"I'm awfully sorry if I've mixed your bottles," she told him, trying to speak steadily. "I didn't mean to. Perhaps some time when you're not too busy you would just show me how you like things tidied, and then----"
Monsieur Trouville made three strides towards her, with so menacing an expression that Joey gave back a step in spite of herself.
"Miss Conyngham tell you to say dat?" he demanded.
"No, of course not. Do you suppose one needs _telling_ to be polite?" Joey answered, growing angry in her turn. "If you don't want your old Lab tidied for you I'm sure I don't want to do it. Good-bye."
And Joey departed with all the dignity that she could muster, though she felt a good deal more like crying. The Professor's suspicious attitude was rather hurting. "He couldn't have been a worse beast if he thought I meant to steal his bottles," she told herself.
She was half-way back towards the front door before she discovered she _had_ stolen something from the Lab after all. Fumbling for the handkerchief which was rather badly wanted at that moment, she brought out a curiously unfamiliar one of violet silk, now excessively grubby. She looked at it with dismay. What wouldn't the Professor do if she went back and told him that to add to her other offences she had used his handkerchief for a duster.
"I'd better wash it first before I return it," Joey said to herself, and rammed it back into her pocket.
She wondered whether Noreen and the others had turned up yet; it would be satisfactory to tell them that she had done the Lab already. Joey thought that she would not say anything about the Professor's fury, which, after all, had been unjust. She put her head down, and raced at her best pace for the front door; it would be rather fun to talk as though the Professor had been quite pleased with her tidying.
Phut! Joey had gone full tilt into someone who was coming from the house--a very tall girl with her hair tied back. "Here, look where you're going, you young idiot!" the big girl called out angrily.
Joey came to earth metaphorically with a bump. "I say, I'm frightfully sorry. Did I hurt you?"
"That's not likely, considering you're half my size," said the tall girl. "But you should look. What's your name?"