Gwethyn's fertile brain was continually at work. In spite of the madness of some of her propositions, she was really an acquisition to the Fifth. She could always be counted upon for new suggestions, and on wet days she would invent games, get up charades, or engineer impromptu entertainments with the ingenuity of a variety manager. One afternoon the heavy rain prevented the girls from taking their usual outdoor exercise between dinner and school. Very disconsolately they hung about, grumbling at the downpour. Only the Sixth Form were privileged to use the studio on such occasions; the younger ones, flung on their own resources, killed time as best they could. The Fourth suffered more particularly, as it was their afternoon for the tennis courts, and they had had bad luck lately in the matter of weather on their special tennis days.
"I declare, I'm sorry for those poor kids!" said Gwethyn. "This is the third Wednesday their sets have been stopped. They are standing in the corridor, looking like a funeral. Can't we liven them up somehow?"
"All serene! Let's ask them into our form room and play games," agreed Rose. "Where are the rest of us? Jill, go and hunt up Susie and Beatrix. It's far more fun when there are plenty. I say, you kiddies there, come along and have some jinks! Pass the word on."
The juniors responded promptly to the invitation. They flocked into the Fifth room, and settled themselves anywhere, on desks or floor.
"What's the game?" they asked hopefully.
"It's quite a new one," explained Gwethyn, who had had a hasty private conference with some of her chums. "It's called 'The Oracle of Fortune'. I'm to be blindfolded so that I can't see the least peep; then you're all to march round me in a circle. When I tap with this stick, you stop, and I point at somebody who comes forward."
"Oh, I know! French blind-man's-buff. That's nothing new!" exclaimed Madge Carter.
"No, it's not French blind-man's-buff," returned Gwethyn, so crushingly that Madge was sorry she had spoken. "I don't feel your faces while you giggle—it's something quite different. I tell your characters. If they're correct, you walk on. If I make a mistake, you may take my place as oracle."
"Who's to judge if they're right?"