Chapter III

"So you are not going to play with Bradford, after all?" Nat Granton said, flinging himself on the turf at Miss Mork's feet as she sat watching the tennis-players practising for the tournament.

"No," she answered. "He and Flora have recovered from their temporary alienation, and I was generous and took myself out of the way."

"Will you play with me?"

"Thank you; no. I shall not go into any team; and in any case, I know too well your sentiments on the subject of girls' playing to trespass on your good nature."

"Then I shall not play," he said, rather crossly.

"And pray what do I care if you don't?"

"It would be polite to pretend to, at any rate."

"'The slightest approach to a false pretence
Was never among my crimes;'"

she quoted, twirling her gay parasol swiftly on its handle. "Do see Tom Carruth serve. That cut is my despair."

"It is simple enough to return," Granton answered, "if you know when it is coming: you've only to run up."

"Yes, but how is one to know when it is coming?"

"One always can tell when I give it," he replied, laughing, "for I always fling my head back."

There came a wicked sparkle of intelligence into Betty's eyes as she made a mental note of this confession for future use. Then the long lashes fell demurely over her cheeks as she gathered together her belongings and rose.

"I must go over to grandmother's," she said. "Never spend the summer near your grandmother's, Mr. Granton: she may be ill and absorb all your spare time."

And away sped the deceitful damsel, on nefarious schemes intent, to play tennis with her cousin George, who had responded with celerity to her summons. She was really improving with a good deal of rapidity. She had been a sad romp in her day, and every prank of her tomboy girlhood stood her in good stead now. Every fence and tree she had climbed, to the unspeakable horror and scandal of elderly spinster aunts, every game of ball for which she had been lectured by an eminently proper governess, every stolen fishing-expedition and hoydenish race whose improprieties my lady buried with overwhelming scorn in the oblivion of the past, had been a preparation for the struggle into which she now threw herself with the whole force of mind and body.

Her cousin George Snow, who was sufficiently fond of his mischievous cousin, and duly grateful for her supposed good offices in arranging the difficulties between himself and Dora, was an invaluable ally. He was taken into full confidence, and embraced the project most heartily. Granton was a right nice fellow, he admitted, but it certainly would not hurt him to be taken down a peg. Snow had just returned from England, where he had seen some of the finest tennis-players perform.

"You play too near the net," he said. "All American players do. Play well back, and above everything, put all your force into the return."

"But I shall send the ball out of the court," Betty protested.

"You mustn't. Drive it down as hard as ever you can. Strength--or rather swiftness--tells; if your service is swift enough it is worth all the fancy cuts in the world. The Renshaws make half their points by volleying from the service-line, and the rest by swift service."

"Swiftness is the word," Betty returned gayly. "Anything more?"

"Get used to striking back-handed; don't try to turn your thumb down; make a business of an out-and-out back-handed, wrong-side-of-the-racquet stroke."

How sound all this advice was, tennis players may determine for themselves; but it certainly served its purpose well. Betty was a promising pupil. Morning, noon, and night she played, working with an assiduity which nearly fagged her cousin out.

"You are plucky, Betty," he declared one day. "I'm afraid for my own laurels. And by the way, am I to be allowed to be present at this great tournament in which you are to cover yourself and your sex with glory?"

"Oh, yes; you are to challenge Mr. Granton if he beats me,--though he sha'n't! Anybody can challenge the winner, you know. That's a provision I had put in myself to cover my own case."

"Poor Granton!" George laughed. "Little does he dream of the awful humiliation in store for him."

Betty set her lips together and nodded her head in a determined way.

"George," she declared, with tragic earnestness, "if I get beaten I shall go straight home and die of--"

"Baffled stubbornness," interpolated her cousin.

"Thwarted vengeance," suggested Dora.

"No, of righteous indignation. Come, one set more before we drive back to Maugus. Only two days left, you know."