"All right," said Joey. "I think I'd like to be friends too." "And we must find a name for you," suggested Gabrielle. "Jocelyn is awfully nice, but the others will think about you as the scholarship kid they ragged, if you stick to it; you want some handy little name--that will make you seem like another girl; and we'll all start fresh." "They call me 'Joey' at home," Joey answered, after a moment's consideration. She knew there was a great deal in what Gabrielle said about the name--Jocelyn Graham had not made a very popular start. "_Joey_--top-hole!" Noreen cried. "You're much more like a boy than a girl; that suits you down to the ground." And as 'Joey' she was presented to the rather embarrassed Syb and Barbara when they came up to bed, armed with a sticky bag of toffee--in large lumps of which luxury the occupants of Blue Dorm smoked the peace-pipe forthwith. CHAPTER IX "MADDY" Remove II. B had French for first lesson next morning; Joey was informed of the fact during getting-up-time next morning by an almost aggressively friendly Sybil, Barbara, and Noreen. "Who takes us?" Joey asked, a little nervously. French was by no means her strong point. "Maddy, of course--Mademoiselle de Lavernais." "What's she like?" Noreen screwed up her face. "Awfully old and dried up, and a sort of front thing on her head in tight curls." "Can't think why Miss Conyngham doesn't have somebody younger," Syb chimed in. "No one else is really old at the Coll. I bet Maddy's sixty if she's a day." "More," Barbara suggested. "Look at her wrinkles. She ought to be pensioned off or something; I should think she jolly well deserves it--she's been here more than twenty years someone told me." "Is she nice?" asked Joey, thinking anxiously of irregular verbs and elusive idioms. "Nice!--you wait till you go a howler in form!" "Having me on?" demanded Joey, with instant suspicion. "No, you stupid; can't you see when we're talking sense?" Noreen said. "I ought to know; I'm always in her black books. She simply can't bear me." "Says Noreen doesn't think or something," Syb contributed. "As if anyone could be bothered to think right through a stuffy French conversation class." "_What?_" shrieked Joey. "It isn't French conversation, is it?" "Isn't it just?--Maddy says heaps of girls can write French decently, but hardly anyone can speak it; so every Wednesday morning Remove II. B has the treat--I don't think!--of conversing with her in French, and you mayn't just say, '_Il pluit_,' or something like that, and then dry up; you've got to converse, and she goes on till she drags it out of you." "Does everyone?" asked Joey, palpitating. "She picks the girls. Pretty sure to go for you as you're new. She'll want to know what your French is like." "She won't take long to find out that it's utterly hopeless," Joey remarked, hunting for her shoes, which had gone under the bed.