then opened the desk and took out some books. Still she did not sit
down, and once or twice she glanced nervously around the room, as
though she were about to speak. But each time her courage failed her.

Her uneasiness communicated itself at length to her next-door
neighbour, Margaret Taylor, who, finding the translation more difficult
than she had expected, was inclined to be grumpy.

"I wish to goodness you'd sit down, Gerry Wilmott, and not keep
fidgeting about like that. You're in my light, and goodness knows this
beastly translation is hard enough without having to do it in the dark
into the bargain," she snapped.

"I'm sorry," said Gerry. Then, having found her tongue at last, she
plunged at once into what she had to say, fearing lest she would never
find courage to say it at all if she let this opportunity slip.

"I want to say," she began, "that I'm--I'm awfully sorry, but I'm not
going on with the strike any longer."

It was out at last! And Gerry waited in trembling expectation for the
storm to burst. It was some while in coming, for the Lower Fifth did
not take in quite what she was saying at first.

"What on earth do you mean?" asked Dorothy Pemberton, looking up from
her exercise with knitted brows.

"I--I mean the strike about not doing Miss Burton's work," stammered
Gerry.

"Well--what about it?" asked Phyllis Tressider menacingly.

"Only that--that I can't go on with it. I--I don't think it's quite
fair to Miss Burton," said Gerry, finding the task even harder than she
had imagined it would be.

"Do you mean to say that you're not going to stick in with the rest of
us--that you are going to back out and do her work? Surely you're not
going to be a traitor to the form like that?" cried Dorothy.

Poor Gerry looked acutely miserable. She felt Jack's reproachful eyes
upon her, and she knew that if she persisted in her present attitude
the friendship which was so precious to her, and which seemed at last
to be within her grasp, would be dreadfully endangered. For a moment
she felt that she could not go on. Why should she give up
everything--Jack's friendship, the good opinion of the girls, the
happiness of the last few days, and allow herself to be branded as a
hopeless prig--all for the sake of a mistress who had shown her nothing
but injustice? Then the memory of the red eyes behind Miss Burton's
spectacles, the abject misery of the mistress's attitude when she had
opened the doo