Meantime the two days of the dramatic performances had arrived. The Seniors always had the first afternoon and the Juniors the second, the audience being composed of the rest of the school together with the mistresses. The outside public was not invited, as the little plays were only intended to be acted among the girls themselves. The Sixth naturally led off, and Gwen quaked as she sat with her Form in front of the heavy red curtains. She was afraid an unpleasant surprise awaited her comrades, and she wondered how they would take it. Exactly what she expected happened. The bell rang, the curtains were drawn aside to reveal--alas, alas, for the Fifth!--a very excellently got up trial scene from the _Merchant of Venice_. Bessie Manners, the head of the school, was a majestic Portia in a handsome scarlet robe; Winnie made an attractive Nerissa; while all the other characters were arrayed in slightly more sumptuous costumes than Elspeth and Hilda had been able to collect. A shudder of cold horror ran through the unfortunate Fifth, the dramatic representatives of which listened with a kind of fascination to their own speeches, tripped off lightly and easily by their Seniors. It was more particularly galling as all realized that the whole thing was on a rather higher scale than theirs; it was better staged, much prompter, the actions were more appropriate, and the players less stiff and self-conscious, to say nothing of the superior dresses. In gloomy resignation they sat the scene out, and had the magnanimity to applaud heartily at the end. Then came the crisis. "We can't possibly give the very same thing all over again," whispered Hilda to Elspeth. "We shall just have to announce that ours is 'off'." Deeply humiliated and disgusted, the Fifth retired to its own classroom to discuss the untoward event. "It's too sickening--when I'd borrowed the wig on purpose!" wailed Hilda. "You can't think how I had to pester Dad to lend it." "And my Bassanio doublet and tights were made at a dressmaker's!" lamented Louise Mawson. "Who'd have thought of the Sixth choosing that very scene?" "Well, I tried to persuade you to take something else instead," declared Gwen, offering Job's comfort to the disappointed ones. "Gwen Gascoyne, I verily believe you knew all the time what the Sixth were going to have." "You must have known when your sister was in it." "I wasn't sure, but I had an inkling," confessed Gwen. "Then why didn't you tell?" howled the girls in chorus. "Why? Because it didn't seem fair. Winnie hadn't said a word--I only guessed. You know we're all supposed to keep our own secrets." "In this case you ought to have warned us properly. It was too bad to let us rehearse all that time, and get all the costumes together--for this!" "We've made ourselves ridiculous, and it's your fault entirely." "Couldn't you act it here, just among ourselves?" suggested Gwen humbly; but her proposal was squashed by an indignant and scornful majority.