And Joey departed with all the dignity that she could muster, though she felt a good deal more like crying. The Professor's suspicious attitude was rather hurting. "He couldn't have been a worse beast if he thought I meant to steal his bottles," she told herself. She was half-way back towards the front door before she discovered she _had_ stolen something from the Lab after all. Fumbling for the handkerchief which was rather badly wanted at that moment, she brought out a curiously unfamiliar one of violet silk, now excessively grubby. She looked at it with dismay. What wouldn't the Professor do if she went back and told him that to add to her other offences she had used his handkerchief for a duster. "I'd better wash it first before I return it," Joey said to herself, and rammed it back into her pocket. She wondered whether Noreen and the others had turned up yet; it would be satisfactory to tell them that she had done the Lab already. Joey thought that she would not say anything about the Professor's fury, which, after all, had been unjust. She put her head down, and raced at her best pace for the front door; it would be rather fun to talk as though the Professor had been quite pleased with her tidying. Phut! Joey had gone full tilt into someone who was coming from the house--a very tall girl with her hair tied back. "Here, look where you're going, you young idiot!" the big girl called out angrily. Joey came to earth metaphorically with a bump. "I say, I'm frightfully sorry. Did I hurt you?" "That's not likely, considering you're half my size," said the tall girl. "But you should look. What's your name?" "Jocelyn Graham. What's yours?" The tall girl frowned. "I am Ingrid Latimer, Senior Prefect here," she said coldly, and Joey understood that she had done the wrong thing in asking that off-hand question. She became rather flustered. "Oh, are you? Then--when do you want your boots put on?" she asked nervously. Ingrid frowned more alarmingly. "What on earth are you talking about?" "I got the scholarship--don't I have to put your boots on?" faltered Joey. Now she came to put it into words it did sound an extremely silly thing to say. Somehow she wasn't surprised by the crushing tone of the Senior Prefect's answer. "Please don't try to be funny; we've no use for that sort of thing here. Who put you up to all this?" A light began to break upon Joey. Something hot surged in her chest. "Oughtn't I to have tidied the Lab either?" she asked, with the courage of desperation. "Tidied the Lab! Why, no one's allowed there without Monsieur or the Chemistry Mistress. Look here, my good child, are you trying to be funny--I shouldn't, because it won't pay you--or are you the outsidest edge of imbecile new kids that ever came to Redlands?" Joey was silent. She was trying to adjust things in her mind. The girls had had her on, and oh how easily! She _was_ the outsidest edge in imbeciles, she supposed.