e don't want any Fourth Form girls foisted on us!" proclaimed Rachel
Hunter.

"You don't belong to the Upper School!" urged Charlotte Perry hotly.

"I didn't yesterday, but I do now," retorted Gwen. "Miss Roscoe's
moved me up. Yes--and I mean to stay here, too!" she added, facing her
opponents stubbornly.

"Miss Roscoe must be mad!"

"What can she be thinking of?"

"Better go and ask her yourself," said Gwen, "if you think she's
likely to listen to you. She isn't generally very ready to enter into
explanations."

"But this is monstrous! It's an unheard-of thing!" exclaimed Louise
Mawson excitedly. "A chit like you to be brought into the Fifth! Why,
how old are you?"

"Exactly fourteen and a quarter--birthday on July 16th, if you want
exact date," returned Gwen smartly.

"Oh!" "What a shame!" "We shan't stand it!" rose in such a chorus from
all sides that Gwen took the opportunity to make her escape and go to
the dressing-room for her lunch. The interval was only ten minutes,
and she wished both to break the news to her old classmates and to
fetch some necessary books from her former desk before the bell rang.

The other members of the Fifth lingered behind in perturbed
consultation. They considered they had a just and most pressing
grievance. In all the annals of the school such a case had never
occurred before. It had been hitherto an inviolable though unwritten
law that no one under the age of fifteen should be admitted to the
Fifth Form, a law which they had believed as strict as that of the
Medes and Persians, and here was the headmistress actually breaking
it, and in favour of a girl only fourteen and a quarter. If Miss
Roscoe had not brought her herself into the room they would not have
credited it.

"It's abominably unfair!" broke out Rachel Hunter, a tall girl of
sixteen. "Because my birthday comes on October 4th I had to stop a
whole year longer in the Lower School. Yes--though my mother came and
begged Miss Roscoe to let me go up!"

"Well, you couldn't get moved up on your work, at any rate, Rachel!"
chirped Joan Masters. "It would have had to be favour in your case."

"That's not the point! It's a different question. If Miss Roscoe makes
a rule she ought to stick to it. Why, half the girls in the Form might
have come up sooner if it hadn't been for the age limit."

"You're right, and I can't see why Gwen Gascoyne should be so
specially noticed."

"She's supposed to be clever, I believe."