attitude, and apparently just removing a burning cigarette from her rosy lips! The blue smoke curled away from the horrid thing, and Bobby was leaning back, with her roguish glance following the smoke-rings, and apparently enjoying the weed immensely.
“Miss Hargrew!”
The awful voice startled everybody but Bobby herself. Perhaps the wicked one had been expecting it.
“What do I see, Miss Hargrew?” demanded Gee Gee, in a tone of cold horror.
“I really do not know, Miss Carrington,” replied Bobby, as the girls shrank away from her vicinity, and she herself hopped down to the floor, hiding her hands behind her. “I never did know just how far you could see with your glasses.”
“Miss Hargrew, come here!” snapped the teacher, in no mood for frivolity.
Bobby approached slowly. She held her hands behind her back like a naughty child.
“Let me see what is in your hand, Miss!” commanded the teacher
Bobby brought forth her right hand – empty.
“Your other hand, Miss!”
Back snapped the culprit’s right hand and then her left hand appeared – likewise empty.
“Miss Hargrew! I demand that you give me what you are hiding in your hand, at once!” cried Miss Carrington.
Slowly, and with drooping mien, the culprit brought forth both hands. In the fingers of one still smoked the brown object the teacher had spied.
“A vile cigarette!” she gasped.
“No, ma’am,” replied Bobby, quite bravely. “Only a piece of Chinese punk-stick left over from last year’s Fourth of July celebration. I wouldn’t smoke a cigarette, Miss Carrington. I don’t think they’re nice – do you?”
It was impossible for the other girls to smother their laughter. A ripple of merriment spread back to the music room. Now, Miss Carrington was a very unfortunate woman. She had no sense of humor. There should be a civil service examination for educational instructors in the line of “sense of humor.” For those who could not “pass” would never make really successful teachers.
“Clara Hargrew!” snapped Miss Carrington, her glasses almost emitting sparks. “You will show me a five hundred word essay upon the topic ‘Respect to Our Superiors’ when you come to the classes, Monday morning. And you may go home now. Until your standing in deportment is higher, you can have no part in athletics, save those gymnastic exercises catalogued already in the school’s curriculum. After-school athletics are forbidden you, Miss Hargrew.”
Bobby at first paled, and then grew very red. Tears stood in her usually sparkling eyes.
“Oh, Miss Carrington!” she cried. “I was only in fun. And – and this is not a regular school session. This is Saturday.”
“You are in the precincts of the school, Miss.” said Gee Gee. “Do as you are bid. And throw that nasty thing away.”
She swept back to the platform at the upper end of the music room, and those girls who had not already gone ahead of her were quick to leave the culprit to herself. Hester Grimes smiled sneeringly at poor little Bobby.
“Got taken up that time pretty short, didn’t you, Miss Smarty?” she jeered.
Miss Grimes had often been the butt of Bobby Hargrew’s jokes. And then – Bobby was Laura Belding’s friend and eager supporter. The door was closed between the music room and the office and Bobby was left alone.
Mrs. Case, the girls’ athletic instructor, was a very different person from the hated Gee Gee. She was a fresh-colored, breezy woman, in her thirties, whose clear voice and frank manner the girls all liked. And then, in the present instance, her proposals anent the athletic association fitted right into the desires and interests of most of the pupils present.
“The work of the Girls’ Branch Athletic Association is spreading fast,” Mrs. Case said. “Centerport must not be behind in any good thing for the education and development of either her boys or girls. This is something that I have been advocating before the Board for several years. And other teachers are interested, too.
“An association will be formed among the girls of East High and West High, as well. I understand that the school authorities of both Lumberport and Keyport are to take up the subject of girls’ athletics, too. So, although inter-class athletics is tabooed, there will be plenty of rivalry between the girls of Central High and those of our East and West schools, and those of neighboring cities. A certain amount of rivalry is a good thing; yet we must remember to cheer the losers and winners both. This is true sport.
“I want my girls,” continued Miss Case, with a smile, “to be all-round athletes, as well as all-round scholars. You may be rivals for all honors with those of your own age in other schools. There are most fascinating games and exercises to take up, as well as Folk Dancing. The boys have a splendid association in our school – ”
Suddenly Miss Carrington sprang up, interrupting her fellow-teacher. She stood upon the platform a moment, looking toward the office, and sniffed the air like a hound on the scent.
“Wait!” she commanded. “I smell smoke!”
She was a tall woman, and she darted down the room with long strides. She flung open the office door. Then she shrieked and fell back, and half the girls in the music room echoed her cry.
Flames rose half way to the ceiling, right near the principal’s desk, and the office itself was full of smoke!
CHAPTER IV – “POOR BOBBY!”
Ordinarily the girls of Central High were perfect in “fire drill.” But then, when ever they practiced that manœuver, there was no fire. For a hundred or more of them, however, to see the shooting flames and blinding smoke, and to hear a teacher who had “lost her head” screaming as loud as she could scream, was likely to create some confusion.
It was Mrs. Case who rang the fire alarm. This notified the janitor, if he was in his basement quarters, of the situation of the fire, too. He would come with an extinguisher to their rescue. But meanwhile the blaze in the principal’s office was increasing.
“That reckless girl!” shrieked Miss Carrington. “She shall pay for this!”
And Laura, who had run down the room until she, too, was at the door of the office, knew whom the teacher meant. Poor Bobby Hargrew! She and her piece of burning punk-stick must be at the bottom of the catastrophe. But Miss Carrington really spoke as though she thought Bobby had intentionally set the fire.
“Oh, she never could have meant to do it,” cried Laura, horrified.
The girls had run from the door into the corridor and nobody but Miss Carrington and Laura were at the office door.
“What shall we do? What shall we do?” moaned the teacher, wringing her hands.
“Can’t we put it out?” demanded the girl.
“No, no! You’ll be burned! Come back!” cried Miss Carrington.
But the smoke had cleared somewhat now and Laura could see just what damage the fire was doing. It surely had started in the big wastebasket. If Bobby had flung the burning punk into
