"Aristocratic!" cried Kate.—"Hannah Johnson, you haven't given your opinion yet.—And, Ruth Craven, you haven't given yours."
"I reserve my opinion," said Ruth.
"And I say there's a great deal of humbug and balder-dash in the world," said Hannah Johnson.
Ruth's remark was unexpected, but the girls pooh-poohed Hannah's. Who was Hannah Johnson that she dared to speak so rudely to one so charming and beautiful as Kathleen O'Hara? There was a disconcerting pause, and then Kathleen said:
"Hannah, doubtless you are right. There is plenty of humbug in the world; but I don't think I am one. Now the question is: Shall I be on the side of the foundationers,
or shall I be on the side of the paying girls in the Great Shirley School?"
"Indeed, darling," said Rosy Myers, "you shall be on our side. Those horrid, stuck-up paying girls don't want you; and we do. Nothing will induce us to give you up. It is a chance to get a girl like you, so lovely and so sweet and so rich, to be one of us."
"Well, I think I can give you a good time, and I can show those others with their snobbish ways—"
"Hear, hear!" cried the excited girls.
"I can show the others what I think of them. They won't snub me, but perhaps I shall snub them. Well, girls, as we have decided to band together, we must draw up rules; and when they are drawn up we must obey them. I, of course, will be your head; as you have made me queen, that is the natural thing to expect."