Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/22

16 in the least barbarous about you. I think there ought to be a law against naming a girl till she's old enough to choose for herself. Well, as I told you, I was christened Azalea, but everybody saw from the first it didn't fit. 'She's a regular little gipsy!' Dad said; so they called me Gipsy, and Gipsy I mean to be. I made Dad tell Miss Poppleton so, and enter me Gipsy on the school books. I wasn't going to start in a new place as Azalea."

"So you've been to school before?" said Dilys Fenton.

"Rather! I told you I've been to seven schools—three in America, two in New Zealand, one in Australia, and one in South Africa. This is the first English school I've tried."

"Seven—and you're only fourteen! Why, you must have been to a fresh one every year!"

Gipsy nodded.

"You're just about right there. Never stayed more than two terms at any of them. No—they didn't expel me! I tell you, I'm an absolute miracle of good behaviour when I like. It was simply because Dad and I were always moving on, and whenever he went to a fresh place I had to go to a fresh school. You don't think I'd let him leave me in America when he was going to Australia, do you?"

"Haven't you got a mother?" asked Barbara Kendrick.

"Shut up, you stupid!" murmured Dilys Fenton, giving Barbara a nudge.

Gipsy rolled her handkerchief into a tight ball, and unrolled it again before she replied.