day. "Can't even walk decently in line, and prance
about for all the world like a monkey tied to a barrel piano!"

Doreen had taken the defection of the Juniors much to heart, and could
not forgive the leader of the opposition.

"Thanks! I wasn't aware my movements were so original!" retorted Gipsy.
"There's method in my madness this time, though. I was trying to dodge
Miss White, and dash upstairs to get my _Hamlet_. I've forgotten the
wretched thing, and if I go to class without a book, Poppie--h'm! I mean
Miss Poppleton" (as Doreen's eyebrows went up)--"will want to know the
reason why."

"I expect she will," returned Doreen dryly. "And serve you right too,
for forgetting! No, I shall not allow you to go and fetch it. I'm here
to keep order, not to help you out of scrapes."

The Upper Fourth, under Doreen's superintendence, had just filed from
its own classroom to attend a Shakespeare lecture by the Principal. The
girls were a few minutes early, and in consequence were drawn up like a
small regiment in the corridor to wait until a previous class was over
and they could enter the lecture hall. Waiting is often dull work, and
Gipsy had considered herself a public benefactor in seeking to enliven
the tedium of her form mates. Doreen's notions on the subject of
discipline did not appeal to her.

"But I can't go to the Shakespeare lesson without my _Hamlet_," she
remonstrated. "Suppose I'm asked to read?"

"You should have thought of that before!" snapped Doreen. "Be quiet,
Gipsy Latimer; if you speak another word I shall report you!"

Gipsy refrained from further unavailing speech, but her active brain was
by no means silenced. I do not think anybody but herself would have
dreamed of doing what followed. The outer door of the corridor was
standing open, and when the monitress's back was for the moment turned,
Gipsy slipped out into the playground. On the opposite side of the
quadrangle stood the open window of her classroom, ten feet or so above
the ground. The wall of that part of the house was thickly covered with
ivy, and in less time than it takes to tell it she was scrambling up
with as much agility as the monkey to which Doreen had unfeelingly
compared her. A few girls who happened to be standing near the door and
witnessed her achievement gasped audibly, but I verily believe Gipsy
would have been back before she was missed, had not Maude Helm
officiously chirped out:

"Oh, I say! Look at Yankee Doodle!"