Joey darted to the door as soon as that little ray of pale wintry daylight showed her where it was. She saw the Professor busily engaged in fitting the little wooden box into a cigar case that seemed made for it. His white linen coat had covered a neat dark tweed suit of undoubtedly English make; his moustache was gone. She saw that in the moment before he walked quietly past the locked and keyless door of the dark closet, and out through the outer door of the Lab, which he locked behind him. Joey had seen that he was smiling a little. CHAPTER XVIII AT DEEPING ROYAL Cook, though amazingly capable, was not an absolute magician; few people are. Perhaps it was not altogether astonishing, considering that she had only received her orders last night when dinner had been duly ordered, that the meal was not on the table quite at 12.45. It was in fact seven minutes late--not an extraordinary delay considering the circumstances, but enough to make the meal a scramble, and everybody feel a little fussed. Noreen and Gabrielle had both meant to see Joey before she started, and impress on her the great importance of not allowing her cousin to start late for Deeping Royal. But Joey was not to be seen about the place when they put on coats, boots, and hats according to directions before lunch, in Remove II. Dressing-Room, and there was not a second to tear up to Blue Dorm, where she would be changing into her Sunday frock, when lunch was over. Everybody was bustled into the brakes in hot haste, with the exception of poor Tiddles, who was being consoled, however, by lunch with the housekeeper in her own room, and a liberal supply of sweet biscuits and almonds and raisins. "Rotten about Joey not coming with us," grumbled Noreen, as the long procession of brakes wound down the drive. "I can't think why she wanted to go to her cousin's to-day of all days." "She didn't," Gabrielle remarked. "Joey does a few things she doesn't want." "Well, it's very tiresome she should do it to-day. I bet she'll be late, and then she'll have to stand somewhere at the back, and we shan't be together at all." "We could go back a little way to meet her," suggested Gabrielle, "and then whatever happens, we shall be together." "Good egg! What luck you're Lower School Head, Gabby! If it were me I should have to ask leave, and probably get it refused too," Noreen whispered, for Miss Lambton was in the brake with them, and she was young and great on discipline, and was known to disapprove of some among the many concessions made to Gabrielle's exalted position. It was on the cards that, if she heard the plan, there would come an authoritative order to keep all together and not exert the privileges of Head of the Lower School. The drive was a long one, but no one in the whole school thought so for an instant. Besides the grand excitement of the match at the far end, the drive itself was so full of interest.