"She's Scotch, not Cockney, you cuckoo, and probably quite harmless," someone else chimed in. "But I should have thought the Grammar School a bit more her line. However to Redlands she's coming, and at Redlands she'll presumably stay, and we shall have to make the best of it."
"And of her," groaned the girl called Syb.
There was a silence; for the little group of girls in the corridor had to make room for some indignant fellow-passengers to pass out from the compartment in the corner of which Joey was wedged, unable, without putting her fingers into her ears, and so drawing undesired attention to herself, to help overhearing the chief part of this conversation. These girls had joined the train at Lincoln, where Joey, in accordance with instructions, had changed for the local line; and the train had been so full that these girls had never bothered to find a seat at all, but stood in a tight bunch in the corridor, talking loudly to make themselves heard above the roar of the train. They were Redlands girls; Joey would have known that by their uniform if she hadn't by their talk.
It had taken her a minute or two to tell what they meant by village schoolgirls; when she did, her face grew hot, and she stared defiantly towards them.
They were outsiders themselves, thought Joey, to talk like that about a girl who was coming to Redlands, even if she had been to a different sort of school before. But though the thinking it was certainly a relief, it could not quite do away with the sore, hurt feeling. Evidently the Redlands girls were not inclined to start friends.
It was all the harder to bear because they were such jolly-looking girls. The one called Noreen was extremely pretty, with lovely Irish-blue eyes under black eyebrows, and a wealth of dark hair; and even Syb was nice-looking, with a bright colour and a straight, determined figure. The girl who had spoken last was short and insignificant, with bobbed hair, but her eyes were very bright and her smile infectious, Joey settled; while the other two were a round-faced couple, much too nice in appearance for the sentiments they had been expressing.
Joey was to have an opportunity for studying them more closely in a minute, for apparently they had had enough of standing in the corridor, and came pouring into her compartment so soon as the other passengers had poured out. They didn't trouble even to put their hockey sticks in the rack, by which Joey guessed that Mote Deep, the station for Redlands, was not far away.