rushed the junior players, most of them dressed in gymnasium suits.

Julia Crosby, at their head, had come with so much force, that she now
slid halfway across the room, landing right in the midst of the
sophomores.

"I beg your pardon," said Grace, who had been almost knocked down by the
encounter, "I suppose you did not notice us. But you see, now, that we are
in the midst of practising. The gym. is ours for the afternoon."

Julia Crosby looked at her insolently and laughed.

How irritating that laugh had always been to the rival class of younger
girls. It had a dozen different shades of meaning in it--a nasty,
condescending contemptuous laugh, Grace thought, and such qualities had no
right to be put in a laugh at all, since laughing is meant to show
pleasure and nothing else. But Julia Crosby always laughed at the wrong
time; especially when there was nothing at which to laugh.

"Who said the gym. was yours for the afternoon?" she asked.

"Miss Thompson said so," answered Grace. "I asked her, this morning, and
she gave us permission, as she did to you last Monday, when the boys were
all out at the football grounds."

"Have you a written permission?" asked Julia Crosby, laughing again, so
disagreeably that hot-headed Nora was obliged to turn away to keep from
saying something unworthy of herself.

"No," answered Grace, endeavoring to be calm under these trying