"N—not quite," came in muffled accents from behind the drawn curtain.
"Buck up, then—I'm waiting to walk down to tea with you," said Muriel cheerily. And when, a few moments later, a subdued and rather red-eyed person emerged from Number Thirteen, she slipped her hand through the new girl's arm again, and marched her through the dormitory and down the stairs and into the dining-hall, chatting gaily to her all the way, as though she had been some important fellow-prefect instead of merely a humble, insignificant member of the Lower Fifth who had just made a disastrous exhibition of herself on the hockey field.
Arrived in the dining-hall where the girls were assembling for tea, Muriel gave Gerry's arm a parting squeeze, and with a cheerful "Buck up, kid, and never mind what those little beasts say," she sent her off to her place at the bottom of Table Five, while she herself went to her station at the head of Table Two.
But not even the head girl's championship could save Gerry from the bad times that awaited her now. Indeed, in some ways, it rather made matters worse. Phyllis was furiously jealous of the favour Muriel had shown to the new girl, and Dorothy—although she was not so "gone" on the monitress of the Pink Dormitory as her friend was—was yet very indignant that their victim should have any favour shown to her at all. Both girls bitterly resented the way Muriel had spoken to them after the fateful hockey match; and the rowing they had received, and the ensuing conduct marks bestowed upon them, they had, quite unjustly, put down to Gerry's account. They took care that Muriel should not hear any more of their persecution of the new girl; but that did not deter them from carrying it on with an added zeal whenever they were quite sure that the prefect was not within hearing. They tormented Gerry by every means in their power; and though Gerry did her best to conceal from her torturers how much their jeers and gibes had power to hurt, yet she was so unskilled at hiding her feelings and felt their unkindness so keenly that the two were perfectly well aware of how surely their thrusts went home.
The persecution was not by any means confined to her own form, either. Nearly the whole school had been witnesses of her failure up on the hockey field, and those who had not been actually present had heard highly-coloured versions of the episode from those who had. The obnoxious nickname became more used than ever. Even the small girls from the First and Second Forms would shout "German Gerry!" after the new girl; and not even the little marks of favour Muriel sometimes showed her had power to turn the tide of popular opinion in Gerry's favour.
Even Monica, who had at first showed Gerry so much kindness, appeared to have given her up. She no longer smiled at her when they met in the corridors, as they frequently did. And as for Jack,—for whose friendship Gerry yearned more than for anyone else's,—she might not have existed so far as Jack was concerned. That episode up on the hockey field had put the finishing touch to Jack's wavering attraction for the new girl. She could not be friends with a girl who funked—that settled the matter. And Jack returned to her old companionship with Nita Fleming and three or four other members of the Lower Fifth, and tried not to see the wistful expression in Gerry's eyes when they sometimes happened to meet her own.
Gerry's next hockey practice promised to be rather a terrible ordeal for the girl. She began to dread it directly after the dormitory match, and was thankful for the brief respite afforded by the intervening Sunday. Monday, the day on which she should have played again, turned out so wet that hockey or anything else of an out-of-door nature was quite impossible. Tuesday was a walk-day for Gerry's team. But on the following Wednesday the practice could be avoided no longer, and after dinner Gerry went up to her dormitory to change into her hockey things, feeling very much as though she was on her way to be martyred at the stake.
Gerry was far and away the biggest girl in the very low team in which she had been placed. K.1. and K.2. were mostly filled with quite little girls from the First and Second Forms, with one or two backward individuals from the Third, and one spectacled person, Sally Jones, from the Middle Fourth. Sally was rather an aggressive young lady altogether. Although she was not good at hockey she was certainly improving, and was usually put to play centre forward in the practice games. She was inclined to presume upon this position and her superior age to order the other children about. When Gerry slowly approached the ground on which the two K teams were supposed to practise, Sally regarded her with keenly-inquiring eyes, and noticing her obvious dejection prepared to improve the occasion.
"Here comes German Gerry," she observed. And with a quick turn of her wrist she flicked the ball she was idly knocking about full at the approaching girl, hitting her smartly on the shin.
Gerry, who had not seen the ball coming, gave an involuntary cry of pain, which occasioned a shriek of laughter from the small girls around.