Tennis Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

lot of kids would not do her any good. Susan felt inside that quite honestly this was true. But of course she could not possibly refuse to play. After all, her only excuse was that her father thought the game at school was not good enough. She was ashamed at agreeing with him inside. It was in a way criticizing your school, which was not done at St. Clair’s.
    The tennis was rotten. There was no coaching in the lower school and they all slammed the ball about just as they liked. Susan tried to practise special strokes, especially her backhand, which her father said was very weak. She would keep up a running criticism of herself in her head.
    â€˜Look which way you are standing. Sideways. You can’t take a backhand unless your right shoulder is towards the net. Don’t spoon it up. Look at your feet, Susan. My good child, look at your left foot. Unless your left foot is behind for you to swing back on, how do you think you are going to take the ball? That was better. That was much better. Don’t get too close to the ball. You took that one very nicely indeed.’ And all the time she whispered: ‘Follow through. Follow through. You idiot, you took your eye off the ball.’
    Of course it was splendid advice and was exactly what her father had told her. Actually very few of her strokes followed the advice she gave herself. She was not experienced enough to know the good ones from the bad, and they looked better than they were because the other girls could not return the ball. In fact, most of her practice came when taking a service.
    At one of the lower school tennis afternoons, the school tennis captain happened to be passing just as one of Susan’s backhands came off. Susan did not see her standing there, or she would never have hit another ball. As it was, though of course she made plenty of mistakes, she was at least in the right position all the time. The next day she was sent for.
    â€˜Susan Heath, will you go to the senior prefects’ room, at once?’
    Susan got up, scarlet in the face. She knew she had done nothing. At once she suspected Nicky. What awful sin could she have committed that would take her, a junior, in front of the senior prefects?
    â€˜Who wants me?’ she whispered.
    â€˜Ann Ford. Go on.’
    Susan, hurrying like a scared rabbit up the stairs, forgot that Ann Ford was the tennis captain and only remembered that she was a prefect. By the time she got to the top flight she had decided that Nicky, and probably herself too, as she was Nicky’s sister, would be expelled. When she reached the prefects’ room she was almost too scared to knock, but she made herself somehow. Ann Ford was sitting at her desk. She looked up as Susan came in.
    â€˜Hallo! Are you Susan Heath?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Susan agreed apologetically, certain that the school would soon be ringing with the name.
    â€˜You’ve had some tennis coaching, haven’t you?’
    â€˜Tennis?’ Susan looked stupid, for it is very difficult to jump your mind from your sister being expelled to tennis.
    â€˜Well, haven’t you?’ Ann asked again.
    â€˜Yes, from father,’ she agreed.
    â€˜I see. Well, I’m having you put on to special coaching. You’ll get a chance to play every day. At the end of the term I’ll come and look at you to see how you are shaping. Might get you into a team next year.’
    Susan felt she ought to curtsy or something. This was, she knew, a most tremendous honour. But as she went down the passage back to her form she felt worried inside. Her father had said he did not want her to play at school. He would simply hate her playing every day and being coached by somebody that perhaps he would not think very good. On the other hand, what would her house say if she missed the chance of being in a team with all the marks that brought in? How dreadfully swanky they would think her if they heard that her reason for not playing was