Just below them, sitting on the steps, were Janet and Phyllis. Ethel stood beside them. She was talking in a loud and excited way and the girls listened.
“I should think you’d want to get out of the damp old hole,” she was saying. “There’s an extra room in our corridor.”
Janet and Phyllis looked at her with dangerously calm eyes.
“We’ve by far the finest bunch of girls in our wing,” she continued. “We’re going to take everything away from you this year.”
“Indeed!” Janet said quietly.
“May I inquire how long you’ve been at Hilltop?” Phyllis asked politely.
A smile ran around the group of faces watching from the balcony above.
“Oh, I’m a new girl,” Ethel replied rather flatly.
“You’d never guess it,” Janet said with so much scorn that Gwen almost laughed, and Sally did, but the three on the piazza below were too intent to look up.
“I think the new girls ought to stick together,” Ethel announced. “Of course, if you still persist in living in the old wing, why the fight’s on, but I rather hoped you’d come over to us.”