l was inclined to believe that the
occupant of Number Thirteen had imagined the whole incident.

"There's nothing there. Get back into bed at once," she commanded,
having looked in every possible and impossible place for the cause of
Geraldine's alarm. "Even if it was a mouse, it couldn't hurt you. It
would probably be much more frightened of you than you are of it."

"There really is nothing there, Geraldine," said Monica kindly. "Come
along and get back into bed and let me tuck you up. I'm next door to
you, you know, and I'll come along in a minute if you're frightened in
the night."

Geraldine allowed herself to be taken back to bed and tucked in by the
elder girl. Now that her first fright was over, and the unreasoning
terror that always possessed her at the sight of a mouse had passed
away somewhat, she was very much ashamed of her panic, and dreaded the
teasing it would probably bring upon her from the rest of the school.
A remark which Dorothy Pemberton made, as she scurried back to her own
distant cubicle at Muriel's bidding, did not tend to ease poor
Geraldine's mind.

"I think her name rather suits her, don't you?" she asked of the
dormitory in general. "She's nothing but a German Gerry after all!"

And although Muriel Paget commanded her sharply to shut up and get into
bed, yet the titter of appreciation that went round the dormitory
warned Geraldine only too surely that Dorothy had found a nickname for
her that would stick.

CHAPTER IX

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE HEAD GIRL

And it stuck! From that day forward Geraldine was invariably known
throughout the school as "German Gerry." "Gerry" alone the girl would
not have minded so much. As a shortening for Geraldine, it compared
quite favourably with most nicknames. But with the prefix of "German"
the title became abhorrent to the unfortunate new girl, a fact which
was very soon discovered by the Lower Fifth. And although Geraldine,
or Gerry, as she now became, except to the mistresses and one or two of
the older girls, did her best to disguise how much she minded, yet she
could not help wincing sometimes when the objectionable name was
uttered.

Once she tried the effect of a mild remonstrance.

"I wish you wouldn't call me that," she said one evening during
preparation, when Phyllis Tressider addressed her by the title with a
request for the loan of a book. "I'm _not_ German--and I _do_ so hate
being called it!"

There was dead sil