Noreen groaned.
"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."
"If only he hadn't been so sure about the girl," Joey repeated, frowning. "It's that makes Miss Conyngham so stiff about it—otherwise she'd just take our words."
"I think she ought to, anyway. Just think of the match, and Redlands perhaps pulling it off for the first time for six years, and not one of us there!"
"P'r'aps the girl will own up in time," Joey suggested, but not hopefully.