"Next week I shall be back at Silverside," she whispered. "I just hate the thought of it!" "Poor little woman!" "It isn't as nice there as it ought to be, somehow. Things seem always at sixes and sevens, and it's so horrid." "What's the trouble?" "The old school and the new school won't mix. The Silversiders look down on the Hawthorners, and the Hawthorners resent it, of course, and just detest the Silversiders. It's a constant bickering the whole time. I think it's almost worse since Annie and Gladys were made prefects. It's perfectly wretched for me, because I'm between two stools." "How's that?" "Well, you see, in a way I'm a boarder, but then I'm the only weekly boarder, so the others who stay there the whole term rub it into me that I'm not quite one of themselves. They can't forget that I used once to go to The Hawthorns, even though it's a long time ago, and they keep bringing it up against me as if I were a sort of traitor in their midst. Then it's quite as awkward for me with the day girls. I like some of them very much; they used to be old chums of mine, and I'd like to go on being friends with them. But if I even speak to them in school, Laura or Janet are down on me like anything, and ask me if I've forgotten I'm a member of the Silverside League." "What is the League, please?" "It's a kind of blood-brotherhood among the boarders to keep up Silverside traditions. When the day girls heard of it, they started an 'Old Hawthorners' League' in opposition." "But surely you're all Silversiders now?" "We are in name, but nothing else. We still feel two separate schools. The day girls wouldn't play hockey with us in the winter. They got up a club of their own, and wore their old school colours. They won ever so many matches, and the Silverside Club did so badly. Adah was dreadfully sick about it. She thought them so mean to desert." "Perhaps they felt they wouldn't be welcome." "That's exactly the point. Instead of pulling together, it's always boarders versus day girls; and as for poor little me, I'm neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring!" The Lavender Lady smiled, and then looked thoughtful. She stroked Avelyn's hair. "Poor little woman!" she said again. "I feel like Mohammed's coffin, slung between earth and heaven." "Can't something be done to bring these rival factions into harmony? You're one school now, and ought to work together for the common good." "That's what Miss Thompson says, but it doesn't make any difference." "Girls often won't listen to teachers. The movement must come from within, not without. It seems to me, Ave, you're the one to set it in motion." "I?" Avelyn turned up her face in the greatest amazement to meet the Lavender Lady's calm eyes.