"I am sorry to hear that," returned Marjorie, keeping her temper with difficulty, "but she is not mine. I like her. I shall stand up for her and be her friend as long as we go to Sanford High School. I am sorry to seem disagreeable, but I shouldn't feel the least bit true to myself if I were afraid to say what I think. This is my street. Good-bye." Marjorie walked proudly away from the group. An instant and she heard the patter of running feet behind her. "You can't get rid of us so easily," panted Geraldine Macy. "I think you are right, Marjorie," said Irma Linton, quietly, putting out her hand. "I should like to be your friend." And the dividing of the sextette of girls was the dividing of the freshman class of Sanford High School. CHAPTER IX A BITTER MOMENT Marjorie went soberly up the steps of her home that afternoon. Her pleasure in making the team had been short-lived. She wondered if it would not be better to write her resignation. How could she bear to play on a team when three of the members had decided to drop her acquaintance? Still, they had not chosen her to play on the team; why, then, should she resign? She decided to consult her captain on the subject; then changed her mind. She would not trouble her mother with such petty grievances. This prejudice against Constance Stevens had originated wholly with Mignon La Salle. Perhaps the French girl would soon forget it, and it would die a natural death. Marjorie was not mortally hurt over the turn of the afternoon's affairs. She had not been so deeply impressed with the importance of Mignon and her friends that she failed to see their snobbish tendencies. She made mental exception of Jerry and Irma. She was secretly glad that they had declared for her. She liked Jerry's blunt independence and Irma's gentle, lovable personality. With the optimism of sixteen, she declined to worry over what had happened, and her report to her captain at the end of that troubled afternoon included only the pleasant events of the day. When she went to school the next Monday morning she discovered that it did hurt, just a trifle, to be deliberately cut by the Picture Girl, and, instead of being greeted with Susan Atwell's dimpled smile, to receive an icy stare from that young woman, as, later in the morning, they passed each other in the corridor. In some mysterious manner the story of the disagreement had been noised about the freshman class, with the result that Marjorie's acquaintance was eagerly sought by a number of freshmen whom she knew merely by sight, and that several girls, who had made it a point to smile and nod to her, now passed her, frigid and unsmiling.