"It is; though not exactly from Stephie's point of view. I don't care the least scrap that there are no Vernons or Courtenays or Derringtons here now. Stephie can lament them if she likes. I never knew them, so I can't regret them. There's one thing I can't help noticing, though--the tone has been going down." "Do you think it has?" replied Lizzie thoughtfully. "Merle and Alice and Mary are rather silly, certainly, but there's not much harm in them." "I don't mean our form; it's the juniors. I've noticed it continually lately." "Now you come to speak of it, so have I. I don't quite know what it is, but there's a something." "There's a very decided something. It's come on quite lately, but it's there. They're not behaving nicely at all. They've slacked all round, and do nothing but snigger among themselves over jokes they won't tell." "They're welcome to their own jokes as far as I'm concerned, the young idiots!" "Yes, if it's only just fun; but I'm afraid it's something more than that--something they're ashamed of and really want to hide. I've seen such shuffling and queer business going on when any of the monitresses came in sight." "Have you said anything to Catherine or Helen?" "No, and I don't want to. It's very unfortunate, but they've really got no tact. Catherine's so high-handed, and Helen's nearly as bad. They snap the girls up for the least trifle. The result is the juniors have got it into their tiresome young heads that monitresses are a species of teacher. They weren't intended to be that at all. A monitress is just one of ourselves, only with authority that we all allow. She ought to be jolly with everybody." "Um! You can hardly call Catherine jolly with the kids." "That's just it. They resent it; they've gone their own way lately, and it's been decidedly downhill. I'm persuaded they're playing some deep and surreptitious game at present. I wish I knew what it was." "Can't Rona tell you?" "I wouldn't pump Rona for the world. It's most frightfully difficult for her, a junior, to be room-mate with a senior. Her form always suspect her of giving them away to the Upper School. Rona's had a hard enough struggle to get any footing at all at The Woodlands, and I don't want to make it any harder for her. If she once gets the reputation of 'tell-tale' she's done for. Since Stephanie made that fuss about juniors coming into senior rooms I mayn't ask her into V B; so if she's ostracized by her own form too she'll be neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. No; however I find out it mustn't be through Rona." "Yes, I quite see your point. Now you speak of it, I believe those juniors are up to something. There's a prodigious amount of whispering and sniggering among them. 'What's the joke?' I said to Tootie Phillips yesterday, and she flared out in the most truculent manner: 'That's our own business, thank you!'" "Tootie has been making herself most objectionable lately. She wants sitting upon."