The junior division, drawn up in double file, stood assembled in the anteroom of the gymnasium, on the day of the great competition for the Canon’s prize. The figure-marching by the whole class was over, and the senior division had just begun the wand exercises to the piano accompaniment of the German music-master, who, being the unlucky possessor of an unpronounceable name in three syllables, was generally known as ‘Scales.’ The applause which had followed after the marching had taken away the first shyness of the younger children; and even the prospect of doing separate exercises presently, before an audience of strangers, did not seem to be having much effect on the sixteen little girls in scarlet frocks who were waiting in the anteroom for their turn to come. Hurly-Burly, though supposed to be superintending affairs in the gymnasium, had to look in at the door more than once, to remind them that the crashing chords of ‘Scales’ did not drown everything; but just as she had succeeded in reducing them at last to order, a piece of information passed down the file from Charlotte Bigley, who stood nearest the doorway and had the best view of the gymnasium, upset them all once more.

‘Margaret has forgotten the figure,’ ‘Margaret has put the others out,’ ‘Margaret has gone wrong,’ ‘Margaret Hulme has clean forgotten everything, and she’s got to step out,’ were the various forms in which the news travelled down to the end of the file, the last of all being the version of Angela Wilkins and therefore generally discredited.

‘I don’t believe a word of it!’ said Jean, stoutly.

‘Why, Margaret couldn’t go wrong if she tried,’ exclaimed Barbara, whose belief in the head girl, though slow in coming, was quite equal by this time to Jean’s.

‘She has, though,’ declared Angela, who stood with Mary Wells just in front of Jean and Barbara.

Mary Wells, who had stepped out of rank on hearing the surprising news, now returned, and in her slow and conscientious manner proceeded to reprove Angela.

‘How you do exaggerate, Angela!’ she said, frowning. ‘Margaret only went a little wrong; and she’s caught up again all right. Isn’t it funny, though?’ she was obliged to add immediately, with a thrill of amazement in her voice.

The two children behind her for once were dumb. The head girl, according to their simple creed, could do no wrong; so when she did, what words had they left to use? Babs was the first to see a way out of the difficulty.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I expect she’s nervous. It makes you forget like anything, if you’re nervous. Once, when Egbert was being prepared for confirmation, he was so nervous–it was a strange clergyman, you know, and Egbert said he blinked–that he clean forgot his catechism, even the easy first part about your godfathers and godmothers. So that’s why Margaret forgot her steps, you see if it wasn’t!’

‘Nervous!’ echoed Jean, incredulously. ‘Who ever saw Margaret nervous? Do you think she’d be able to make every new kid who comes to the school quake in her shoes if she was nervous?’

‘I don’t know,’ answered Babs, doubtfully. Margaret Hulme had certainly never made her quake in her shoes, even when she was a new girl; but she did not admit this to Jean. ‘Egbert can make people afraid of him too,’ she went on, ‘and he can thrash any chap you please, and he always washes his head in cold water every morning, even if there’s ice, and he has more ties and clothes and things than all the others put together, and he’s awfully grand and splendid, Egbert is,–but all the same, he was frightened of that strange clergyman. Can you see Egbert?’ she concluded proudly. ‘He’s at the end of them all, next to Jill. Wasn’t it jolly of Finny to put them right in the front row of the gallery?’

Her companions forgot Margaret for a minute or two in their efforts to stand on tiptoe and catch a glimpse through the open door of Barbara Berkeley’s five brothers. The various relatives who came to the break-up parties, and never seemed to exist at any other time except on letter-writing days, always caused a good deal of excitement among the girls, and added a temporary importance to the most insignificant of them, provided she was lucky enough to possess a parent or even a cousin among the visitors.

‘They’re all mine,’ said Babs, glowing with the joy of possession. ‘I’ll introduce them to you at supper, if you like.’

‘I’m rather glad I haven’t any one belonging to me here,’ said Jean, cheating herself into a brief forgetfulness of the little home in Edinburgh. ‘I’m so frightened of the introducing part; I never know what to say, and it makes me feel such a goat.’

‘Oh,’ said Mary Wells, placidly; ‘how funny of you, Jean. I always say, “Here’s my sister, and this is Charlotte Bigley.” That’s quite easy, surely.’

‘Yes, but it isn’t right,’ responded Jean, frankly. ‘You should hear Margaret Hulme do it–that’s something like! It reminds you of mothers, and callers, and At Home days when you wear your best frock and hand the scones.’

Their talk was interrupted by the retirement from the gymnasium of the senior division. Margaret marched into the anteroom, with her eyes staring straight in front of her, and an exaggerated air of confidence in her bearing. There was an obvious lack of enthusiasm among her followers, who were all whispering and looking significantly at their leader; but the noise produced by Scales, who seemed to think that a Beethoven sonata was an appropriate solo to play in the interval, made conversation impossible; and the section that was to do the horizontal bar, led by Ruth Oliver, returned to the gymnasium before the juniors were able to satisfy their curiosity. During the second event of the competition, Margaret and the vaulting-horse section exchanged very few remarks, and the feeling that there was something unusual in the air had considerably increased by the time Ruth, looking flushed and totally unlike herself, marched her section back again. The rumour ran down the junior file that Ruth Oliver had been distinguishing herself, and that as much of the clapping as Scales allowed to be heard was on her account. Certainly, the irresolute manner that marked everything Ruth did, as a rule, had quite deserted her as she filed past the triumvirate with her little band.

‘Why,’ exclaimed Angela, audibly, ‘I never knew Ruth Oliver was pretty before!’

‘She isn’t, is she?’ said Jean, just as loudly.

‘Of course she is!’ declared Babs, warmly. ‘She’s beautiful, and–and classic!’The others laughed, and she wondered why. Somebody had said, only the other day, that Jill Urquhart had classic features; and how was she to know that, although she was every bit as fond of Ruth as of Jill, the same adjective would not do for both?

‘Look at Margaret Hulme,’ whispered Mary Wells, as the vaulting-horse section marched past them. ‘She’s quite white!’

The little remark was enough to set them all wondering afresh; and Barbara, moved by a sudden impulse, darted up to Ruth Oliver.

‘Did Margaret go wrong in the wands?’ asked the child, in an anxious whisper.

The smile that had made Ruth look so surprisingly pretty died out of her face, and she glanced gravely down at her little questioner.

‘Never mind, baby,’ she said gently. ‘Go back to your place.’ And she came as near snubbing any one then as she ever did in the whole of her school career.

A burst of applause put every one in the anteroom once more on the alert.

‘What is it?’ passed eagerly from one to another. The answer, given by Charlotte from her point of vantage near the doorway, was soon circulated. Margaret Hulme had easily surpassed her seven companions by a brilliant performance on the vaulting-horse; and the spirits of the anteroom went up with a bound. Hurly-Burly had mounted the platform at the farther end of the gymnasium, and was comparing notes with Miss Finlayson and the expert from the London training-college, who was acting as one of the judges; so there was no one to restrain both senior and junior divisions from falling out of rank and pressing round the head girl, as she once more marched back to them. They had never once made so much fuss over their idol as they did now that she had shown, for the first time, that even idols are capable of failure.

Hurly-Burly returned and restored order in a stern voice; and they saw Finny standing in the middle of the platform, waiting for Scales to bring the ErlkÖnig to a thundering close. The next moment she was speaking in that low voice of hers that went straight to the ears of every one in the room.

‘It may make the end of the senior competition more interesting to you,’ she began, ‘if you know how the competitors stand now. So far, Ruth Oliver is a little ahead of the others––’ Even the solemnity of the occasion could not stay the murmur of astonishment that rose in the anteroom at this announcement; but Miss Finlayson waited for it to subside, and finished her speech. ‘She and Margaret Hulme are very close, for they are exactly even as regards gymnastics; but Margaret lost a little over the wand figure. So the prize will greatly depend upon the result of the high jump. At the same time, I feel sure you will agree with me that the way in which the other competitors have worked has greatly added to our enjoyment, and deserves much of our applause.’

A good many downcast faces in the anteroom cheered up as Miss Finlayson made her ingenious reference to the unsuccessful ones, and so contrived to make them feel that the applause at the end of her speech was really for them. Then the whole senior division filed into the gymnasium for the last time, to the slow music of Herr Scales, who had just had a polite rebuke from Hurly-Burly, and was forcing himself desperately to keep the soft pedal down.

The children never forgot the tense feeling of the next few minutes, the thrill that ran through every girl in Wootton Beeches when Ruth Oliver knocked down the rope at four feet four, the answering thrill that followed it when she cleared it at four feet six, the surprise they went through when Margaret also cleared it at four feet six, but knocked it down at four feet eight; and last of all, the enthusiasm of the spectators when Ruth just managed to clear it at four feet eight and Margaret still knocked it down after two tries at it. The people, who clapped and smiled so good-naturedly, little knew that the exciting contest they had just witnessed had upset the traditions of two and a half years and proclaimed the triumph of the most retiring girl in the school. They only thought how modern and delightful it was for girls to play the same games as boys; and Mrs. Oliver beamed on every one from the platform, and decided that Ruth should stay another year at school instead of leaving at midsummer. But the anteroom was overwhelmed.

‘It’s–impossible!’ gasped Jean, when the news travelled down to the triumvirate. ‘Why, Margaret can clear four feet ten easily! I’ve seen her.’

‘And Ruth has never done more than four feet six before,’ added Angela, forced by the seriousness of the moment into a strict statement of facts.

‘Margaret was nervous; I’m certain she was,’ said Barbara, positively. ‘It was the same with Egbert, when he forgot his godfathers and godmothers; he said there was a silly idiot at the bottom of his form, who didn’t mind the strange clergyman blinking at him a bit, and he even got through the duty to his neighbour. And Ruth wasn’t nervous, you see.’

‘What nonsense you are talking,’ remarked Mary Wells, who loved to be literal. ‘Why, Ruth is more shy than any one in the whole school!’

That was certainly true, and Babs went on puzzling over it, long after Margaret and Ruth had retired hand in hand to the other end of the anteroom. For whatever the head girl felt about her failure, she did not mean to let any one guess that she cared. Her easy self-possession was all her own again, as she kept tight hold of Ruth’s hand and chatted lightly to the girls about her; and one or two of the others, who tried to patronise her with their consolation, received such sarcastic replies that they were very soon put back in their place again. Margaret Hulme was not going to forget she was head girl, even if that roomful of strangers had robbed her of the power she had wielded for two and a half years.

Scales struck up a march of his own composition; and at a vigorous sign from Miss Burleigh, Charlotte Bigley hastily marshalled her scattered troop and led them into the gymnasium for the Indian club performance. They were all very much subdued by the time they had separated to their various places, for the peep they had stolen through the anteroom door had given them no idea of what it really felt like to stand in the middle of this staring crowd of people, who filled the gallery above and the platform at the end, and even spread thinly round the room close up to the wall. Jean clenched her teeth and frowned fiercely, and would have endured twice the shyness that tortured her sooner than forget one of the exercises she had to go through; and as for Barbara, she took no notice of the people at all, but began to work mechanically, as soon as the first bars of the familiar valse fell on her ears. Angela, however, lost her head and one of her clubs at the same instant; and a harmless aunt, who sat near, only escaped a severe blow from the latter by the dexterity of another visitor, who put out his hand just in time and caught it as it flew past him. It was neatly done, and the audience applauded vigorously, while Hurly-Burly gave the command to stop practice, and the stranger restored her property to the confused and unhappy Angela. Then Babs recognised him. It was the Doctor who had come out in this surprisingly new light; and even Kit, with whom she immediately exchanged glances, was looking down at him approvingly.

‘Did you see Dr. Hurst?’ whispered Babs to Jean afterwards, as they filed out of the gymnasium again.

‘Of course I did, directly I got in,’ answered Jean. ‘Couldn’t think who it was looking so glum and thundery! Wonder why he came to a show like this? He doesn’t look as though he went in for gymnastics, does he?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Babs, trying to be fair even to the beast who had not shown himself worthy to be a prince. ‘It was very smart the way he caught that club. Perhaps he is good at gym, though he can’t take a joke.’

Angela required so much consolation from them both on account of her blunder, that they forgot all about the doctor, and spent most of their time, while Charlotte’s section was displaying on the horizontal ladder, in assuring her, with more or less confidence in their tones, that when it came to the rings no one could hope to compete with her. Then Charlotte Bigley returned at the head of her section, trying unsuccessfully to look as if nothing had happened; and Mary Wells proudly informed all those who cared to hear, that if anybody thought she was going to do the rings as well as Charlotte had just done the ladder, she was much mistaken!

‘Oh, you shut up!’ rejoined Babs. ‘You haven’t seen Angela yet.’

‘Or Jean!’ echoed Angela, faithfully.

The third voice for once was wanting. Jean Murray stood waiting for the signal to advance; and her determined, almost dogged look was blotting out every other expression on her thin, clever face.

Babs understood, and sprang forward to her place at Jean’s side.

‘It’s all right, Jean,’ she said earnestly. ‘I must try my very hardest, because Finny made us all promise; but–but I do want you to win, all the same.’

‘Oh, stop it, Babe,’ Jean threw back at her, in a tone that startled and hurt her; and the child shrank into herself again, and had a hard fight to keep back the tears that rushed into her eyes for the first time in many weeks.

Their persistent encouragement of Angela made her go through the first exercise on the rings successfully. It was a swing and a pull up in front, and she managed it more neatly than either of her supporters. Then came the swing and turn, and here Angela’s temporary courage deserted her. Perhaps she was flurried by the little attempt made by the gallery to applaud her the second time she came forward; in any case, the glimpse she had of Kit, who caught her eye and nodded cheerfully just as she was beginning, did not help to compose her. She turned too soon and too vigorously, and spun round helplessly in the air, until Hurly-Burly came to her aid and helped her to drop ignominiously to the ground. After that, it was evident that the issue of the competition rested with Jean and Barbara, for they soon showed that they were much more finished and thorough in their work than any one else in their section; and everybody was prepared for the statement made by Miss Finlayson in the next interval. She announced that Charlotte Bigley, Jean Murray, and Barbara Berkeley were exactly even up to that point, and that the result would have to be determined by the rope-climbing.

The rope-climbing, however, left the result still undetermined. Both Jean and Babs reached the top in six seconds, blew the trumpet they found there with a vigour that sent the spectators into a peal of merriment, and slid down again, much pleased with themselves and the interest they were exciting. Charlotte Bigley on the third rope excelled them in speed and reached the top in five seconds, but forgot to blow the trumpet, and so made things even once more. The junior division filed out again, while Miss Finlayson and the expert and Hurly-Burly put their heads together on the platform, and Herr Scales thought the moment an appropriate one for a performance in his best manner of his favourite composition, which was called Sonnenschein and had been thumped out in the holidays to half the parents in the room.

Miss Finlayson rose to her feet again. As the three competitors she had already mentioned were still equal, she must call upon each of them to do one of the advanced exercises, Charlotte on the ladder and the other two on the rings; they were to choose their own exercises, and if they again proved themselves equally good, the prize would be divided. The spectators were in a pleasant state of interest by this time, and the three little rivals were greeted with enthusiasm when they stepped out of the anteroom for the last time and took up their positions in front of the platform. They looked very small and slight as they stood there in their short red frocks against a solid background of people; but they had quite lost every suspicion of bashfulness, and Babs even began to look upon the whole thing as an immense joke. She nodded gaily to the boys in the gallery, and smiled happily at Auntie Anna, who had the place of honour on the platform next to the Canon; and in the silence that followed, while Charlotte Bigley was jumping from rung to rung of the horizontal ladder, she occupied herself in trying to decide on her own exercise. If Jean chose leaving go with one hand, she should swing and let go and catch on to the trapeze beyond–at least, if Hurly-Burly would only be decent and give her leave. She half hoped that Jean would choose the other; for she had practised the trapeze one, only last week, and––

A sudden murmur, followed by a faint attempt at applause, roused her; and she saw Charlotte Bigley walking slowly back to the anteroom with her eyes fixed on the ground.

‘What happened? I didn’t see,’ she whispered, nudging Jean.

‘Hand slipped, fell off,’ answered Jean, briefly, as she went forward and grasped the rings.

She did choose swinging and letting go with one hand, and she went through it very successfully, and earned every bit of the applause that greeted her when she finished. Barbara was so delighted that she went on clapping her loudly after everybody else had stopped, and did not notice what she was doing till the audience began to laugh and Hurly-Burly came up and spoke to her.

‘May I have the trapeze let down?’ whispered Babs, eagerly. ‘I want to let go of the rings and catch on to it at the end of my swing–like I did the other day.’

Hurly-Burly looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure you can manage it?’ she asked.

Barbara pleaded, and the games-mistress gave in. It was always difficult for any one so practical as Miss Burleigh to understand the odd little pupil, who at one moment could throw herself into a game as heartily as a boy, and at another was liable to exasperate her companions by going off into a dream and completely forgetting what she was doing. But it was impossible to help liking the child, and Hurly-Burly, who had a sneaking conviction that the trapeze exercise would decide the prize in her favour, could not resist the temptation to let her have her own way and secure to herself at the same time a little reflected glory. For it was she who had taught Barbara the exercise, and she had every reason to be proud of her pupil. So she let down the trapeze from the roof and held it back with her hands, ready to drop it forward when the child had worked up her swing.

The eyes of the German music-master were filled with sentimental interest, as the youngest girl in the school stepped up to the rings. He knew very little about gymnastics, though a German; for his life had been passed almost entirely in other lands, and during the brief period he had spent in his own country he had been so absorbed in his art that he had completely neglected the physical culture that is of so much importance to most Germans. As for girls’ gymnastics, his experience in them had been entirely confined to a few occasions like the present, when he was asked to play instead of the junior music-mistress. But he never assisted at the usual lessons, when the junior music-mistress was considered good enough to perform; so Miss Finlayson’s remarks on the merits of the three competitors conveyed very little to him. Still, he managed to gather that Barbara stood a good chance of winning the prize, and his fat, benevolent face beamed with satisfaction in consequence. It was true that the little FrÄulein with the black, black eyes and the wonder-clumsy fingers had no more talent for music than his tabby cat, while the performances of FrÄulein Vilkins were the joy of his heart; but it was the little one who asked him so many questions about his beloved Germany, which she seemed to regard as being about the size of Kensington Gardens, and he forgave her all her excruciating false notes for the sake of her warm heart, which was colossal. When he saw her standing there all alone, he quite gave up trying to be brilliant and dropped into a little simple melody of his own, which he had never thought important enough to name, but which Barbara had always told him in her funny English was ‘awfully fine.’ Unfortunately, just as she recognised the notes and nodded at him with a little smile, Jean brought him a message from the games-mistress, asking him not to play at all until the exercise was over.

‘It’s rather a difficult exercise, and you might put her out,’ explained Jean, seeing that he looked puzzled at such a peculiar request. Her explanation did not help him much, for Jean did not trouble to translate it into his own language; and, never having witnessed the exercise that was coming, he failed to see the point of Hurly-Burly’s message. However, he was glad of the opportunity to descend from the platform and get a better view of the little FrÄulein’s performance; and he placed himself, rather inconveniently, just in front of the games-mistress, and prepared to miss nothing of what followed.

Everybody in the room was smiling genially at the youngest girl in the school. She had already prepossessed them in her favour by her frank admiration for Jean Murray; and now, as she stood there waiting for the sign from Hurly-Burly to begin, there was something about her happy unconsciousness that appealed irresistibly to her audience. Suddenly, the five boys in the gallery began to stamp their feet encouragingly, and Peter shouted ‘Go it, Babe!’ at the top of his voice. In a moment, the cry was taken up in the anteroom. ‘Go it, Babe!’ said twenty voices or more in a breath. The enthusiasm was infectious, and the words were repeated with many a laugh all over the room. ‘Go it, Babe!’ cried the people on the platform, and the people in the gallery, and the people who sat near her by the wall, until every one in the gymnasium was stamping and clapping and saying ‘Go it, Babe!’ to the little person in the short scarlet frock.

Barbara held the rings tightly, and her breath came rather quickly and unevenly. She was bewildered by the noise, and waited for it to subside before she began the exercise. It was so difficult to know what it all meant. Of course, the boys wanted her to win; and perhaps the other people did too, because they were grown up, and grown-up people always were jolly and kind to her. She could understand why the Doctor, stern as he was, smiled away at her and clapped her as heartily as any one, from his place on the platform; and she thought she knew dimly what was making Jean stamp on the floor till the dust flew. But the enthusiasm of her other school-fellows, who were pressing forward from the anteroom door, amazed her greatly. Could it be that they had suddenly forgotten how young and unimportant she was, and how much she needed correction, and how often she required to be told that she was the youngest in the school? Were these the girls she had hated so heartily only three months ago, the disgraced princesses she had turned out of her kingdom so passionately?

The applause died down at last, and Miss Burleigh made her the signal to begin. Babs walked back as far as she could, stood stretched for a second on the tips of her toes, then shook the hair out of her eyes with the old familiar movement, and took a sharp run forward. The next minute, the slim scarlet form was flying backwards and forwards, with graceful, regular movements. The onlookers gazed and admired, wondering with some curiosity what her exercise was going to be; and their interest increased when she uttered a sharp ‘Now!’ just as she was sweeping backwards from her highest swing. Only one person in the room failed to notice that it was Miss Burleigh who let the trapeze drop forward instantly, so that it hung ready for the small performer to grasp on her return swing.The music-master had been wholly absorbed in watching the little FrÄulein, from the first moment she had begun to swing. He thought he had never seen anything so graceful as the way she swept to and fro, nor anything so hÜbsch as the expression and the rose-red complexion of the youngest girl in the school. It was truly grossartig! His eyes followed her closely all the time, from end to end of her swing; and that was how he contrived to be looking away at the precise moment when Hurly-Burly let down the trapeze. The murmur that rose from the people who surrounded him, as they realised what Barbara was going to do, made him look round; and he saw the thing hanging there, as though it had dropped from the roof by accident, and in another second would get in the way of the child who was swinging so deliciously. Viewed afterwards in the light of ordinary common-sense, it seemed to him wunderbar that he could so have deceived himself. At the time, not a doubt was in his mind as to what he thought had happened. The trapeze had fallen down by accident and was going to embarrass the little FrÄulein, if not to hurt her; and the people around him were all exclaiming aloud, because they too had realised her danger. Nevertheless, nobody seemed to know what to do, and the little FrÄulein was already sweeping straight towards it on her downward swing. All these reflections rushed through his brain in the flash of a moment. There was no time to hesitate. He must be the one to rush out and come to her aid. With a loud German exclamation, the music-master hurled himself forward and snatched back the trapeze just as the child let go of the rings.

He had a dim recollection afterwards of being gripped by Hurly-Burly just an instant too late, and of seeing the little scarlet figure twist in the air above him and drop with a nasty thud at the edge of the last mattress, of finding himself in the midst of a huge concourse of people, who suddenly rose up with a great roar and bore down upon him, uttering shriek after shriek,–and then, of coming miserably to himself again, with his heart thumping and his head throbbing painfully, just as a deathlike silence succeeded the uproar, and a voice like Miss Finlayson’s said something that sounded like ‘Doctor!’

Some one had sprung from the platform with a flying jump the moment the accident happened, and was forcing a passage through the throng of people. There was not a sound to be heard in the great gymnasium as the Doctor knelt down on the floor and put out his hand to the little still spot of scarlet that lay on the edge of the last mattress.