“Do be quiet, Sybil,” adjured Gretta, feeling very sorry for her little sister, but knowing from old experience that sympathetic treatment was of little use at such a time. “Perhaps Miss Read will let me keep something for you; I’ll ask her, if you’ll stop crying.”
“She won’t, she won’t,” sobbed Sybil. “They’re all just the hor----!”
“Cheero, Sybil!” interposed Josy; “there’s the match to watch on Saturday, anyway!”
“Yes, that’s the _best_ part of the day,” agreed Margot.
“It isn’t, it isn’t,” sobbed Sybil, quite given over to her grief and temper; “and I’ll not go near the old match, and I’ll pay you out, everyone of you--just see if I don’t!”
But not one of the listening girls guessed how she would keep her word.
To say that Sybil was angry would be using too mild a word to express the state of feelings that filled her troubled breast. She was just as furious as any little girl could be, and truly to outward appearance her lot at present was a hard one.
To be denied any participation in the dormitory feast (and to such a sweet-toothed little damsel the magnitude of the treat was tremendous), and to be expected to take comfort--forsooth!--from the fact that she would be allowed to watch the hockey-match was, according to Sybil’s present state of ideas, to add insult to injury.
A week ago, before the feast had been mooted, no one had been more excited and delighted at the prospective match than the child herself, but now the complexion of the case was altered. The feast which she was not to enjoy loomed largely and lusciously before her, while the hitherto alluring match had fallen in her opinion to the position of an irritating event without interest or excitement. And now here was Margot--Margot, only six months her senior, and yet included in the band of fortunate older ones!--suggesting that this match was the “best part” of the day’s entertainment. Sybil flounced angrily out of the sitting-room and, leaving a group of amused and half-sympathetic bigger girls, betook herself in tears to the playground, to be found there presently by her chum and slave, Adela, in a very great temper indeed.
“I’ll just pay them all out!” she exclaimed for the twentieth time, feeling very glad of a sympathetic listener and waxing proportionately eloquent.