The masculine figures, unmindful of manners, collapsed on to the nearest seats, and sobbed with laughter.
"Took you in this time, old sport! Don't we make killing boys? I believe you were just gone on us both! Oh, how it hurts to laugh! I feel weak!"
"I think you're a pair of idiots!" retorted Vivien. "I don't see anything funny in it."
"We do, though!" cackled Patsie. "Oh, Vivien, you looked so interested and excited! It gave me spasms! There, don't get ratty over it! Brace up!"
"It was a jinky joke!" burbled Audrey. "I say, you two, you'd better scoot quick and do some lightning changing! If Miss Janet comes in there'll be squalls! She's not quite ready yet for co-education here. Stick on your waterproofs again! There, bolt before you're caught!"
"A nice monitress you are, Patsie Sullivan!" exploded the outraged Vivien. "Where's our authority to go to, I should like to know, if you and Audrey put Fifth Form girls up to such tricks? I wonder you condescend to it! If I were head girl, I can tell you I'd have something to say to you! But with these new slack ways there'll be no respect for us left. The school's going to the dogs, in my opinion!"
Patsie and Audrey beat a hurried retreat, for they knew that there was a certain amount of justice in Vivien's remarks. Their escapade, a report of which would, of course, be circulated through the school, would in no way enhance the authority of the Sixth. They hoped Lorraine would not hear about it, though it seemed inevitable that it must come to her ears. As a matter of fact, Lorraine learnt the whole story before she had taken off her boots. She made little comment, but went into class with a cloud on her face.
The head girl was going through the difficult experience, shared by all who are suddenly placed in authority, of trying to hold the reins so as to satisfy everybody. To keep slackers up to the mark without gaining for herself the unenviable reputation of "a Tartar", to be pleasant with the juniors without loss of dignity, to preserve old standards while adopting new ones, called for all the tact she possessed. She often felt her cousin a great impediment. Vivien was one of those people who love to give good advice, and to say what they would do in certain circumstances, urging on others drastic measures which they would probably never enforce themselves if they happened to be in authority. Sometimes, however, the objections were just, and this was a case in point. The matter floated in Lorraine's mind all the morning, as a kind of background to English literature and mathematics. She called a monitresses' meeting for four o'clock that very day.
When afternoon school was over, and Miss Janet, with the big volume of Milton, had taken her departure, Lorraine assembled her committee, intercepting Patsie and Audrey, who were trying to sneak from the room.
"Look here, you've got to stop!" she assured them.