Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) 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.