“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[113] 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. [113] 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.” [114] [114] “But I shall send the ball out of the court,” Betty protested.
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