"Why...no; why should I have?" Jane was honestly surprised, but then she seldom got upset over things most people did, and indeed, often didn't realized when she was being insulted, or at least she hadn't when she'd been younger. With age, she'd become more experienced in recognizing such comments, although they still didn't really move her. Still, it was useful to know when someone was deliberately trying to be mean. "And quite frankly, I don't even remember what you said to me then, so it couldn't have been very bad." Jane smiled reassuringly at her old friend.

Helena needn't have worried about earning her daughter's disapproval. Violet had been looking from one woman to the other, listening avidly as this tale of youthful misdeeds unfolded. By now, she had decided that her mother was even cooler than she'd hoped. "Way to go, Mum! You were a real rebel, weren't you?!" Violet disregarded the quick glance of disapproval that her former governess threw at her after this statement. She was a grown woman, now, she didn't need to worry about being reprimanded. But Jane had now paused for far too long to suit Violet's curiosity, so she turned to face her. "So? What happened next?"

Jane sighed softly to herself--she really ought to have anticipated this happening when she had agreed to come and talk to her old school friend. "No, it wasn't anything you said, it was what happened during a potions class. I was very busy working on a rather complicated potion--not the one in the lesson book, but something more advanced. I suppose I was trying to get extra credit, or maybe just to see if I could do it. At any rate, while I wasn't looking, your mother threw something into my cauldron while I wasn't looking, something that didn't belong in that potion. We never did find out what it was," she added, looking over at Helena, because she would really like to know what it was, even after all these years. There wasn't enough left of the potion to analyze it. There wasn't much left of my entire cauldron, because it exploded, all over the ceiling, and created a thick cloud of fumes in the lab. Everyone had to be evacuated and then checked out by the school nurse, because apparently the fumes were potentially toxic." Jane sighed again, because up to that point, that potion had really been coming along very well.

"At any rate, after the lab was fumigated and anything dangerous left there had been removed, Helena and I were both given detention together, all weekend, and what we had to do was to clean up the lab and put everything back in order. And doing that sort of thing with another person, well, you get to know them a lot better, and you end up either good friends or sworn enemies. Fortunately, your mother and I ended up the former." Jane smiled, thinking about that weekend--it had really been rather fun after the first hour or so, despite all the work.