He was a short man, this Monsieur Trouville, neat and dapper, though inclined to be fat. His high forehead peaked up to his receding hair, his short moustache was stiffly waxed and stood out very black against his pallid face. He was not ill-looking, but just at that moment Joey thought she had never seen anyone quite so unpleasant.

He caught her by the arm. "What are you doing here? How dare you come? Do you not know it is forbidden, except when I take the classes here? I will report you to Miss Conyngham. You shall be expelled."

Joey stood her ground. "You can't expel people when they've only just come," she assured him stoutly. "It ... isn't done. Besides, I'm all right to tidy here. I'm the scholarship girl."

This last statement did not appear to mitigate Monsieur Trouville's fury in the least.

"You have distairbed all my bottles—you have made for me hours of work with your disobedience," he snarled. "I vill have you punished—you shall be no more at Redlands!"

He began to cast about the room, like a blood-hound nosing for a trail. Joey felt rather frightened; there was no doubt about it, Monsieur Trouville was really angry. He spluttered out the objurgations in his strong French accent rather like an angry cat. Somehow, in spite of what Noreen and Syb had said, she had not expected him to be quite so much annoyed by her presence.

"I'm awfully sorry if I've mixed your bottles," she told him, trying to speak steadily. "I didn't mean to. Perhaps some time when you're not too busy you would just show me how you like things tidied, and then——"

Monsieur Trouville made three strides towards her, with so menacing an expression that Joey gave back a step in spite of herself.

"Miss Conyngham tell you to say dat?" he demanded.

"No, of course not. Do you suppose one needs telling to be polite?" Joey answered, growing angry in her turn. "If you don't want your old Lab tidied for you I'm sure I don't want to do it. Good-bye."

And Joey departed with all the dignity that she could muster, though she felt a good deal more like crying. The Professor's suspicious attitude was rather hurting. "He couldn't have been a worse beast if he thought I meant to steal his bottles," she told herself.

She was half-way back towards the front door before she discovered she had stolen something from the Lab after all. Fumbling for the handkerchief which was rather badly wanted at that moment, she brought out a curiously unfamiliar one of violet silk, now excessively grubby. She looked at it with dismay. What wouldn't the Professor do if she went back and told him that to add to her other offences she had used his handkerchief for a duster.

"I'd better wash it first before I return it," Joey said to herself, and rammed it back into her pocket.

She wondered whether Noreen and the others had turned up yet; it would be satisfactory to tell them that she had done the Lab already. Joey thought that she would not say anything about the Professor's fury, which, after all, had been unjust. She put her head down, and raced at her best pace for the front door; it would be rather fun to talk as though the Professor had been quite pleased with her tidying.

Phut! Joey had gone full tilt into someone who was coming from the house—a very tall girl with her hair tied back. "Here, look where you're going, you young idiot!" the big girl called out angrily.

Joey came to earth metaphorically with a bump. "I say, I'm frightfully sorry. Did I hurt you?"

"That's not likely, considering you're half my size," said the tall girl. "But you should look. What's your name?"

"Jocelyn Graham. What's yours?"

The tall girl frowned. "I am Ingrid Latimer, Senior Prefect here," she said coldly, and Joey understood that she had done the wrong thing in asking that off-hand question.

She became rather flustered. "Oh, are you? Then—when do you want your boots put on?" she asked nervously.

Ingrid frowned more alarmingly. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"I got the scholarship—don't I have to put your boots on?" faltered Joey. Now she came to put it into words it did sound an extremely silly thing to say. Somehow she wasn't surprised by the crushing tone of the Senior Prefect's answer.

"Please don't try to be funny; we've no use for that sort of thing here. Who put you up to all this?"

A light began to break upon Joey. Something hot surged in her chest. "Oughtn't I to have tidied the Lab either?" she asked, with the courage of desperation.

"Tidied the Lab! Why, no one's allowed there without Monsieur or the Chemistry Mistress. Look here, my good child, are you trying to be funny—I shouldn't, because it won't pay you—or are you the outsidest edge of imbecile new kids that ever came to Redlands?"

Joey was silent. She was trying to adjust things in her mind. The girls had had her on, and oh how easily! She was the outsidest edge in imbeciles, she supposed.

"Who put you up to all this?" repeated the Senior Prefect magisterially.

Joey stuck her hands into her pockets. She had been made a fool of; well, it wasn't pleasant, but one must grin and bear it, even the hateful apologising to the justly incensed Professor, which she supposed must be her next proceeding. She wasn't going to get the others into trouble anyway, and Ingrid Latimer's tone suggested trouble ahead. "Oh, never mind!" she said.

"I wish to know," Ingrid repeated. "Their names, please?"

"Sorry, it can't be done," Joey stuck out hardily. "And if you don't want your boots put on, I'll go—please!"

The Senior Prefect looked as though she could hardly believe her ears; but Joey hadn't been educated up to Senior Prefects and their expressions. She bolted straight back to the Lab; it would be best to get that hateful apology over at once.

But the door was locked, this time on the inside, and though she knocked till her knuckles were sore, there was no answer.

"Hi, Jocelyn Graham, you're to go to Miss Conyngham," shouted a familiar voice, and Noreen hove in sight round the corner.

Joey saw her opportunity. "Tell that to some other idiot, if you can find one silly enough to listen to the sort of things you say," she told her. "Personally, I find it jolly interesting to see what a kid like you will try on next; but even I don't want too much funniness, thank you."

She marched off, leaving an outraged and astounded Noreen staring after her, and betook herself to the sleepy stream meandering at the bottom of the garden. It was a comfort to feel that Noreen had not succeeded in having her on a third time, but it was about all the comfort there was. Joey felt desperately home-sick and miserable just then, and as if she would give anything in the world to find herself on the heathy moor, or making bannocks for tea in the kitchen of the little grey stone cottage, far away from this puzzling and unfriendly new world.

She stared across the sleepy water, wondering whether Father had felt more wretched than this when he was a prisoner among his enemies. Yes, of course it had been worse for him, a great deal worse; for he had been in the midst of dirt and ill-usage and barbarities unspeakable—only—he hadn't expected to find the Huns friendly gentlemen, and Joey had somehow expected a great deal from Redlands. Still, that was no reason for making a fuss; Father hadn't—Joey knew that. She screwed her eyes up tight, and rubbed the back of a grubby hand across them fiercely. And while she was doing that someone spoke to her.

"I say, are you Jocelyn Graham?"

Joey opened her eyes hastily. A girl was standing by her, a girl with long lovely auburn-brown hair and clear eyes a shade darker, and a delicate clear skin. She wasn't as tall as Joey herself, anything like, and she hadn't the superior way of talking, which Joey had noticed in the rest.

"You are Jocelyn, aren't you?" this girl went on, and Joey liked her way of saying it, for it was friendly. "Well, do let me take you to Miss Conyngham—yes, it's all right, she really wants you—and she sent for you some time ago, you know."

Joey remembered. Panic took hold of her. "Will she be mad?"

The pretty girl smiled. "She's seeing the other new girls. You'll be all right if we run."

They ran. Somehow Joey did not doubt this new friend. "What's your name?" she asked breathlessly, as they tore up from the stream and across the gardens.

"Gabrielle—Gabrielle Arden."

"Why did you come after me?" Joey asked.

"Oh, Noreen thought you had gone down that way."

"It was decent of you," Joey said, with conviction.

"Jocelyn—Noreen and the others didn't mean anything, truly," Gabrielle panted. "They didn't think you would really go and do the Lab, you know."

Joey returned no answer; for one thing she had no breath to speak; for the second, she looked forward to a settlement, a little later on, with Noreen and Co., when the interview with Miss Conyngham and the hateful apology to the Professor were well over.

Gabrielle said nothing more either, and the two arrived in silence at Miss Conyngham's door. Miss Conyngham herself opened it, shepherding out three girls who looked new and rather frightened.

"Ah, Gabrielle, that's right," Miss Conyngham said. "Kathleen Ronaldshay has no elder sisters here; will you take care of her and show her round? And here is Jocelyn. I will introduce all you new girls to each other, and then I want a little talk with Jocelyn alone."

Joey shook hands with Bernadine Elton, Kathleen Ronaldshay, and Ella Marne; then the three were sent off in Gabrielle's care—they were all of them much bigger than she was—and Miss Conyngham drew Jocelyn into her pretty room.

Miss Conyngham matched her room; she was dainty and fair and fragile-looking, and, as Joey mentioned afterwards to Mums, "looked as if a light were burning inside her which made her all lit up as soon as she began to talk."

She did not look as though she could keep six hundred girls in order; but Joey found out very soon that appearances were deceitful in this case. Just now, however, Miss Conyngham was not out to keep anyone in order.

"I was so sorry that you and Miss Craigie couldn't come down together; but I have had a wire, she is better, and the temperature very much down this morning. So I hope we may get her back in a fortnight. And by that time I expect you will have made hosts of friends, and have a tremendous amount to tell her."

Joey assented cautiously. Privately she doubted the friends, and it certainly wouldn't be possible to tell Miss Craigie that she hated Redlands for fear it should go back to Mums via the minister. But an assent of some kind seemed the proper thing.

"You will be placed in Remove II. B; that is the head form of the Lower School," Miss Conyngham went on. "Gabrielle, who brought you here, is in that form, only she is A: she is Head of the Lower School, you know, and only thirteen; we are all proud of Gabrielle at Redlands."

"Is she top of this Remove place, then?" asked Joey.

"Not necessarily. The Head of the Lower School is chosen from Remove II., but it is in open Election among the other girls. They vote for the best in every way out of sixty Remove girls; you want a great many qualities to be Head of the Lower School, Jocelyn."

Joey was interested. She somehow hadn't guessed that Gabrielle was anything special, except good-natured to a new girl.

"The election of the Head Girl for the two hundred and fifty of the Upper School, and for the three hundred and fifty of the Lower, happens at the end of every year," Miss Conyngham went on, in a nice companionable way, as though she were quite sure that Joey would be interested, and feel the school matters her own. "It is a very serious affair, I can assure you. The result of the Election holds good for the whole succeeding year; at Christmas Gabrielle will stand for re-election—that is, if she doesn't pass out of Remove into the Upper School. By the end of the term all this will have come to mean a very great deal to you, I think."

Joey's assent was again a model of caution; of course, Miss Conyngham didn't realise how the girls resented that village school. Probably Gabrielle had just been nice because she did not know.

"Well, now it must be tea-time," Miss Conyngham concluded, "and you must go and have tea. Give Matron your keys afterwards, and she will show you where to put away your clothes."

Miss Conyngham consulted a list pinned on her wall. "You are in Blue Dormitory, I see; that is a very favourite one. I will ask Gabrielle to introduce you to your room-mates, Sybil Gray, Barbara Emerson, and Noreen O'Hara. I think you will all get on very comfortably together."

Joey did not even give a cautious assent to this; she thought she knew exactly how that quartette were going to get on. She just said, "Thank you, Miss Conyngham."

Miss Conyngham rang the bell twice. A minute later there was a tap at the door, and Gabrielle answered her "Come in."

"Take Jocelyn in to tea and show her her dormitory, Gabrielle, please," Miss Conyngham said. She did not add, "Take care of her," for which Joey was grateful. It was bad enough to be disliked by the rest, but at least she needn't be despised. No one should guess that she wasn't feeling happy at Redlands.

"Which dorm are you in?" Gabrielle asked, as soon as Miss Conyngham's door was shut behind them.

"Blue," Joey said briefly.

"That's topping. It's next door to mine, and such a jolly set there."

"I know," Joey interrupted rather grimly. "Sybil and Barbara and Noreen."

"Do you know them, then?" asked Gabrielle, surprised.

"We met in the train," Joey explained. She hesitated for a second. "I shall like being in their dorm."