"She dreams, this child. I haf no knowledge of the signalling. But for the other matter, Madame, may I ask that you will question further?"
"No, Professor, I shall not do that," Miss Conyngham said firmly. "Jocelyn has given me her word of honour that she had no hand in the matter, and I trust my girls. Someone else must have taken her handkerchief by accident. I need hardly tell you that I shall look most carefully into the business and discover the culprit; but I cannot act as you suggest, or disbelieve the word of a child who has always shown herself truthful. Jocelyn, you may go; I am satisfied with what you have told me; but until the mystery is cleared up there will be no leave out for any Redlands girl, and you may tell the girls so."
"Not for the match?" cried Joey, in dismay.
"Not for the match; except, of course, for the players," Miss Conyngham said quite decidedly. "Someone is behaving like a dishonourable coward, and until she owns up the whole school must be punished. That will do, Jocelyn."
The Professor made a quick step towards Miss Conyngham. His expression made Joey think of the day he had found her trying to perform the duties of a "scholarship kid."
"If the word of the young lady is to be taken before mine, Miss Conyngham, I must ask you of your goodness to seek another Professor of Chemistry," he said. "And it would be much to my convenience if you could find him by the end of dis vairy month, since your young ladies here haf no desire to learn of me—and I therefore receive insults on all sides...."
"Run away, Jocelyn," Miss Conyngham ordered, and Joey obeyed of course, though it was a tantalising moment to be ordered out. Would Miss Conyngham and the Professor make friends again, she wondered, or would she accept his resignation and let him leave them as he asked to do by the end of the month?
The end of the month—why, that would be the 31st, of course. Joey thought of Noreen's words, "We're living in a mystery." Noreen had been joking, but it began to look as though her joking words were coming true.
It was then it occurred to her that the minute the ban on going out was removed, the person to consult was John. But meantime the school was under arrest and the culprit had still to be found. Joey made her way back to the others, and announced Miss Conyngham's depressing ultimatum on the way to Remove II. B classroom. By Break the whole school knew it, and the Head of the Upper School and the Head of the Lower met for a council of war.