ched Battle

GIPSY ran upstairs to the classroom with a feeling of intense
satisfaction. So far all had gone well. She had succeeded in arousing a
spirit of righteous wrath and resistance throughout the Lower School,
and a desire to combine for the general welfare. There was a certain
exhilaration in the discovery that she was thus able to sway the minds
of her companions. She had been popular in other schools, but she had
never had a chance such as this. To do Gipsy justice, however, she
thought far more of the cause she had taken up than of her own
popularity. "Fairness" was her watchword, and wherever her lot had been
cast she would have come forward as the champion of any whom she
considered unfairly treated. A girl of decided ability, her knockabout
life had in many ways made her old beyond her years, and she had that
capacity for organization and power of making others work with her that
belong to the born leader. Having constituted herself practically head
of the movement, she assumed the further conduct of affairs, and at four
o'clock held a small committee meeting with Hetty Hancock, Lennie
Chapman, and Meg Gordon, her three self-elected coadjutors. As the
result of their consultations they presented themselves next day in the
Sixth Form classroom, at the identical moment when Miss Giles had just
retired, and the members of the Sixth were still engaged in putting away
their books.

"Hello, you kids! What are you doing here?" exclaimed Doreen Tristram.
"Just you quit, and be quick about it, too!"

"Kids, indeed!" retorted Hetty Hancock. "Not much kids about us, I
should think. We're all turned fourteen."

"Are you really? What a magnificent age! I'm glad you've enlightened me,
for I should certainly have classed you among the babes!" returned
Doreen sarcastically.

"Define a kid!" drawled Esther Hughes, putting on her pince-nez to
regard the intruders.

"Everybody knows a kid means a First or Second Form-er, sometimes a
Third, but never, never a Fourth Form girl!" burst out Lennie Chapman
indignantly. "Why, I'm taller than you!"

The Seniors giggled.

"Merely a difference of opinion, my child," said Ada Dawkins. "Now,
according to our standard, every member of the Lower School is a kid,
even if she were six feet in height! Our superiority lies in brains, not
inches! All Juniors are kids, you are a Junior, therefore you must be a
kid. _Quod est demonstrandum!_"

"And kids aren't allowed to poke thei