ates started on their final contest. The sympathies of
the gallery went strongly with Winona; the girls wanted their Games
Captain to win, and they cheered her vigorously. But Winona was tired,
Elsie Parton was lithe and active, and had made fast swimming her
specialty. Winona did her sporting best, but by the middle of the bath
Elsie had distanced her, and reached the winning post a whole length
ahead.

There was dead silence from the girls in the gallery. Their Captain had
failed, and they did not mean to applaud her opponent. Winona, looking
upwards, saw the popular feeling in their faces. All her generous spirit
rose in revolt. She was standing close to Miss Bishop, Miss Gatehead and
Miss Medland, and therefore it was certainly a breach of school
etiquette for her to do what she did, but acting on the impulse of the
moment she shouted: "Cheer, you slackers! Three cheers for Elsie
Parton!" and waving her hand as a signal, led off the "Hip-hip-hip
hurrah!" A very volume of sound followed, and the roof rang as Miss
Bishop presented the winner with the cup for the Championship.

"Thanks _awfully_, Winona!" said Elsie, as the girls walked away to the
dressing-rooms. "I'm afraid I've disappointed the school--but I did want
to win!"

"Of course you did--and why shouldn't you? I hope I can take a beating
in a sporting way! I think I made them ashamed of themselves. Fair play
and no favoritism is the tradition of this school, and I mean to have no
nasty cliquey feeling in it so long as I'm Games Captain, or my name's
not Winona Woodward! That's the law of the Medes and Persians!"

CHAPTER XX

The Red Cross Hospital

Winona received constant letters from Percy in the trenches "somewhere
in France," all, of course, carefully censored. They had arranged a
cryptogram before he left England, however, and by its aid he was able
to tell her the name of the place near which he was fighting. It was a
tremendous excitement for her when his letters arrived to fetch her key
to the cryptogram and reckon out the magic little word that let her know
his whereabouts. She would find the spot on the big war-map that hung in
the dining-room and would mark it with a miniature flag, feeling in
closer touch with him now she knew exactly where he was located. She
kept a special album in which she placed photos of him in khaki, all his
letters and postcards, and any newspaper cuttings that concerned his
regiment. The book was already