IN TROUBLE
Joey slipped into her place at table, hoping that Miss Lambton would
not notice her grubby hands and rough hair. There had only been just
time to tear off her coat and hat in the nearest cloakroom, belonging
to the Sixth Form by right; tidying had to go by the board.
She squeezed in between Noreen and Barbara. "I've got a scrummy box of
chocs," she whispered.
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.
"You are thirteen, I think," she said, at last, "old enough to
understand that you have done rather an inexcusable thing this
afternoon. If it had been little Bertillia, I should not have been
surprised--one expects a baby to occasionally act on an absurd impulse,
and that is why babies are in charge of someone, always. You are a girl
of thirteen, with plenty of brains if you choose to make use of them,
and yet, because presumably you were not enjoying yourself, you were
guilty of very gross discourtesy towards your cousin, and of a breach
of trust towards me. I grant that perhaps you did not understand it is
a college rule that no girl goes out alone; but you heard me arrange
with your cousin to bring you back in time for chapel at 6.30, so you
knew what my wishes were."
"Yes," murmured Joey, staring hard at a picture opposite--a little
patch of purple heather, and a group of yellowing birches that reminded
her of Calgarloch and home. Noreen and Barbara had prepared her for
a row, but she had _not_ been prepared for the horrid effect of the
Head's quiet, cold voice.
"Your cousin telephoned here in great anxiety when she found that
you had gone," Miss Conyngham went on, "and when there was no sign
of you on the road we all knew you must be coming by the Deeps, in
the sea-roke. You did a very dangerous as well as a very wrong thing,
Jocelyn; do you know that?"
"The man in the tower told me so, most kindly," Joey explained; "but
I didn't do it on purpose. Honour! And I had a reason, a real proper
reason for leaving Cousin Greta's on my own--only it wasn't one I could
say to her. It _wasn't_ just not enjoying myself: I was enjoying myself
quite with John--that is Gracie's snotty cousin, worth ten of her any
day...."
"That will do," interrupted Miss Conyngham. "I am glad you had any
reason in what you did; but nothing can make it excusable. I have
always been proud to trust our Redlands girls in every way; do you
realise that when you act as you have done you are bringing discredit
on us all? And a girl owes loyalty to her school above everything!"
Joey swallowed hard. "Well, I'm frightfully sorry, Miss Conyngham. I
... I should think you had better punish me--only, might I go now,
because of writing to Cousin Greta?"
"You had better telephone to your cousin," Miss Conyngham said gravely.
"I will put you through in a minute. Yes, I think you must be punished,
not because I am angry but to help you to remember. You are not to talk
to the others in Blue Dormitory for a week, and go to bed directly
after supper during that time. Do you think you can remember?"
Joey gasped. "You couldn't make it French verbs instead? I'm awful at
French verbs--ask Maddy."
"People don't choose their own punishments, Jocelyn," the Head told
her, with the ghost of a smile. "It must be as I said: can you
remember, do you think? You see, I am trusting to your honour."
"Yes, I'll remember," Joey said mournfully, "but it will be beastly. I
hope it will square up all the bother I've given you a bit, though."
"We will see what it can do," said Miss Conyngham in a kinder voice.
"Now I will put you through to your cousin."
The telephone was still rather a mystery to Joey; but she squeezed the
middle of the receiver as Miss Conyngham directed, and said "Hullo."
Then Miss Conyngham went out and left her.
"Is that you, Cousin Greta?" Joey inquired in a high-pitched unnatural
voice. "Then, please, I'm most awfully sorry, and I didn't mean to
be rude, or make you anxious--just I thought I'd better come home
early...."
Cousin Greta interrupted. "I know, dear; John told me. Don't think any
more about it; I am only too thankful you are safe. You must come over
on another Sunday very soon, and we will try and give you a really
happy time."
Joey felt more choky than she had done through all Miss Conyngham's
harangue.
"It's no end brickish of you," she stammered, forgetting to speak in
what she thought was a telephone voice, and becoming much more audible
in consequence. "You were fearfully kind to-day, and it's frightfully
nice of you not to be mad!"
She rang off, and went to find her chocolates, feeling distinctly
happier. She met Noreen in the passage, and thrust the box into her
hands.
"Look here, you'd better keep them and orgie," she said. "I'm not to
talk for a week in dorm."
"What a sickening shame! But we'll keep the chocs till the week's up,"
Noreen said cheerfully. "My hat-box will do; Matron never pokes her
nose into that. Keep smiling, old thing; it's rotten, I know, but we'll
simply have the bust of our lives when the week's up, and you're clear."
Joey went up to bed directly after supper that night as commanded, but
feeling less depressed than might have been expected. For one thing,
Miss Conyngham had addressed her in quite an ordinary tone at supper;
for another, Cousin Greta had been so unexpectedly nice. And Noreen's
friendship came in a good third. Joey looked forward determinedly to
next Sunday, when chocolates should be eaten in wild profusion in the
watches of the night, to the accompaniment of the nervous young man's
gruesome stories of what happened to people wandering casually about
the Deeps.