry with some interest, and the girl's genuine self-depreciation in her study that morning had touched her more than she quite knew.
”Poor kiddie, I expect she's feeling pretty cut up about it,” she said sympathetically. And she actually waited until Gerry, forlornly lagging in the rear of the other players, came up, in order to speak a kind word to the disgraced member of her team.
Gerry, absorbed in her own miserable thoughts, did not see the head girl until she was nearly upon her. Then she drew up short with a nervous gesture, expecting a reprimand. But Muriel made haste to remove the apprehension she saw in Gerry's eyes.
”Come on, kid; you seem to have got left behind,” she said gently.
”Come and walk with me.” And she slipped her hand through the younger girl's arm.
”Oh, Muriel--I am so sorry----” began poor Gerry, the tears coming into her eyes. But Muriel cut short the impending apology.
”Oh, rubbis.h.!.+” she said. ”Don't be sorry. Just do better another time. That's all I want. After all, we haven't _lost_ the Cup, you know. We shall have another shot for it next week or the week after, and you must try and do better then.”
”Oh no, no! Not in a match again! Please, please not, Muriel!” cried Gerry, with such a note of anguish in her tone that Muriel realised that this was not a case for the maxim, ”You can do it if you only try,” with which she was used to encourage people who in her opinion needed encouragement. In a vague sort of way it came home to her that Gerry's mentality was rather outside her experience of schoolgirl psychology, and for the moment she forbore to press the already overtaxed girl further.
”Very well,” she said gently. ”Don't get into such a stew over it.
You shan't play in a match again until you feel more confident. But you've got to learn to play hockey, you know. I must take you in hand myself and see what I can do with you. Meanwhile you must cheer up, and not go fretting yourself to death over that one ball. It really doesn't matter an atom!”
And as they had now reached the school buildings, she let go of Gerry's arm, and with a kindly smile and an encouraging pat on her shoulder, she sent the Lower Fifth girl off to the dormitory to change, not a little comforted.
CHAPTER XI
A LESSON IN HOCKEY
But the comforted feeling did not last very long. There was no monitress on duty in the Pink Dormitory when Gerry reached it, both Muriel and Monica, who sometimes acted as the head girl's understudy, having been detained downstairs, and Dorothy Pemberton was taking advantage of that fact to change from her hockey things to her ordinary school attire in Phyllis Tressider's cubicle. Through the half-drawn curtains the two saw Gerry go by, and immediately brought their conversation round to the new girl's display of cowardice upon the playing-field.
”Wasn't it a shame we didn't win the match?” lamented Phyllis. ”If it hadn't been for German Gerry's funking that ball we must have won.”
”Sickening, isn't it?” agreed Dorothy, raising her voice so that there could be no possible doubt about the occupant of the next cubicle hearing the remark. ”I can't _think_ what made Muriel play her! I shouldn't think she ever would again!”
”Fancy being afraid of a hockey ball!” said Phyllis scornfully.
”Perhaps it was the sight of Jack that frightened her,” suggested Dorothy. ”Jack owes her something for the way German Gerry stopped her playing in that hockey trial. Perhaps she thought Jack was going to take it out of her then with a hockey stick!”
A little choked sound from next door a.s.sured the two that their shots were going home, and encouraged them to further efforts.
”I bet Muriel felt pretty ratty when the German turned tail,” Phyllis went on maliciously. ”Even Monica looked fed up--I guess she won't take German Gerry's part any more! And as for Muriel--I shouldn't think she'd ever speak to Gerry again! Muriel simply _hates_ cowards.”
Dorothy racked her brains for another hurting remark. But before she could think of one, rapid steps came down the corridor, and the next minute the cubicle curtain was thrust aside, and the head girl, flushed with indignation, appeared before the two conspirators' horrified eyes.
”There's one thing I hate even worse than cowards,” said Muriel, with mingled contempt and anger, ”and that is _sneaks_! It's one of the meanest, sneakiest things I ever heard of to go saying things like that about a person when you _know_ they can overhear you! I'm not the least bit ratty with Gerry. She didn't do it on purpose, and she's sorry enough about it, anyway, without you two little worms rubbing it in like that. You just shut up and leave Gerry alone. If I hear you talking like that again I shall deal with you pretty severely.”
<script>