"We shall be fighting for the school colours!" said Adah, with a light of enthusiasm shining in her blue eyes. "It's _we_, the little band of old pupils, who are to preserve the ideals of the school. These new girls must be made to realize that they're at Silverside now, and not at The Hawthorns." "I guess we'll rub it into them," murmured Laura Talbot to the still-confused Irma. It was a new girl after all, however, who made the really practical suggestion of the meeting. Avelyn Watson had sat very quietly during the proceedings, feeling herself in a somewhat awkward position. She had been a pupil at The Hawthorns for two years, but her mother had never really liked the school, and had removed her from it the preceding Christmas. Avelyn had come to Silverside quite ready to embrace its traditions and to erase The Hawthorns from her memory. To be confronted with more than fifty of her old schoolfellows, some of whom had to-day claimed affectionate intimacy with her, had been somewhat of a shock. She did not quite know where she stood. She was not sure whether the boarders were disposed to receive her into the bosom of the League, or if they would regard her as among the aliens. One fact, culled from former experience, rose to her lips. She was too shy to state it publicly, but she bent towards Laura Talbot and whispered: "Tell them, if they want to do anything, they ought to have prefects--you see, I _know_!" Laura immediately broached the suggestion as her own, and gained the whole credit for it. The idea, hinted at by Annie Broadside and Gladys Wilks in the morning, had been fermenting in Adah's brain all day, and she grasped at it eagerly. "It would give us just the authority we want," she agreed. "We'd better make a deputation and speak to Miss Thompson about it. Who'll go with me?" The Principal, busy and burdened with a hundred new cares, sat in her study that evening answering letters from parents. She pushed away her papers rather wearily as the deputation, consisting of Adah Gartley, Isobel Norris, Consie Arkwright, and Joyce Edwards, entered the room with a kind of bashful assurance. She was tired, but she was always ready to listen to what her girls had to say. It had been her invariable rule to meet them half-way. She heard them now patiently, asking many questions, for they were shy in stating their case, and did not at first explain their objects lucidly. When at length she had got at the gist of the matter, she leaned back in her chair and thought for a moment or two before she replied.