The head girl was going through the difficult experience, shared by all who are suddenly placed in authority, of trying to hold the reins so as to satisfy everybody. To keep slackers up to the mark without gaining for herself the unenviable reputation of "a Tartar", to be pleasant with the juniors without loss of dignity, to preserve old standards while adopting new ones, called for all the tact she possessed. She often felt her cousin a great impediment. Vivien was one of those people who love to give good advice, and to say what they would do in certain circumstances, urging on others drastic measures which they would probably never enforce themselves if they happened to be in authority. Sometimes, however, the objections were just, and this was a case in point. The matter floated in Lorraine's mind all the morning, as a kind of background to English literature and mathematics. She called a monitresses' meeting for four o'clock that very day. When afternoon school was over, and Miss Janet, with the big volume of Milton, had taken her departure, Lorraine assembled her committee, intercepting Patsie and Audrey, who were trying to sneak from the room. "Look here, you've _got_ to stop!" she assured them. "I've to call at the dressmaker's; I've brought my bicycle on purpose!" objected Audrey. "Then the dressmaker will have to wait ten minutes." "And I'm due at the dentist's," declared Patsie. "The dentist can wait too! It's most important for us all to be at this meeting. I can't possibly let any one off it." Rather sulkily, Audrey and Patsie went back to their desks. Possibly they might have rebelled, but public opinion was plainly against them. Vivien was looking virtuous, and Dorothy made some pointed remarks about duty before pleasure. "If you think going to the dentist's and having that horrible drill whirling round and round inside your tooth is a pleasure, I wish you'd go instead of me," retorted Patsie, flinging her books back into her desk and banging the lid hard. "You'd be only too welcome to take my place." "Don't be shrill, child. Business is business, and the sooner we get it over the better. I want to go home myself." "I won't keep you all more than a few minutes," interposed Lorraine. "What I want to say is this, that though I have openly rather held a brief for the juniors in some ways, I don't mean our authority over them to be in the least lessened. Please don't misunderstand me about it. We must thoroughly uphold our dignity as monitresses," (turning a reproachful eye on Patsie and Audrey) "and enforce the rules as much as ever." "Hear! hear! It doesn't do to grow slack," said Vivien pointedly. "We're certainly not going to grow slack. I put it to every monitress to make it a point of honour to keep up discipline. There must be no truckling even with Fifth Form girls. Rules are rules!" "Right you are, O Queen!" "We'll be a regular set of dragons!" "No giving in on our part!"