"But you needn't play unless you like?" "Oh, yes, you must; unless you are ill or tired. You can get off any day if you don't feel well, but not altogether. And you would not wish to either. It would be so horribly flat! Once you are into a team, you are all anxiety to get into another, and I can tell you when you see your remove posted up on the board, it is b-liss!--perfect bliss!" The recruits laughed, and looked at their new friend with approving glances. She was, so far, the only one of the girls who had treated them on an equality, and gave herself no air of patronage, and they were correspondingly appreciative. They asked eagerly in which games she had won her remove, and Rhoda, at least, was disappointed at the answer. "Cricket! That's the great summer game. I've three brothers at home, and used to practise with them sometimes to make an extra one. They snubbed me, of course: but I'm not a bad bat, though I say it myself." "And what about tennis?" "Um-m!" Kathleen pursed up her lips. "We have courts, of course, but its rather--_Missy_, don't you think? The sports captains look down on it, and so, of course, it's unpopular. The little girls play occasionally. It keeps them happy." This was a nice way to speak of a game which had been for years the popular amusement of young England! Rhoda was so shocked and disappointed that she hardly dared mention croquet, and it seemed, indeed, as if it would have been better if she had refrained, for Kathleen fairly shouted at the name. "My dear, how can you! _Nobody_ plays croquet except old tab-- I mean ladies who are too old to do anything else. Miss Bruce plays sometimes when she has the vicar's wife to tea. We hide behind the bushes and watch them and shake with laughter. _Croquet_, indeed! I should like to see Tom's face if you mentioned croquet to her!" "It's a matter of perfect indifference to me what Miss Bolderston thinks," said Rhoda, loftily; but she veered away from the subject of games all the same and tackled lessons instead. "Are you working for any special examination, or just taking it easily?" "I'm going in for the Oxford Senior in summer. My birthday is so horribly arranged that it comes just one week before the limit. A few days later would give me a year to the good, but as it is it's my last chance. If I can only scrape through in preliminaries I am not afraid of the rest, but I am hopelessly bad in arithmetic. I add up with all my fingers, and even then the result comes wrong; and when so much depends upon it I know I shall get flurried and be worse than ever."