"Thanks! Perhaps you'll allow us to arrange your teams in the Games department, as you're so anxious to meddle in ours? We'll choose your captains and champions if you choose our soloists. It would be an admirably suitable division of labour."
Kitty turned away, for there was justice in Lottie's sarcasm. She would not have been prepared to admit any interference in the cricket or tennis programme, and she knew that she had no right to criticize the decisions of the other committees. And yet her whole sense of justice rebelled against Mildred's exclusion.
"It's monstrous!" she confided to Bess Harrison. "Here they're actually discarding their trump card! And it's nothing but Lottie's jealousy! She's green with envy because Mildred's to play at Herr Hoffmann's Students' Concert. I thought we were urged to put aside all petty feelings and spites in the interests of the Coll., and just aim to bring St. Cyprian's out top!"
"That was rubbed into us as our motto."
"We keep to it in Games, thank goodness! For some reasons I wish Miss Cartwright hadn't left the Alliance so entirely in our own hands."
"It's the same as the other schools. Neither principals nor mistresses are to regulate matters. Remember, it's a self-governing institution."
"Well, this branch of it hasn't the wit to know its own best asset," grumbled Kitty.
Mildred felt decidedly hurt to be so entirely left out of the Eisteddfod. She was not even asked to join in the part song, for Lottie, as choir-mistress, had the selection of the chorus. There was perhaps reason in this, for Mildred, though she always sang in tune, did not possess a very strong voice. All the same, it was a marked omission, and an intentional slight.
Lottie, as grand vizier of the proceedings, was now in her element. She assumed such complete direction of everything that she even took precedence of Ella Martin. Ella, though a monitress, never pushed her authority, and indeed was sometimes hardly self-assertive enough for her post. On the present occasion she allowed Lottie to seize the reins rather too easily. The matter was discussed by her fellow monitresses.
"A Fifth Form girl ought not to be allowed to run the whole show," said Hilda Smith. "Ella ought to put her foot down!"