‘Because I want to be first,’ she said slowly. ‘I want to be first in everything. I’d sooner be bottom than second! Of course you’ll think I’m a conceited pig,’ she added, almost fiercely, ‘but I can’t help that; I don’t expect you to understand.’ Then she muttered in a lower tone,–‘Nobody ever does, excepting only mother and father.’
Barbara’s eyes were fixed on her face, and there was a warmth in their blackness that Jean had only seen there once, and that was when she was writing to her father in America.
‘Good old Jean!’ she murmured. ‘It’s awfully hard to understand; but I’ll try–truthfully. And I’d like you to get the prize–I would, really. I didn’t want you to have it before; but I do now, Jean, old girl!’
‘I ought to want you to have it, but I don’t,’ sighed Jean, trying vainly not to be behindhand in unselfishness; ‘I just want it myself, so it’s no good pretending I don’t.’
There was silence between them for an instant; and from the other end of the gymnasium drifted the monotonous war-cries of Mary Wells and Angela Wilkins.
‘Margaret and Charlotte Bigley!’ shouted one.
‘Margaret and Jean Murray!’ added the other.
The enthusiasm was too infectious to be resisted. With a wild scream of glee, Jean and Babs raced the whole length of the room and flung themselves into the fray, without a thought of the opposite sentiments they had just been expressing to each other.
‘Margaret and the Babe!’ yelled Jean, brandishing an Indian club.
‘Margaret and Angela!’ came from the panting Barbara, just behind her.