red turned away with a red-hot spot raging under her blouse. That
she, the warden of the form, should have been passed over in favor of a
girl whose sole qualification seemed to be that she could offer some of
the others a lift in her car, was a very nasty knock. Was Bess to
supplant her in everything?

"Perhaps you'd like to make her warden instead of me!" she remarked
bitterly to Belle Charlton, who stood near. "I'm perfectly willing to
resign if you're tired of me!"

Belle only giggled and poked Joanna Powers, who said:

"Don't be nasty, Ingred! Bess is a sport, and we most of us like her."

"I can't see the attraction myself!" snapped Ingred.

She did not want to go to the hockey match now, and made up her mind
obstinately that nothing in this wide world should decoy her to it. Bess
came to school next morning armed with full permission to use her
father's car and to invite as many of her schoolfellows as it would
accommodate. She cordially pressed Ingred to join the party.

"I'm not going to the match, thanks," replied the latter frigidly.

"But there's heaps of room--there is indeed, without a frightful
squash."

"There's something I want to do at home on Saturday."

"Couldn't you do it in the morning? The form will be disappointed if you
don't go--and, I say----" (shyly) "I wish you'd write that wretched
report instead of me. I hate the idea of doing it!"

"The form won't care twopence whether I go or stay away, and as they've
chosen you to write the report you'll have to write it or it'll be left
undone," retorted Ingred perversely.

Bess, looking decidedly hurt, turned away. Her little efforts at
friendship with Ingred were invariably met in this most ungracious
fashion. She could not understand why her kindly-meant advances should
always be so systematically repulsed. Ingred, on her part, stalked off
with the mean feeling of one who at bottom knows she is in the wrong,
but won't acknowledge it even to herself. Under the sub-current of
indignation she realized that she would have liked Bess immensely if
only the latter had not taken up her residence at Rotherwood. That,
however, was an offense which she deemed it quite impossible ever to
forgive.

Ingred went about her work that morning in a very scratchy mood, so much
so as to attract the attention of Miss Strong, who possibly felt a
little prickly herself, since even teachers have their phases of temper.
It was at that time a fashion in the form