age," piped one of the smaller
girls. "I'm going to pin it on to the piano. She knows we call her
'Sausage'! She'll be in such a rage!"

"You little horror!" said Gipsy, seizing the picture and tearing it into
shreds before the eyes of its enraged owner.

On the whole, though her championship was treated as a joke, Gipsy's
influence had a beneficial effect, and the general behaviour in the
singing class began steadily to improve. Her Briarcroft songs were
appreciated, and the girls sang them lustily and trolled out the chorus
with vigour. The tunes were very catchy and bright, and everybody seemed
constantly to be humming them, in season or out of season.

"Your 'Hurrah! for the dear old School!' has got in my brain, Yankee
Doodle," said Mary Parsons. "It haunts me all day long, and I can't get
rid of it."

"We'll sing it in the lecture hall on the last day of the term. Poppie'd
be quite flattered," said Hetty Hancock.

"With a special cheer for Fraeulein Hochmeyer, then!" added Gipsy.

CHAPTER XII

A Spartan Maiden

THE Spring Term was passing rapidly, and Gipsy had now been nearly six
months at Briarcroft. It felt a very, very long time to her since the
first evening when she had introduced herself in so sprightly a fashion
to her fellow boarders, and had given them a graphic account of the
shipwreck. The old Gipsy of last October and the new Gipsy of the
present March seemed like two different people, with a whole world of
experience to divide them. The well-conducted regime of Briarcroft had
had its due effect, and had considerably toned down her unconventional
Colonial ways; while the trouble through which she was passing, like all
seasons of adversity, had made her older and more thoughtful than
before. There was still no news of any kind from her father, and no
answer had yet been received from the cousins in New Zealand. Miss
Poppleton's manner towards Gipsy hardened a little more each week that
mail day arrived and brought no solution of the problem where her school
fees were to come from. At present her attitude was that of grim
acceptance of a most unwelcome burden. She was not actively unkind, and
no doubt thought she was behaving very generously in keeping Gipsy at
Briarcroft at all, but in a variety of small ways she made the girl feel
the humiliation of her position.

To poor Gipsy the difficulties appeared to accumulate more and more. The
clothes which her father had bought for her in