Mignon's black eyes blazed. "What do you mean by stealing into our room and listening to our private conversation?" she demanded passionately.
Marjorie faced the furious girl with calm, contemptuous eyes. Before their steady gaze, Mignon quailed a trifle.
"We did not _steal_ into your room. If you had not been so busy boasting over your own unfairness you could have heard our approach. However, that doesn't matter. What _does_ matter is this. Come here, Muriel." She beckoned Muriel to her side. "Show Miss La Salle your elbow," she commanded.
Muriel rolled back her loose sleeve and showed the raw, red spot on her soft, white arm.
Mignon laughed sarcastically and shrugged her scorn of the injury. "You can't be a baby and play basket ball," she jeered.
"Neither can you behave like a savage and expect it to pass unnoticed--by at least a few persons," retorted Marjorie. She was fighting hard to control the rush of temper which this heartless girl always brought to the surface. "Harriet was badly shaken up, because someone purposely tripped her. Some one else kicked Susan on the ankle. It is too much. We won't endure it. Now I give you fair warning, if any girl of my squad is handled roughly during the next half she intends to call a halt in the game. The rest of us will then leave the floor and go to Miss Archer's office. Think it over. That's all."
Marjorie turned on her heel. Without so much as a glance toward the discomfited girls of Mignon's team, she walked from the room, followed by her silently obedient train.
"Well, _what_ do you think of that?" gasped Louise Selden. Nevertheless, she had had the grace to turn very red during Marjorie's stern arraignment.
Mignon turned savagely upon the abashed members of her squad. "If you pay any attention to _her_, you are all _babies_," she hissed. "You are to play the second half just as I told you. Don't let that priggish Dean girl scare you. _She_ wouldn't go to Miss Archer. She knows better than that."
"You're wrong, Mignon. She meant every word she said." Daisy Griggs' ruddy face had grown suddenly pale. "_I'm_ going to be pretty careful how I play the rest of this game."
"So am I," echoed Elizabeth Meredith. "If Miss Dean went to Miss Archer it would raise a regular riot."