The Youngest Girl in the Fifth | Page 3

interval the seventeen members of the
Fifth turned upon the newcomer.
"What are you doing here, Gwen Gascoyne, I'd like to know?"

demanded Edith Arnold, opening the attack.
"We don't want any Fourth Form girls foisted on us!" proclaimed
Rachel Hunter.
"You don't belong to the Upper School!" urged Charlotte Perry hotly.
"I didn't yesterday, but I do now," retorted Gwen. "Miss Roscoe's
moved me up. Yes--and I mean to stay here, too!" she added, facing her
opponents stubbornly.
"Miss Roscoe must be mad!"
"What can she be thinking of?"
"Better go and ask her yourself," said Gwen, "if you think she's likely
to listen to you. She isn't generally very ready to enter into
explanations."
"But this is monstrous! It's an unheard-of thing!" exclaimed Louise
Mawson excitedly. "A chit like you to be brought into the Fifth! Why,
how old are you?"
"Exactly fourteen and a quarter--birthday on July 16th, if you want
exact date," returned Gwen smartly.
"Oh!" "What a shame!" "We shan't stand it!" rose in such a chorus from
all sides that Gwen took the opportunity to make her escape and go to
the dressing-room for her lunch. The interval was only ten minutes, and
she wished both to break the news to her old classmates and to fetch
some necessary books from her former desk before the bell rang.
The other members of the Fifth lingered behind in perturbed
consultation. They considered they had a just and most pressing
grievance. In all the annals of the school such a case had never
occurred before. It had been hitherto an inviolable though unwritten
law that no one under the age of fifteen should be admitted to the Fifth
Form, a law which they had believed as strict as that of the Medes and

Persians, and here was the headmistress actually breaking it, and in
favour of a girl only fourteen and a quarter. If Miss Roscoe had not
brought her herself into the room they would not have credited it.
"It's abominably unfair!" broke out Rachel Hunter, a tall girl of sixteen.
"Because my birthday comes on October 4th I had to stop a whole year
longer in the Lower School. Yes--though my mother came and begged
Miss Roscoe to let me go up!"
"Well, you couldn't get moved up on your work, at any rate, Rachel!"
chirped Joan Masters. "It would have had to be favour in your case."
"That's not the point! It's a different question. If Miss Roscoe makes a
rule she ought to stick to it. Why, half the girls in the Form might have
come up sooner if it hadn't been for the age limit."
"You're right, and I can't see why Gwen Gascoyne should be so
specially noticed."
"She's supposed to be clever, I believe."
"She doesn't look it! Besides, what do we care whether she's clever or
not? It's the injustice of the thing that makes me angry. A kid like her
amongst us seniors! The idea!"
"Miss Roscoe may send Gwen up," declared Louise Mawson, "but she
can't make us accept her as one of ourselves. I vote we send her to
Coventry."
"We will! She's nothing but a Lower School girl, and we won't tolerate
her being imposed upon us!"
"She'll be so conceited at finding herself a Senior!"
"We'll soon take her pride down, then!"
"She'll meet with a few snubs here, I'll undertake to say!"
"If Miss Roscoe is going to bring up all the rank and file like that

there's no credit in being in the Fifth!"
"It's a positive insult to the rest of us!"
So decided Gwen's new classmates, jealous for the prestige of their
Form, and annoyed at the indignity which they considered they were
made to suffer in admitting a younger girl among their number. To
Gwen or her feelings they gave not a thought. If she met with an
unpleasant experience all the better; it might deter Miss Roscoe from
repeating the experiment. That the remove was not Gwen's fault, and
therefore that it was scarcely fair to visit the headmistress's act upon her
innocent head, did not enter into their calculations. Where they
consider their rights are concerned schoolgirls rarely hold mercy before
justice.
Meantime Gwen, who had gone to break the important tidings to the
Upper Fourth, did not find her old friends as responsive as she had
expected. They received her communication with marked coldness.
"Why should you have been moved up, Gwen Gascoyne, and not Daisy,
or Aileen, or I?" enquired Alma Richardson, with a distinctly aggrieved
note in her voice.
"Miss Roscoe always favoured Gwen!" said Eve Dawkins enviously.
"You're six months younger than Viola Sutton, so it seems absurd you
should be put above her."
"You'll be so grand now, I suppose you won't care to