"Muriel! How perfectly ripping! You don't mean to say you are going to be our monitress this term? Oh, how quite too splendidly glorious! I say, do let me fetch you your hot water in the mornings. Do—do—there's a dear!"
"No—me—me!" interposed half a dozen voices. But Muriel held up her hand in laughing dismay.
"For goodness' sake, chuck it, you kids! Nobody is going to fetch my hot water for me. The maids can do it as they do everybody else's. I'm not going to have any of that silly rot going on in the Pink Dorm, if I'm to be monitress here. So I give you fair warning!"
"You are going to be monitress, then? Oh, how perfectly scrumptious!" And Phyllis Tressider executed a dance of delight. Muriel laughed again, pleased at her reception. She enjoyed popularity as well as most people, although she would allow no unhealthy sentiment to be lavished upon her. If people "adored" Muriel Paget, they had to do it from a distance, and not let the object of their worship know too much about it, either. Otherwise they ran a grave risk of "ructions" with the head girl. And to be "told off" by Muriel was no joke, as many of the girls at Wakehurst Priory could testify.
The head girl walked along the corridor towards the monitress's cubicle, which was at the far end of the dormitory—a bigger and somewhat more elaborately furnished affair than any of the other cubicles. As she passed by Number Thirteen, the curtains of which were still thrown back, the sight of the new girl and her rather frightened attitude caught Muriel's eye, and she stopped good-naturedly to speak to her.
"Hullo! Somebody new in here? What's your name, kiddie?" she asked, ignoring the fact that she was only a couple of years or so older than the individual she was addressing.
"Geraldine Wilmott," replied the new girl shyly. Phyllis's unprovoked attack had unnerved her considerably, and she shrank away from the head girl's well-meant advances.
"She's got Dorothy Pemberton's cubicle—isn't it a shame?" said Phyllis, scowling darkly at Geraldine. "Dorothy's had that cubicle next to mine for years and years. It's too bad that we should be separated now, all because of a new kid."
"Jolly good thing you are to be separated, I think, if I'm to be your dormitory monitress," replied the head girl, with a smile that took the sting out of her words. "One of you alone is bad enough—but you two together are the limit! If Sister has really put you into different dormitories at last, she has my heartfelt gratitude!"
"They're not so far removed after all, worse luck," remarked the occupant of Number Fourteen, who was just finishing putting away her belongings in a neatly arranged drawer. "Dorothy's got Number Twenty-Nine, the next cubicle to yours, Muriel. She's in the same dormitory still."