"Oh, let German Gerry alone!" she said cuttingly. "Of course she won't stick in with us! She's far too much of a sneak, and far too much of a coward to risk a row with Miss Oakley. What's the good of arguing with a coward!"
"Look here, if we're not all going to be in it, I'm coming out too," exclaimed Hilda Burns suddenly. "It was all very well striking when we were all hanging together, but it's quite a different thing if some of them are going to back out. You can take me off the list of strikers too."
"Are you going to be a coward as well?" said Dorothy sneeringly. But it was too late. The defection started by Gerry spread rapidly. Since the morning, the strike, which had at first seemed to be merely a more or less harmless rag, had begun to appear in its right light, and the hearts of the Lower Fifth were no longer in the business. Several members of the form were glad to find an excuse for backing out of their contract, and soon some nine or ten of the girls had retracted their vows of defiance.
"Oh, well, of course, if you're all going to funk it, it's no good going on with it at all," said Dorothy sulkily. "We've all got to hang together or, of course, it's no use. I should have thought you'd have been ashamed to follow the example of a German Gerry, though!" she added, with biting sarcasm, as she cast a look of malevolence at Gerry.
Then her eyes fell upon Jack, who was still lingering hesitatingly by Gerry's desk, and the sight spurred her on to make one more spiteful thrust at Gerry.
"There's one thing, Gerry Wilmott, you may as well understand right away. You're not going to gain anything by what you've done to-night. You may have broken our strike,—no strike can stand out against a blackleg,—but all the same, you'll wish you'd stayed in with us before you've finished. I don't know what those rabbits are going to do," with a contemptuous glance towards Hilda and the other girls who had seceded, "but I think I can answer for the rest of the form all right. No decent girl in the Lower Fifth will ever speak to you again, if they can help it."
She turned to Jack.
"Surely you won't have anything more to do with such a rotten coward, Jack?" she said contemptuously.
Jack looked down at Gerry. But Gerry's eyes were fixed miserably upon her desk, and she did not see the questioning look upon the face of the girl with whom she most longed to be friends. And while Jack still lingered, Phyllis Tressider clinched matters.
"She's not only a coward—she's a sneak as well!" she said, glad to see her enemy in such disgrace again. "I bet she let those chestnuts drop out of her pocket yesterday on purpose to get you and Nita into a row."