"The boarders have always run the Dramatic," added Consie. "We'd like to begin our meeting, please, when we can have the studio to ourselves."
"Oh, very well! Keep your wretched society to yourselves if you want!" yapped Annie; "but I'll tell you this, at any rate, I think it's most monstrously unfair. You needn't expect us to help you with any of your schemes, for we just shan't!"
"Don't excite yourselves—we haven't asked you!" sneered Consie freezingly as the Hawthorners flounced out of the room.
At first the committee was too agitated to discuss business. It was ablaze with indignation at the impudence of mere day girls aspiring to join the select circle.
"How could we let them?" fluttered Joyce Edwards. "To begin with, there wouldn't be enough parts to go round, nor enough costumes. Dear me! we should have the Juniors expecting to appear on the platform! What next, I wonder? We Seniors have always done the acting, and let the kids and day girls make the audience."
"And we'll go on doing so!" declared Adah. "We're the prefects, and we'll manage the school affairs as we like, without interference from anybody."
The decision about the Dramatic was the same as regarded most of the other societies. The boarders kept them jealously to themselves. The day girls grumbled, even protested indignantly, but they were powerless to make any change. The four prefects were all boarders, and exercised their newly-granted authority for their own advantage. Miss Thompson had no idea of the state of affairs. In appointing as school officers girls who had been with her for some years, she thought she was safeguarding the tone of Silverside and preserving its traditions intact. She had certainly no intention of establishing an oligarchy; yet in effect that was what had resulted. The members of the Boarders' League felt pledged to support one another against all outsiders, and every activity of the school was in the hands of a clique.
Adah, as head girl, was intensely patronizing. She was puffed up with pride in her new office, and would explain Silverside customs with an airy superiority which aggravated the Hawthorners continually. Their injured souls rallied round Annie Broadside. Annie was a born leader. She keenly resented the state of affairs, and meant to show fight. She only waited a suitable opportunity, and at length it came.
For the first few weeks of term the boarders had been busy with various affairs on Saturdays, and had contented themselves with an occasional game of tennis and croquet. At the beginning of October they suddenly realized that the hockey season was beginning. So far hockey, and indeed any organized games, had been only very languidly pursued at Silverside. The smallness of the school had not given a wide choice of champions, and for some years the elder girls had been more interested in botany and butterfly collecting than in sports.
Silverside had had a hockey team, and had occasionally played a match, though it could not pride itself on its record of goals. The present prefects had never distinguished themselves remarkably at athletics, but they were sufficiently enthusiastic to wish the school to win successes. They called a boarders' meeting to discuss matters.