irst event of the kind in the annals of
the school, so naturally it aroused much enthusiasm. About thirty
candidates were selected by Miss Medland as eligible for competitions,
the rest of her pupils having to content themselves with looking on. A
special afternoon was given up to the display, and invitations were sent
out to parents to come and help to swell the audience.

"Are you in for the mermaidens' fete?" Winona asked Marjorie Kemp.

"Mermaidens' fete, indeed! How romantic we are all of a sudden! The frog
fight, I should call it."

"There speaks the voice of envy! You're evidently out of it."

"Don't want to be in it, thanks! It'll be wretched work shivering round
the edge of the bath for a solid hour!"

"Sour grapes, my child!" teased Winona.

"Go on, my good girl--if you want to make me raggy, you just shan't
succeed, that's all!"

"Now I _should_ like to have been chosen!" mourned Evelyn Richards. "I
don't mind confessing that I've had a disappointment. I thought I could
swim quite as well as Freda, and it's grizzly hard luck that she was
picked out and I wasn't. Rank favoritism, I call it!"

"Poor old Eve! Look here, I'll tell you a secret. You head the reserve
list. I know because I saw it. If anybody has a cold on the day of the
event, you'll take her place."

"You mascot! Shall I? Oh! I do hope somebody'll catch cold--not badly,
but just enough to make it unsafe to go into the water. You can't think
how I want to try my luck. I don't suppose I've a chance of a prize, but
if I did get one, why I'd cock-a-doodle-do the school down!"

"I'm quite sure you would! Trust you to blow your own trumpet!"

"Winona Woodward, if you'd been properly and thoroughly spanked in your
babyhood, you'd be a much more civil person now. I decline your company.
Ta-ta!"

"Poor old Eve! Take it sporting!" said Winona soothingly.

On the afternoon of the great event, the ladies' large bath was
specially reserved for the school. A goodly crowd of spectators filled
almost to overflowing the galleries that ran round the hall; interested
fathers and mothers, sympathetic aunts, and a sprinkling of cousins and
friends made up the visitors' list, and the rest of the space was
crammed with school girls. Each likely champion had her own set of
supporters, who murmured her name as a kind of war cry, and were only
restrained from shouting it at the pitch of their lungs by the sight of
Miss Bishop, who stood below, talking to Mis