The Girls of the Abbey School

The crowning of the May Queen was in progress in the big school hall, and among the crowd of girls who hung over the balcony railing none was more interested than Jen. She was very much of a new girl—or else, as she said to herself, she would jolly well have been down there among the other dancing girls, who, in two long lines, were laughing at their partners as they kicked and clapped hands and shook their fingers at one another in a quaint country dance, ‘Sweet Kate.’
The four previous Queens sat on the platform, grouped about the heroine of the day, a sweet-faced, bronze-haired girl of sixteen. Jen gazed at her worshipfully. She had not been shy the day before, her first day at school, because she did not know the meaning of the word, but she had certainly felt strange. The school was so very big; there were such crowds of girls, who all knew one another, and all knew where to go. Then this girl, with the ruddy hair and friendly brown eyes, had espied her and come to the rescue, had shown her over the school and answered her eager questions.
Jen had marvelled that a senior should take so much trouble over a thirteen-year-old, but Nesta and Kathy, of her form, had explained, when, thanks to this introduction, they had accepted her into their midst, ‘She’s the new Queen. The Coronation’s to-morrow night. It’s part of her work to look after new girls.’