“Jean,” returned Ted calmly, “or at least the committee think so. I can tell by the way Barbara looks at her.”
“Beastly shame,” muttered Bob. “Why couldn’t Emily and Christy have braced up and got it themselves?”
“Now, Bob,” Nita Reese remonstrated, “don’t you think you’re a bit hard on Jean this time? I know she’s a good deal of a land-grabber, but now she’s gone into an open competition just like any one else, and if she wins it will be because she deserves to.”
“Ye-es,” admitted Bob grudgingly. “Yes, of course it will. I know that as well as you do, Nita Reese. Just the same she’s never any good in Gest and Pant, is she, Teddie?”
“In what?” demanded Helen Adams and Clara Madison together.
“Gest and Pant—short for Gesture and Pantomime, senior course in elocution,” explained Teddie rapidly. “Oh, I don’t know. I think she’s done some pretty good things once in a while. And anyhow she can’t fool the committee and Mr. Masters.”
“Of course not,” agreed Bob.
“Just the same,” said Madeline Ayres, who had come up in time to hear the end of the argument, “we’ll stand for her if she gets the part, but until she does we can hope against hope for a dark horse, can’t we, Bob?”
“What’s a dark horse?” asked Clara Madison in her funny, slow drawl.
“Your vocabulary’s getting a big increase this morning, isn’t it, Clara?” said Madeline quizzically. “Gest and Pant, short for Gesture and Pantomime; dark horse, short for a person like—— Girls, run in, quick. She’s begun calling the roll.”