"I'm glad of that—for your sakes," said Kitty, still curtly, "and I should be still more obliged if it wasn't meant for anyone else, not when she's in my company, at any rate," and she passed on, leaving the juniors a little taken aback.
As she caught the others up in the passage, she said involuntarily, lowering her tone, "if I were a prefect I'd never allow them to do that to me. Why do you, Duane?"
Duane looked at her. Kitty had quite a shock when she saw the unmistakable, and for once unconcealed, hostility in the other's sleepy grey eyes.
"You happen to enjoy their popularity, you see," Duane replied, coldly. "Besides, you're not a prefect. It isn't all jam to be head prefect—at least, the jam's only there to hide the bread underneath."
"A sort of gilded pill," laughed Kitty, to hide her discomfiture, but Duane walked on without reply. Kitty felt a little miserable as she brushed out her thick brown crop that night. "I was right from the beginning," she thought. "I knew the Hon. Duane and I would never hit it off. It's rotten having your own head prefect for an enemy."
Girls in the other houses raised expressive eyebrows when, next Wednesday afternoon, on the important occasion of the tennis match between Carslake's and Prince's, while there was a goodly proportion of the juniors of the latter house in attendance to support their players, the Carslake juniors were chiefly conspicuous by their absence.
"Sulking," explained France airily to Vanda. "Had a row with 'em last week. They'll come round in time."
"Seems to me you are always having rows in Carslake's," retorted Vanda, dryly.
Carslake's lost the match, but they put up a better fight than was expected. Kitty, indeed, played brilliantly again, and as a result received her first colour from the hands of Vanda. She was delighted at the honour of being chosen to represent the school, though her pleasure was rather spoilt when several of the juniors were heard to rejoice openly that she had been given the preference over Duane.
May passed in a blaze of sunshine and ended on a more hopeful note for Carslake's, the house gaining their first and most welcome cricket victory over Green's. They had previously lost to Sheerston's (who possessed a very strong side), leading into the field a team that had perforce to be composed largely of juniors, for Bertha was in bed with a severe cold, and Sonia was but a broken reed where games were concerned. After the dismissal of Duane and Kitty, except for a dogged stand by Daisy Carteret, the rest of Carslake's innings was a mere "procession," so that when the house next took the field against Green's, Paddy could be heard loudly propounding an original riddle to the scorers in the pavilion.