dled away
again, and left her hopeless of propitiating these strange schoolgirls,
who seemed determined on being cross with her whatever she did. Angela
knocked roughly against her at the same instant, and surprised her at
last into a remonstrance.

'What have I done?' she demanded. 'Won't anybody tell me what I have done?'

No one answered her. The alliance of Jean and Angela, though Jean was
the youngest and Angela the most empty-headed of all the children there,
meant the existence of a strong party in the junior playroom; and the
poor little new girl stood a very small chance of asserting herself
against it. They were much like sheep, both in the upper and the lower
playrooms at Wootton Beeches; and the party that followed Margaret Hulme
in one room was like the party that followed Jean in the other. In
both cases it only needed some one a little stronger than the rest to
be the leader; and Jean, in spite of her inferiority in age, supplied
the strength, or what her school-fellows mistook for it, in a certain
doggedness of temper that pulled them along in her wake. Most of them
found it so unpleasant to be in her bad books, that she had very little
difficulty in managing them.

Barbara turned appealingly to Angela. 'Why is Jean so cross with me?' she
asked. 'I haven't done anything to her, have I?'

'Not done anything?' echoed Angela, looking over her shoulder for Jean's
support. 'Why, you went and told Margaret Hulme that Jean hadn't given
you Finny's message, and----'

'Sneak! Tell-tale!' sneered Jean again.

Barbara suddenly looked immensely relieved, and smiled in a friendly
manner at the enemy. At least this was a misunderstanding that she could
clear up. 'Is that all?' she cried. 'No wonder you were cross, if you
thought that. Of course I never said a word about it to Margaret Hulme, or
any one else; I suppose she guessed, or something. But why didn't you
give me the message? It would have saved such a lot of bother, wouldn't
it?'

'Well,' gasped Jean, as though words almost failed her, 'I never heard
such wicked story-telling!'

'Nor I either,' chimed in Angela, putting her arm round Jean's waist.
'She's done nothing but tell crams ever since she's been here. Come away,
Jean, dear; she isn't fit to be argued with.'

The pair of them marched off, consumed with righteous wrath, to the other
end of the playroom. Babs, overwhelmed with the incredible idea that any
one should suppose her capable of tell