he seemed to tower yards. She
fixed her clear dark eyes in a kind of hypnotic stare on Ingred and
remarked witheringly:

"That will do! I don't allow _any_ girl to speak to me in this fashion!
You'll take a cross for conduct as well as losing the five order marks.
You may go to your seat now."

Ingred walked back to her desk covered with humiliation. To be publicly
rebuked before the whole form was an unpleasant experience, particularly
for a warden. Beatrice, Francie, and several others were holding up
self-righteous noses, though their desks contained an equal assortment
of mascots. Ingred, still seething, made little attempt to listen to the
rest of the lecture, and was obliged to pass the questions which came to
her afterwards on the subject-matter. She was heartily thankful when
eleven o'clock brought the brief ten minutes "break."

"Well, you _have_ been a lunatic this morning!" said Beatrice, passing
her, biscuits in hand, in the cloak-room. "What possessed you to go and
lose the tennis-court for the form?"

"If you hadn't stared so hard at me Miss Strong would never have
noticed."

"Oh, of course! Throw the blame on somebody else! You're always the
'little white hen that never lays astray.'"

"Kitty and Evie and Belle and I had arranged a set!" grumbled Cicely
Denham. "It's most unfair, this rule of punishing the whole form for
what one girl does!"

"Go and tell Miss Burd so then!" flared Ingred. "It hasn't been very
successful so far to tell teachers they're not fair, but you may have
better luck than I had. She'll probably say: 'Oh, yes, Cicely dear, I'll
rearrange the rules at once!' So like her, isn't it?"

"Now you're sark! Almost as sarky as the Snark herself!" commented
Cicely, as Ingred, choking over a last biscuit, stumped away.

There is much written nowadays about the unconscious power of thought
waves, and certainly one grumbler can often spread dissatisfaction
through an entire community. Perhaps the black looks which Ingred
encountered from the disappointed tennis-players in her form turned into
naughty sprites who whispered treason in the ears of the juniors, or
perhaps it was a mere coincidence that mutiny suddenly broke out in the
Lower School. It began with a company of ten-year-olds who, with pencil
boxes and drawing books, were being escorted by Althea Riley, one of the
prefects, along the corridor to the studio. Hitherto, by dint of
judicious curbing, they had always walked two an