An air of deep gloom pervaded the sophomore dressing room, however.  Virginia Gaines dressed in gloomy silence.  One or two of her team ventured to speak to her.  She answered so shortly that they did not trouble her further, but went out talking among themselves as soon as they had changed their gymnasium suits for street clothing.  Outside Elfreda waited impatiently.  “I thought you were never coming,” grumbled the stout girl.  Then the unpleasant side of her disposition, which she had tried to eliminate during her brief friendship with the Oakdale girls, came to the surface and she said maliciously:  “I thought you said they couldn’t play, Virginia.  Funny, wasn’t it, that you had such a poor idea of their playing?  It was the best game I ever saw, but all the star playing was on the freshman side.”

Virginia’s face grew dark.  “Stop trying to be sarcastic,” she stormed.  “I won’t stand it.  Do you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you.  I’m not deaf,” returned Elfreda dryly.  “As for standing it, you don’t have to.  Good-bye.”  Turning sharply about she set off in the opposite direction, her hands in her pockets, a look of intense disgust on her round face.  “That’s the end of that,” she muttered.  “I’ll move to-morrow.  This time it will have to be out of Wayne Hall, unless——.”  Then she shook her head almost sadly:  “Not there,” she added.  “She wouldn’t have me for a roommate.”

CHAPTER XX

GRACE OVERHEARS SOMETHING INTERESTING

After the famous basketball game a marked change was noticeable in the attitude of the freshman class toward the Oakdale girls.  Grace and Miriam received numerous invitations to dinners and spreads, in which Anne was frequently included.  Then the girls at Wayne Hall gave a play in which Anne enacted the role of heroine, stage manager, prompter, and producer, besides doing all the coaching.  After that her star was also in the ascendant and the little slights and coolnesses that had been noticeable after Elfreda’s ill-timed gossip had done its work, died a natural death.

The stout girl had lost no time in leaving Virginia.  The evening after her quarrel with the sophomore she had moved her belongings into the hall the moment she reached her room, then gone downstairs and demanded another room.  As it happened, a freshman whose cousin lived at Morton House had invited her to share her room.  She had departed that very afternoon and Mrs. Elwood offered Elfreda the now vacant half of her room.  Emma Dean, the tall, near-sighted freshman, occupied the other half.  There was a single room in the house of Mrs. Elwood’s sister, but Elfreda had refused to consider it.  Despite the fact that there were now four young women at Wayne Hall with whom she was not on speaking terms, she could not bring herself to leave the house.  In her inmost heart she knew that it was because she did not wish to leave the three girls she had repudiated, but not for worlds would she have acknowledged this to be the case.