While the Seniors, with whom Gipsy was out of favour, viewed her escapade with lofty contempt as a madcap proceeding, the Juniors regarded her as an even greater heroine than before. Gladys Merriman redeemed her promise, and brought the box of chocolates she had offered, and Gipsy with strictest impartiality handed them round the Form till they were finished.
Gipsy had certainly established her record for horse-breaking, and though, according to Miss Poppleton, it was scarcely a lady-like accomplishment, there was hardly anyone in the Lower School who did not admire her prowess.
"You're like the girl in the cinematograph who tracks the villain to his mountain retreat, or finds the hero, bound with cords, lying in the brushwood, and then rides off post-haste to inform the sheriff. She always catches a wild-looking horse, and gallops full speed!" laughed Dilys.
"I wish we'd a cinema camera!" sighed Hetty. "We might have taken some gorgeous records this afternoon for the Photographic Society. No one even got a snapshot."
"Your own faults, not mine! You should have brought your cameras!" returned Gipsy.
"We never thought you'd really do it."
"Is that so? Well, when I allow to do any special thing, I guess I admire to see it through!"
"Oh, you Yankee!" roared the others.
Though the girls laughed at her Americanisms and Colonial ways, and often teased her about them, Gipsy continued as great a favourite as ever, she took all the banter so good-temperedly, and returned it so smartly. There was always a delightful uncertainty also as to what she would do next, and the prospect of an exciting interlude by "Yankee Doodle", as she was nicknamed, was felt decidedly to relieve the monotony of the ordinary Briarcroft atmosphere. Not that Gipsy really ever meant to behave badly; but, accustomed as she was to the free-and-easy conduct of her up-country Colonial schools, she found it almost impossible to realize that what would have been tolerated there with a smile was in her new surroundings counted a heinous crime. The silence rules and the orderly march in step from classroom to lecture hall filled her with dismay. She appeared to expect to be allowed to tear about the passages, talking at top speed, even in school hours, and many were the admonitions she incurred from indignant monitresses.
"A fine model you are for the Lower School!" said Doreen Tristram sarcastically one day. "Can't even walk decently in line, and prance about for all the world like a monkey tied to a barrel piano!"