Free 02 Jo of the Chalet School by Elinor Brent-Dyer

Frenchwoman in her own tongue. ‘She will not have run to climb mountains, or to cut off her hair!’
    Grizel and Simone both went crimson at this allusion to their exploits of the previous term. They felt that Mademoiselle was not playing fair in raking up past events, and their faces said as much.
    ‘Can she have gone to Torteswald?’ pondered Miss Bettany aloud.
    Mademoiselle glanced out of the window. ‘But regard you the rain, ma chère ! It pours like a torrent!’
    ‘I can’t imagine her doing such a thing without telling me first!’ went on her sister. ‘Still, she might have done so! Or she may have gone to see the Brauns. She is very fond of them. -Gisela, go and ring up the Villa Maurach and – where is it your cousins are staying, Bette? Wald Villa? Well, ring them up, Gisela; and also Die Rosen, the Brauns’ chalet at Buchau, and ask if any of them know anything about her.’
    Gisela went off to the telephone, but presently returned, saying that nobody had seen Jo that day, and certainly none of them expected to see her.
    Miss Bettany frowned as she turned away, after thanking the head girl. It was so totally unlike Jo to go off by herself in this fashion. She was a gregarious little soul, and was generally to be found with crowds.
    Where she could be now was a mystery, and the girls, streaming back to their own quarters, were thoroughly curious. Some of them inclined to Simone’s suggestion that the Tzigane had carried her off; the others declared that she must have gone for a stroll somewhere.
    ‘But it isn’t the weather for strolls!’ Grizel pointed out with an eloquent wave of her hand towards the window. ‘The rain’s simply emptying down! Just look at it!’
    ‘Well, anyway, there’s no truth in that idiotic Tzigane idea!’ declared Juliet. ‘I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying anything about it, Simone! Madame’s worried enough without your suggesting such ghastly things!’
    ‘I d-didn’t!’ sobbed Simone in her own language. ‘I love Madame!’
    ‘It looks like it, I must say!’ retorted Juliet. ‘Well, Robin? What do you want?’
    The Robin, who had been tugging at her sleeve, said, ‘I don” think you ought to speak so unkindly to Simone, Julie!’ (Her name for Juliet.) ‘I think also that Zoë is with Eigen.’
    ‘Eigen?’ The big girls crowded round her at once.
    ‘But why do you think that, Robin?’ asked Gisela.
    ‘Eigen isn’t here,’ returned the mite. ‘He was talking this morning with Zoë, and perhaps they went somewhere.’
    ‘Come and tell Madame,’ said Gisela. ‘She will like to know.’

    Accordingly, as Madge Bettany was pacing up and down her study, trying to puzzle out where Joey could have gone, she heard a tap at her door, and then the head girl and the school baby entered.
    ‘Robin thinks Joey may be with Marie’s little brother Eigen, Madame,’ explained Gisela as she made her little regulation curtsy.
    The Head stared at that. ‘Joey with Eigen! But why?’
    ‘She was talking with Eigen this morning, Madame,’ said the Robin in her pretty French.
    Miss Bettany sat down and held out her hand. ‘Come here, Robin. Now, tell me just when you saw Joey and Eigen together, and where.’
    The Robin leaned up against her knee, and looked up at her with confident brown eyes. ‘it was when we came from Le Petit Chalet, Madame. They were standing by the stationery cupboard, and Zoë’ -she still could not manage the English J -‘was looking very angry – but very angry, and she stamped her foot and said, “Oh – ze – brutal – beasts !”‘
    The Robin repeated the English words with great care and a distinctness which would have been laughable under any other circumstances. But nobody felt very much like laughing just then. Miss Bettany looked at the baby with serious eyes, and the Robin gazed back just as seriously.
    ‘You’re sure that this is what she said?’ asked the young head-mistress.
    The curly head was