The Youngest Girl in the Fifth Read Online Free Page B

moment to sympathize.
    "Badly," groaned Gwen. "They're boycotting me. Of course the Fourth won't have anything to do with me now; so I'm like Mahomet's coffin, swung between heaven and earth! It's not pleasant, I assure you."
    "I should think not. I wish I could do anything."
    "You can't. Go back and play basket-ball."
    It was not Rodenhurst etiquette for Seniors to talk to Juniors, so Gwen, mindful even in her forlorn state of her new dignity as a member of the Upper School, could not indulge in the luxury of a chat with Lesbia. She wandered down the corridor, read the time sheets and the announcements on the notice boards, peeped into several empty classrooms, and was glad for once when the bell rang. At one o'clock things were no better. She was given a new place at the dinner-table and had to sit between Rachel Hunter and Edith Arnold, both of whom behaved as if unaware of her presence, and talked to each other across her as though she were non-existent. When she asked for the salt (rather shortly, certainly) Edith only stared and did not pass it. By the end of the meal Gwen began to feel the situation was getting on her nerves. She had been fairly popular in the Upper Fourth, so the change was the more unpleasant.
    "I'm not going to give in, though," she thought. "I believe what they want is to make me ask Miss Roscoe to move me down again. Well, they'll find themselves mistaken, that's all! I'll stay in the Upper School if nobody speaks to me till next midsummer, and if I have to stop up half the night slogging away at my work!"
    "How cross that Gwen Gascoyne looks!" whispered Hilda Browne to Iris Watson.
    "Yes, she doesn't seem to want to know us, does she?"
    "She needn't, I'm sure. I think she's horrid!"
    It was still raining and impossible to go into the playground, so Gwen strolled into the empty classroom, and for lack of anything else to do began arranging and rearranging the contents of her desk. She had not been there more than five minutes when the door opened and Netta Goodwin, one of her new form-mates, entered, humming a tune. She glanced at Gwen, went to her own desk, made a pretence of trying to find a book, sat whistling for a moment or two, then finally turned towards Gwen.
    "Well, how do you like being a Senior?" she asked half mockingly.
    "Too soon to tell yet," replied Gwen cautiously. "I shall know better at the end of a week."
    "You've not had a very charming reception so far, have you? I saw how Rachel and Edith were behaving at dinner."
    "I don't care!" snapped Gwen. "I don't want to talk to them, thanks! The Form can please itself whether it's friendly or leaves me alone as far as I'm concerned."
    Netta whistled softly. There was a rather inscrutable expression on her face.
    "All the same I suppose you don't always want to go on being a kind of leper and outlaw? Not very interesting, I should say, to come to school every day and speak to nobody!"
    Gwen was silent. She had no argument to advance.
    "They're annoyed with you just at present for being moved into our Form, but they can't keep it up long. In a little while they'll feel accustomed to you and you'll get on all right. Then the question is, are you going to belong to the Saints or the Sinners?"
    "What do you mean?" asked Gwen.
    "We're all one or other here. We call Hilda Browne and Iris Watson and Louise Mawson and Rachel Hunter and Edith Arnold and a few more 'the Saints'."
    "Nothing very saintly about them that I can see!" sniffed Gwen.
    "Well, it depends on your standards. Perhaps they thought they behaved like saints at dinner."
    "More like Pharisees! Which are you?"
    Netta's brown eyes twinkled.
    "I leave you to guess!" she replied sagely. "I'm not stiff and stand-off like some of them are, at any rate. If you'd care to take a walk down the corridor, I'll go with you."
    A stroll with anyone was better than sitting alone in the classroom; it was still only two o'clock, and there was half an hour to get through before afternoon school