"Are you a teacher?"
"No."
"A prefect or a monitress?"
"No."
"Then, what are you?"
"I'm a boarder," announced Adah with dignity.
The junior sniggered rudely.
"Boarders have no right to interfere with us, that I can see. We'll do as we like. Come along, girls, follow the leader!" and, turning, she made a long leap across the bed, landing in the edging of blue lobelias.
Adah stood by, raging and impotent. She would have interfered by force, but very fortunately at that moment the school bell rang, and the irrepressible juniors desisted from their occupation and raced one another to the side door. Adah followed thoughtfully. Her brain was a whirlpool of new impressions, most of them not at all favourable, and she had not yet had time to assort them and put them into mental pigeon-holes. One idea loomed large. Silverside was going to be an utterly different place from what it had been before. That brief tussle had revealed much. Hitherto the little girls had been well-behaved children, rather in awe of their elders, and easily held in check; these new juniors seemed a different generation, and a very perverse and untoward one.
Everything, indeed, was changed. Her form room overflowed with strangers, and there was a new mistress, whose methods were different from those of Miss Hopkins. Adah, mindful of her position as oldest pupil, did the honours of the school, showing teacher and girls where books, exercise paper, and other necessaries were kept, but she performed this charity more in the spirit of noblesse oblige than with any goodwill.