"Are you in for the mermaidens' fete?" Winona asked Marjorie Kemp. "Mermaidens' fete, indeed! How romantic we are all of a sudden! The frog fight, I should call it." "There speaks the voice of envy! You're evidently out of it." "Don't want to be in it, thanks! It'll be wretched work shivering round the edge of the bath for a solid hour!" "Sour grapes, my child!" teased Winona. "Go on, my good girl--if you want to make me raggy, you just shan't succeed, that's all!" "Now I _should_ like to have been chosen!" mourned Evelyn Richards. "I don't mind confessing that I've had a disappointment. I thought I could swim quite as well as Freda, and it's grizzly hard luck that she was picked out and I wasn't. Rank favoritism, I call it!" "Poor old Eve! Look here, I'll tell you a secret. You head the reserve list. I know because I saw it. If anybody has a cold on the day of the event, you'll take her place." "You mascot! Shall I? Oh! I do hope somebody'll catch cold--not badly, but just enough to make it unsafe to go into the water. You can't think how I want to try my luck. I don't suppose I've a chance of a prize, but if I did get one, why I'd cock-a-doodle-do the school down!" "I'm quite sure you would! Trust you to blow your own trumpet!" "Winona Woodward, if you'd been properly and thoroughly spanked in your babyhood, you'd be a much more civil person now. I decline your company. Ta-ta!" "Poor old Eve! Take it sporting!" said Winona soothingly. On the afternoon of the great event, the ladies' large bath was specially reserved for the school. A goodly crowd of spectators filled almost to overflowing the galleries that ran round the hall; interested fathers and mothers, sympathetic aunts, and a sprinkling of cousins and friends made up the visitors' list, and the rest of the space was crammed with school girls. Each likely champion had her own set of supporters, who murmured her name as a kind of war cry, and were only restrained from shouting it at the pitch of their lungs by the sight of Miss Bishop, who stood below, talking to Miss Medland and the judge. The enthusiasm went perhaps more by favor than by actual prowess, and could hardly be taken as an augury of success, for Barbara Jones, who was popular, received much more encouragement than Olga Dickinson, who had distanced her every time at the practices. Juniors will be juniors, however, and the fourth and third forms stamped solidly for Barbara, ignoring the superior claims of her rival. The bath, with its blue and white tiles, looked tempting. All the school envied the candidates as they came marching in in their costumes. "Evelyn's got a place after all!" said Garnet, who was among the spectators, to Gladys Cooper, who sat next to her. "Some one else must be off, then. Who is it? Freda Long? Poor old Freda! Got toothache? It's hard luck on her! There's Winona. I don't believe she'll win, but I'll cheer her! Rather!"