Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/96

88 "Thanks! I wasn't aware my movements were so original!" retorted Gipsy. "There's method in my madness this time, though. I was trying to dodge Miss White, and dash upstairs to get my Hamlet. I've forgotten the wretched thing, and if I go to class without a book, Poppie—h'm! I mean Miss Poppleton" (as Doreen's eyebrows went up)—"will want to know the reason why."

"I expect she will," returned Doreen dryly. "And serve you right too, for forgetting! No, I shall not allow you to go and fetch it. I'm here to keep order, not to help you out of scrapes."

The Upper Fourth, under Doreen's superintendence, had just filed from its own classroom to attend a Shakespeare lecture by the Principal. The girls were a few minutes early, and in consequence were drawn up like a small regiment in the corridor to wait until a previous class was over and they could enter the lecture hall. Waiting is often dull work, and Gipsy had considered herself a public benefactor in seeking to enliven the tedium of her form mates. Doreen's notions on the subject of discipline did not appeal to her.

"But I can't go to the Shakespeare lesson without my Hamlet," she remonstrated. "Suppose I'm asked to read?"

"You should have thought of that before!" snapped Doreen. "Be quiet, Gipsy Latimer; if you speak another word I shall report you!"

Gipsy refrained from further unavailing speech, but her active brain was by no means silenced. I do not