d to see the point of Hurly-Burly's message.
However, he was glad of the opportunity to descend from the platform
and get a better view of the little Fraeulein's performance; and he placed
himself, rather inconveniently, just in front of the games-mistress, and
prepared to miss nothing of what followed.

Everybody in the room was smiling genially at the youngest girl in the
school. She had already prepossessed them in her favour by her frank
admiration for Jean Murray; and now, as she stood there waiting for
the sign from Hurly-Burly to begin, there was something about her happy
unconsciousness that appealed irresistibly to her audience. Suddenly, the
five boys in the gallery began to stamp their feet encouragingly, and
Peter shouted 'Go it, Babe!' at the top of his voice. In a moment, the
cry was taken up in the anteroom. 'Go it, Babe!' said twenty voices or
more in a breath. The enthusiasm was infectious, and the words were
repeated with many a laugh all over the room. 'Go it, Babe!' cried the
people on the platform, and the people in the gallery, and the people who
sat near her by the wall, until every one in the gymnasium was stamping
and clapping and saying 'Go it, Babe!' to the little person in the short
scarlet frock.

Barbara held the rings tightly, and her breath came rather quickly and
unevenly. She was bewildered by the noise, and waited for it to subside
before she began the exercise. It was so difficult to know what it all
meant. Of course, the boys wanted her to win; and perhaps the other people
did too, because they were grown up, and grown-up people always were
jolly and kind to her. She could understand why the Doctor, stern as
he was, smiled away at her and clapped her as heartily as any one, from
his place on the platform; and she thought she knew dimly what was making
Jean stamp on the floor till the dust flew. But the enthusiasm of her
other school-fellows, who were pressing forward from the anteroom door,
amazed her greatly. Could it be that they had suddenly forgotten how
young and unimportant she was, and how much she needed correction, and
how often she required to be told that she was the youngest in the school?
Were these the girls she had hated so heartily only three months ago, the
disgraced princesses she had turned out of her kingdom so passionately?

The applause died down at last, and Miss Burleigh made her the signal to
begin. Babs walked back as far as she could, stood stretched for a