"And yet she's rather like Gipsy, just like enough to be a kind of pale copy—an understudy, in fact."
"You've hit it! Understudy's the very word. She's absolutely forming herself on Gipsy."
Curiously enough, Meg Gordon really bore rather a marked physical resemblance to the object of her worship. She was slim, and dark, and about the same height, and though she lacked Gipsy's vivacity of expression, a stranger might quite possibly have mistaken the one girl for the other. It was perhaps just as well that Gipsy had one such devoted ally, for there were a few malcontents in the Form who were not at all ready to accept her with enthusiasm. Maude Helm had taken a dislike to her from the first, and had allowed her prejudice not only to blind her to Gipsy's good points, but to cause her to try to influence others in her disfavour. It is rarely that anybody succeeds in doing a public service without making any enemies, and Gipsy was no exception to the rule. According to Maude's code, she had violated every tradition of school etiquette by pushing herself, a newcomer, into a position of prominence; and that she had conferred a real benefit upon the Lower School by her championship went for nothing.
"It's sickening, the way everybody truckles to her," declared Maude to a few of her particular chums. "I vote we stick out, at any rate, and don't let her have everything her own way. We don't want the school Americanized to suit her fancy."
"No; Miss Yankee will have to find out we're not all ready to lick her boots!" grumbled Alice O'Connor.
"Glad she wasn't chosen President of the Guild, at any rate," remarked Gladys Merriman. "If she puts up for anything else I shall oppose her. There are other people in this Form quite as capable of taking the lead as she is, if they only got the chance."
"Yourself not excepted, I suppose!" snapped Mary Parsons, who happened to overhear. "You forget Gipsy refused the Presidency voluntarily."
"Clever enough to see it would pay her best!" sneered Gladys. "She evidently knows how to get round the Form."
"Gladys! How mean you are! Well, you can't do Gipsy much harm by your nastiness, that's one comfort."
"It only makes me like her all the more," broke out Joyce Adamson, who had strolled up to take Mary's arm.