"Ye'll be taking your supper here, miss, and then ye shall gang to your bed," Mrs. Nicol informed her, and Joey, seeing nothing whatever to stay up for, agreed meekly. It was not the evening she had pictured to herself, but she must make the best of it. She wrote a pencil post card to Mums, while Mrs. Nicol laid the table and set before her a rather gristly chop, in which she mentioned that the journey had been "all right" and she herself was "all right" too. It seemed better not to mention Miss Craigie's illness, and this rather desolate reception, when she happened to be one of those five children who had promised father to "take care of Mums." CHAPTER III THE DUTIES OF A SCHOLARSHIP KID "She'll be there, I suppose?" "Why should she, you mugwump? A scholarship kid won't have an entrance exam like an ordinary new girl." "I wish to goodness the Redlands trustees had never thought of the old scholarship idea," grumbled a third voice. "Mary Hertford was rather the limit, wasn't she? at least when she was in the Lower School--setting the pace so frightfully fast, specially in maths, but at least Mary was our own sort. I don't call it playing the game to shove village schoolgirls among us." "Syb, you don't mean it?" "I do. Miss Wakefield told mother. The Lamb had had a letter from her dear Miss Craigie, I fancy, and in her joy went bleating round to everyone.... Fact! This scholarship kid was the priceless gem from some village school." "How putrid!" "What on earth are we to do with her?" "Put up with her, I suppose, Noreen, my good child. What else do you suppose we can do?" "Wish to goodness I hadn't worked so beastly hard last term. Reward, Remove II. B, and the company of this village kid. It's sure to be in Remove II. with scholarship! Think she'll say 'sy' for say, and drop her 'h's'?" "She's Scotch, not Cockney, you cuckoo, and probably quite harmless," someone else chimed in. "But I should have thought the Grammar School a bit more her line. However to Redlands she's coming, and at Redlands she'll presumably stay, and we shall have to make the best of it." "And of her," groaned the girl called Syb. There was a silence; for the little group of girls in the corridor had to make room for some indignant fellow-passengers to pass out from the compartment in the corner of which Joey was wedged, unable, without putting her fingers into her ears, and so drawing undesired attention to herself, to help overhearing the chief part of this conversation. These girls had joined the train at Lincoln, where Joey, in accordance with instructions, had changed for the local line; and the train had been so full that these girls had never bothered to find a seat at all, but stood in a tight bunch in the corridor, talking loudly to make themselves heard above the roar of the train. They were Redlands girls; Joey would have known that by their uniform if she hadn't by their talk.