"Well, you have been a lunatic this morning!" said Beatrice, passing her, biscuits in hand, in the cloak-room. "What possessed you to go and lose the tennis-court for the form?"
"If you hadn't stared so hard at me Miss Strong would never have noticed."
"Oh, of course! Throw the blame on somebody else! You're always the 'little white hen that never lays astray.'"
"Kitty and Evie and Belle and I had arranged a set!" grumbled Cicely Denham. "It's most unfair, this rule of punishing the whole form for what one girl does!"
"Go and tell Miss Burd so then!" flared Ingred. "It hasn't been very successful so far to tell teachers they're not fair, but you may have better luck than I had. She'll probably say: 'Oh, yes, Cicely dear, I'll rearrange the rules at once!' So like her, isn't it?"
"Now you're sark! Almost as sarky as the Snark herself!" commented Cicely, as Ingred, choking over a last biscuit, stumped away.
There is much written nowadays about the unconscious power of thought waves, and certainly one grumbler can often spread dissatisfaction through an entire community. Perhaps the black looks which Ingred encountered from the disappointed tennis-players in her form turned into naughty sprites who whispered treason in the ears of the juniors, or perhaps it was a mere coincidence that mutiny suddenly broke out in the Lower School. It began with a company of ten-year-olds who, with pencil boxes and drawing books, were being escorted by Althea Riley, one of the prefects, along the corridor to the studio. Hitherto, by dint of judicious curbing, they had always walked two and two in decent line and had refrained from prohibited conversation. To-day they surged upstairs in an unseemly rabble, chattering and talking like a flock of rooks or jackdaws at sunset. It was in vain that Althea tried to restore order, her efforts at discipline were simply scouted by the unruly mob, who rushed into the studio helter-skelter, took their places anyhow, and only controlled themselves at the entrance of Miss Godwin, the art mistress.
Althea, flushed, indignant, and most upset, sought her fellow-prefects.
"Shall I go and complain to Miss Burd?" she asked.
"Um—I don't think I should yet," said Lispeth a little doubtfully. "You see, Miss Burd has given us authority and she likes us to use it ourselves as much as we can, without appealing to her. Of course in any extremity she'll support us. I'll pin up a notice in the junior cloak-room and see what effect that has. It may settle them."