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?"