"I keep telling you I'm sorry," she protested pathetically. "I never, never meant to give Jack away. I wouldn't have breathed a word about it if only she hadn't owned up like that."
"Just as though she could have done anything else!" cried Phyllis hotly. "We're not that sort in the Lower Fifth, Geraldine Wilmott, whatever you may be! Of course Jack couldn't go letting Pretty Polly think that it was you who'd done that sketch—whatever a sneak like you might have done!"
As Geraldine had not sneaked, this remark was unjust, to say the least of it. But the new girl was too unhappy to protest any further. She returned to the task of putting away her lesson books, and Dorothy and Phyllis left the room arm in arm. Geraldine looked round forlornly at Jack, after the two chums had departed, but Jack was absorbed in conversation with Nita Fleming, and the two presently departed from the classroom, leaving the new girl to her own devices. Geraldine shed a few miserable tears when she was finally left alone in the empty classroom, but she was not allowed much time to indulge her grief. A bell rang loudly through the school buildings, and she had to mop up the tears hastily and hurry out to discover what the next proceeding might be.
Dinner was the next item on the programme, she found, and she joined in the stream of girls who were hurrying into the dining-hall. Jack and Nita were already in their places, and Geraldine made her way rather shyly to the vacant place on Jack's left side.
"May I—am I to sit here again?" she asked timidly.
"If you want to," replied Jack briefly. And Geraldine, not knowing where else to go, took up her position behind the vacant chair. As she did so, Jack murmured a few words in Nita's ear, and the next instant the two girls had exchanged places, so that Geraldine now found herself standing next to Nita instead of next to Jack. The action cut the new girl to the heart. Jack was so offended with her that she couldn't even bear to sit next to her at meals apparently! If there had been anywhere else to move to, Geraldine would certainly have moved, but there seemed to be no vacant places anywhere near, and she was far too shy to bring herself into prominence by going and hunting for one. So she stayed where she was, and when grace had been said, sat down next to Nita.
The meal was a very uncomfortable one for her. Jack and Nita evidently considered that she had been very much to blame over the classroom incident, and beyond seeing that she was supplied with table necessaries, bread, and salt and water, they left her severely alone, making no attempt to draw her into the conversation as they had done at breakfast. And poor Geraldine ate her meal in silence, wishing that Jack's unfortunate caricature had been at the bottom of the sea before she had had anything to do with it.
It was really rather hard upon Geraldine to be blamed like this, for she had never intended to get Jack into trouble, and, in their heart of hearts, the whole of the Lower Fifth knew this. The whole episode would probably have blown over in a day or so, if it had not been for Dorothy and Phyllis. These two, although almost the youngest girls in the Lower Fifth, possessed a great deal of influence in their form, and unfortunately they seemed to have taken a violent dislike to the new girl upon the first day of term. Anything that they could do to hurt and annoy her, they did, and the rest of the form were either too weak or too indifferent to interfere. Not that all the girls were actively unkind to Geraldine—but the majority of them left her severely alone, and the new girl, instead of making friends with her companions, grew more and more lonely and isolated as the days passed by.
Her own manner helped very largely towards this isolation. She was so shy and reserved herself that it was difficult for anyone to make friends with her, and besides she was so absorbed with the longing to make peace with Jack—who still remained coldly aloof—that she really did not give anybody else a chance. She simply played into Dorothy's and Phyllis's hands by her misery and shyness.
"She's so stuck up and superior—she doesn't want to make friends," was Phyllis's frequent assertion. And the rest of the form, not being possessed of any very great discernment, were quite content to accept this version of the case and to leave Geraldine severely to herself.