"He's always such a foaming-at-the-mouth sort of beast if you intrude on his blessed privacy. Still, I don't mind trying if you like. He _ought_ to be pleased to get back his old hanky. What am I to say if I see him--humblest apologies and all that? Righto! Stay with the kids till tea: we shan't get a fire till supper-time. If I don't return, look for me in a poisoned grave under the Lab." Noreen departed. Joey went back to the babies for the ten minutes that remained before tea-time, and found that they liked stories quite as much as Kirsty and Bingo did. Then Matron came in to give them their tea, and Joey went down to hers. She did not see Noreen till the meal was over; but caught her up in the hall--on the way to the classrooms for prep. "So sorry, Jocelyn, after you've washed it and all, but I let that hanky drop on the way, and muddied it a little--not much. So I thought I'd better not face the Professor, but just chucked it in at an open window. You bet he'll see it--he probably won't know it ever left the floor where you found it," she said. "So that's all right, isn't it?" "Thanks awfully," Joe said, and tried to think it was as right as Noreen said. CHAPTER VIII THE PEACE-PIPE Matron was lying in wait at the door of Remove II. B Classroom, and pounced on Joey as she came out at the end of prep explaining that she was to go to bed at once in order that her throat and chest might be rubbed with camphorated oil. Joey submitted, but unwillingly; bed two hours before anybody else, when she didn't feel ill, only heavy, was a very depressing idea. However, it was clearly no case for argument. Matron bustled her through her bath and into bed, and was rubbing her with a vigour that left no breath for conversation on her part by the time the other three came in to change their frocks for supper. Joey wished very heartily that Matron had finished, for she had thought of some new and effective things to say to Syb and Barbara, in answer to their taunts of last night. Noreen was, of course, to be left out; Noreen had really been decent about the bed and everything, even if she had been the ringleader in that ragging business. Joey meant to forgive and forget where Noreen was concerned; but to let Syb and Barbara have it hot and strong. Only she would contrive to let them know that she wouldn't take all the hot water again. But of course nothing could be said or done while Matron was in the room. She had finished the rubbing now, but was pouring out a portentous dose of ammoniated quinine. On the other side of the room Barbara, Syb, and Noreen were dressing with extraordinary politeness. "Please, Barbara, could you hook me up?" and so on. They were nearly ready; if Matron stayed much longer the supper bell would ring, and the opportunity would be lost.