don't
feel the least scrap ill."

While the Seniors, with whom Gipsy was out of favour, viewed her
escapade with lofty contempt as a madcap proceeding, the Juniors
regarded her as an even greater heroine than before. Gladys Merriman
redeemed her promise, and brought the box of chocolates she had offered,
and Gipsy with strictest impartiality handed them round the Form till
they were finished.

Gipsy had certainly established her record for horse-breaking, and
though, according to Miss Poppleton, it was scarcely a lady-like
accomplishment, there was hardly anyone in the Lower School who did not
admire her prowess.

"You're like the girl in the cinematograph who tracks the villain to his
mountain retreat, or finds the hero, bound with cords, lying in the
brushwood, and then rides off post-haste to inform the sheriff. She
always catches a wild-looking horse, and gallops full speed!" laughed
Dilys.

"I wish we'd a cinema camera!" sighed Hetty. "We might have taken some
gorgeous records this afternoon for the Photographic Society. No one
even got a snapshot."

"Your own faults, not mine! You should have brought your cameras!"
returned Gipsy.

"We never thought you'd really do it."

"Is that so? Well, when I allow to do any special thing, I guess I
admire to see it through!"

"Oh, you Yankee!" roared the others.

Though the girls laughed at her Americanisms and Colonial ways, and
often teased her about them, Gipsy continued as great a favourite as
ever, she took all the banter so good-temperedly, and returned it so
smartly. There was always a delightful uncertainty also as to what she
would do next, and the prospect of an exciting interlude by "Yankee
Doodle", as she was nicknamed, was felt decidedly to relieve the
monotony of the ordinary Briarcroft atmosphere. Not that Gipsy really
ever meant to behave badly; but, accustomed as she was to the
free-and-easy conduct of her up-country Colonial schools, she found it
almost impossible to realize that what would have been tolerated there
with a smile was in her new surroundings counted a heinous crime. The
silence rules and the orderly march in step from classroom to lecture
hall filled her with dismay. She appeared to expect to be allowed to
tear about the passages, talking at top speed, even in school hours, and
many were the admonitions she incurred from indignant monitresses.

"A fine model you are for the Lower School!" said Doreen Tristram
sarcastically one