rd Berkeley?' asked Jean, suddenly. She
had not listened to grown-up conversations in the Christmas holidays
for nothing, and she thought she saw her way at last to crushing the
irrepressible new girl, once and for all.

Babs nodded. She was too proud to say anything. What other girl in the
room had a father who was so celebrated that people knew him by his
Christian name, instead of calling him just _Mr._ Somebody? She had only
a short time in which to enjoy her triumph, however, for Jean Murray
turned quickly on her heel, and walked off with a swaggering step.

'Then my father says that your father is a failure over here,' she
answered, tossing her head contemptuously. 'Nobody will read his old
book in England; so he was _obliged_ to go to America.'

The other girls were beginning to notice the dispute, and they came
crowding round to hear what it was all about. Most of them were in
time to see Jean Murray walk off with her head in the air, just as the
little new girl clenched her fists and crouched down as if to make a
spring. Then the storm broke, and the Babe's fury was let loose among the
fifty-five occupants of the junior playroom.

It was an easy matter, in that spring forward, to send some half dozen or
so spinning out of her way, but Barbara did not stop to see what happened
to them. All she wanted to do was to reach the arch offender of them all,
the one who had dared to slight her father, and to hold him up to the
ridicule of fifty-five girls.

Nobody quite knew what did happen on this unexampled occasion in the
annals of Wootton Beeches; and certainly nobody stirred a finger to put
a stop to it. All that the girls in the senior playroom could tell about
it afterwards was that a sudden scuffle and several screams broke the
hush and hum of voices on the other side of the curtain; and then Angela
Wilkins dashed through the archway with a terrified look on her face, and
seized Margaret by the arm.

'Oh, come! do come!' she sobbed out in her fright. 'Barbara Berkeley has
got Jean Murray down on the floor, and she's _killing_ her!'

CHAPTER X

THE END OF THE FEUD

When the prayer-bell rang that evening, it interrupted a wild tumult in
the junior playroom. The elder girls had rushed through the curtain,
on the terrified summons of Angela Wilkins; and the whole school crowded
and thronged round a confused heap in the middle of the floor. Nothing
much was to be seen except two lanky black legs, a c