"I can't stop now, darling; but I'll tell you what, I'll come after tea to-morrow, as we can't go to the match."
Tiddles released her unwillingly, and Noreen seized her arm and dragged her off at once.
"What _is_ the matter?" Joey asked, as soon as they were outside the room and out of hearing of the babies.
"You'll never guess. It is about the limit. Here have Doris Redburn and Roma Kirke been insinuating that it was _I_ who broke into the Lab."
"They said I was always grousing about stinks and saying how I hated the Professor--of course, that's a true bill. And they said I didn't care what rows I got into. That's a true bill as well. I don't care. I rather wish I had done that Lab business--only Gabrielle is so stuffy about things like that--but if I had, I simply _couldn't_ hold my tongue and have the whole Coll punished, even if telling meant getting expelled."
"Of course you couldn't," Joey burst out, furious for her friend. "Who are saying it--Doris and Roma? I'll just go and tell them what I think about their hateful untruthful cheek...."
"No, stop!" Noreen cried, catching her arm as she whirled by. "It's no good just going for those two--they say lots of girls think it. Wonder if Miss Conyngham does too?"
"'Course not!" said Joey hotly. "She'd jolly well know you couldn't be a mean outsider, whatever else you might be. But I do wish the Professor hadn't gone and stirred her up like this. If he hadn't been so cock-sure he saw a girl, it might have been supposed to be the cat."
"It's pretty beastly anyway. One of our crowd is behaving like a rotten outsider, and her rotten outsiderishness is being fastened upon me. It is rough luck."
Joey had never seen her cheerful and inconsequent friend half so "down"; she was dreadfully distressed.
"Let me just go for that Doris girl--she's much the worst," she suggested.
"What's the good?" asked Noreen dejectedly.
She put her arm through Joey's, and they began to walk up and down the broad gravel path between the house and the Lab.
"Why on earth couldn't the Professor go to bed and stay there, instead of messing round and spoiling the hockey-match for us all? I'm jolly glad he's leaving at the end of the month," she concluded vindictively; "but he's done the harm by now."