"Look here, kiddie—you must try and get a better opinion of yourself. Having confidence in oneself is half the battle in everything, you know. Just make up your mind that you're going to play A1 in the match this afternoon, and you'll come through all right! You're such a quiet, shy person that you make the girls shy of you too, and you'll never make friends with them while you're like that. You just try and come out of the background a little and do things, and you'll find you'll get on much better all round."
Muriel smiled down very kindly at the younger girl as she said these words, and Gerry felt her heart go out to the head girl of the school. Almost it was on the tip of her tongue to confide some of her troubles to Muriel about that horrible nickname and the caricature that first day in class, and how the rest of the Lower Fifth suspected her of having German sympathies, if nothing worse! It was evident that Muriel knew that things were not quite right with her, or she would not have said as much as she had done.
But just as she was going to speak, the words died away on her lips. No! She wouldn't say! She wasn't a sneak, whatever the Lower Fifth might think, and since she had kept her own counsel so far, she would keep it to the end. After all, she didn't want to be friends with such a mean set of pigs as the Lower Fifth had proved themselves to be! Even Jack, whom she had liked so much that first day of term—but, no! Jack would not bear thinking about just then! And Gerry turned to leave the head girl's study with a murmur of thanks for Muriel's encouragement.
"I'll do my very best," she said earnestly. And Muriel gave her another friendly smile as she dismissed her, so that Gerry retraced her steps to the Lower Fifth classroom with a new feeling of happiness in her heart. Muriel was nice—whatever the girls in the Lower Fifth might be. And so was Monica, and possibly some of the girls in the Middle and Upper Fifth were not quite so beastly—yes, that was the only word for it—as her present companions. Gerry decided that she would work harder than ever at her lessons and try and get moved up next term, and then possibly, amongst new companions, she could make a new start, and find school life a much happier affair than it had been hitherto.
With which resolve she turned the handle of the sitting-room door and walked inside.
CHAPTER X
THE DORMITORY MATCH
As a rule when Gerry walked into a room, she might have been invisible so far as the Lower Fifth was concerned. But on this particular morning the form's collective curiosity was too great to allow it to keep up its dignified attitude of obliviousness any longer.
"What did Muriel want you for?" demanded Phyllis jealously, as Gerry came into the sitting-room.