"Oh, after hockey," said Jack, readily taking the bait. "Tea, of course, after you've washed and changed. There's usually about half an hour's interval after we come down from the field. The tea-bell goes at half-past four, and the prep bell at five, so there's not much time between them. We do prep until seven. Then change for supper, which is at half-past seven. From eight to nine's free. The juniors go to bed then, while the seniors—all the forms above the Lower Fourth—go to Chapel once more for prayers. Then bedtime comes for everybody at nine-thirty. So wags the weary round from day to day," she concluded, with a fine poetical flourish. "If it wasn't for hockey and half-holidays, and Sundays and hampers and dormitory feasts, and other occasional rags, school would be an awfully dead-and-alive affair. But as it is, it has its redeeming features. I say, what dorm are you in?"
"The Pink Dormitory," answered Geraldine.
"You lucky kid! That's Muriel Paget's dorm this term. Half the girls in the school would give their eyes to be in your shoes."
"Why?" asked Geraldine in astonishment.
"Why? Because Muriel's head girl, and everybody in this school is cracked on her. At least, as cracked as Muriel will let them be! She won't let girls make themselves idiots over her—she squashes them horribly if they overdo the flowers and sweets and fagging business. Still, it would be jolly nice to be in her dorm; I wouldn't mind being there myself, though I'm not one of the most love-sick of her satellites, by a long way. I bet there'll be a rare old scrum to-night to fetch her hot water, and do those sorts of things."
"One of the girls did ask if she might fetch her hot water, this afternoon," volunteered Geraldine. "But she squashed her then. She said she wasn't going to have any of that silly rot going on in her dorm so long as she was monitress there."
"Did she? How awfully like Muriel!" chuckled Jack, with keen appreciation. "Who was the girl, do you know? Oh, of course, though, you won't! You're new. I quite forgot."
"I do happen to know that girl's name, though," responded Geraldine, pleased to be able to satisfy her companion's curiosity. "It was Phyllis—Phyllis Tressider, or some such name as that."
"Who's that talking about me?" said a sharp voice behind her; and Geraldine, turning round with a start, found herself looking into a pair of angry blue eyes as the owner of the name came up to the table on which the two girls had been sitting. The new girl gave an uncontrollable recoil and looked apprehensively towards her new friend, who, however, appeared wholly unconcerned at Phyllis's truculent attitude.
"All right, Phil. Keep your hair on, old girl," she said affably. "I was only asking Geraldine Wilmott a question which she answered."