Play the Game!

Play the Game!, by Ruth
Comfort Mitchell

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Title: Play the Game!
Author: Ruth Comfort Mitchell
Release Date: May 27, 2007 [EBook #21625]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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GAME! ***

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PLAY THE GAME!

BY
RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL
[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: LONDON :: 1924
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1920, by The Crowell Publishing Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
* * * * *
TO MY BROTHERS
* * * * *
Books by
RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL
* * * * *
CORDUROY
NARRATIVES IN VERSE
JANE JOURNEYS ON
PLAY THE GAME
* * * * *

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
New York London
* * * * *

PLAY THE GAME!
CHAPTER I
There was no denying the fact that Honor Carmody liked the boys. No
one ever attempted to deny it, least of all Honor herself.
When she finished grammar school her mother and her gay young
stepfather told her they had decided to send her to Marlborough rather
than to the Los Angeles High School.
The child looked utterly aghast. "Oh," she said, "I wouldn't like that at
all. I don't believe I could. I couldn't bear it!"
"My dear," her mother chided, "don't be silly! It's a quite wonderful
school, known all over the country. Girls are sent there from Chicago
and New York, and even Boston. You'll be with the best girls, the very
nicest----"
"That's just it," Honor interrupted, forlornly.
"What do you mean?"
"Girls. Just girls. Oodles and oodles of nothing but girls. Honestly,
Muzzie, I don't think I could stand it." She was a large, substantial
young creature with a broad brow and hearty coloring and candid eyes.
Her stepfather was sure she would never have her mother's beauty, but
he was almost equally sure that she would never need it. He studied her
closely and her actions and reactions intrigued him. He laughed, now,
and his wife turned mildly shocked eyes on him.

"Stephen, dear! Don't encourage her in being queer. I don't like her to
be queer." Mrs. Lorimer was not in the least queer herself, unless,
indeed, it was queer to be startlingly lovely and girlish and appealing at
forty-one, with a second husband and six children. She was not an
especially motherly person except in moments of reproof and then she
always spoke in a remote third person. "Honor, Mother wants you to be
more with girls." Then, as if to make it clear that she was not merely
advancing a personal whim,--"You need to be more with girls."
"Why?"
"Why--why because Mother says you do." Mrs. Lorimer did not like to
argue. She always got out of breath and warm-looking.
Her daughter dropped on the floor at her feet. Mrs. Lorimer had small,
happy-looking, lily-of-the-field hands and Honor took one of them
between her hard brown paws and squeezed it. "I know, but--why do
you say so? I don't know anything about girls. Why should I, when I've
had eight boy cousins and five boy brothers and"--she gave Stephen
Lorimer a brief, friendly grin--"and two boy fathers!" Her stepfather
was not really younger than his wife but he was incurably boyish. The
girl grew earnest. "Please, pretty-please, let me go to L. A. High! I've
counted on it so! And"--she was as intent and free from
self-consciousness as a terrier at a rat hole--"all the boys I know are
going to L. A. High! And Jimsy's going, and he'll need me!"
Her stepfather laughed again and lighted a cigarette. "She has you there,
Mildred. He will need her."
"Of course he will." Honor turned a grateful face to him. "I'll have to do
all his English and Latin for him, so he can get signed up every week
and play football!"
Mrs. Lorimer did not see why her daughter's finishing need be curtailed
by young James King's athletic activities and she started in to say so
with vigor and emphasis, but her husband held up his long beautifully
modeled hand rather in the manner of a traffic policeman and stopped
her.

"Look here, Mildred," he said, "suppose you and I convene in special
session and consider this thing from all angles and then let