attention to the Sans than if they had not been present. The dance
had been such an unusually pleasant affair! More than one girl remarked
early in the evening to her closest friends that things went along so
much better when a certain clique of girls were absent. The Sans' junior
classmates were not pleased at their late attendance of the masquerade.
They criticized the Sans as selfish and lacking in proper class spirit.
Thus the Sans fashioned a new rod that night for their backs of which
they were destined later to feel the sting.

The day following the masquerade the sophomore team sent the junior team
an acceptance of their challenge. This mystified the Sans five even
more. Under the circumstances they had expected and even hoped their
challenge would be declined. A refusal on the part of the sophomore team
to play them would give them an opportunity to intimate that their
opponents were afraid to meet them for fear of being beaten. Deep in
their hearts the Sans five were the real cowards. They dreaded playing
against Marjorie and Muriel in particular. As Leslie gloomily said to
Natalie, "Bean and that Harding snip will certainly get back at you if
they can. I imagine Robina Page was one of that crowd who gave us the
run."

Leslie had been terribly out of sorts since the failure of her plot. She
did not know where she stood at Hamilton as regarded safety. She was
highly disgruntled by the lack of cordiality shown her and her chums by
many students whom she had considered friendly to her. It was being
forced upon her, little by little, that the Sans were losing ground.
They had sworn to win back their lost power of the previous year. They
had not done this. Now the game with the sophomores must be played and
she was not in the mood to coach her team, nor were they in the mood to
play. She doubted if they would dare make use of "the soft talk." The
freshman team had expressed themselves quite openly on that subject
about the campus. When taxed with it once or twice by juniors who had
learned of it and deferred judgment, Leslie had replied with sarcastic
bravado that the freshies had evidently "heard things" during the game
which no one else heard.

The game being scheduled for the twenty-seventh of February, Leslie
allowed her bruised and shaken team three days' rest. After that time
she fairly drove them to private practice. She pestered Ramsey, the
coach, for new and sure methods of winning points from an antago