"I've got an idea!" she announced. "It's a jolly good one, too, so you needn't smile. It's a good thing somebody does have ideas in this place, or you'd all go to sleep! Well, it's this. I really can't stand the swank of those girls in the Gold bedroom. They seem to imagine the school belongs to them. They're not very much older than we are, indeed Nona is actually six weeks younger than Lilias, and yet they give themselves the airs of all creation. Just now Laurette said to me: 'Get out of my way, child!' Child, indeed! I'm fifteen, and tall for my age! I vote that we start a secret society, just among our own set, to resist them."
"Jolly!" agreed Dulcie. "A little wholesome taking down is just what they need. Laurette's the limit sometimes. Whom shall we ask to join?"
"Well, all of you here, and myself, and Noreen, and Prissie, and Edith. That would make nine."
"Quite enough too," said Gowan. "A secret society's much greater fun if it's small. Things are apt to leak out when you have too many members. I take it we want to play an occasional rag on the Gold bedroom? Very well, the fewer in it the better."
"What shall we call our society?" asked Dulcie.
"'The Anti-Swelled Headers' would about suit," suggested Lilias.
"No, no! That sounds as if we were afraid of getting swelled head ourselves—at least anybody might take it that way."
"There's a big secret society in Sicily called 'The Mafia,'" vouchsafed Carmel.
"Then let us call ours 'The Chilcombe Mafia.' No one will understand what we mean, even if they get hold of the name. Indeed I shouldn't mind casually mentioning it now and then, just to puzzle them. When things get bad, 'The Mafia' will take them up."
"Strike secretly and suddenly!" agreed Dulcie with a chuckle.