"Yes, and she nearly snapped your head off and said you were always grumbling," added Calla. "I remember how she jumped on you."
"Well, to go back to my point," continued Kathleen, "here we are on the first day of a new school year. At any other school there'd have been great times. The 'King's' girls meet in the big lecture hall and have speeches and arrange all the clubs for the winter. That's what I call a 'coming back'. We don't come back, we only ooze back. We hang about on the stairs till a teacher says 'Oh, my dear, you're moved into Vb', or whatever the form is. There ought to be a proper reading out of the lists in the gym. Then each form would march to its own room and the thing would be done decently and in order. We're utterly and absolutely old-fashioned, and behind the times. That's what's the matter with the Kingfield High School."
"Humph! Something the matter with your own eyes I should say!" sniffed Aldora Dodson, who had just joined the group. "What about that notice stuck up in the hall?"
"What notice?"
"What notice?" mimicked Aldora. "You don't mean to tell me you all walked past it like blind bats, when it was there as large as life, and actually staring you in the face! If you want to know what it's about go and look at it! I can't waste my time telling you things you're too lazy to read for yourselves."
Aldora's advice, though administered in an uncomplimentary fashion, was sound. Without further parley the girls took it. They hurried from the cloakroom and tore into the hall, to discover the truth for themselves. Quite a crowd was collected round the notice board. It took a little while to elbow their way through. When at last they reached vantage spots, where by dint of craning their necks they could see between or over the heads of those in front of them, their eyes encountered a home-made poster, so large and conspicuous that it was certainly very extraordinary that they should have passed it by unnoticed.
The school will assemble
in the
GYMNASIUM
at 2.30
when the new form lists will be read, and various new arrangements will be explained.
M. Tatham.
"Hold me up! I'm fainting!" exclaimed Kathleen. "New? Did my eyes deceive me or are we actually going to have something new? Wonders will never cease."