on.

"You're just copy-cats," she declared, with a withering scorn that
brought Graham to Gyp's defence.

No wonder Jerry never found a moment in the Westley home dull!

"_You_ needn't think," he shot across the table at Isobel, "that 'cause
you have waves in your hair you're the whole ocean!"

"Funny little boy," Isobel retorted, trying hard to hold back her anger.
"Mother, I should think you'd make Graham stop using his horrid slang!"

"That's not slang--that's _idiotmatic_ English," added Graham, smiling
mischievously at his mother. He chuckled. "You should have heard Don
Blacke in geom. class to-day. He got up and said: 'Two triangles are
equal if two sides and the included angle of one are equal
_respectfully_ to two sides,' and when we all laughed he got sore as a
cat!"

CHAPTER X

THE DEBATE

"Gyp--_what_ do you think has happened?" Jerry frantically clutched
Gyp's arm as they met outside of the study-room door. Jerry did not wait
for Gyp to "think." "My name's been drawn for the debate--this Friday
night! Miss Gray just told me. I'm taking Susan Martin's place."

"What _fun_----"

Jerry had wanted sympathy. "Not fun at all! I am scared to death."

A bell rang and Gyp scampered off to her classroom, leaving Jerry to go
to her desk, sit down and contemplate with a heavy heart the task that
lay before her. She had never so much as spoken a "piece" in her life;
since coming to Highacres she had listened, with fascination, to the
weekly discussion of current topics, envying the ease with which the
boys and girls of the room contributed to it. She had wondered whether
she could ever grow so accustomed to large groups of people as to be
able to talk before them. Now Miss Gray, waving in her face the little
pink slip that had done all the damage, was driving her to the test.

However, there had been a great deal in Jerry's simple childhood, spent
on the trails of Kettle Mountain, that had given to her an indomitable
courage for any challenge. Real fear--that horrible funk that turns the
staunchest heart cowardly, Jerry had never known--what she had sometimes
called fear had been only the little heartquake of expectation.

Once, when she was twelve years old, she had ventured to climb Rocky
Point, alone, in search of the first arbutus of the year. Spring had
come to the lower slopes of the mountain but its soft hand was just
breaking the upper crusts of ice and snow. As she climbed up the trail a