"Half of you wouldn't be able to join," declared Hilda Browne.
"That's our own lookout. The point is that we ought to be able to do so if we want. If you persist in keeping it all to yourselves, you may act without an audience, for none of us will come to see you, and we'll tell the other Forms what the quarrel is."
"I know they'd back us up," said Joan Masters.
Very unwillingly the clique gave way. They knew they had no just ground for their position, but they had hoped it would not be called in question.
"It's all the fault of Gwen Gascoyne, with her Lower School notions," said Rachel Hunter.
"She needn't think she's going to act!" asserted Edith Arnold.
"Don't want to!" rapped out Gwen, who happened to overhear. "I should miss the bus if I stayed behind after four. I only wanted to see things made fair and square."
Though the new arrangements were really owing to Gwen's enterprise, nobody was willing to accord her any thanks. Joan Masters and Elspeth Frazer received all the credit for having righted the wrong; and though a few might remember that Gwen had started the movement, they were almost ready to agree with Rachel Hunter that it was rather pushing of an ex-Junior to have taken so much upon herself. They had not yet forgiven her translation to the Fifth, and only the utmost humility on her part would have reconciled them. Humility was certainly not Gwen's characteristic, so she still went by the epithet of "that cheeky kid" in the Form.
"So much for their gratitude," confided Gwen to Lesbia. "I don't want to act, but some of those who have got into the play might at least acknowledge what I've done for them."
"They seem a hateful set!" sympathized Lesbia.