"Write on your doors the saying wise and old,
'Be bold! be bold!' and everywhere—'Be bold!'
'Be not too bold'—yet better the excess
Than the defect; better the more than less;
Better like Hector in the field to die,
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly."
Gerry's face took on an expression of rigid determination as she repeated the lines to herself. And, throwing up her head with a little gesture of defiance, she said aloud:
"Well, I just won't be a 'perfumed Paris' this time, whatever happens!"
And with this bold resolve she walked into the sitting-room, and settled herself down in her usual corner with a book, until the bell should ring for prayers and bed.
CHAPTER XXII
THE DORMITORY FINAL
Saturday morning dawned at last. It was a splendid day for hockey, fine and bright, with a touch of frost in the air, not enough to make the ground hard, but just sufficient to dry up some of the worst of the mud and to make it exhilarating to run about.
There was great excitement over the match throughout the school. Even the girls who were not directly concerned in the results of the game, either as members of the teams or occupants of the rival dormitories, were keenly interested, while the agitation of the two dormitories actively engaged was raised to fever-pitch. Some of the smaller girls in the Pink Dormitory had been occupied during the past week in manufacturing rosettes of pink ribbon, which they sold for twopence apiece to the members of the team and the partisans of the dormitory—a proceeding which promised considerable profit at first to the enterprising trio who originated it. Unfortunately for them, however, Muriel Paget descended upon them on the morning of the match with searching inquiries as to the monetary part of the transaction.
"But, Muriel, the ribbon cost us an awful lot of money," protested one of the small profiteers in distress, when the head girl ordered that all proceeds from the sale of the favours should be deposited in the dormitory missionary-box. "It was very good ribbon, penny-halfpenny a yard, and we've used yards and yards of it!"