Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Fantasy Football Challenge presents
Jane Allen Junior

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instanter. I must at least have time to round up a few reliable girls. No use going after the 'sperit' with a band of cowards. You know yourself what fun that would be for his spookship." "Oh yes, of course, Jane. I did not mean to be impatient, but the girls just begged me to enlist your leadership. You have always been such a-- successful leader." "Thanks again, girlie. But failure is sure to come to him who tries once too often. Not that I should mind failure, except for the sake of those excited children. Really I hate to think how the ghost will feel when we get through rattling his bones." A sudden dash at a pair of ceiling rings set the whole line dangling along the gym and served to illustrate a possible way of rattling spectral dry bones, although Jane's graceful figure, as she swung to and fro, did much to soften the effect. "When can we make the raid?" persisted Maud. "I have promised to bring a definite answer." Jane dropped to the mattress and sat with hands clasped over her knees. "Is this ghost a person of regular habits? Does he take exercise every night?" "The noise was perfectly dreadful last night, and Velma Sigsbee was visiting Lenox night before and she almost went into hysterics when the rattling began. You know what Velma is for signs. Won't wear a thing green and all that." "And I suppose she attempts to explain it all on purely reasonable grounds of modern thought. The brand that credits the dead with all power, and limits the living with a very flexible and convenient practical faith. The two work together beautifully, of course, for what we can't understand we must put down to faith, and what we want to believe we are inspired to by our friends on the other side. Dovetails perfectly, sort of a fidele de convenance. Well, Maudie, you may tell the babes that we juniors, their natural guardians, will take care of his ghostship if possible this very night; if not tonight then tomorrow at M. I suppose midnight is the time of clangs and rattles?" "Yes, the girls say it is always midnight. And I just want to say, Jane, that the big country girl, Shirley Duncan, is the only one not terrified. But I suppose country girls are accustomed to wild things." Everyone seemed loath to add further criticism to Shirley's rather unenviable reputation. "Oh yes; haunted wells and spooky attics, to say nothing of barnyard 'sperits' that roam about to scare the cows into giving buttermilk and cream cheese," replied Jane. "It might just be--" she hesitated, then jumped to her feet with a little gleeful bounce--"it might be a ghost from Shirley's own home town. Strange we never had one at Wellington before." "Velma said something like that," admitted Maud. "She said Shirley was so--so antagonistic that her presence here might disturb some friendly communication, and--" Jane's laugh finished the hypothesis. "How delicious of Velma!" she exclaimed. "But we must be careful not to bring any more trouble upon poor Shirley. She's only a freshman and has apparently enjoyed few home opportunities," finished Jane. "But why does she tell the girls such horribly weird stories?" objected the scientific Maud. "She seems to delight in getting an audience for the wildest sort of yarns. And just now naturally they go to the youngsters' heads. Honestly, Janie, no less than three freshmen have begged me to crowd into their quarters tonight. They seem to think a soph might keep off this animated Jinks." "I can just imagine Shirley telling country ghost stories," reflected Jane, "and I agree with you, dear child, she is very inopportune with them, but it would be worse than useless for me to attempt to interfere. In fact, I think if I did so she would take up Irish Folk Lore to keep stories going. Running out of ghosts she might fall back on fairies. She really seems the queerest girl we have had in a long time." "Except Dolorez Vincez, she was still more curious," recalled Maud, referring to the South American character in Jane Allen: Center, who still kept within the shadow of Wellington by now running that protested beauty shop just outside the college gates. "But Dol is something of a foreigner, while Shirley seems to be all

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