school,
Kirsty was carefully attending to her duties as Games Captain. Her work
among the juniors prospered exceedingly. They were taking to hockey with
wild enthusiasm and gave evidence of considerable promise. As most of
them were free at three o'clock, they got the chance of playing almost
every day. Kirsty was extremely anxious that these practices should be
properly supervised. She was too busy herself to take them personally,
so she was obliged to delegate the work to anybody who had the spare
time.

"The girls I want most are all at classes or music lessons," she
lamented. "Not a single one of the team's available. Winona Woodward,
I've been looking at your time-table, and find you've two vacant
half-hours. Wouldn't you like to help?"

"Like! I'd sell my birthright to do it!" gasped Winona. "But I'm
fearfully sorry; I'm cataloguing for Margaret!"

"Then I mustn't take you away from the General! It's a nuisance though,
for you'd have done very well, and I don't know who else I can get."

Winona considered it was one of the sharpest disappointments she had
ever gone through.

"Oh, the grizzly bad luck of it!" she wailed to Garnet. "It would have
been idyllic to coach those kids. And it would have given me such a leg
up with Kirsty! To think I've lost my chance!"

"I suppose Margaret might get some one else to do cataloguing?"

"I dare say: but I couldn't possibly ask her, and I'm sure Kirsty won't.
No, I'm done for!"

School etiquette is very strict, and Winona would have perished sooner
than resign her library duties. She felt a martyr, but resolved to smile
through it all. Garnet contemplated the problem at leisure during her
drawing lesson, and arrived at a daring conclusion. Without consulting
her friend she marched off at four o'clock to the prefects' room, a
little sanctum on the ground floor where the minutes' books of the
various guilds and societies were kept, and where the school officers
could hold meetings and transact business.

As she expected, Margaret was there alone, and said "Come in" in answer
to her rap at the door. The members of the Sixth kept much on their
dignity, so it was rather a formidable undertaking even for a Fifth Form
girl to interrupt the head of the school. Margaret looked up
inquiringly as Garnet entered.

"Yes, I'm fearfully busy," she replied to the murmured question. "What
is it? I can give you five minutes, but no more, so please be brief."

Thus urged, Garnet,