It was about this time that a general spirit of trouble and dissatisfaction seemed to creep into the school. How and where it started nobody knew, any more than one can trace the origin of influenza germs. There is no epidemic more catching than grumbling, however, and the complaint spread rapidly. It had the unfortunate effect of reacting upon itself. The fact that the girls were restive made the teachers more strict, and that in its turn produced fresh complaints. Miss Burd, careful for the cause of discipline, made a new rule that any form showing a record of a single cross for conduct would be debarred for a week from the use of the asphalt tennis-courts, a decidedly drastic measure, but one that in her opinion was necessary to meet the emergency. Though the disorder was mostly among the juniors, Va was not altogether immune from the microbe. It really began with a quarrel between Ingred and Beatrice Jackson. The latter was a type of girl common enough in all large schools. She was not always scrupulously honorable over her work, but she liked to curry favor with the mistresses. She copied her exercises shamelessly, would surreptitiously look up words in the midst of unseen Latin translation, and was capable not only of other meannesses, but sometimes of a downright deliberate fib. She and Ingred were at such opposite poles that they did not harmonize well together. In the old days, with visions of parties at Rotherwood, Beatrice had at least been civil, but now that there seemed no further prospect of being asked to pleasant entertainments, she had turned round and treated Ingred with scant politeness in general, and sometimes with deliberate rudeness. Little things that perhaps we laugh at afterwards, hurt very much at the time, and Ingred was passing through an ultra sensitive phase. During the latter part of that autumn term she detested Beatrice. One day Miss Burd announced that on the following Saturday there was to be a match played in a suburb of Grovebury between two first-class ladies' hockey clubs. She suggested that it might be of advantage to some of the girls to go and watch it, and proposed that each of the upper forms should elect one of their number as special reporter to write an account of the match which could be read aloud afterwards in school. The idea rather struck them. "It's Finbury Wanderers _versus_ Hilton," said Linda Slater, "and they're both jolly good, I know. Wish I could have gone myself, but I'm booked already for Saturday." "Heaps of us are," said Cicely Denham. "We'd like to hear about it, though," added Kitty Saunders. "I call it rather a brain wave to choose a reporter." "Hands up any girls who are free on Saturday!" called Beatrice Jackson.