n glorification!"

Dorothy straightened her collar outside her coat as if its arrangement
were the main object in life.

"Oh, _I'm_ not saying so!" she remarked carelessly. "I'm only telling
you what I heard Vivien say. Effie Swan wondered you never asked _her_
to play when you asked Theresa Dawson."

"I couldn't ask them all--it wasn't a concert."

"She's very offended, though. I don't think she's going to come to the
next social."

"Let her stay at home, then!" snapped Lorraine, thoroughly exasperated.

Dorothy consulted her watch.

"It's frightfully late!" she sighed. "I shan't have time to do my
practising. We're going out to a concert to-night."

She sauntered away, having lodged several very unpleasant shafts, and
leaving them to rankle.

For Lorraine, all the satisfaction of the afternoon had faded. Nothing
hurts so much as the confidences of a so-called friend who tells you the
disagreeable things that other people say about you. It is a
particularly mean form of sincerity, for the remarks were probably never
intended to be repeated. The mischief it often causes is incalculable.
Lorraine walked home, feeling that there was a barrier between herself
and her cousin.

"I knew Vivien would be annoyed at my being head girl, but I didn't
think she'd be so spiteful as that!" she ruminated. "Well, I don't care!
I shall go on with the 'socials' all the same, and with any other
schemes that crop up. But it is horrid of her, because she might have
been such a help to me!"

As the term went on, Lorraine began to see only too clearly that her
two great obstacles in the school were Dorothy and Vivien. They did not
openly thwart her, but there was a continual undercurrent of opposition,
not marked enough for comment, but sufficiently galling. No matter what
she proposed, they had always some objection to offer, and, though in
the end they might hold up their hands with the rest, it was with an air
of concession more than of whole-hearted agreement. They were the
cleverest girls in the form, so it was hard to have to count them as
opponents, rather than as allies, in her work. The other members of the
Sixth, who had passed up the school with her, she knew from experience
would give scant help. Patsie was a good-natured rattle-trap, Audrey an
amiable little goose; Nellie and Claire were very stodgy, ordinary
girls, without an original idea between them, and not much notion of the
responsibilities of monitresses.