Gerry stood for a few moments gazing at the list, uncertain whether to be pleased that Muriel still intended to give her another chance, or to be frightened at the ordeal that lay before her. And as she stood there, doubtfully regarding the notice-board, the head girl herself came along, and stopped to speak to her.
"Well, Gerry, I'm giving you your chance, you see," she said kindly.
"Yes—I see," said Gerry, turning round to face the prefect. "But, Muriel, are you—are you sure you think it's best? Supposing—supposing I funk again?"
"Now, look here, Gerry, I shall really get cross with you if you go on like this," said the head girl impatiently. And indeed, there was some reason for her impatience. She seemed always to be having to spur Gerry Wilmott on to the simplest acts of courage. "I keep telling you and telling you that you must have more confidence in yourself! You needn't funk if you'll only make up your mind not to. You've put up one or two quite good games since you've been playing forward, Alice says, and there's no earthly reason why you should not do the same on Saturday. If Dora Wainscott's hand was well enough for her to play, I should put her in. But it isn't, and you're just as good as any of the other girls in the dorm who are left—rather better than most of them. Now, are you going to buck up and do yourself and the dorm credit, or are you going to let me down?"
"I'm—I'm going to do my best," said Gerry, lifting earnest eyes to the head girl's face. "It's jolly good of you, Muriel, to give me the chance after the way I went on over gym this afternoon."
"Did you think I should cut you out because of that?" said Muriel. "You certainly did make rather an ass of yourself. But there's no earthly reason why you should do the same on Saturday. I should like to fit you up with a new backbone, Gerry Wilmott," she added laughingly. "You'd be quite a decent kid if you'd only buck up and be a bit more daring! You ought to take for your own the motto that the Red Cross Knight found written up over the door of the castle—'Be bold, be bold, be bold!'"
"It wasn't the Red Cross Knight; it was Britomarte," said Gerry, and Muriel smiled approvingly at her for the correction. It was something for Gerry even to dare to correct a quotation.
"Good for you, kiddie! So it was. Well, you get that thoroughly into your head by next Saturday and act upon it, and you'll do all right." And she hurried on her way, leaving a much inspirited Gerry behind her.
"She is a brick!" thought the girl enthusiastically, as she walked slowly towards the Lower Fifth sitting-room. "I don't wonder all the girls are so keen about her. I will get that motto into my head, and I will play up and justify her choice of me for next Saturday, and I won't let anything the other girls may say or do affect me! I'll just keep saying the words over and over to myself whenever I feel inclined to funk, and see if that won't make me braver. Be bold, be bold, be bold!"
And then some lines of Longfellow's she had once heard came into her head in the inconsequent way such lines do occur to lovers of poetry: