a shame
that Dorothy and Phyllis should be always at her like that. But
unfortunately Jack was not strong enough in character to stand up on
behalf of the new girl. She was always far too easily swayed by
popular opinion, and since popular opinion appeared to be dead against
Gerry, Jack dared not show her any sympathy. So she stifled her
feelings of compunction and returned to work, endeavouring to banish
all thought of Gerry Wilmott from her mind.

After this one attempt, Gerry abandoned all efforts to rid herself of
the objectionable nickname. It never occurred to her to take the form
into her confidence respecting the reason for her nerves. Indeed, she
did not connect them herself with the air-raid night. Also, in the
present state of affairs, there was really no one in whom she could
confide, and in any case she would have found it difficult to speak of
that terrible evening. She became more and more solitary, hardly
attempting to speak to her companions, and a more miserable and
lonelier girl than the one who inhabited Cubicle Thirteen, in the Pink
Dormitory at Wakehurst Priory, it would have been hard to find. It
really seemed as though some of the ill-luck proverbially attaching to
the mystic number was hanging over her head. Lessons were almost her
only solace. Having no other interest in life, Gerry set to work to
excel in class, and did so well that she very soon rose to the top of
the form, a place which had been divided pretty evenly hitherto between
Hilda Burns and Dorothy Pemberton. The new girl's success in form work
aroused more jealousy on Dorothy's part, and on Phyllis's, too.
Phyllis's championship of her chum did not need much spurring, more
especially when it concerned Gerry Wilmott.

But success in lessons cannot make up for unpopularity away from them.
To a girl at boarding-school the social life is by far the most
important part as a rule, much more important than the hours passed in
the classroom. And Gerry, who was no exception to the general run of
girls in this respect, found her position in form a very poor
consolation indeed for all the other troubles that she had to bear.

Unfortunately, too, she was a hopeless duffer at games, never having
played any before coming to school. Hockey was the principal pastime
during the two winter terms at Wakehurst, and practice two or three
times a week was compulsory for all except for a few girls who were
exempt on account of some physi