Just Gerry Part 21

"It wasn't the Red Cross Knight; it was Britomarte," said Gerry, and Muriel smiled approvingly at her for the correction. It was something for Gerry even to dare to correct a quotation.

"Good for you, kiddie! So it was. Well, you get that thoroughly into your head by next Sat.u.r.day and act upon it, and you'll do all right."

And she hurried on her way, leaving a much inspirited Gerry behind her.

"She is a brick!" thought the girl enthusiastically, as she walked slowly towards the Lower Fifth sitting-room. "I don't wonder all the girls are so keen about her. I _will_ get that motto into my head, and I _will_ play up and justify her choice of me for next Sat.u.r.day, and I won't let anything the other girls may say or do affect me! I'll just keep saying the words over and over to myself whenever I feel inclined to funk, and see if that won't make me braver. Be bold, be bold, be bold!"

And then some lines of Longfellow's she had once heard came into her head in the inconsequent way such lines do occur to lovers of poetry:

"Write on your doors the saying wise and old, 'Be bold! be bold!' and everywhere--'Be bold!'

'Be not too bold'--yet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less; Better like Hector in the field to die, Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly."

Gerry's face took on an expression of rigid determination as she repeated the lines to herself. And, throwing up her head with a little gesture of defiance, she said aloud:

"Well, I just _won't_ be a 'perfumed Paris' this time, whatever happens!"

And with this bold resolve she walked into the sitting-room, and settled herself down in her usual corner with a book, until the bell should ring for prayers and bed.

CHAPTER XXII

THE DORMITORY FINAL

Sat.u.r.day morning dawned at last. It was a splendid day for hockey, fine and bright, with a touch of frost in the air, not enough to make the ground hard, but just sufficient to dry up some of the worst of the mud and to make it exhilarating to run about.

There was great excitement over the match throughout the school. Even the girls who were not directly concerned in the results of the game, either as members of the teams or occupants of the rival dormitories, were keenly interested, while the agitation of the two dormitories actively engaged was raised to fever-pitch. Some of the smaller girls in the Pink Dormitory had been occupied during the past week in manufacturing rosettes of pink ribbon, which they sold for twopence apiece to the members of the team and the partisans of the dormitory--a proceeding which promised considerable profit at first to the enterprising trio who originated it. Unfortunately for them, however, Muriel Paget descended upon them on the morning of the match with searching inquiries as to the monetary part of the transaction.

"But, Muriel, the ribbon cost us an awful lot of money," protested one of the small profiteers in distress, when the head girl ordered that all proceeds from the sale of the favours should be deposited in the dormitory missionary-box. "It was very good ribbon, penny-halfpenny a yard, and we've used yards and yards of it!"

"Well, you may keep back enough money to pay expenses," conceded the head girl. "Reckon out exactly how many yards of ribbon you've bought and how many favours you've sold, and then bring the balance of the money to me to be put into the missionary-box. And please remember for the future that you're English schoolgirls--not beastly little Jews."

With which parting remark she stalked off with much magisterial dignity, leaving three very crushed small girls behind her.

However, the three had the consolation of regaining the money they had outlaid upon their project, and also of having started a very popular scheme. The idea of the favours caught on. The members of the Green Dormitory were immediately bitten with the desire to sport green rosettes, and drawers were ransacked, and finally permission obtained for a messenger to be sent into the town to purchase a sufficiency of green ribbon to manufacture favours for the rival team and its supporters. Before the morning was over nearly every girl in the school sported a favour of one colour or the other. Pink favours predominated, partly because of the start obtained by the early venders, and partly because the Pink Dormitory was Muriel's dormitory.

The head girl was far and away the most popular person in the school, far out-rivalling Alice Metcalfe, the Green Dormitory's captain, in the girls' affections. Still, the Greens had quite a fair show of ribbons--enough at any rate to make a good "shout" for their side when the match should begin.

Gerry Wilmott, alone of her team, did not wear a pink rosette. She wanted one badly, but she had not quite liked to ask for one, and the three little girls who were selling them carefully refrained from coming near the girl who was known as a coward and a sneak throughout the school. Gerry looked at them very wistfully once or twice when they were in her vicinity, but in spite of her desire to be decorated with the colours of the dormitory for which she was to play, she did not dare to risk a rebuff by going up to them. She would have gone favourless up to the field itself if it had not been for Monica Deane, her next-door neighbour in the dormitory. Monica had purchased a favour quite early in the day, much to the distress of little Vera Davies, her devoted admirer, who presented her with one just before the match began, which she had made herself.

"Please, Monica, wear mine!" pleaded the little girl, coming into Monica's cubicle where the senior was changing into the gym dress which was the regulation hockey kit at Wakehurst Priory. "I begged a bit of the ribbon from Gladys and Betty and Marjorie, and made it for you all myself, to bring you luck! Please take your other one off and wear mine!"

"All right, kiddie, of course I'll have to wear it since you made it for me yourself," said Monica good-naturedly. "I'll give the other one away to somebody else, if there's anybody left in the school who hasn't got one."

Then a sudden thought struck her.

"Gerry, have you got one, or would you like mine?" she called over the cubicle wall, remembering that she had seen the Lower Fifth girl undecorated earlier in the day.

"No; I haven't got one. I'd like it very much," answered Gerry, in rather a low voice. The next moment the small pink favour came fluttering over the part.i.tion that divided her cubicle from Monica's.

"There you are, then," said the senior girl.

Gerry caught the precious bit of ribbon and pinned it on to the tunic of her gym dress with an odd feeling of pleasure in her heart. It seemed to her a happy omen that she should be able to wear her dormitory colours after all.

"Thanks awfully, Monica," she said gratefully. "I'll pay you the twopence for it sometime."

"You just won't, then!" said Monica gaily. "It's a present to bring you luck. Vera says it's much more lucky to have your favours given to you than it is to buy them for yourself. So, with two of us wearing lucky ribbons, the Pink Dorm really ought to win!"

"I hope we shall," said Gerry fervently. Then she added under her breath, "I'm going to try and do my share to-day, anyway, and justify Muriel for having chosen me."

This little episode of the pink favour quite cheered Gerry up. Perhaps the luck of the pink ribbon would counteract for once the unlucky influence of Cubicle Thirteen. Gerry was really almost beginning to believe that the ill-omened number of her cubicle must have something to do with the persistent misfortune which dogged her footsteps!

Fortified by her precious talisman, she took her place up on the hockey field as left outside without nearly such quakings of heart as she had feared. And when once the whistle had gone and the play begun she didn't have time to think about being frightened. Muriel saw to it that her nervous left outer should have plenty of work quite early in the game; and by the time the match had been in progress for ten minutes or so, Gerry had lost all her gloomy fears in the excitement and interest of the struggle.

It was obvious from the beginning that it was going to be a hard-fought fight. Both teams were out to win. As before, the Pink Dormitory forwards were far superior to the forwards from the Green Dormitory, but the splendid defence of the latter team quite balanced this.

Backwards and forwards the battle raged, neither side getting a chance to shoot for goal until the first half was nearly over. Then, much to everybody's astonishment, Elsie Lips...o...b.. succeeded in getting through for the Greens.

"I say! That's serious!" said Dorothy Pemberton to Phyllis Tressider as the two girls stood arm in arm sucking lemons at half-time. "Fancy the Green Dorm getting a goal in like that, before we've scored one!

We shall have to buck up like anything this half if we're not going to let the Pink Dorm down."

During the interval Muriel Paget went up to Gerry, who was standing a little forlornly on the outskirts of the group of players, with a rea.s.suring word.

"Well, I don't think you need be afraid of funking now, Gerry; you're doing quite well," she said.

"No; I don't think I shall funk now!" said Gerry. "It's all thanks to you, though, Muriel. If I'd been playing back I know I should have felt just the same as I did last time."

"Oh, well, but you're not playing back now," responded the head girl.

"So there's no need to worry over that! We've got to buck up like anything this half, though, for we're a goal behind. Mind you keep up if I do get away with the ball. And if it comes out to you when you're anywhere near their goal, pa.s.s it straight in, and then you'll be all right."

Muriel succeeded in scoring for the Pink Dormitory soon after the second half started, and the Pink team and their partisans breathed again. The score was now one all, and for some time it seemed likely that it would remain so. Nearly every girl in the school was up on the ground, watching the struggle, and as time pa.s.sed on and still the goals stood at one all, the most intense excitement prevailed.

"Oh, they're going to tie again! They're going to tie again!" wailed Vera Davies, some seven minutes before time was up. "And I made the favour for Monica myself, on purpose to bring her luck! And now the Pinks aren't going to win after all!"

"It isn't over yet," said Marjorie Brown, the small girl from the Pink Dormitory whom Muriel had so nearly to put in to play instead of Gerry on the previous occasion. "Oh, look, look! Muriel's got the ball and she's got a clear run! No; she's lost it! Jack Pym's got it. No; she's pa.s.sed. Oh, Vera, look! Dorothy Pemberton's got it now, and she's taking it up. Play up, Pink Dorm! Play up! Play up!"

Her cry was taken up by the whole school.

"Play up, Pink!"

"Play up, Green!"

"Stick to it, Dorothy!"

"Alice! Alice! Into her, Alice!"

"Play up, Muriel! Play up, Muriel!"

"Pink Dorm! Pink Dorm!"