There was another ovation this week, but it lacked the whole-hearted fervour of the one given to Dorothy.
Rhoda Fleming was not very popular. Her tendency to swank made the girls dislike her, and her fondness for snubbing girls whom she considered her social inferiors was also against her. Still, there can mostly be found some who will shout for a victor, and so she had her moment of triumph, which she proceeded to round off in a manner that pleased herself.
Meeting Dorothy at the turn of the stairs a little later in the evening, she said, with a low laugh that had a ring of malice in it, “I have scored, you see, Miss Prig, in spite of all your clever scheming, and I shall score all along. I have twice your power, if only I choose to put it out; and I am going to win the Lamb Bursary somehow, so don’t you forget it.”
Dorothy laughed—Rhoda’s tendency to brag always did amuse her. Then she answered in a merry tone, “If the Mutton Bone depended on the striving of this week, and next, and even the week after, I admit that there would not seem much hope for the rest of us; but our chance lies in the months of steady work that we have to face.”
Rhoda tossed her head with an air of conscious power, and came a step nearer; she even gripped Dorothy by the arm, and giving it a little shake, said in a low tone, “I suppose you are telling yourself that I am not fit to have the Mutton Bone; but you would have to prove everything you might say against me, you know.”
Dorothy blanched. She felt as if her trembling limbs would not support her. But she rallied her courage, and looking Rhoda straight in the face, she said calmly, “What makes you suggest that I have anything to bring against you? Of your own choice you enrolled for the Bursary. You declared in public that there was no reason why you should not enrol; so the responsibility lies with you, and not with me.”
It was Rhoda’s turn to pale now, and she went white to her very lips. “What do you mean by that?” she gasped, and she shook Dorothy’s arm in a sudden rage.
“What are you two doing here?” inquired a Form-mistress, coming suddenly upon them round the bend of the stairs.
“We were just talking, Miss Ball,” replied Rhoda, with such thinly veiled insolence that the Fourth Form mistress flushed with anger, and spoke very sharply indeed.
“Then you will at once leave off ‘just talking,’ as you call it, and get to work. No wonder the younger girls are given to slackness when you of the Sixth set them such an example of laziness. I am very much inclined to report you both to your Form-mistress.” Miss Ball spoke with heat—the insult of Rhoda’s manner rankled, and she was not disposed to pass it by.