t was the usual custom for the
instructor in gymnastics to hold basket ball try-outs among the aspiring
players of the various classes. Assisted by several seniors, she culled
the most skilful players to make the respective teams. But this year a
new departure had been declared. Miss Randall was no longer instructor.
She had resigned her position the previous June and passed on to other
fields. Her successor, Miss Davis, had ideas of her own on the subject
of basket ball and no sooner had she set foot in the gymnasium than she
proceeded to put them into effect. Instead of picking one team from the
freshman and sophomore classes, she selected two from each class. Then
she organized a series of practice games to determine which of the two
teams should represent their respective classes in the field of glory.

Marjorie, Susan Atwell, Muriel Harding, a tall girl named Esther Lind,
and Harriet Delaney made one of the two teams. Mignon La Salle,
Elizabeth Meredith, Daisy Griggs, Louise Selden and Anne Easton, the
latter four devoted supporters of Mignon La Salle, composed the other.
There had been some little murmuring on the part of Marjorie's coterie
of followers over the choice. Miss Davis was a close friend of Miss
Merton and it was whispered that she had been posted beforehand in
choosing the second team. Otherwise, how had it happened to be made up
of Mignon's admiring satellites?

Miss Davis had decreed that three practice games between the two
sophomore teams should be played to decide their prowess. The winners
should then be allowed to challenge the freshmen, who were being put
through a similar contest, to play a great deciding game for athletic
honors on the Saturday afternoon following Thanksgiving. She also
undertook to make basket ball plans for the juniors and seniors, but
these august persons declined to become enthusiastic over the movement
and balked so vigorously at the first intimation of interference with
their affairs that Miss Davis retired gracefully from their horizon and
devoted her energy to the younger and more pliable pupils of the school.

Not yet arrived at the dignity of the two upper classes, the sophomores
and freshmen were still too devoted to the game itself to resent being
managed. To find in Miss Davis an ardent devotee of basket ball was a
distinct gain. Miss Archer, although she attended the games played
between the various teams, was not, and had not been, wholly in favor of
the spo