oft
that Gipsy was in ill favour at headquarters; and though most of the
girls were sorry for her, with a certain number her changed fortunes
undoubtedly lessened her popularity. Maude Helm never lost an
opportunity of a sneer or a slight, and could sometimes raise a laugh
at Gipsy's expense among the more thoughtless section of the Form. Gipsy
generally responded with spirit, but the gibes hurt all the same.

[Illustration: "GIPSY GENERALLY RESPONDED WITH SPIRIT"]

"When are you going to get some new hair ribbons, Yankee Doodle?" asked
Gladys Merriman one day. "Those red flags of yours are looking rather
dejected."

"The American turkey's losing its top-knot," sniggered Maude tauntingly.
"It doesn't soar up aloft like it used to do! Been a little tamed by the
British lion!"

"If you imagine a turkey to be the crest of the United States, you're a
trifle out," said Gipsy scornfully.

"I'd take to a pigtail if I were you," tittered Maude. "It only needs
one ribbon!"

"If you were me, then I suppose I'd be you--and, yes, it might be
necessary to change my style of hair-dressing," retorted Gipsy, with a
glance at Maude's not too plentiful locks.

Some of the girls giggled, and Cassie Bertram murmured: "Rats' tails,
not pigtails! Or even mouse tails!"

Maude scowled. She had not intended the laugh to be turned against
herself.

"I wouldn't wear limp, faded red bows at any price," she commented,
banging her desk to close the conversation, and stalking from the room.

"That Gipsy Latimer's too conceited altogether! I should like to take
her down a peg," she confided to Gladys, as the pair walked arm-in-arm
round the playground.

"Well, so you do, continually!" said Gladys.

"That's only by the way. She deserves something more for her American
cheek. I'm going to play a trick on her, Gladys. It'll be ever such fun!
Listen!"

The two girls put their heads together, and laughed as Maude whispered
her plan; then they both scuttled up to the empty classroom, and
abstracting Gipsy's atlas from her desk, carried it downstairs to the
lost-property cupboard, and hid it carefully under a pile of books.

"She won't find that in a hurry!" chuckled Maude.

"There'll be a fine to-do when she misses it," said Gladys.

"People who suffer from 'swelled head' just deserve a little wholesome
medicine, to cure them of thinking too much of themselves. Now she's
editor of the Magazine, Yankee Doodle's unbearable, to my mind. Th