A Popular Schoolgirl, Angela Brazil [big screen ebook reader txt] 📗

juvenile heads bumped each other in their efforts to read the notice. The result, however, was absolutely unprecedented in the annals of the school. It was the custom of the Sixth Form, and of many of the Fifth, to take their lunch and eat it quietly in the gymnasium. There was no hard and fast rule about this, but it was generally understood to be a privilege of the upper forms only, and intermediates and juniors were not supposed to intrude. Today most of the elder girls were sitting in clumps at the far end of the gymnasium, when through the open door marched a most amazing procession of juniors. They were headed by Phyllis Smith and Dorrie Barnes carrying between them a small blackboard upon which was chalked:

Down with prefects!
Rights for juniors!
The whole school is equal!

After these ringleaders marched a determined crowd waving flags made of handkerchiefs fastened to the end of rulers. A band, equipped with combs covered with tissue-paper torn from their drawing-books, played the strains of the “Marseillaise.” They advanced towards the seniors in a very truculent fashion.

“Well, really!” exclaimed Lispeth, recovering from her momentary amazement. “What’s the meaning of all this, I’d like to know?”

“It’s a strike!” said Dorrie proudly, as she and Phyllis paused so as to display the blackboard before the eyes of the Sixth. “We don’t see why you big girls should lord it over us any longer. We’ll obey the mistresses, but we’ll not obey prefects.”

“You’ll just jolly well do as you’re told, you impudent young monkeys!” declared Lispeth, losing her temper. “Here, clear out of this gymnasium at once!”

“We shan’t! We’ve as good a right here as you!”

“We ought to send wardens to the School Parliament.”

“We haven’t any voice in school affairs!”

“It’s not fair!”

“We shan’t stand it any longer!”

The shrill voices of the insurgents reached crescendo as they hurled forth their defiance. They were evidently bent on red-hot revolution. Lispeth rose to read the Riot Act.

“If you don’t take yourselves off I shall go for Miss Burd, and a nice row you’d get into then. I give you while I count ten. One⁠—two⁠—three⁠—four⁠—”

Whether the strikers would have stood their ground or not is still an unsolved problem, but at that opportune moment the big school bell began to clang, and Miss Willough, the drill mistress, in her blue tunic, entered the gymnasium ready to take her next class. At sight of her, Dorrie hastily wiped the blackboard, and the juniors fled to their own form-rooms, suppressing flags and musical instruments on the way. Miss Willough gazed at them meditatively, but made no comment, and the Sixth, hurrying to a literature lesson, had no time to offer explanations.

Lispeth, more upset than she cared to own, talked the matter over with her mother when she went to dinner at one o’clock. She was a very conscientious girl and anxious to do her duty as “Head.” As a result of the home conference she went to Miss Burd, explained the situation, and asked to be allowed to have the whole school together for ten minutes before four o’clock.

“It’s only lately there’s been this trouble,” she said. “I believe if I talk nicely to the girls I can get back my influence. That’s what Mother advised. She said ‘try persuasion first.’ ”

“She’s right, too,” agreed Miss Burd. “If you can get them to obey you willingly it’s far better than if I have to step in and put my foot down. What we want is to change the general current of thought.”

Speculation was rife in the various forms as the closing bell rang at 3:45 instead of at 4 o’clock, and the girls were told to assemble in the Lecture Hall, and were put on their honor to behave themselves. To their surprise, the mistresses, after seeing them seated, left the room. Miss Burd mounted the platform and announced:

“Lispeth Scott wishes to speak to you all, and I should like you to know that anything she has to say is said with my entire approval and sanction. I hope you will listen to her in perfect silence.”

Then she followed the other mistresses.

All eyes were fixed on Lispeth as she ascended the platform. With her tall ample figure, earnest blue eyes, light hair, and fair face flushed with the excitement of her task she looked a typical English girl, and made what she hoped was a typical English speech.

“I asked you to come,” she began rather shyly, “because I think lately there have been some misunderstandings in the school, and I want, if possible, to put them straight. There has been a good deal of talk about ‘equality,’ and some of you say there oughtn’t to be prefects. I wonder exactly what you mean by ‘equality?’ Certainly all girls aren’t born with equal talents, yet each separate soul is of value to the community and must not go to waste. The test of a school is not how many show pupils it has turned out, but how all its pupils are prepared to face the world. I think we can only do this by sticking together and trying to help each other. In every community, however, there must be leaders. An army would soon go to pieces without its officers! The prefects and wardens have been chosen as leaders, and it ought to be a point of honor with you to uphold their authority. I assure you they don’t work for their own good, but for the good of the school. I hear it is a grievance with the juniors that they mayn’t elect wardens for the Council. Well⁠—they shall do that when they’re older; it will be something for them to look forward to! There’s a privilege, though, that we can and will give them. We’re going to start a Junior branch of the Rainbow League, and I think when they’re doing their level best to help others, they’ll forget about themselves. Carlyle says that the very dullest drudge has the elements of a hero