"She doesn't look it! Besides, what do we care whether she's clever or
not? It's the injustice of the thing that makes me angry. A kid like
her amongst us seniors! The idea!"

"Miss Roscoe may send Gwen up," declared Louise Mawson, "but she can't
make us accept her as one of ourselves. I vote we send her to
Coventry."

"We will! She's nothing but a Lower School girl, and we won't tolerate
her being imposed upon us!"

"She'll be so conceited at finding herself a Senior!"

"We'll soon take her pride down, then!"

"She'll meet with a few snubs here, I'll undertake to say!"

"If Miss Roscoe is going to bring up all the rank and file like that
there's no credit in being in the Fifth!"

"It's a positive insult to the rest of us!"

So decided Gwen's new classmates, jealous for the prestige of their
Form, and annoyed at the indignity which they considered they were
made to suffer in admitting a younger girl among their number. To Gwen
or her feelings they gave not a thought. If she met with an unpleasant
experience all the better; it might deter Miss Roscoe from repeating
the experiment. That the remove was not Gwen's fault, and therefore
that it was scarcely fair to visit the headmistress's act upon her
innocent head, did not enter into their calculations. Where they
consider their rights are concerned schoolgirls rarely hold mercy
before justice.

Meantime Gwen, who had gone to break the important tidings to the
Upper Fourth, did not find her old friends as responsive as she had
expected. They received her communication with marked coldness.

"Why should you have been moved up, Gwen Gascoyne, and not Daisy, or
Aileen, or I?" enquired Alma Richardson, with a distinctly aggrieved
note in her voice.

"Miss Roscoe always favoured Gwen!" said Eve Dawkins enviously.

"You're six months younger than Viola Sutton, so it seems absurd you
should be put above her."

"You'll be so grand now, I suppose you won't care to know us!"

"It's not fair to the rest of the Form!"

"Oh dear! I'm between two fires," thought Gwen, as she hastily cleared
her possessions from her old desk. "The Fifth don't want me, and the
Fourth are horribly jealous. You're going to have a bad time, Gwen
Gascoyne, I'm afraid! I see breakers ahead! Never mind. It's a great
honour to be moved up, and Father'll be glad and sympathize, if nobody
else does. The work will be pretty stiff: I expect it'll be all I can
do to manage it. But I mean to have a