Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/178

168 that its rejection was obvious at once. Meg Gordon started up immediately with a counter motion.

"I beg to propose that Gipsy Latimer continue to be editress until the end of the summer term."

"And I beg to second that motion," agreed Lennie Chapman heartily.

This time the hands went up in earnest, and there was no doubt about the majority.

"Hurrah! Hurrah!" shouted Gipsy's supporters, turning in much triumph upon the opposition as the meeting broke up. Maude and her friends, finding the point carried, had no more to say, and were obliged to drop the subject. Leonora affected a sublime indifference.

"I'm sure I didn't want to be editress. I can't think why they suggested it," she said, in her stolid, bored fashion.

"To carry favour with Poppie, and spite Gipsy!" declared Lennie Chapman. "I don't blame you: they made you a cat's-paw, that's all."

"It's a victory for Gipsy, but I'm sorry it's happened at all," fretted Hetty. "It's annoyed her dreadfully, and I believe she's ready to throw the whole thing up and resign office."

"That she can't and shan't and mustn't do! We won't allow her!"

The struggle made a great sensation in the Upper Fourth. Some of the girls openly twitted Maude with her defeat, an unwise and ungenerous proceeding which bore ill fruit. Maude was not a girl to let bygones be bygones; she turned sulky, brooded over