Miss Finlayson came up to them, and Jean fairly quaked. If there was a rule that the head-mistress was strict about, it was the rule of silence after prayers. Jean knew, for she had been unlucky enough to break it more than once.
'I have changed your room, Jean,' said Miss Finlayson, calmly. 'Angela will have yours for the rest of the term, and you are to sleep in number fourteen, next door to Ruth Oliver. I have just told Angela, so you can go straight to her old room now, and I will send up one of the servants to move your things for the night. The rest can be done in the morning. By the way,' she added, as she left them, 'you three may talk till the lights are put out; for it seems that Barbara has something to say that will not keep until to-morrow. Good-night.'
She walked away downstairs with a deliberate step; and the two children were left standing together on the landing.
'Well, I never!' exclaimed Jean, staring after Miss Finlayson.
But Babs was less concerned with the peculiarities of the head-mistress than with her own immediate business. 'How much longer are you going to be before you shake hands?' she asked.
'Oh, that's all right,' answered Jean, awkwardly, and she at last put a limp hand into the one Barbara was tired of pressing upon her. They trotted along the passage side by side, Jean feeling a little overwhelmed by the suddenness of the reconciliation, while Babs wondered what had happened to make her so silent all at once. To her it seemed the most natural thing in the world to be on good terms with the enemy whose head you had just thumped, provided that you had apologised suitably afterwards; and she chatted away cheerfully until Jean was obliged to stifle her inclination to be dignified.
'I say,' said Babs, when they reached the gallery in the other wing of the house and were hurrying round it to their rooms; 'shall I be punished a lot for knocking you down this evening?'
Jean recovered some of her self-assurance. If she was to be denied the pleasure, in future, of persecuting the new girl, there was no reason why she should not still patronise her.
'Punished!' she echoed. 'That's all you know about it. Nobody is ever punished here.'
It took Barbara a moment or two to get used to this new idea, and by that time they had reached their rooms. She returned to the subject soon after, however, when Ruth had opened the doors that led from her room into both theirs, so that they could talk across her if they liked.