"I say, what a scarlet nose you've got!"
This was entirely permissible and called for neither comment nor reply, other than a casual "Have I—what's it matter?"
But Lily always remembered the outcry that followed upon a remark once made by one of the younger pupils:
"I wonder why one gets that funny feeling sometimes of having done things before? Sort of like that Indian thing Mam'oiselle was reading about the other day—reincarnation or something——"
"Here! Chuck it, please. That was in a lesson!"
"Little girls shouldn't use long words they don't understand," said a senior severely.
"Snub for you, Elizabeth Fulham, showing off like that! Trying to be original, I s'pose! Did you ever hear of such affectation in a Fourth Form kid!"
Apparently no one ever had and no one ever did again, Elizabeth Fulham subsiding, with a very red face, into silence and subsequent orthodoxy. Certainly no one else at Bridgecrap could fairly be accused of trying to be original. It would have been the unforgivable sin.
Everyone seemed to copy everyone else.
Many of the girls copied Dorothy Hardinge, the eldest of Charlie Hardinge's three kiddies, because she was very good at games and had won the High Jumping Competition two years running at the school sports. The Third Form girls parted their hair in the boyish way affected by Dorothy, and used the same slang that she did; and were "keen" on the mathematical mistress, because Dorothy was "keen" on her.