Part 21 (1/2)

”It wasn't the Red Cross Knight; it was Britomarte,” said Gerry, and Muriel smiled approvingly at her for the correction. It was something for Gerry even to dare to correct a quotation.

”Good for you, kiddie! So it was. Well, you get that thoroughly into your head by next Sat.u.r.day and act upon it, and you'll do all right.”

And she hurried on her way, leaving a much inspirited Gerry behind her.

”She is a brick!” thought the girl enthusiastically, as she walked slowly towards the Lower Fifth sitting-room. ”I don't wonder all the girls are so keen about her. I _will_ get that motto into my head, and I _will_ play up and justify her choice of me for next Sat.u.r.day, and I won't let anything the other girls may say or do affect me! I'll just keep saying the words over and over to myself whenever I feel inclined to funk, and see if that won't make me braver. Be bold, be bold, be bold!”

And then some lines of Longfellow's she had once heard came into her head in the inconsequent way such lines do occur to lovers of poetry:

”Write on your doors the saying wise and old, 'Be bold! be bold!' and everywhere--'Be bold!'

'Be not too bold'--yet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less; Better like Hector in the field to die, Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly.”

Gerry's face took on an expression of rigid determination as she repeated the lines to herself. And, throwing up her head with a little gesture of defiance, she said aloud:

”Well, I just _won't_ be a 'perfumed Paris' this time, whatever happens!”

And with this bold resolve she walked into the sitting-room, and settled herself down in her usual corner with a book, until the bell should ring for prayers and bed.

CHAPTER XXII

THE DORMITORY FINAL

Sat.u.r.day morning dawned at last. It was a splendid day for hockey, fine and bright, with a touch of frost in the air, not enough to make the ground hard, but just sufficient to dry up some of the worst of the mud and to make it exhilarating to run about.

There was great excitement over the match throughout the school. Even the girls who were not directly concerned in the results of the game, either as members of the teams or occupants of the rival dormitories, were keenly interested, while the agitation of the two dormitories actively engaged was raised to fever-pitch. Some of the smaller girls in the Pink Dormitory had been occupied during the past week in manufacturing rosettes of pink ribbon, which they sold for twopence apiece to the members of the team and the partisans of the dormitory--a proceeding which promised considerable profit at first to the enterprising trio who originated it. Unfortunately for them, however, Muriel Paget descended upon them on the morning of the match with searching inquiries as to the monetary part of the transaction.

”But, Muriel, the ribbon cost us an awful lot of money,” protested one of the small profiteers in distress, when the head girl ordered that all proceeds from the sale of the favours should be deposited in the dormitory missionary-box. ”It was very good ribbon, penny-halfpenny a yard, and we've used yards and yards of it!”

”Well, you may keep back enough money to pay expenses,” conceded the head girl. ”Reckon out exactly how many yards of ribbon you've bought and how many favours you've sold, and then bring the balance of the money to me to be put into the missionary-box. And please remember for the future that you're English schoolgirls--not beastly little Jews.”

With which parting remark she stalked off with much magisterial dignity, leaving three very crushed small girls behind her.

However, the three had the consolation of regaining the money they had outlaid upon their project, and also of having started a very popular scheme. The idea of the favours caught on. The members of the Green Dormitory were immediately bitten with the desire to sport green rosettes, and drawers were ransacked, and finally permission obtained for a messenger to be sent into the town to purchase a sufficiency of green ribbon to manufacture favours for the rival team and its supporters. Before the morning was over nearly every girl in the school sported a favour of one colour or the other. Pink favours predominated, partly because of the start obtained by the early venders, and partly because the Pink Dormitory was Muriel's dormitory.

The head girl was far and away the most popular person in the school, far out-rivalling Alice Metcalfe, the Green Dormitory's captain, in the girls' affections. Still, the Greens had quite a fair show of ribbons--enough at any rate to make a good ”shout” for their side when the match should begin.

Gerry Wilmott, alone of her team, did not wear a pink rosette. She wanted one badly, but she had not quite liked to ask for one, and the three little girls who were selling them carefully refrained from coming near the girl who was known as a coward and a sneak throughout the school. Gerry looked at them very wistfully once or twice when they were in her vicinity, but in spite of her desire to be decorated with the colours of the dormitory for which she was to play, she did not dare to risk a rebuff by going up to them. She would have gone favourless up to the field itself if it had not been for Monica Deane, her next-door neighbour in the dormitory. Monica had purchased a favour quite early in the day, much to the distress of little Vera Davies, her devoted admirer, who presented her with one just before the match began, which she had made herself.

”Please, Monica, wear mine!” pleaded the little girl, coming into Monica's cubicle where the senior was changing into the gym dress which was the regulation hockey kit at Wakehurst Priory. ”I begged a bit of the ribbon from Gladys and Betty and Marjorie, and made it for you all myself, to bring you luck! Please take your other one off and wear mine!”

”All right, kiddie, of course I'll have to wear it since you made it for me yourself,” said Monica good-naturedly. ”I'll give the other one away to somebody else, if there's anybody left in the school who hasn't got one.”

Then a sudden thought struck her.

”Gerry, have you got one, or would you like mine?” she called over the cubicle wall, remembering that she had seen the Lower Fifth girl undecorated earlier in the day.

”No; I haven't got one. I'd like it very much,” answered Gerry, in rather a low voice. The next moment the small pink favour came fluttering over the part.i.tion that divided her cubicle from Monica's.

”There you are, then,” said the senior girl.