The College groaned and conjectured and groaned again. It gave Miss Conyngham up as a bad job; gentle though she was, she was harder to move than "Maddy" with her austere manner, or Miss Wrestow, the senior mistress, with her strict views on discipline. It tackled understanding people, like Miss Craigie and Miss Lambton, and implored intervention. But nothing made any difference; Miss Conyngham had given her ultimatum, and by that the school had to abide. Until the culprit gave herself up, the whole of Redlands was under the ban. Joey sometimes wondered if she were still suspected, in spite of her emphatic denial and Miss Conyngham's apparent acceptance of it. She knew that the Professor had suspected her; Ingrid had been sure that he whispered her name to Miss Conyngham when she came in late on that dreadful morning, and the look in his eyes had been so vindictive, Ingrid said, that he must have really wanted to get her severely punished, perhaps even sent away. Ingrid had been very indignant about it, and championed Joey so publicly that no one in the College would have dared to doubt her. Besides at first everyone was sure that the clearing up of the mystery was only a matter of a few hours, or, at the most, a few days. Ingrid called a meeting of the Upper School; Gabrielle of the Lower. Both pointed out with proper Head-Girl firmness that the offender was bound in honour to come forward--and no one did! And that second half of October went slipping away, with the College still under its ban and the mystery unsolved. The suspense began to get upon everybody's nerves, and excitable people started to cast accusations about, more or less wildly. It did no good, and only wore still thinner the already thin patience of the girls. And the thirtieth came, and still the criminal was undiscovered and the College paying in bitterness of spirit for her silence. Joey was trying to forget the trouble in the kindergarten with the babies. They, in especial little Tiddles, were always so proud and pleased to have her there that she snatched half an hour with them whenever she could manage it, despite the remonstrances of Noreen, Syb, and Barbara, who thought her tastes eccentric and "not the thing" for Remove II. B. Of course they could not be expected to realise that Joey missed Kirsty and Bingo quite badly sometimes, for the public attitude of Redlands towards juniors at one's home was studiously detached. Syb wrote to her small sister every week, Joey knew, and sent her a present costing three weeks' pocket-money on her birthday, but when asked about her didn't know whether she was nine or ten, and could only state vaguely that she "believed it wasn't a bad sort of kid." So Joey refrained from saying too much about Kirsty and Bingo, but stuck firmly to her friendship with the kindergarten people all the same.