"You'd better try, then!" laughed Hetty. "It's the Annual Meeting of all the Guilds on Friday week. We have to elect officers for the year. I should like to see you tackle Helen Roper!"
Gipsy turned away without further comment. Her past experience of schools had taught her that it was unwise to begin by criticizing well-worn institutions too soon. During the next few days, however, she asked many questions, and by diligently putting two and two together managed to arrive at a tolerably accurate estimate of the general state of affairs. The result caused her to shake her head. Though she said little, like the proverbial parrot she thought the more, and her thoughts gradually shaped themselves into a plan of action. At the end of a week she faced the situation.
"Look here, Gipsy Latimer!" she said to herself, "there are abuses in this school that need reforming. Somebody's got to take the matter up, and I guess it's your mission to do it! I don't believe it's ever occurred to those girls to make a stand for their rights. They may support you, or they may call you an interfering busybody for your pains; you'll have to take your chance of that. With your free-born democratic standards, it's impossible for you to sit still and see things go on as they are. This annual meeting's your opportunity, so you'd best pluck up your courage and nerve yourself for the fray."
CHAPTER IV
A Mass Meeting
A large school is a state in miniature. Quite apart from the rule of the mistresses, it has its own particular institutions and its own system of self-government. In their special domain its officers are of quite as much importance as Members of Parliament, and wield an influence and an authority comparable to that of Cabinet Ministers. Tyrannies, struggles for freedom, minor corruptions, and hot debates have their places here as well as in the wider world of politics, and many an amateur "Home Rule Bill" is defeated or carried according to the circumstances of the case. At Briarcroft Hall there had hitherto existed a pure oligarchy, or government of the few. The Sixth Form had jealously kept the reins in their own hands, and, while granting a few privileges to the Fifth, had denied the slightest right of interference to the Lower School. So far, though the Juniors had grumbled continually, they had never taken any steps to redress their grievances. Here and there one of them would offer an indignant protest, which was treated with scorn by the Seniors, and things would go on again in the old unsatisfactory fashion.
Gipsy, with the unbiased judgment of an entirely new-comer, had formed her opinion of the Briarcroft code, and deeming reform necessary, set to work to preach a crusade. She expounded her views to Hetty Hancock, Lennie Chapman, and a few other sympathizers, and organized a plan of campaign.
"What we want to do is to combine," she announced. "It's not the slightest scrap of good a few single girls going and airing their woes to the Sixth. They're not likely to listen. If we could show them that the whole of the Lower School is one big united body, pledged to resist,—well, they'd just have to give way."