Upstairs in the Seniors' Retreat the girls were talking seriously.

"Of course, she deserves to be called down in front of the whole school," Helen Jenkins, a very severe type of girl with big horn-rimmed spectacles, was saying. She was the editor of the school paper, and the most studious girl in the school.

"But, as Poppy says, it's never wise to attach too much importance to the mistakes of a new girl," Marion West, vice-president of the cla.s.s, replied.

Poppy looked at the three Soph.o.m.ores before her.

"Have you all any suggestions?" she inquired.

Gladys and Sally looked at Ann.

"Perhaps a gentle little boycott might help," she suggested quietly.

"It's just as hard on our wing, if not worse, than it is on yours,"

Stella Richardson, one of the Seniors who lived in the new wing, spoke up. "There isn't one of us who wouldn't gladly drown the little wretch, and the trouble is, she's gotten some of the new girls and talked to them until they feel it's a positive virtue to be rude every time they see one of you."

"Oh, it's all too nonsensical," Gwen exploded. "Good old wings, who dares to take our happy fight and make an ugly thing out of it?"

"My thumbs are down for anyone who dares," Ruth Hall announced. She roomed in the new wing with Stella Richardson.

Gwendolyn Matthews might have been said to have snorted with rage. She was a splendid healthy specimen of girlhood; a mind capable of small and mean thoughts was beneath her contempt. She walked out on the balcony, her back to the rest of the room.

A minute later she beckoned cautiously to the girls to follow her. They crowded out on the balcony on tip-toe and peered down as Gwen directed.

Just below them, sitting on the steps, were Janet and Phyllis. Ethel stood beside them. She was talking in a loud and excited way and the girls listened.

"I should think you'd want to get out of the damp old hole," she was saying. "There's an extra room in our corridor."

Janet and Phyllis looked at her with dangerously calm eyes.

"We've by far the finest bunch of girls in our wing," she continued.

"We're going to take everything away from you this year."

"Indeed!" Janet said quietly.

"May I inquire how long you've been at Hilltop?" Phyllis asked politely.

A smile ran around the group of faces watching from the balcony above.

"Oh, I'm a new girl," Ethel replied rather flatly.

"You'd never guess it," Janet said with so much scorn that Gwen almost laughed, and Sally did, but the three on the piazza below were too intent to look up.

"I think the new girls ought to stick together," Ethel announced. "Of course, if you still persist in living in the old wing, why the fight's on, but I rather hoped you'd come over to us."

Phyllis stood up. She was taller than the other girl, and she looked straight down into her pale blue eyes.

"Pardon me," she said, "but there is no fight on at all. As a new girl, neither I nor my twin would presume to act as you advise." She sat down again, with her back towards Ethel.

Janet did not bother to stand when she said what she had to say.

"We saw the sign you put up on the green door, and as new girls we are thoroughly disgusted with you. If we banded together, it would be to show you your proper place." Janet did not raise her voice as she spoke, and when she had finished she looked out over the green lawns as though the sight gave her pleasure after Ethel's sour face.

"It might be well for you to remember," Phyllis spoke as though her thoughts came from a long distance, "that though we are two separate wings, we are both a part of Hilltop, and though we each give the best that is in us, it is that Hilltop may soar the higher-not as you seem to think it is, for any individual and mean advantage."

The girls on the balcony looked at one another, speechless with admiration and delight.

"Oh, well said!" Alice whispered.

Gwen and Stella hugged each other and Gladys danced a little jig.

"I declare, I love those children!" Poppy exclaimed.

"They're _my_ twins, I'd have you remember," Sally exulted.

They looked back again to the piazza. Ethel had gone and the twins were strolling arm-in-arm over the green lawn.

CHAPTER VII-Poetry and Prose

Janet ran down the hall, waving a letter over her head.

"Sally, Phyllis, where are you?" she called.

The door of Sally's room opened, and Prue came out carrying a drawer piled high with clothes.

"h.e.l.lo there!" she called. "Come and help me move."

"Oh, then you know Daphne is coming? I just had a letter from her and I'm trying to find Sally and Phyllis," Janet replied, taking one end of the heavy drawer.

"You'll find them all in there." Prue nodded her head towards the door she had just left. "They are stuffing my peanut b.u.t.ter, eating my crackers and making fun of my poetry."

"Why, Prue, I didn't know you wrote," Janet exclaimed.

"I don't," Prue told her; "that is, not for publication, but every once in a while I put things down on paper and somehow or other they rhyme."

"Why didn't you show me any of them?"

"They weren't good enough. I'd never have let those wild Indians see them. Just as I was packing, my notebook fell out of my desk, and a lot of papers I had in it, scattered to the floor. And, of course, Sally pounced on them."

"Poor Prue," Janet sympathized.

They were walking slowly down the hall carrying the drawer between them.