"Rather not. He only came last term, and nobody could stand him then. He's worse now. So if it's an evil conscience—I say, Joey, you old slacker, why don't you take stinks? You could help no end in the Sherlock Holmes business. Tell you what. I'll smuggle you in next time—Cicely Wren is in San with a throat—he won't notice who's there as long as he has his proper tale of jumpy victims."
"Let's," Joey said; but much to her surprise and disappointment, Gabrielle interfered quite decidedly.
"No, that wouldn't do. You mustn't, Joey. Don't try and get her to, Noreen."
"Don't see why not," grumbled Noreen, but Joey noticed that she yielded to the rather small Head of the Lower School with only that one murmur.
It was a dull, lowering afternoon, and the Round Tower, standing up before the three, looked gloomy and forbidding.
"Wonder if the jumpy young man is there now?" Joey remarked. The whole story of her adventure had been joyfully told last night in Blue Dorm, to the accompaniment of a most unwise amount of chocolates, and all Blue Dorm was as keen to explore the shaky tower as she was herself. And she and Gabrielle had shared a milk tumbler at Break, after which Gabrielle had been quite as much stirred up as the other three were.
"It strikes me," said Noreen, "that we are living in a mystery—probably lurid—and certainly topping. Why should Joey's man be so jumpy?" She paused dramatically.
"P'r'aps an air-raid bomb fell near him," suggested Joey.
"Egg! A bomb took most of my Granny's bed-room wall out one night, and she didn't turn a hair. English people don't."
"P'r'aps he's Belgian. He didn't seem quite English somehow."