Noreen gave quite a start. "Hullo! You've turned up. Half the Lower School have been leading weary lives about you this afternoon!" "Why?" demanded Joey. "Oh, your cousin 'phoned, apparently, and said you'd gone off by yourself, and the chauffeur couldn't see you along the road, and then the roke came up and they were afraid something might happen to you...." "Likely--I'm not a kid," Joey stated, with immense scorn. "But I'm awfully sorry anyone bothered. Am I in a row?" "'Fraid so. What possessed you to bolt off like that, you goat?" "Oh, I don't know. I wanted to come back." "You're cracked, I think," Barbara said uncompromisingly. "Don't you know girls are always sent back when they're at school?" "I couldn't know there was going to be such a rotten old fuss about it," Joey complained. "However, if I'm in for it, I am. I've got the chocs, anyhow; we'll orgy in Blue Dorm to-night." "Jocelyn Graham!" Miss Lambton spoke sharply from her end of her table. "Hurry with your tea, please, and then go to Miss Conyngham." "Yes, Miss Lambton," Joey answered ruefully, and then added to Noreen, "Hope she'll leave me time to write and apologise to Cousin Greta." "You'll be lucky if she's finished rowing you by supper-time," Noreen remarked unkindly, but added, after a second, "Don't worry; I don't suppose you'll catch it much, as you're new. Say you didn't know." "Say there's insanity in the family and you _hope_ it isn't coming out," suggested Barbara; but Joey was too much depressed to be drawn by this remark. She finished her tea in haste, and was dispatched by Miss Lambton to Miss Conyngham, without waiting for grace. Miss Conyngham's "Come in" was rather severe. Joey screwed up her courage and opened the door. "Please, Miss Lambton said I was to come," she said meekly. Miss Conyngham was standing by the fire; she looked tall and imposing--much taller and more terrifying than in that first interview, poor Joey thought. "What have you been doing, Jocelyn?" she asked, and her voice, though quiet, was very cold. Joey pulled herself together. "I'm very sorry if it wasn't the right thing," she said; "but I came away earlier from my cousin's, because--because--I wanted to--and I've made up my letter of apology, truly; quite a polite one, and if you could finish rowing me in time for the post, I should be frightfully obliged, because Mums hates impoliteness." Miss Conyngham said nothing for a minute, but looked attentively at Joey.