Concluding

Mr Rock rose with a groan. Crossing to the open bedroom window he shone his torch out on fog. His white head was gray, and white the reflected torch light on the thick spectacles he wore. He shone it up and down. It will be a fine day, a fine day in the end, he decided.

He looked down. He clicked his light out. He found there was just enough filtering through the mist which hung eighteen foot up and which did not descend to the ground, to make out Ted, his goose, about already, a dirty pallor, almost the same colour as Alice, the Persian cat, that kept herself dry where every blade of grass bore its dark, mist laden string of water. Old and deaf, half blind, Mr Rock said about himself, the air raw in his throat. Nevertheless he saw plain how Ted was not ringed in by fog. For the goose posed staring, head to one side, with a single eye, straight past the house, up into the fog bank which had made all daylight deaf beneath, and beyond which, at some clear height, Mr Rock knew now there must be a flight of birds fast winging, Ted knows where, he thought.

The old and famous man groaned again, shut the window. He began to dress. He put working clothes over the yellow woollen nightshirt. The bedroom smelled stale, packed with books not one of which he had read in years. He groaned a third time. Early morning conies hard on a man my age, he told himself for comfort, comes hard. How hard? Oh, heavy.

When he put the kettle on downstairs he did not lay out his granddaughter Elizabeth a cup because Sebastian Birt might be with her still, in the other bedroom across the landing.

Five minutes more saw him off to fetch Daisy's swill. It was lighter already, but with pockets of mist that reached to the ground. Over his shoulders he wore a yoke. The hanging buckets clanked. He wondered if he should have brought his torch, but it seemed the sun must come through any minute.

He went slowly and was overtaken by George Adams, the woodman, going up for orders.

They did not speak at once, went on together down the ride in silence, between these still invisible tops of trees beneath which loomed colourlessly one mass of flowering rhododendron after another and then the azaleas, which, without scent, pale in the fresh of early morning, had not yet begun, as they would later, to sway their sweetness forwards, back, in silent church bells to the morning.

The man spoke. "It'll turn out a fine day yet," he said.

"Yes, Adams," said the other.

They walked on in silence.

"How's your wife, Adams?" Mr Rock then asked.

"Why I lost her, sir, the winter just gone."

Mr Rock said not a word to this at first. "I'm getting an old dodderer," he ventured in the end, sorry for himself at the slip.

"You're a ripe age now," George Adams agreed.

He never offered to help carry those buckets, the man reminded himself, because whatever the position Mr Rock had once held, this long-toothed gentleman did his own work now, which was to his credit.

"Yet I feel not a day older," Mr Rock boasted.

"It's my legs," the sage added, when he had no reply.

There was another silence. It was too early yet for the birds, or too thick above, because these were still.

"Nothing anyone can do for the bends," Adams said at last, out of an empty head.

At this instant, like a woman letting down her mass of hair from a white towel in which she had bound it, the sun came through for a moment, and lit the azaleas on either side before fog, redescending, blanketed these off again; as it might be white curtains, drawn by someone out of sight, over a palace bedroom window, to shut behind them a blonde princess undressing.

"It's not fair on one to grow old," Mr Rock said.

Adams made no comment.

"And how's Miss Elizabeth?" the man asked, after a time.

"Better, thank you," Mr Rock replied.

"She overtaxed her head where you put her out to work?" Adams hazarded.

"Don't they all?" the old man countered. He adored his granddaughter and, if it had not been for Birt, could have talked readily about her. "Same as those children up at the house." She was thirty-five and they between twelve and seventeen. "Breakdown from overstrain," he ended, cursing Sebastian Birt in his mind, because, although she was not working now, she would never get well while she could meet that man, he knew.

"You'll find her a blessing to have at home. Somebody by you," Adams said in self pity.

A blessing and a curse, the old man thought, then repented this last so violently that he could not be sure he had not spoken out loud.

"Why, that's strange," Adams said. "Did you hear summat?"

The sage looked blank at his companion. But it was too dark with sudden mist to read the expression on his face.

"I heard a call," Adams volunteered.

"I'm a mite deaf," Mr Rock answered.

"And I caught the echo," Adams insisted.

Which reminded Mr Rock of the argument he had had with Sebastian on this very point, not long since. "It would be from the house, then," he said in a determined voice, referring to the great sickle-shaped sweep of mansion towards which they moved like slow, suiciding moles in the half light.

"It's the trees throw back the sound, sir."

"Yet if you face about, Adams, call away from the place down this ride behind, you won't get a whisper in return."

"I never heard that," the woodman said, politely disbelieving.

They walked on. Then the old man took the buckets off his yoke.

"I'll have an easy now," he announced, laying the heavy object by, to one side. He put the buckets bottom upwards, and they sat on these.

"You don't want to rush it when they're full," Adams said.

I do this for Elizabeth, Mr Rock told himself, but out loud he exclaimed, "I hope I have more sense." His glasses were misted, fog still hung about, but the sun coming through once more, made it for a second so that he might have been inside a pearl strung next the skin of his beloved.

"It's what them younger ones haven't got, sense," Adams said. Elizabeth, Eliza, Liz, Mr Rock thought.

"And what age would you be, sir?"

"Seventy-six come March."

"That's a tidy sum to be still carrying swill around," the man complimented him, and noticed it a second time.

"What would that be, again?" he asked.

Mr Rock did not answer.

"I thought I caught what I heard before, twice over," Adams insisted.

"Was there an echo?" Mr Rock asked, his mind adrift.

"Not that I reckon."

"They must have faced away from the house, then," the old man said, and let his love for Elizabeth, and fear that he might lose the cottage, sap what ability was left him. Then he tried not to start on this subject, but could not help it.

"Adams," he began, "how d'you hold your house?"

The woodman stopped listening to the woods or to Mr Rock. He took in what was being said, but he had heard it so often these last ten years that he barely paid attention. From habit he answered, "The same as the rest. It goes along with the job to the estate."

"They'd like to have me away," the old man said.

"Well, I heard tell that you were goin' on your own, sir?"

"How's that?" Mr Rock demanded, turning his eyes full on Adams, with such a glare of alarm the man was startled.

"Why it might be just talk up at the house, like."

"What was?"

"Some up at the house has made out there was likely an honour for you," the woodman offered.

"Yes, and I don't doubt," Mr Rock exclaimed, with violence. "The paltry intriguers," he said. "But they didn't tell you, did they, about the other?"

"I don't follow, Mr Rock, sir."

"It's the Academy of Sciences," the sage elaborated, boasting but frantic. "There's an election yesterday or today. If they elect me, I can spend the rest of my time in their Institute, or scientific poor law sanatorium, but I can't take my girl. Otherwise I may have some money, thank you. And then, of course, I can refuse. Would you hesitate in my place?"

"How's that, sir?"

"What's to happen to Miss Elizabeth?" he asked, talking as if to a servant in the days of his youth. "She's sick with her mind, Adams. Anyone can tell it."

"So you'll have the money, sir?"

"What do you think?"

"And good luck to you I say, Mr Rock."

"They'd like to have me out, this lot would, Adams," he said, calmer now. "It wasn't Mr Birt said about me, was it?"

"Why never in the world," the woodman answered. "Likely enough one of the girls only caught a word Miss Baker or Miss Edge let drop."

"Those two won't be sorry when my time comes," Mr Rock announced. "But I'll tell you. So long as she remains single I'll see they let her keep on at my cottage, the State I mean. I've some friends still in high places haven't forgotten the services I rendered. Why, when the State took over from the owner, and founded this Institute to train State Servants, it was even in the Directive that I was to stay in my little place."

"That's right, so you've often said," Adams hastily agreed.

"Well then," Mr Rock muttered, and fell silent.

"There's gratitude," he added after a moment, "Throw him out in the street."

"That's the way things are," Adams agreed, glad to let the matter drop.

"But are you safe, man?" Mr Rock demanded.

"Houses are that short there's no-one safe," Adams replied. Mr Rock was silent, for an entirely fresh idea had struck him. This woodman was a widower, living alone, and his was a five-roomed cottage. This had never occurred to Mr Rock before. Perhaps because he never could remember Mrs Adams was dead. And as long as Elizabeth was alive he would not let her be turned out, not if he had to hang for it.

Then the cry came a third time, much clearer, so that even Mr Rock heard, and the double echo.

"Ma-ree," a girl's voice shrilled, then a moment later the house volleyed back "Ma-ree, Ma-ree," but in so far deeper a note that it might have been a man calling.

"There's one been out on the tiles," George Adams remarked to make a jest, because he was relieved to hear just a girl hollering. But the sage made no comment. He had been struck by a second notion. What he asked himself now was, could Miss Edge and Miss Baker, in order to get him out of the house, have set Birt onto Elizabeth, be in league with the man to break a poor old fellow down by simply driving his sad girl out of her wits? To have her straitjacketed even, muffled in a padded room?

Up at the great house Miss Edge switched on lights in the sanctum to which she had risen in the State Service, hand in hand with Miss Baker. It did not surprise her to find this lady not yet down.

Edge was short and thin. Baker, who hardly cared for early rising, fat and short.

Both, at this time, were also on separate Commissions in London, sitting Wednesdays each week, which necessitated a start that day very much in advance of the usual hour. On such mornings their breakfast was taken in this seventeenth-century, grey-panelled room, under a chandelier, on furniture which included two great desks set side by side, and equal to the authority these two whiteheaded women shared.

The panelling was remarkable in that it boasted a dado designed to continue the black and white tiled floor in perspective, as though to lower the ceiling. But Miss Edge had found marble tiles too cold to her toes, had had the stone covered in parquet blocks, on which were spread State imitation Chinese Kidderminster rugs. As a result, this receding vista of white and black lozenges set from the rugs to four feet up the walls, in precise and radiating perspective, seemed altogether out of place next British dragons in green and yellow; while the gay panelling above, shallow carved, was genuine, the work of a master, giving Cupid over and over in a thousand poses, a shock, a sad surprise in such a room.

In spite of summer and that it was dawn, there was already a log fire alight as Edge moved across to draw one pair of curtains, merely to look at the weather, or to lower a window perhaps, she did not know, but the room influenced her to act on graceful impulse. She took hold on velvet, which had red lilies over a deeper red, and paused, as she gently parted the twin halves, to admire her hands' whiteness against the heavy pile. Delicately, then, she proceeded to reveal window panes, because shutters had not been used the night before, to disclose glass frosted to flat arches by condensation, so that the Sanctum was reflected all dark sapphire blue from electric light at her back because it was not yet morning. She could even see, round her head's inky shade, no other than a swarm of aquamarines, which, pictured on the dark sapphire panes, were each drop of the chandelier that she had lit with the lamps switched on in entering.

She also caught a glimpse of matter whisk across behind, then dart back to hide. She turned. Held her breath, or she might have screamed. And it was, as she had feared, a horrid bat.

She made one dive for the wicker basket and put that on her.

The anonymous letter she had torn into little pieces the night before, now lay like flakes of frost on her white head.

She crouched down in case this new thing could nicker up her skirts. And Miss Baker entered.

"My dear," Baker said, cutting the lamps off at the switch, going across to the window which she opened. A light came through, so grey it was doomed, together with a wisp of mist. The bat flew outside at once. Whereupon Miss Baker turned lamps on again. Edge rose, delicately took off the basket.

"If we could as easily rid ourselves of Rock," she said. Over one eyebrow, caught in a mesh of hair, was a torn piece of paper with, printed on it, the word "FURNICATES".

"You have something on your head," Baker calmly told her. Without a word Edge removed it, reread, and let the word drop from her fingers to spiral to destruction on the flames.

"What's for breakfast?" Baker asked. Edge looked at a wristwatch. "They have five minutes," she said, referring to the ten girl students whose turn it was to do orderly duties, that is to wait on these two Principals. Then she slightly yawned. She began, "Each Wednesday that you and I go up to Town," she said, "the weather we have here, Baker, is exquisite, truly exquisite. There may be black fog outside, just now, this minute, but we shall be cheated, dear. The sun will shine."

"I dread Wednesdays for that reason," Baker untruthfully agreed.

"And the day of the Dance on top of all," Edge mused aloud.

"Oh well," the other said.

"So much still to be done," Edge insisted.

"Least said soonest mended," Baker gave a hint. She moved over to warm her fingers at the blaze.

"If the whole routine is not upset already," Miss Edge complained, fidgetting with tableware. "Till we even have to go hungry up to our labours in London because they are going to Dance." There was no reply.

"And such a day of it altogether, with the tamasha this evening," Edge continued. "Particularly now when at any minute we ought to hear about that dreadful Rock's election."

"Well Edge," Miss Baker objected. "I warned you, you know, last night. Didn't I? Don't lay too much store. It may not eventuate."

"I cannot believe Providence will not provide the key after all that you and I have done," Edge argued. "You know what this means. Why, I have literally set my heart on it. And such a happy way out, dear. To go where he will be properly looked after, and we shan't have to see that granddaughter trail herself around."

"They won't take her, Edge," Miss Baker said. "Whatever happens."

Before Edge could answer, the door was opened by a tall girl with long golden hair, and who had been in tears. She was followed by another student bearing breakfast dishes and the toast.

"Why, Marion, where s Mary?" Edge broke off, for Mary had been so punctual in her attentions that these two ladies had let her wait on them out of turn, in fact almost without a break, so that she was readily missed.

"She's to go to Matron, ma'am."

"What's the matter with the child?"

"It's nothing, ma'am, I think."

"Will you tell Miss Birks from me I shall want to hear when I get back. We cannot have Mary away, can we?"

"What's for breakfast," Baker said again, getting with difficulty off a low footstool over by the fire.

"You have your especial favourite this morning," Miss Edge told her, after she had lifted the silver cover off a dish. "Kedgeree, my dear."

"And scrambled eggs to follow if you will just touch the bell, ma'am," the girl who had been crying said, as, with her companion, she left the room, and the door gently, gently closed.

"Well, if it is scrambled I trust the bacon's crisp," Baker hoped, and spooned her kedgeree onto a plate. Miss Edge, however, did not seem able to settle down. She went over to the curtains, shaping as though to open these once more. But her dread of bats returned, so, lest there should be another nested within the heavy pelmet, she barely disturbed those folds with a forefinger, but peeped at the day as if by stealth.

"We are going to have such a wonderful morning," she announced.

"Come and take breakfast, Edge," Miss Baker said.

"I told you it would be, just the one day in the week we must go to Town. Oh, how really aggravating," Edge went on. "Baker, I wonder if you would mind? But it does seem rather stuffy here, now they've lit our fire. Could I trouble you to help with this window?"

While Baker came to lend a hand without a word, Miss Edge put long fingers up to her hair, as if to ward off another flittering animal about to be let loose. However the two ladies soon had the window open, and Baker went back to her place at table. But Miss Edge could not at once leave the scene spread out afresh. Because, with the coming of light, the mist was rolling back, even below her third Terrace, all the way to her ring of beechwoods planted in line with the crescent of her House; although, off to the left, where beech trees and azaleas came down over water, her Lake still held its still fog folded in a shroud.

"I love this Great Place," she announced.

"You have your breakfast or you'll regret it, Edge."

But Miss Edge would not budge. She was moved. Then she thought she heard something.

"What was that?" she asked. Baker plucked a fishbone from her mouth.

"I thought someone called," Miss Edge explained.

"Shall I ring for our eggs now?" Baker wanted to be told.

"Just as you please," Edge murmured. They did not command sufficient labour to mow the lawns, which, in the dew, over long grass, all down the three descending Terraces, had strings of brilliants garlanded now between the blades and which flashed prism colours at her from the sun, against a background of mist. "I love it," she repeated.

Fresh morning air flowed gently, coolly down from the window. She was about to move away, out of danger, when she was halted.

"There," she exclaimed. "Did you not hear this time?"

"I didn't," Baker said.

"I wonder," Edge murmured, hesitating. But Miss Baker cut her short. She insisted that her colleague must take breakfast, in view of the long day they both had before them. And at last Edge sat down, remarking that she would wait for her dish of egg.

"As I lay in bed last night," she went on, "I was going over the whole Rock imbroglio in my mind. You know, Baker, we are altogether crippled here without a proper furnaceman, while at the same time you and I are agreed that we shall never find a man before we can offer a cottage. And that means none other than this curious creature Rock."

There was a knock. A nervous Marion came in with scrambled eggs. Now that Edge was away on her pet topic she did not think to ask after Mary a second time, although she did break off so as not to speak of Institute affairs before one of the students. The moment the door was closed again, however, Miss Edge continued, still on the perennial subject, "In the summer, when he no longer had his furnaces, the man could cut some of the grass. We might even get a few of the girls to try their hands at making up hay in their free hours to help the farms. In any case he could assist generally about the place, and, if we chose well, I do not doubt we could get some real assistance out of his wife, for the man must be well married. And that house of Rock's was built by the life tenant," which was their way of referring to the private owner of this estate, from whom the State had lifted everything.

"Was actually built to that very purpose. It is a worker's cottage, Baker."

"After you brought this up the other day I had a look at our original Directive," Baker said, deliberately putting some egg on a plate which she laid in front of Miss Edge. "There," she said, "Now eat that up. And it lays down in black and white how, while Mr Rock's still living, he's to enjoy the house which the life tenant put him into. The State recognises a right in view of the past services."

"Ah yes," Edge answered, toying with a fork. "But yesterday I fetched through that Directive for myself, and there is precisely nothing in it about the granddaughter."

"Elizabeth Rock? She's in the Service," Baker objected. "She's on sick leave after a breakdown through overwork. You can't mean that a man's own granddaughter mustn't come home when she's ill." Edge sipped at her tea.

"It's Sebastian Birt," she said, in what was now a dangerous mood, over the edge of a cup, "the precious economics tutor. What doubtless goes on between those two can be a menace, dear, to our girls."

"Yes," Baker said, "that's as may be. But we're back to where we started ten years ago when we first came, Edge. The moment we're not allowed to choose our own staff, as under the present system we never can, we're in a dilemma over men like Mr Birt."

"But are you content? After all, there are ways and means?"

"Edge," Baker replied, "you are simply not to allow this to serve as a pretext to eat absolutely nothing when we have a long day before us. Do take your food now. The car will be round in half an hour. The last time we discussed the matter, and you went into methods to get rid of Sebastian, you had to agree with me that it would be difficult, while I considered it might be downright dangerous. Now you bring the whole thing back to the granddaughter. If you want to know what I think, then I'll tell you. First, if we do get rid of him they'll send us someone who may be worse and, second, I have a feeling we could burn our fingers over Master Birt."

"But it does so aggravate one, Baker; there is the cottage sitting up begging at me and I have set my heart on it."

"Well, Mr Rock won't live for ever, will he?" Baker asked, while she took a great bite off her toast heaped with marmalade and butter.

"I want action," Edge demanded.

"I don't know how you're going to get it, then," Miss Baker said. "And there's this about Sebastian. There's never come even a hint of trouble, the five years he's been here, between him and one of our girls."

"I am eating my heart out for that cottage, Baker."

"And all the while your stomach's crying aloud for sustenance. Look. I shall see Pensilby of the Secretariat of New Buildings at my Commission today, and I'll ask him if his Department would support a licence for an entirely new cottage."

"But new building does not come under that Ministry," Edge elegantly wailed.

Miss Baker then explained the acute approach to the official which had suggested itself.

"I see," Edge exclaimed. "My dear, you are splendid," she said, which was praise indeed. But she was not the sort to let anyone rest for any length of time on such a note. She had been looking at the other curtains, and now she rose from her place to walk daintily across. She paused an instant, then, courage in both hands, she swept these back as dramatically as the scene disclosed shone on her now smiling eyes. Because, except for what still hung over the water, the mist was evaporating fast, the first beech trees away to the right were quite freed, her Park itself was brilliantly clear, the sun up, a lovely day had opened and, as she watched, a cloud of starlings rose from the nearest of her Woods, they ascended in a spiral up into blue sky; a thousand dots revolving on a wave, the shape of a vast black seashell pointed to the morning; and she was about to exclaim in delight when, throughout the dormitories upstairs, with a sound of bees in this distant Sanctum, buzzers called her girls to rise so that two hundred and eighty nine turned over to that sound, stretched and yawned, opened blue eyes on their white sheets to this new day which would stretch on, clinging to its light, until at length, when night should fall at last, would be time for the violins and the dance.

But Edge had caught sight of two specks. She looked again. Two men had come out from under her Trees. One was carrying a yoke with buckets, so she knew him. She cried out, in shocked vexation, "Rock flaunts himself."

"What?" Baker demanded, jolted by the tone used into looking sharply from her plate.

"Why cannot the man take the back way?" Edge asked in a calmer voice. "Must he trail across our beautiful front, even with his swill?"

"He's rather a favourite outside this room, you know," Miss Baker said, to moderate her colleague.

"Tomorrow I shall speak about it."

"Well, I shouldn't give a hint in the kitchen, Edge."

"Stumbling over our grass," Edge protested, when there was a knock. "Come in," she invited, triumphant suddenly. The girl Marion entered. She stood just inside the door.

"Ma'am," she said, and swallowed.

"Yes, Marion?"

"Ma'am," she said, once more swallowing.

"Well?"

"It's Mary and Merode," and the child brought out everything, which was little enough, in a rush.

"They're not there, and the beds not slept in."

Half an hour later, punctual to the minute, Baker left with Edge in the car for Town. They had a number of reasons why they should carry on as though nothing had occurred. What they had decided was, that the police must be casually informed, yet be instructed, at the same time, not to make a search.

Meanwhile Miss Marchbanks could question other girls in the dormitory.

There was no point in losing one's head. The Dance must go on of course.

Mary was such a steady girl, in fact they would not even consider it (although Merode had no parents), Edge had said speaking for Miss Baker, and that it was all a mistake, as they would find when, after their hard day, they themselves returned. In any case, the two girls must be together, which made for safety. Baker had not been so sure.

But, as Edge pointed out, if they were to draw attention by staying down here to miss their Wednesday Commissions, they would look, when everything was cleared up by luncheon, as it would surely be, like nothing so much as old fools, or worse, yes, like a couple of old fools.

So they went. And two thirds of the students knew nothing whatever, at first, about the disappearance of these children.

Mr Rock left his yoke. When he came in alone by the outside kitchen door, he could just see Maggie Blain seated, in charge, at her kitchen table and beyond her, barely a part of one of the cookers. This was by reason of a great shaft of early sunlight which, as it entered one of the windows, shone so loud already that it bisected the kitchen, to show him air on the rise in its dust, like soda-water through transparent milk. It hid the line of girls beyond, fetching their own breakfasts at the other cooker. They were no more to him than light blue shadows, and their low voices, to his deafness, just a female murmuring, a susurration of feathers.

"The swill man," he called in a high cracked voice, bringing out the joke he had plied for ten years; anxious about his breakfast, because that depended upon Mrs Blain's present health and temper.

He felt it would be all right because she said, "Marion, a cup of tea for Mr Rock."

The girl and the old man came together over this, in the megaphone of light. When he was seated she whispered at him, "You didn't catch sight of Mary and Merode?"

He could not hear.

"You'll have to speak up, my dear," he said, "if you want me to understand."

"As you came along?" she said louder, at a loss.

"There'll be time and to spare for secrets when the music's playin'," Maggie Blain told her. "Will you come along tonight?" she enquired of Mr Rock. He decided that she sounded hospitable.

"I'm past it," he said.

"Might do you good," she said grimly. He did not like that tone so well.

"And you?" he asked, then felt faint for lack of food, so that he had to close his eyes behind the winking spectacles.

"Me?" she said. "I'll be so rushed all day with work I shan't seek to be on my toes when the hour strikes." He took this to be a bad sign. And he had only had the cup of tea.

"Oh, you'll come to our dance surely, won't you Mr Rock?" a girl's voice called from the shadows. But he was not even going to consider now that the Principals had not invited him. It was breakfast he was after.

"You shouldn't trouble about me," he said, with the one purpose in view. "This lady here's the one will have to bear the brunt," he said. But it drew no response out of Mrs Blain. So he kept silent for a time. The whispering began once more. If he could have heard, past the glow from that hot tea which flooded his senses, he would have caught these sentiments, "You didn't?"

"I did."

"Oh, but you shouldn't have."

"Why, whatever else was I to do?"

"But they'll turn up, directly."

"Mary and Merode?"

"I know, but all the same."

"There you are, you feel like me, like me, you see." And all the while a line of girls fetched their breakfasts, served themselves, the sleep from which they had just come a rosy moss upon the lips, the heavy tide of dreams on each in a flow of her eighteen summers, and which would ebb now only with their first cup they were fetching, as his tea made his old blood run again, in this morning's second miracle for Mr Rock.

"It'll be a smashing day," the cook said, heavily ironic. And why shouldn't I come along, Mr Rock asked himself in an aside, because I could keep out of sight, and there will be a buffet.

"Not that I'll see much even if it does keep fine," the cook said. While I sit still, Mr Rock argued inside him, I shan't have to worry that I shall come upon Elizabeth and him round every corner, behind every palm; no, of course, there will be no palms. But he was famished.

"A holiday?" he asked out loud because, in that case, there might, at the moment, be less chance of food. Several sang out together in answer.

"Why, this is Founder's Day," they announced. He had forgotten.

"Yes, I expect we spoiled the peace and quiet for you when they stuck us down in this damp den, ten years ago to a week," the cook pronounced.

"Pooled the diet?" he asked, not hearing.

One or two giggles came from the girls as they moved with their trays. But he was well-liked, and respected.

"I shouldn't wonder you thought they'd let you live your life out in peace and quiet," Maggie went on, in a louder voice.

"How's that?" he said, catching it. "Plenty of go about me yet," he bragged.

"Come on, hurry now," Maggie called to the queue. She could not see this because it was beyond the sunlight. "Or I shall never get started," she explained.

"Yes, Mrs Blain," they dutifully answered.

"Heavy on you, too, with your girl sick?" the cook added, condescending.

The old man wondered if she thought Elizabeth was a slavey, but what he jovially said was, "Well, I haven't three hundred of 'em, have I?"

"Oh I don't let those be a bother, my goodness me," the cook replied. "No, all I meant was that a man your age doesn't want to be saddled to fetch and carry for others," she explained.

"I never permit a woman to be a worry," Mr Rock said, with decision.

"I don't suppose," Mrs Blain replied, sparing a glance inside her at the picture she imagined of the late Mrs Rock. "And then your granddaughter will wed and the place'll seem empty," she said, without malice.

"She's not there more often than not," he objected, in the sense that she was always off somewhere to meet Sebastian.

"But then she's not been so well," Maggie Blain agreed to defend Miss Rock, having misunderstood him.

"They overdo things at their age," Mr Rock explained, as though Liz were still a child, with all the time in the world before her for work, love, and marriage.

"Ah, there you are," the cook said.

"I wouldn't have your family, nevertheless," the old man put in. He usually plied the one jest until he won his meal.

"They're good girls," Mrs Blain answered. She was in great ignorance. "Have you got the staff breakfasts up?" she called after the orderlies. At this half promise of food he felt his stomach gush

digestive juices.

"We've taken them, Mrs Blain, and there's one over," Marion insinuated. "Mr Birt's had a night off." Mr Rock waited for the spare to be offered. He waited. Then, to his vague, wondering surprise, beyond the cone of light in which he sat and warmed his cold hollow bones, he gradually felt a tide of female curiosity flow up over him, so strong it was like the smell of a fox that has just slunk by, back of some bushes. He could not understand. If he had only known, this bit of news had been put forward, and some of the girls hung on the answer, to discover whether it was official and above board, the absence of Sebastian Birt under the particular circumstances.

"That's right," Mrs Blain said. "His name's struck off my list," and there was a sort of sigh came from outside the sunlight. The whispering began again. But it had given Mr Rock an uneasiness. Because he was certain Sebastian had been round to the cottage after dark. And now the snake was not even in next morning. Drat Mrs Blain, why couldn't she hurry his breakfast. How right, earlier on, not to carry the tea up to Liz, Mr Rock told himself, the fellow could only have been there all night, and somehow or other these girls knew, which must be one reason they did not propose to give him a bite of anything. He could go hungry now.

"But there's some don't trouble," Mrs Blain said, with so much suggested in her voice that Mr Rock, instantly apprehensive, decided in his own best interests that he would do better to ignore what was on the way, until he knew how grave it was.

"But there's some don't give themselves the trouble," she repeated, directly at him. He realised he would have to respond. He turned to her like a blind man.

"Going off up to London as usual this day of all days," she explained herself.

"Oh, Mrs Blain, it's the date the Commissions sit," said one of the embryo State Servants.

"I tell you I'm right sorry this minute for Miss Marchbanks," the cook continued. "All that goes awry will be laid to her door, and no argument," she ended, in a sort of hush about.

Most of the children were hanging on her words. She was aware, but in ignorance. She sought to improve on this. "God help her, poor woman, if she hasn't the decorations just so in quick time," she said.

The whispers began again.

"Is that the last of breakfast?" she called out, and the old man's heart beat wet in his mouth.

"I should be getting on," he said, to force matters.

"Don't disturb yourself, Mr Rock," the cook told him. "You're one who's never in the light, is he, girls? You'd better get your own now," she gave them leave. And with a sort of chorus of welcome and pleasure because they were hungry too, nine came with their spoons and plates of porridge, and their lovely, sleepy, but rather pimply skins, to sit alongside the famished, sweet old sage. None dared remind Mrs Blain of him. She was a terror for her rights.

"But you are coming tonight, Mrs Blain?" one asked.

"Me?" the cook demanded. "After I've finished the knick knacks for the buffet, which'll take me all day on my stoves?"

"You know you've got the best lot of orderlies on the whole rota to help you," they said.

"I'd never have agreed without," Mrs Blain retorted. "I told Miss Marchbanks. Give me Mary and the girls on her rota, I said, or you'll have a dead woman on your hands."

This statement had a greater effect than she could have expected. There was a sort of gasp round the kitchen, and at least three children, while Mr Rock blindly watched, pushed their porridge plates away. One or two even put what they felt into words.

"I don't think I'll come either, tonight I mean," the youngest said.

"How's that Maisy?" the cook asked. "Are you shy even of a bit of fun at your time of life?"

The girl would not admit it was Mary and Merode she had on her mind, that she feared the worst. But she blushed.

"To cook when the weather's hot turns my stomach," she explained, because Mr Rock's unseeing spectacles were on her. The old man still did not know if he was altogether forsaken, whether, upon this, the dawn of their great day, he was just to get the bare cup of tea.

"Now don't give me that, not at your age," the cook coarsely insinuated.

"Oh Mrs Blain," they all cried out, while Maisy went red.

"Because that's when you can say so," Mrs Blain elaborated with gusto. "Getting your man his Sunday dinner, oh dear, openin' the oven door when you're in that condition, and the hot smell of the roast comes."

"I can smell it now," Mr Rock suggested in great ignorance, and smacked his lips. They all laughed.

"There's expectant fathers' kitchens now," Marion announced, while the old man tried to reconcile himself to the idea that he must go hungry. But the girls tittered, for this that Marion had just put forward was one of Miss Inglefield's more modern jokes in class.

"And I know how my fellow would have said, when he was still alive, if I'd told him that, while my little Enid was on the way," Mrs Blain announced, delighted. "Yet what are you girls thinkin'?" she demanded. "Where's Mr Rock's bit of breakfast, may I ask?"

"Oh Mr Rock," several cried out, got up, and at long last hurried this over.

"It was just. ." Maisy began to excuse herself, with intent to explain how upset she was about Mary and Merode, but the cook would not allow her.

"It was simply you forgot," Mrs Blain interrupted. Mr Rock, who deeply felt his position, begging, as it seemed he had to, for this one meal per diem, next tried not to have it.

"No thank you," he said. "This day I don't fancy. ." and began to get out of his chair.

"Sit you down, don't be awkward," the cook cried. "I can't have my place treated cavalier fashion," she said. "You either eat a good breakfast or you mayn't move out of here in daylight. Then what would your Daisy say without her swill? There's a bit of bran as well, for Ted. You won't have that either if you can't do justice."

"And yourself, Mrs Blain?" he asked, then subsided in his place, mouth watering, glad.

"Me? I mentioned to my girls before you came. I'd rather not refer to that once more," she said with finality. Her stomach was upset. He nodded, old and solemn over the plate, with no idea of what she meant.

He ate.

He was greedy.

They watched in approving silence.

"I can't imagine what you'll think, Mr Rock, to forget you like we did," a girl lied, to cover her tracks.

"I don't," he replied, rather abrupt, but his feelings, at the moment, were directed to his stomach. Some of them feared he had been offended.

So they began to make up to him. They uttered little comforting remarks. He sat silent. With an old man's gluttony he had eaten too fast and he was, one might say, listening to the food settle in a cavernous, wrinkled belly.

"We all feel the same when we're on orderly duties, Mr Rock. We'd really miss you if you didn't drop in of a morning."

"I think Daisy's sweet," Margot said.

"Will you ask me for a dance, Mr Rock?"

"They only played waltzes, too, when you were young, Mr Rock, didn't they?"

"I think they might let us have something else besides," one of them put forward.

"Like a tango," she said. "They still have those in the smaller halls."

"Enough's enough," the sage announced. Several of the girls began to giggle. They were not to know this, but he was referring to his digestion.

"I think it a shame," Mrs Blain brought out, in a warning voice. But the younger ones could not stop, behind hands they had over their mouths.

"I don't know what's so comical, I'm sure," Mrs Blain said in reproof, and then the old man realised from their flushed faces that they were laughing at him.

"I shouldn't pay attention," Mr Rock commented.

"Oh we don't," they answered, still giggling.

"To me," he said. They stopped. "I'm only on sufferance here, you know," he said, with a satisfied bitterness.

"Oh Mr Rock," they cried.

"I think it a shame," Mrs Blain announced, brightly. "Now then," she called out. "Let’s get goin'." And in a moment the old and famous man was left alone at table, altogether blinded by increasing brightness, before an empty plate and a cup that was warm, behind a rumbling stomach, left to dread the journey back with full buckets.

When Sebastian Birt came into the staff breakfast parlour he found he was first. He did not look out on the bright daylight but under the dish cover on a hot plate. He took no scrambled egg.

He poured himself a cup of tea. He was sitting down to this when Miss Winstanley entered. He did not rise. He said to her, in what he imagined to be the manner of a State executive, for he was always in a part, "Well, well," he said, rubbed hands together.

"Morning, Sebastian," she said. "It'll be a lovely day."

"So it is, so it is."

"But I thought you'd got off for the night," she went on, and helped herself at the side table, paying attention to how he acted.

"Couldn't fit it in, unexpectedly detained, these trade delegations from the North," he answered, to keep up the pretence. But he did not look away from his cup. As he was fat, and very short, he seemed a small boy. It was not at this that Miss Winstanley tenderly laughed.

"And is the guv'nor to let you come to the dance tonight?"

"There are, or rather were, two governors," he replied, this time, all at once, in the part of the sort of lecturer he was not. "The Governor of the Bank of England, abolished as such long since, then the governor of the local poor law institution, or poor house, known to each one of you, if not from personal experience, then at least by report, and a factor in our civilization that we have yet to eradicate." He raised his voice in mockery while he watched his cup. "To pull out by the roots," he ended.

"Edge?" Miss Winstanley prompted.

"The functions are so similar," he replied. "They may readily be confused. The best mind can fail to distinguish between Edge and the common or garden workmaster. Where similar functions are operated in dissimilar environments which may yet have factors common to both. ." and here he paused, at a loss perhaps. This gave her time to put over, "I know all that, but are you coming?"

"I should really see my secretary, let me just glance at my book," he replied, in the character of an executive once more. "I cannot be rushed willy nilly into appointments." A silence fell. Then she thought of something.

"Look here," she said, "you put yourself down as not to want breakfast."

"Tchk, tchk," he answered, still the State manager. "What has my girl been about?" For the first time he looked slyly at Miss Winstanley. But she reached for the butter, and did not notice. When he went on, as he did at once, it was with lowered eyes once more.

"They will allow themselves to be pressed. Not in a trouser press, ha, ha, I should hope not indeed. But they will lose their pretty heads over the telephone. When calls really begin coming in, they won't simply lay the receivers down off the hooks to have time to think, they will persist with answers till they get more and more flurried. Then the harm's done, the mistake is made, and I'm landed for an engagement I can't possibly. ."

"But there isn't a breakfast for you, Sebastian," she interrupted.

"I shall decline to take one of theirs, even if pressed," he answered, perhaps in reference to his colleagues who, this holiday morn, must be enjoying a long lie abed. "I know better than to get the wrong side of Mrs Blain," he explained, rather more soberly. Then he went on, back in the part once more.

"I always say, as a matter of fact I insist in the office, that we are all members of a team, helping others to help themselves."

"It's all very well, but there'll be a cup and saucer short, Sebastian."

"Well I can wash mine, can't I?" he demanded, falsetto now. "And my lipstick's lovely. It never comes off."

"You'd better," she said. "I don't use any, as you could tell if you looked."

At this moment, when Sebastian might not have known how to reply, for he was a shy fellow, Dakers, the law tutor, came in.

"Morning all," the man said.

"Hullo Sebastian. I thought we were not to have the honour this forenoon. D'you know I almost fancy it may eventually turn out to be rather a fine day."

"It's like this, Dakers," Winstanley said. "The lad here was detained. Calls on his time have been heavy of late," she explained, with malice. Mr Birt pettishly frowned into his cup at this open allusion to the hours he spent with Elizabeth.

"The guv'nor consulted me last night," Dakers said. He had not missed the implications in Winstanley's last remark. He had a particular sort of loyalty towards the young woman. He wished to warn them both.

"Edge? Consulted you? What on earth about?" Winstanley asked.

"Oh, she wanted me to run through the original Directive from the Ministry, which relates to the cottage held by our fabulous pensioner, Rock," Mr Dakers explained. Seated up to the table, he was now engaged in rather nervously rearranging the knives and forks on each side of a porridge plate.

"And which shelters his granddaughter Elizabeth," Mr Birt added, still with his highest falsetto, but which had an edge to it, a squeal of unease.

"The unremunerated opinion of a lawyer is not worth a rap," Dakers assured them, raising the spoon at last. "But I had to tell her, and, since no-one else is here, I'll pass it on." Then he broke off to put some porridge in his mouth. "I don't think we have a leg to stand on. It's his for life," he said.

"How Machiavellian," Birt exclaimed shrilly. "You mean he can defy each and every one, the guv'nor included? Well, everything's perfect then, isn't it?"

"What I mean, and why I chose this moment, is that she'll cast about her to find some other way out, my dear fellow."

A grey line of milk escaped from a corner of his mouth. He dabbed at it, as though he had cut himself shaving.

They prudently joined together to change the topic, did not refer to it again.

When Mr Rock got back to his cottage from the house he was tired and out of breath, because the swill buckets had been particularly heavy this fine morning. He noticed the postman had called and bent down with a groan to pick some envelopes off the mat. He always paid his small bills in cash with the result that his correspondence, which came to about half a dozen letters every day, was made up of complimentary resolutions passed by various scientific societies, letters from students, or maniacs and so on; at least that is what Mr Rock believed, because, for some years now, this distinguished man had not opened a single one of the communications he received. Instead he always put them unexamined into a travelling trunk which was on the floor just inside the living room, and which he used for nothing else. He sat down on it today, looked at each envelope back and front because he expected to hear the result of the election. But there was no trace of an O.M.S. (On Majesty's Service; they had left out the His, long since, as being unworthy of the times). On the other hand there was a private letter which might be from young Hargreaves. But then, Mr Rock asked himself, what point could there be in finding out, it would not advantage him in what he termed his battle for the place, the roof here; and wouldn't it rather weaken his resolve if he knew which way the election went? After all, his attitude was sound. More than that, it was straightforward, which could not be said of the cruel posturing taken up by those two Babylonian harlots, Baker and Edge up there, who schemed day and night, never actually to come out in the open because they knew very well they would never venture, but who, with a tireless industry, neglected their trivial duties to machinate against him, to play with his girl's reason even, and who fell so low as to work on her sentiments with truly Byzantine malice by the use of a tutor they had no wish to retain, or other pretext to expel, the lout.

No, it would be folly on his part to break the rule of years, to open his correspondence just to satisfy a moment's panic. What he had done for the country was his monument, no-one could steal that, even if they voted him tomorrow into the hunt kennels for broken down scientists. Because he wasn't going on a chain. Because he'd take the money instead, or refuse it. Besides he injured no-one in the blameless life he led here. And an individual still had some rights under the State. And if he opened this letter now, learned whether or no he had been elected, he could tell the turn their conversation would take when he met Miss Edge at the dance tonight. By the way, was he going?

Well, Mr Rock, she'd say, and am I to congratulate you, or some such phrase, the smarming harpy, after which, if he knew he had been elected, he would have to smirk thank you, yes, they've put me in, I'm delivered over to their charity now all right. Or, on the other hand, if they had not elected him, was he to eat humble pie, tell her that young men whose work he despised had not thought him worth the candle, after all he'd done. Never, he told himself, never, he'd take the money, and then found he was actually opening the letter he had assumed to be from young Hargreaves, and which wasn't from the man after all.

"Dear Sir," it read.

"Although I have not the honour of your acquaintance, yet due to the pride of place which science occupies in the State, thereby she can work for the good of all, I write to enquire. ." and the old man, who was breathing easier for his rest, thrust the thing back into its envelope, got off the trunk, opened this, and put the day's post onto a mass of other unopened letters. Muttering, he stumped off to his outhouse to boil the swill. He found he had no paper with which to light a fire, came back, raised the lid, took a fistful of letters at random, and used these. He employed the daily newspaper, which he never read, only in the outside lavatory.

The fire was lit when he half heard a remark behind. He turned round, saw his granddaughter, Liz. She was a distracted looking woman and wore his winter overcoat over red cotton pyjamas, with rubber boots.

"Morning Gapa," she said, as always to him, in an exaggeratedly loud voice, "I think, you know, it's going to be a lovely day."

"There you are, dear," he replied, and his sour old face cracked into a grave smile. "Did you sleep all right?"

"Took me rather a long time to sink off and then it was so tiresome, you know how things are, I awoke, I don't know what time it was, oh about four in the morning, and couldn't drop off again."

"Hadn't you better go back to bed then, dear," he said. "I would if I were you. And I'll bring you up a bite, directly I've done Daisy's swill."

"Oh but I had to come down at once, soon as ever I heard the postman, I mean I'm so excited for you, Gapa dear, today of all days this must mean such a great deal. ." and, as so often, her mind fell away in a wail while she looked at him out of big empty eyes.

"Now what are you getting at?" he enquired, like she were a child. His tone was good-humoured, although he knew very well what she had tried to express.

"Well, it's the dawn of the day after, isn't it?" she said. "When they had their meeting? I thought, that's to say I expected, well, I do think Mr Hargreaves might have written, just to tell, I mean. I'm so keen about this for you, there, of course."

"Why, so it is, I hadn't given a thought," he lied, and turned his back to stir what was in the pot.

"You mean to say you've put your letters away like you always do, this morning out of all, because it's important, you see, they might have had to write specially and you ought to answer. Oh Gapa," she ended. "Don't you understand?"

"Liz dear," he said, "there's little enough to upset anyone. They know me better than to write. And whatever the thing is won't make any difference. I've told you. Surely you remember?"

"You stand there and say that after all I poured out to you last night, what you want to tell me is that not a word, I mean absolutely water off a pig's back, no difference at all, that you didn't even listen yesterday? Oh, you can be stubborn."

"Now Liz," he said. Tears came into his eyes, but she could not see because he stood averted.

"Look," the woman said, and meant it so much that she actually managed a connected sentence. "Would you allow me to get this morning's post out of your box?"

"You'd not find much, dear," he said. "I used them to light the fire."

"That's that, then," she said, not displeased. She liked decisions postponed.

"I should run along, dear, and have your rest out," he said, disappointed.

Liz did not move.

"About tonight," she said. If he had watched, he would have seen an expression of satisfied guile pass across her face. "What are you, I mean, had you thought, will you go?"

"In the circumstances, yes, I think we'd better."

"What circumstances?" she asked sharply, for it would be too absurd if he imagined he must chaperon her with Sebastian.

"Why nothing," he said. "Only they might be curious, just now, if we did not put in an appearance. Though I'm too old for that sort of idiot jollification," he said.

"Oh, Gapa I am glad, that's splendid, because I was so keen, you see I'm so proud, proud to… you know, and I was afraid. ."

"We're only on sufferance here, you understand," he pointed out, glad to ignore her genuine enthusiasm. He was aware of her desire to show him off, and, if he had remembered this in time, it might easily have prevented him coming to the dance.

"Dear Gapa," she said. "If you could only understand, I do so wish you'd realise why there's no-one, there couldn't be, and here of all places, why they'd never dare, what, after all you've done, oh it's too absurd?"

He did not reply.

"Did you see Sebastian already?" she asked.

"No. He had the night off," he replied, as though to keep up a polite fiction.

"He didn't," Liz said. It was noticeable when she spoke of this young man, and even more so when in his presence, that she was fairly collected in her talk. "He slept over there, after all. He thought it would look strange to be away, you see, well not there, the day of the dance."

Mr Rock's jealousy and disbelief choked him before he could answer.

"He said he'd come over early," she explained.

"You get back into the house, then," he told Liz, all the more certain she had only come out to leave the way free for Master Birt to get off. "I'll see if I can't fetch you breakfast presently."

"But how about, I mean you've been up all this time, have you had some, oh, now Gapa, you can really try one so, what about you?"

"I'm all right. It's never hurt me to do without," he said, his self pity allowing him to forget what Mrs Blain had provided. "But you've been ill," he generously added, and felt tired.

"Hullo," she then exclaimed, in such a well known accent of pure gaiety that Mr Rock knew, before he could turn round. It was Sebastian Birt, in a neat brown suit.

"Hullo Sebastian," he said.

"And the light of their camp fires went out to meet the dawn," this young man announced, pretending to quote Herodotus, in a reference to the fire under the copper in which Daisy's swill was being cooked.

"You're up then," Mr Rock said, looked shortsightedly to see whether Sebastian was shaved and, when he found that the young man had done so, having to admit to himself, with a gloating reluctance, that the prating idler could not have spent the night in her bed unless, as was just possible, he had been slippy enough to bring his razor or depilatory with him. The worthless fellow would have had to do it on cold water though, which was very unusual in such a quarter, Mr Rock thought.

Meanwhile Elizabeth Rock, who had realised how unattractive she must look in her state of undress, was off back to the cottage.

"Wait for me, now," she called, "I won't be a moment, really." And Sebastian, who did not answer, just stood there in a daze at the chance which bound him to these two strange people by the love he had for the granddaughter, the love, he thought, of his life.

"Well?" Mr Rock enquired, not for lack of more he might have said. Sebastian brought himself out of himself with a jerk.

"They've mislaid one of their girls," he mentioned as casual as could be, speaking in his own voice, as he almost always did to the old man.

"Who have?"

"Miss Edge and Mistress Baker," Sebastian replied, about to break into eighteenth-century speech, but he checked himself. "In fact they're looking everywhere for a couple, a brace," he added.

"Bless my soul," Mr Rock commented, his eye on the swill. The news did not at once disturb him.

"And they've left Ma Marchbanks to hold the baby."

"How's that?"

"They've gone up to Town as per usual. Our misguided rulers have put both on separate Commissions which sit Wednesdays. Of course, they can't miss those."

"Good," Mr Rock said.

Sebastian barked a laugh. "What in general is good about it, sir?" he asked. "There's hell to pay up at the house."

"I always feel easier when those two State parrots are safe off the premises," Mr Rock said. "I don't know what they put in the food now, but these last few weeks I can't seem able to boil your swill."

"Preservative," Sebastian promptly replied. "For what we are about to receive may it be ever fresh," he misquoted in his falsetto, then immediately controlled himself. "Tell me, does she do well

on it, sir?" he enquired with deference, as though Mr Rock might suppose the question to be sarcastic.

"So long as I'm allowed to keep the animal," Mr Rock nervously answered, "and I think I've a reasonable prospect. But if I were a younger man there's one thing I'd do." And he looked with savagery at Birt. He was in earnest. "I'd have a shot at this filth of a swine fever," he said. "Next to the system we live under each one of us nowadays, it's the curse of our time," he ended, stirring the swill once more.

There was a silence.

"You haven't seen Merode and Mary, then?" the younger man asked. He was anxious again.

"Me? No. Why should I?"

"They're the pair of students we can't find."

"So you said," Mr Rock admitted, horrified.

There was another silence.

"It's going to be a magnificent day," Sebastian suggested.

"When you get to my age you'll appreciate it."

"You mean the weather?" Sebastian asked, respectfully.

"Did you say 'end of her tether,'" Mr Rock demanded in a wild voice, thinking of Mary and turned to face the younger man who explained, "I spoke indistinctly again. No, I mentioned the weather."

"Oh I see," Mr Rock commented. "It's my ears," he said.

At this moment the swill began to boil with mustard bursting bubbles and, as a result, a stench rose from the copper harsh enough to turn the proudest stomach. Birt would have gone off at once but did not like to leave at a moment of awkwardness and incomprehension. Because, also, of his love for Elizabeth, he did not wish to antagonise the old man, so put up with the smell. Besides, he had promised to wait.

"At last," Mr Rock said, and came to Sebastian's rescue by moving away on his own. "Have you had breakfast?"

"Oh yes, thanks all the same, I had mine up at the Institute," Birt lied, so as not to saddle the sage with the need to prepare an extra portion. For his part Mr Rock showed no sign of what he felt as, with simplicity, he waited by the kitchen entrance for Sebastian to pass first. Even in this room Sebastian imagined he could taste the stink of swill. But just then Elizabeth entered, and the young man forgot in anxiously watching to find how she might be. Much could, as a rule, be told from the clothes she wore, from her manner when she set out.

"What's it to be?" Mr Rock asked, as he took a saucepan off a nail.

"Why Gapa," she said, eyes smiling upon Sebastian. "How sweet you are to us, but you mustn't bother, not on a day like this. I couldn't now," she said.

"Sebastian, you talk to her," Mr Rock suggested. The young man looked gravely at him.

"Don't think there's anything I can do, sir," he said with a sort of adolescent's smiling courtesy, out of place in a beak.

"Now Elizabeth. ." Mr Rock began at once, but she interrupted.

"No," she said. "It's no use, I won't listen, either of you. Come on Seb, the weather's too good to waste inside." She took his hand, led him out. "Don't you ever smell anything besides your pretty students?" she asked in a low voice. "I believe you don't, and that's what makes you lucky," she said, as they turned into the ride by which Mr Rock had gained the big house earlier. It was noticeable how, when with her love, she no longer hesitated with her spoken feelings. "Darling, you're the luckiest man," she said, and sniffed fresh air.

"You're looking so much better," he told Elizabeth as they dawdled up the ride, holding hands. She was not tall like Winstanley, yet came head and shoulders above him.

"Oh Seb, I don't know that you'll ever forgive me; all my stupid hesitations," she said.

The sun, which was not high yet, came aslant between trees with a smoky light, much as it had through Mrs Blain's great window, and struck their blue shadows sideways.

"Most of it's my fault, I do know that." He spoke sincerely.

"Why no," she murmured back. "You're perfect."

"If we hadn't met," he said, "you’d never've had your breakdown, would you?"

"I might. You can't tell. Now I've had one, I know," she said. "Actually, I believe you saved me, my reason I mean."

"Oh Liz, it was hardly as bad, come now."

"That's how it felt," she answered. "And I've been such a fool all this time not realising my own mind."

He did not dare ask whether he was to understand she had at last decided what she wanted of him. His experience with her had taught Birt that she took refuge in a vast quagmire of vagueness when at all pressed. So, heart beating, because it was genuinely important how she would put it, he waited.

"Sometimes I wonder if you'll ever forgive," she began again. "Oh I can't imagine why you picked me out," she said. "I get frightened sometimes you won't ever see me the way I really am. But one thing I'm sure now. I worried so at the start. D'you think I'd better tell? Well, I will. It was about Gapa. He's very famous. You see, I thought it might all be because of him."

He again felt he must at all costs make her right.

"What d'you mean?" he asked patiently.

"When you first showed an interest," she said. "Last Christmas. The time you began coming across the park to see us. Oh, for quite a long while I was sure you only did it to be by Gapa."

"Did you?" he said, indulgently.

She bridled, rather, at his tone. "Well, if you do want to understand I'm not so entirely certain even now, sometimes," she said.

"You're jealous," he said, trying to make it into a joke.

"Of my own grandfather?" she asked, and laughed. "No, but I might be if he had a great granddaughter. That would be different, right enough."

"Liz, don't be absurd."

"Oh but I'm so much older'n you."

"Liz darling, we've been into this before."

"A whole eight years, Seb. It's not fair. When you're forty I'll have a Gapa head. Think of that."

"I have," he said, and sighed.

"There you are you see, you sigh, which is just what I mean," she pointed out. "And, if you're like you are now, what will it be when our time really comes. Isn't it extraordinary? One starts out light as a feather, then everything gets difficult." Her voice was despairing.

"If you care to know, I can't abide him."

"Who?" she asked, for, in her distress, she had lost track of the conversation.

"Your grandfather."

"Don't be so ridiculous," she said in a most friendly way. "You know you dote on Gapa."

"What makes you say?"

"Why, it's in everything you do when you're together. Even if you're both just chatting, hard at it, your own voice drops you respect him so much and, poor dear, he's got to such a state of deafness he doesn't catch what's said."

"Do I?" he asked, guardedly.

"No-one has any idea of how they are," she explained. "And he adores you."

"Are you sure?" the young man enquired, not at all convinced.

"There you go, you see. The moment I tell, I can judge from your voice you're delighted. Oh darling, am I being very difficult, again?"

"Of course not, Liz, but I would like to get this untangled."

"Sometimes I can't imagine how you put up with me," she said, putting his arm in hers to press it to her side. "And who am I to be jealous of my own dear, dear Gapa if he is, even in part, the reason why you come over so often? Because I've a lot more to be grateful to him about then, haven't I? Oh when I'm well again I shall make things up to him, you've no notion how much, and should everything go right, when I come through this, I'll make it up to you too, my darling, even if it takes me the rest of my life, and all my breath."

He kissed her as they walked on. "Don't take this so hard, Liz," he said.

"You're such a brute," she said tenderly.

"What's this?" he asked.

"To make me love you like I do," she said.

"That's my whole point," he took her up. "We can't help ourselves, can we? Things happen. When two people fall in love it's not their fault, surely? They can't help it."

"It must be the fault of one of them."

"How can you say that, dear?"

"When the girl is so much older, then she's to blame."

"You know I'm a fatalist," he said with an effort. "I don't know any serious economist who isn't. It's an occupational risk with economists." He used a sort of bantering tone with which to speak of his profession. The trick he had with a conversation whereby he would bring it to what he considered to be the level of the person he addressed, was more highly developed when with Elizabeth than it was when he spoke to Mr Rock; in other company, it was the impulse which led him to do his imitations. She was aware of this. She did not approve.

"You say that just for me," she told him.

"I don’t. Why should I?"

"But you can't pretend about us, and that we know each other, was just luck," she complained. "With all we might mean," she added. "You cheapen it."

"Well to go on as we do is cheap," he said, apologetically.

"Oh you'll never forgive once all this is over, I know you won't," she cried out, then stopped so as to face him. He turned away in distress. "Well?" she said. "You see, you can't even look. My darling, I'm so beastly." But she stood on there, and did not kiss him. Misery paralysed her.

"I'm so worried for you," he said at last, bringing out the truth.

"Because you're an economist, or why? Because you think if it wasn't me then it might just as well be another girl?"

"Now Liz," he said. "There was nothing further from my mind."

"What in particular are you worried about, then?"

"About your grandfather and you," he said, weakly.

"Why, what d'you mean," she demanded. "He's everything, I worship the very ground he treads. He works his poor old fingers to the bone for me. Without him I don't think I could go on." She, in her turn, swung round to show her back to Sebastian.

"Look," he said, "please be sensible," and his voice grated. "I can't imagine what you suppose I'm trying to make out. It's Miss Edge and Miss Baker's the trouble."

"Oh?" she asked, faced the man once more, with an expression of great vagueness.

"You're both of you a brace of innocents where those two women are concerned."

"My dear," she said. "You don't know Gapa very well if you think it. He's a match for two old spinsters!"

"He's not of this world, Liz," Sebastian objected.

"He's forgotten more of her twists and turns than you'll ever learn," she said. "There."

"I know, but so rash."

"Careful Seb, you can go too far, you know."

"I'm worried about this election. You understand what he is. He'll refuse what they offer, he'll simply disdain the whole thing."

"After what he's done for everyone in this country, I'd say he had a right to do as he liked," she announced, for her own purposes ignoring the fact that she had pressed her grandfather to a certain course only the night before.

"And I insist you can't, my dear girl. No-one can, these days."

"Don't be so absurd."

"But it's the State, Liz," he said. "What the old man will do is to wait till he's elected, then he'll refuse whatever they offer. And offend the powers that be very seriously. You know how he never even opens his correspondence."

"Oh but he does over important things," she lied, to reassure herself. "Besides they would never dare, with men like Mr Hargreaves in the inner circles to protect the three of us."

"It's his age, Liz. Any man as old stretches back to the bad times. He's suspect just because of the years he's lived. They won't like it."

"Then they'll have to swallow their silliness," she said. "Why, he's famous, he's one of the ornaments of the State."

"Look," he explained. "In the class of work your grandfather did they're just lyric poets. After twenty-five they're burned right out. He made his proof of his great theory when he was twenty-one. And he's seventy-six now."

"All the more wonderful then, isn't he?"

"Yes, but don't you realise his idea is poison to the younger men, who think they've exploded it?"

"That's only jealousy."

"I still maintain it would be very dangerous for him to go on as if everything was just plain sailing."

"Oh, if you're going to lose your nerve now, my dear, what on earth, I mean can you imagine, of all the beastly things to happen… oh what will become of you and me?"

"There," he said, genuinely disturbed, "I've upset you and that was the last I intended, the very last," he added. But she was not done yet.

"And what's all this to do with Miss Baker and Miss Edge?" she demanded, recollecting the way he had opened the conversation. She caught him out. He could not even remember how he had brought these ladies in. So he kissed her.

Miss Marchbanks, with Mr Rock's Persian on her lap, sat waiting in the sanctum for one of the senior students, Moira. Extremely shortsighted, she had taken off her spectacles and put these on Miss Edge's desk as though, in the crisis, at a time when she had been left in charge, she wished to look inwards, to draw on hid reserves, and thus to meet the drain on her resolution which this absence of the two girls had opened like an ulcer high under the ribs, where it fluttered, a blood stained dove with tearing claws.

So that when Moira entered, and did not shut the door but stood leant against it, half in, half out of the room, dressed in a pink overall (this colour being her badge of responsibility over others), her bare legs a gold haze to Miss Marchbanks' weak eyes, her figure, as the older woman thought, a rounded mass softly merged into the exaggeration of a grown woman's, her neck and face the colour of ripening apricots from sun with strong eyes that were an alive blue, shapeless to Miss Marchbanks' dull poached eggs of vision, but a child so alive, at some trick of summer light outside, that the older woman marvelled again how it could ever be that the State should send these girls, who were really women, to be treated like children; she marvelled as Moira stood respectfully flaunting maturity, even her short, curly hair strong about the face with the youth of her body, that the State (which had just raised the age of consent by two whole years) should lay down how this woman was to be treated as unfunctional, like a child that could scarcely blow its own nose.

"About the decorations, Moira," she began, dismissing certain uncertainties with a sigh, only to find she was unsure even of what she was about to say. "A thought came to me," she said, then forced herself on, "a thought for the alcove. Fir trees, Moira," she improvised. "And you know all that salt they delivered by mistake, well we could lay that for snow on the branches. It's what they used to do in films. So cool for dancing. Because it will be hot today, I think."

"That would be lovely," the girl agreed with a low, lazy voice, the opposite to her looks.

"Then you do think so, Moira?"

"Oh, I wish you had the arrangements for everything, Miss Marchbanks. Only Miss Edge said it must be rhododendrons and azaleas. She wants huge swags, she said. What are swags, Miss Marchbanks?"

"Great masses, child." Marchbanks for some reason began to feel reassured. "Loot, you see," she went on. "Well, that's that then. So you'd better take forty seniors to make a start."

"We have. And we won't cut the flowers, ever, not where they can see."

"It was just a thought," the older woman said. "Fir trees and waltzes. The snow for all of your white frocks as you go round.

Rather a pity, don't you think? But come in or out child, do. Don't stand there neither one thing nor the other." The girl laughed comfortably.

"You sent for me," she said.

"We're so busy. We've been started ages. But please come and look, oh please. We want your advice particularly." At this she shut the door, came up to the desk. They're incalculable, Marchbanks told herself. And up to yesterday I was so confident I knew their ways. Then her heart missed a beat as she wondered whether the child could be hinting.

"It's the fireplace," Moira said. "Very big." She stood close and absolutely still, to give the older woman, whose body age had withered, a full, wonderful, firm round smile.

"Well, we don't want to root up a whole rhododendron bush, and put that in," the woman gently said.

Then the girl leaned right over, stroked that white cat. She smelled warm to the older lady.

"Why it's Alice, Mr Rock's," she said.

"Every morning," Marchbanks agreed. "Every single day You couldn't do without, could you?" she said to the puss, which Moira could now at last hear purr, which she could tell was in a cat's swoon.

"Isn't it awful," the girl casually said.

"What d'you mean, dear?"

"Why, about Mary and Merode."

Marchbanks swallowed a gulp of the morning.

"Now don't be so silly," she said, in a bright voice. "But I do wish you'd each of you come to see me before you decide on some of your little foolishnesses." She looked in a dazzled way at the large, brilliant, smooth face bent over the cat. She began to drum the fingers of her left hand on Edge's table.

"What mightn't Alice be able to tell?" the child remarked.

"Now Moira, you know as well as I, they've simply gone off somewhere and the car's broken down most probably," Marchbanks said. "Besides we rely on you senior girls, you realise, before the bird is flown, so to speak, you know."

The younger woman did not reply. She went on stroking puss, which had opened huge blue eyes.

"Of course Miss Edge will be very cross with them when they get back properly ashamed of themselves," Marchbanks continued. "But I'll have a word with Miss Baker first. Why child, you don't know anything, do you?" she asked, with an uneasiness as shrill as Sebastian's in her voice.

"Oh Miss Marchbanks, we always tell you all," the girl replied.

"Then what did you mean about Mr Rock's cat?" the older woman said, and put on her spectacles.

"She might have seen them when she was coming over," Moira explained. Now that she could watch the girl in detail Miss Marchbanks no longer approved, and was even half irritated with the creature's blankness. You could admire children when you were not in a position properly to focus them, she thought, because, soon as you had your glasses on, they were merely fat, or null, unless of course they were babies.

"You've a smut on your nose, child," she said.

"Oh have I? Thank you," the girl said, rubbing with a hand.

"Well I must get along at once or we'll never get finished," she excused herself. "I know they'll be disappointed over the fir trees," she said, and backed away with a look of complicity about her nose. "It would have been too lovely. But some people, I mean. . well. . you know," she finished on an adorable smile of pure respect, then was gone.

There was a knock at the door. Upon being bidden to do so, Winstanley entered.

"Why come in, my dear, sit down," Miss Marchbanks said, and took the spectacles off again.

"I wouldn't have bothered you, ma'am, today of all days, but I wanted to know if there was any sort of help at all I could give."

"My dear," Marchbanks said. "And less of this ma'am to me. I hold the position only for twelve hours, if I last those," she said. "No, I've just had Moira along, to find whether I could arrive at anything."

"Why Moira particularly?"

"It was just a thought. Such a pretty child."

"I suppose I mustn't ask, but. .?"

"Not a word," this lady answered. "We're as we were except that I'm very kindly left in charge, and no-one's to know lest it gets out. But I'm to use my discretion continuously, thank you."

"I wouldn't put up with it, "Winstanley said.

How can the lovesick make such sweeping statements, March-banks wondered.

"Especially with the Inspector of Police," she went on without a sign of what she thought. "He's to come over because I'm not to tell him on the telephone. 'We must be discreet'," she quoted with irony. "I mustn't say to his face."

"But I know both girls well," Winstanley protested. "I can't imagine…"

"My dear," Marchbanks said, "what do either of us know?"

"Yes, quite. But. ."

"My dear," Marchbanks interrupted a second time, "you're well out of this."

"You don't mean. ."

"What I suggested was they should have fir trees in the alcove for the ball," Miss Marchbanks said, and put the spectacles on again. Her tired eyes were sharpened by lenses to a very light brown. Winstanley scanned anxiously for a hint of the inner meaning, but without result. "Adams is round here now," the older woman continued, "and it wouldn't have taken him a whole morning to saw half a dozen over in the new plantation. But, so it seems, we are to continue with our traditional decorations," she ended, with a gesture of dismissal. "My dear, thanks all the same," she said.

"Oh I know what I meant to ask," Winstanley said, as she gave in, and went to the door. "Some of us, the staff naturally, thought we might have a swim in the lake this afternoon since it's a holiday. You'd have no objection? We'd keep to the end away from the weeds, of course."

You think Sebastian will like you in your bathing dress? was what Marchbanks did not ask.

"I shouldn't, not just today," she said with a look of resignation that silenced the agitated query with which Winstanley was about to take her up. The older woman sighed once the door was closed, and she was alone again. Who could say what might be in that water?

"Adams," she began, when in his turn the man entered. He interrupted her at once. While attending outside for the day's orders, Mr Rock's hints had preyed on his mind. He was beside himself.

"It wouldn't be about my cottage, now would it, ma'am?" he demanded. "There's no question, is there? For I've a nephew over to me directly, with the girl he married in church. Can't find a place of their own anyhow. It's cruel this housing shortage, miss, I mean ma'am."

"Why of course not, Adams. Whoever gave you that impression?"

"You know the ways things are with a place this size. Nothing but rumours and buzzes about your ears the whole day, ma'am. Till a man can't tell what to believe, and that's the truth."

"But I only wanted to ask your advice, Adams."

"How would that be?" he enquired, putting on his dullest expression.

"You've heard of our two silly students? You must have."

"Me? I wouldn't know the first thing, miss."

"Well, there's two of them gone, Adams, absolutely without trace. Of course, only temporarily. But can you imagine such

deceit?"

There was a pause. Adams might, or might not, have been amazed. Then he said, in a voice of doom, "I pity those two lasses."

"Oh, you know, I don't think there's any necessity to be tragic," Miss Marchbanks said. "I'm sure not, indeed. I only wanted to ask if you had noticed anything."

"Me, miss? What should I see of them?"

"Why possibly they may have fallen into the habit of meeting strangers from outside in the grounds, perhaps?"

"There's been none like that, miss, or I'd have reported it, and double quick to be sure."

"I know you should. That's why I was so determined to ask. Then you haven't come across them?"

"I can't tell one of your learners from t'other, miss," Adams said. "I've no call."

"Exactly," Marchbanks agreed, to humour him. "But you haven't noticed anything unusual?"

"If I was in your place," the man replied, "I'd speak over the telephone with the station."

"Yes, I've done so, Adams."

"They can't have passed that way, then. And the coach halt?"

"Of course," she patiently said. "You don't imagine we've been seated idly by," she said, going over in her mind again the guarded, embarrassed enquiries she had made.

"Well, it's got me beat," he said.

"You see, I just wondered if you might have marked down some little detail, all over the woods in your day's work, and trained to be observant."

"I don't know about trained to be observant, miss?"

"Why yes, naturally, in the course of your duties. Foresters always are," she said, to flatter him.

"It's not me you should enquire of," he said, at last. "Some of the creatures will for ever hang around Mr Rock's place, any day of the week you care to name."

"I know," she said to encourage the man. "He has those animals," and remembered the cat on her Jap, the goose, and the pig, all white.

"Well, to my way of thought, Mr Rock's your money, miss, if you'll excuse me now, because if you've nothing special today I should get on with our logs for the firewood."

"There's just one matter, Adams," she said, and ordered fir branches to be brought up, in case room could be found. Then she dismissed him. At the door, however, he turned back. "It's the overstrain, there you are," he announced. "They overtax their strength," he said, and went.

* * *

A great beech had fallen a night or two earlier, in full leaf, lay now with its green leaves turned to pale gold, as though by the sea. It had brought more vast limbs down along with it, so, in the bright morning, at the thickest of the wood, colourless sky was suddenly opened to Elizabeth and Sebastian above a cliff of green. The wreckage beneath standing beeches was lit at this place by a glare of sunlight concerted on flat, dying leaves which hung on to life by what was broken off, the small branches joining those larger that met the arms, which in their turn grew from the fallen column of the beech, all now an expiring gold of faded green. A world through which the young man and his girl had been meandering, in dreaming shade through which sticks of sunlight slanted to spill upon the ground, had at this point been struck to a blaze, and where their way had been dim, on a sea bed past grave trunks, was now this dying, brilliant mass which lay exposed, a hidden world of spiders working on its gold, the webs these made a field of wheels and spokes of wet silver. The sudden sunlight on Elizabeth and Sebastian as, arms about one another's waists, they halted to wonder and surmise, was a load, a great cloak to clothe them, like a depth of warm water that turned the man's brown city outfit to a drowned man's clothes, the sun was so heavy, so encompassing betimes.

"It will be hot," she said, as though stroking him.

"I love you," he said. She pretended to ignore it.

"I wonder what brought her down," she said. She might, from the tone, have had in mind a middle-aged woman he'd seduced.

"Oh Liz, I do love you, and love you," he replied.

"Adams won't like this," she said, and turned with a smile which was for him alone to let him take her, and helped his heart find hers by fastening her mouth on his as though she were an octopus that had lost its arms to the propellers of a tug, and had only its mouth now with which, in a world of the hunted, to hang onto wrecked spars.

"Darling," she said in a satisfied voice, coming up to breathe.

"Help," another girl's voice then distinctly uttered, close to these lovers. Sebastian felt Elizabeth go stiff. Neither of them spoke.

"Help," it came again. Sebastian stepped sharp away from his love.

"A snooper," he said with a little hiss. "A Paul Pry."

"Who is it, oh dear. .?" Elizabeth called out. She had at once put on her vagueness for protection in the circumstances.

"Help," the voice called once more, louder. By this time both had gathered its direction, which was left-handed to the deepest of the stricken beech. Sebastian began to force his way through and, as Elizabeth cried out, "Now do mind, take care, it's your best suit," he had parted a screen of leaves that hung before him bent to the tide, like seaweed in the ocean, and his pale face, washed, shaved, hair cut and brushed, in this sun a bandit, he looked down on a girl stretched out, whom he did not know to be Merode, whose red hair was streaked across a white face and matted by salt tears, who was in pyjamas and had one leg torn to the knee. A knee which, brilliantly polished over bone beneath, shone in this sort of pool she had made for herself in the fallen world of birds, burned there like a piece of tusk burnished by shifting sands, or else a wheel revolving at such speed that it had no edges and was white, thus communicating life to ivory, a heart to the still, and the sensation of a crash to this girl who lay quiet, reposed.

"What are you about? Come off at once," Sebastian said, unaware that he had been shocked into a close parody of Edge upon his recognising Institute pyjamas. As there were three hundred students he could not be blamed if he did not know the girl, although he was at fault in forgetting, as he did until too late, because of the kisses, that there were two young ladies absent or adrift.

"I must ask you to come away off," he repeated, like Miss Edge.

"I can't, I'm hurt," she said. After which she added, as though terrified, "Oh Mr Birt."

"My dear girl, we can't have this," he said, clambering down. And then became confused. Because her soft body, stretched out, was covered only in thin geranium red cotton, it lay with all grace and carelessness, the breasts lightly covered and the long limbs, and he saw, so that it interrupted his breathing, that she had mud on the white of leg below the knee, with enamelled toes in sandals caked with mud. Sun, through the bright leaves, lit all this in violent dots, spotting the cotton with drips as of wet paint, and making small candle lamps of flesh. Then he was reprieved, now that he was so at her side, for she reached behind and brought out some nondescript overcoat which she pushed over her middle. A schoolmaster mind knew she must have put this away at the back before she called. Thus he was saved because she had made him suspicious.

"Can't you walk?" he asked, unkindly.

"Yes," she said.

"What is it, dear?" Miss Rock demanded.

"You're not to worry, I can manage," he shouted back.

"But what will, in heaven's name, what is it?" Elizabeth insisted. "Look," he said, to the girl he still did not know for Merode, and in his natural voice once more. "Hang on to me." He was frowning.

"I can manage, Mr Birt," she said, awkwardly struggled up to turn a drooping back and shrugged herself into the coat.

"But there must be some explanation," he said, in another severe imitation of Miss Edge.

In reply she just walked out of the place she had made for herself, and this when he had laboriously climbed down to her. She was gone. He found a rent in his own trouser leg and scowled. Then went out after.

He came upon Elizabeth who was being her most warm-hearted with the girl.

"Have my comb, sit here, let me button this up," she was saying, Sebastian imagined, so there might, for not a moment longer, be displayed in full sunlight that expanse of skin how like vanilla ice cream where one of her jacket buttons had come undone. So Elizabeth drew the coat about the girl who, from raised arms, snuffling, and with an absent, ceremonious look, combed out the heavy hair a colour of rust over a tide-washed stovepipe on a shore.

"Why, you poor dear, there, that's better," Elizabeth was saying to Merode, "well… I can't think. . but we needn't bother now, shall we? Sib, she must go back with us, it's too far all the way up to the house. We're only a few yards, really, from our little place," she said to the girl. "Then we'll get a cup of hot tea, I mean to put inside you, d'you think you can manage?"

There was no reply.

"You take her on that arm," Elizabeth ordered Sebastian. "Now lean on me, dear, d'you see, that's right, only a step," and in this fashion they started off to Mr Rock's, neither Birt nor Merode speaking so much as one word.

Meantime, some five or six of those who had been sent to collect azalea and rhododendron had wandered through the woods, had stopped here and there, braving wasps and bees and even a hornet to cut out great bundles of bloom and were overlade now, for, even with arms outstretched, the red and white flowers came half up over their faces; the gold azalea nodding next their gold heads, in all this flowering they carried like a prize. Although they were so burdened, they had decided to move on to see Daisy, and had arrived to stand by emerald nettles at the edge of her sty.

She lay, very white, on a froth of straw and dung which fumed to the warm of day. She was on her side and twelve most delicate fat dugs in pink struck out from a trembling belly in a saw toothed frieze. She had violet, malevolent small eyes under pink cornucopia ears. Her corkscrew tail twitched as though its few inches could reach, in a hog's imagination, far enough to plague the brilliant, busy flies on her white, dirt dusted flanks. She was at rest.

"Isn't she sweet?"

"Do look,"

"Oh fancy," they cried out one to another through a frond of flowers held to bursting chests, "There, doze Daisy,"

"Isn't she a beaut."

Mr Rock came out of the cottage with two buckets of boiled swill. His eyes burned behind spectacles at this bevy of girls. And, when she heard his step, Daisy got up with a start and a heave to squeal with anticipation while her audience, crying out in the alarm they affected, backed from the now simmering pen.

But he did not feed his pig at once, because he had not gone three yards before he heard Elizabeth call 'Gapa,' and then there she was, tearing towards him, hair straight out behind, running with her legs extended sideways from the knees. The group round Daisy ceased to exclaim the better to watch the woman old enough to be its mother. And, in watching, they saw emerge down a ride behind Elizabeth the figures of Birt and the girl they knew at once for Merode. This set them off in whispers, as a cloud passes the moon, like birds at long awaited dusk in trees down by the beach.

While Elizabeth explained to her grandfather in a low voice, obviously with difficulty in making it plain, Merode and Sebastian drew near, and the child began to limp. When she was quite close to the others, who had drawn together, one of them cried out, gurgling, "Why what on earth's happened to you, Merode?"

Whereupon Birt knew for the first time who she was, and doubted his wisdom in bringing her to the Rocks. He also knew he must keep Merode away from friends until she had made out her account; because there would be reports to be written to Edge, and beyond, and that lady was certain to say the girl had been given an opportunity to concoct the tale.

"Dear me what a crowd," he suggested to Merode, in Edge's accents. "Don't you think we'd better take you back?"

"My leg hurts so, Mr Birt," she complained.

"You never said," he expostulated shrilly, becoming even more like the Principal. "Where does it pain most? Tell me."

By this time the crowd of students was upon them.

"Why, Merode," they cried, "Merode, just look at you," and "What on earth have you done to get in such a state, Merode?" and they giggled.

Upon which the redhaired girl burst into loud, ugly sobs. She put up hands to cover her face.

Elizabeth hastened back to the group followed by Mr Rock, who had set his buckets on the ground. Daisy set forefoot on top of the timber of the pen, and, at the sight of that dinner laid by, redoubled the squealing, to do which there had to be opened a great pink mouth to make display of golden fangs.

"Now my dear, you mustn't," Elizabeth told the girl, and put thin arms about her. "Really not, you'll be fine. We're looking after you now," she said, with a wild look around.

"Oh isn't it awful?" the child moaned.

"We'd best rush her up to the Institute," Sebastian suggested, in his common or garden voice.

"Whoever heard of such a thing, how could you, and in her state," Elizabeth replied, leading this girl in the opposite direction, towards their mauve and yellow cottage.

"Now all you others hurry back then," Sebastian ordered, Edge once again. "How d'you think the decorations will get done if you stand here?" he demanded. They went off. One or two still giggled. "They didn't say a word, not a word passed between her and that lot, you're my witness," he continued in all seriousness, but in a low voice for Mr Rock, unconsciously imitating now the manner of his colleague Dakers.

"Witless?" the old man asked, and laughed. "They don't go by their wits at that age."

Sebastian was so agitated he could not find it in him to answer.

"You should know, whose work it is to teach the creatures," Mr Rock finished, went back to his buckets. At this moment Sebastian noticed the pig's outcries for the first time. It might just have seen the knife the butcher was about to use. He was disgusted. To get away, he hurried after Elizabeth and the girl, into the cottage.

They took Merode back to the Institute as soon as they thought she was a little recovered, and handed her over to Matron, who sent for Marchbanks.

"Miss Edge and Miss Baker's in London," Miss Birks told the child. "You rest yourself while I fetch a cup of tea," she said. "And dear," she added, "I'd pull myself together if I was you. In their position they have to make reports. There'll be a lot of answers they'll be requiring, to know how you came to find yourself with

that Mr Birt, not to speak of the old prof's granddaughter." Merode opened her wet, red mouth, as though to explain. Then she thought better, and did not say a word.

"Why just look at you," Miss Marchbanks cried out the moment she entered.

The child was a sight indeed, lying in the surgery, on the couch covered in deep blue rubber with great highlights from tall windows, while she looked sideways over this older woman.

At the ends of her arms lying along her, she scratched with dirty thumbnails about the caked skin round the red nails of her third fingers.

"It's shock," Matron said, in a satisfied voice.

There was a silence. The girl did not cry, did not speak, just lay there, cautiously watching.

"Well I can't talk while you're in that state," Marchbanks announced, making up her mind. "Have you had anything to eat, at least?" But there was no answer.

"It's shock," Miss Birks claimed again.

"You'd better have a hot bath first," Marchbanks ordered, "and Matron will get you breakfast. Then we can have a little chat, Merode," she said, giving a sign for Miss Birks to follow so they could speak in the passage.

"I don't want anyone to see the child," Miss Marchbanks instructed, when they could not be overheard. "Not a soul, mind. Poor thing," she said. "It will go hard with her, I'm afraid, out and about the Park at night in those pyjamas."

"But you'd want me to call in Dr Bodle, naturally?" Matron enquired.

Miss Marchbanks pondered this. "You see," she replied, "it's not fair to ask a word in her condition. She must get herself straight, and then she can make an account. Because we don't want anyone to put ideas into her head. You know what girls are once they come together. Besides, there are the Rules. So my instinct is, not even Dr Bodle, though, of course, a doctor's different. Nevertheless, not unless she has a temperature. Yet I leave it quite to your discretion."

"Very well ma'am," Matron said, and obviously found this unfair.

"Don't let her speak until she sees me. I leave that particularly to your judgement," Marchbanks ended as she made off, having regularised everything, as she thought, for the best.

Matron unlocked a door leading to the bath corridor and then shut the girl into a cubicle. "There," she said from outside. "Mind you have it hot."

"Yes, Miss Birks," Merode replied, quickly turning on water so there could be no conversation. For, in her perplexity, she had resolved she would say not a word to anyone, whatever happened. Matron looked into the remaining cubicles to be sure there was no other child could get in touch with Merode, then left, locking the outer door into the passage. She said aloud, "Poor mite". After which she made her way to Mrs Blain, to see about something hot for the little wretch.

In next to no time the bath was run, with Merode stretched out under electric light and water, like the roots of a gross water lily which had flowered to her floating head and hands. This green transparency was so just right, so matched the temperature of the hidden blood, that she half closed her eyes in a satisfied contemplation of a chalk white body. She felt it seemed to sway as to light winds, as though she were bathing by floodlight in the night steaming lake, beech shadowed, mystically warmed.

Then came a loud whisper from somewhere, out of the air. So that she covered herself with her hands, exactly in the pose classic to plaster casts.

"Merode," it said, "Merode." She was too modest to answer.

"I'm talking through the ventilator, you fool. It's Moira." When she realised she could not be seen, the girl uncovered herself with a shy smile, looked up at that black grating in the wall. "I'm only on the floor above," the voice said, "that's all. Can you hear me?"

"Yes," she said, covering herself again.

"Then what on earth's happened?"

Merode did not say one word.

"It's made an awful stink."

"What has?"

"Why you and Mary cutting off like that. You didn't go down to the lake, did you?"

"No, why?"

"Because when Winstanley went to ask Ma if the staff could bathe there, she said better not."

Merode began to be frightened once more. She kept silent.

"Well you didn't, did you?" Moira repeated.

"Can't you hear me?" the same voice went on, when there was no answer.

"Are you all right?" Moira asked at last.

In reply there came a muffled sound of crying. In the bath beneath Merode pressed the wet back of her hand to a snuffling nose, under the light blue rubber cap almost enclosing her hair which, in this light, was dark honey coloured.

"Why don't be so ridiculous," Moira said. "You aren't to let those old women get you down, surely?"

Merode pulled herself together enough to say, "No."

"Then what did happen?"

"Nothing," the child insisted, in a trembling voice.

From above there came through the ventilator a low "Damn", followed by the echo of heavy footsteps, and a brief noise of scrambling as Moira made off fast. Then Merode was alone in warm silence. She rested. She almost fell asleep.

Later, when she was shown into the sanctum, Marchbanks still had the cat on her knee.

"Sit here where I can see you," Ma said, pointing to an armchair set opposite the two great desks in full sunlight that beat through the windows and was hot. The girl at once became dazzled when she sat down.

"Here," Marchbanks continued, getting to her feet with the cat in her hands, "I've put up with the lazy creature long enough, you take this." She made as if to lay Alice in Merode's lap. She carried the pet curled up as it had been lying, and she placed it just so, but with wide open azure eyes, over Merode's legs. But the girl did no more than move her blind hands to give the animal room, upon which, finding no welcome, Alice got up to stretch, jumped off, and left, tail in the air.

"You never stroked poor puss," Marchbanks remarked, sad to see her plan miscarry.

She got no answer.

"Whose is it then, Merode?" she asked.

"Why, Mr Rock's of course, Miss Marchbanks," the girl was shocked into replying. She had seen the creature so often out with him.

"Because Miss Edge and Miss Baker are away you must call me ma'am," Marchbanks said. "Now I'm in charge for the moment. Which is why I sent for you, dear."

The girl stayed silent, repeating inside her that she must never tell any of them anything.

"Did you see Alice?" Ma Marchbanks next enquired. Once more Merode was surprised into an answer.

"Why how d'you mean, Miss Marchbanks?"

"Call me ma'am, Merode. Well now, she makes her way over the Park each morning to visit us, doesn't she? I think you may have come across her."

"Not me, ma'am."

"Dear, dear, how blind you children sometimes are. But there's no need to be obstinate, is there?"

"Obstinate?" Merode echoed. "I haven't been."

"Then what are you now, child?"

"I really didn't notice puss, ma'am."

"Well, what were you doing not to, dear?"

"But I mightn't have been there, might I?" Merode defended herself, while at the same time a voice, inside, told her she was talking too much, too fast.

"You never explained to me you weren't in the grounds all night, Merode."

"But, ma'am, it was only I could've been in another part while Alice came by."

"Where were you, then?"

There was no answer. So Marchbanks tried again.

"Whose cat is that, Merode?"

"Why I said, ma'am. Mr Rock's."

"Then how did you happen to be found by Elizabeth Rock?"

"Alice wasn't there, I'm sure," the girl answered.

"You're distinctly aggravating, child, and today's sure to be so busy. I'm terribly rushed. How is it you don't pay the slightest attention to what I'm trying to put?"

Merode said nothing.

"It's not fair on one," Marchbanks continued, then brought it out suddenly, in her ordinary voice, "Where's Mary?"

To hear the name came as a frightful shock, and the student at once burst into more tears behind spread fingers which she splayed out over a bent face. At this reaction Miss Marchbanks felt her heart miss a beat, which gave her the old, sickening sensation she hated.

"Good heavens," she said in a loud voice, to reassure herself, "don't work up into a passion. There's nothing wrong, is there?"

She got no answer.

"When did you last see Mary?"

The girl went on crying, without reply. Miss Marchbanks would have left at that moment, to give her time to recover, but the child got a handkerchief out, which made the older woman think a lull was on the way.

"Then something is rather wrong?" she asked.

Merode did not respond. She seemed calmer.

"Merode, is it particular? Are you ashamed?"

"Oh no, Miss Marchbanks," the girl said, which somehow came as a comfort to both.

"Well then, matters must be all right," the woman said brightly. "So there's nothing you feel you can't tell me?"

Merode was mopping her nose by now. But she kept silent. "You see, my dear," the older woman went on, to bridge the silence, "you are putting me into such an awkward predicament. You're no longer a child," she said, disbelieving this. "You know as well as anyone that I must go by rules just the way you have to. And the regulations I'm under are simply this. That when one of the girls we're in charge of doesn't tell the truth after she's broken her word, we mustn't even question her, and we're bound to report it. And I have to make out a report which must go right away, straight up to the State Board in Government Centre, nothing can stop that. To do so would be an offence," she ended virtuously, and took a good look at the child. Merode was staring, with a completely blank expression, at the dado painted to resemble Roman pavements in perspective, "Then I don't have to tell you the view they'll take up there of a serious thing like this, Merode."

"But Miss Marchbanks, what have I done?" the girl burst out.

"Now are you being frank with me, dear? You're not a baby.

Indeed, after all, you're practically a grown woman, that's just the whole trouble. Because you must see you can't be allowed to career about outside, at dead of night, and in our pyjamas."

The girl said not a word, kept her face averted. Miss Marchbanks decided what she didn't like was her not meeting one in the eye. "Besides," she tried once more, "there's the two of you. Mary isn't back yet, you know."

The child, she thought, seemed to turn to stone whenever Mary's name was mentioned. But now that they had the one uncovered, the other could hardly be far away. Yet there was Edge's parting shot. "Safety in numbers, Marchbanks," she had said. And "if it was only the one I would telephone Headquarters at once with her description."

"Think it over, Merode." The older woman had again suddenly decided there could be nothing terrible, that everything would be all right. Almost as though the child sensed this she at once rose to leave the room.

"No, sit down, dear, I haven't quite finished," Marchbanks said. "What were you up to? Tell me."

"I don't know, ma'am."

"Now really, Merode, I shall get quite cross in a moment."

"It was nothing, ma'am, really."

"You'll let me be best judge, if you please," Marchbanks said. There was no response.

"Come now. Did you go out with a boy?"

"Oh no, Miss Marchbanks." This, at least, sounded genuine to the older woman.

"Did you try to meet someone else, then?" No answer.

"In other words it's simply, Merode, that you won't tell. Isn't it?"

But the girl had come to be mesmerised by the black and white receding pavements. No longer blinded in sunlight her eyes had caught on one of the black squares, as that pyjama leg had earlier been hooked on a briar. And while her horror at this interview increased, so the dado began to swell and then recede, only to grow at once even larger, the square in particular to get bigger and bigger till she felt she had it in her mouth, a stifling furry rectangle. Then, when she managed to shake herself free, she cleared it out, but only for a minute. After which this process began all over again.

"Do think," Marchbanks was saying. "My dear, your whole future is at stake. If you set out with such a mark against you, things being as they are these days, when you leave here you'll just have a job on the machines," she said, speaking the brutal truth. "Because you should realise I can't help myself," she ended by falsely admitting. "I'll do all I can, of course. But, as you must get into your head before it's too late, there's Miss Edge and Miss Baker. Oh well, if you really want to know, I'm most afraid of Miss Edge."

Merode could hardly take this in, trapped, as she now was, by one of the more frightening periods of the dado, that immediately before the black square would begin to swell, when the whole stretch was beginning to billow, as if the painted pavement was carried out on canvas which had started to heave under a rhythmically controlled impulse actuated from behind.

"Was it a boy?" Miss Marchbanks demanded, her confidence about to evaporate. Then she thought of the child's mother and father. For she had known this come off when all else failed.

"I must wire your parents," she said, as she got up to go over to the file, and hated herself for playing the ace. But after all, she thought, I've my own position, my pension to consider.

"Why, you're an orphan," she cried out, delighted because she knew this would make a great difference with Baker, who had long been an acknowledged authority in State circles on the parentless. "And made your own way with scholarships, I see here. My dear child, you don't want to throw all that away on a simple escapade." Merode had got her eyes off the dado and was better for the moment. She did not want her aunt brought into this.

"But what is it you wish me to tell you, Miss Marchbanks?" she mumbled.

The lady sighed. "You're surely not expecting me to put the words into your mouth," she said.

"You've always been so wonderful to us, Miss Marchbanks."

"You're rather a flatterer you know, Merode."

"A lot of us call you mother, ma'am." She began to cry again.

"Ma, you mean, which is quite different. Now, come on now, we haven't got all morning. And you want to go to the dance tonight, don't you? It's going to look so lovely, really it is, especially if I can work in a pet idea of mine about fir trees. Adams is to fetch some. Was it a boy?"

Marchbanks saw the girl had ceased crying. At this sudden return to the main object, the child's attention had been forced back to that dado, although at first the squares stayed as they were. What's the use? Merode asked herself. Let them tell it.

"I suppose," she said at last. Miss Marchbanks went back and sat down behind Edge's desk. She allowed herself a small, satisfied smile.

"Was it Mr Birt, by any chance?"

"I don't imagine," the girl answered, obviously in a daze.

"Or Mr Rock?"

No answer.

"Was it?"

The furry square on her tongue started to swell once more.

"I'd like to help you but you won't let me," the woman said. Merode began to cry again. This cut her off from the growing dado, but the rectangle was black with stiff hairs on her tongue.

"Listen dear," Ma Marchbanks said, as a trace of the child's panic passed over her. "You were only sleep walking, weren't you? That's all, isn't that it? So simple, you understand. It must be? Can you hear?"

There seemed to be some lessening in Merode's sobs.

"But where is Mary, then?" Marchbanks insisted in a great voice, upon which Merode slumped forward in a faint. As she rang the bell on the desk for Miss Birks, and started up out of her chair, Ma Marchbanks thought, oh dear, to faint right away while I was questioning, how will that look, oh dear, but the poor child.

Mr Rock went out with the bran to summon Ted, his goose. It was unusual for the bird not to be at hand, waiting.

"Ted," he called, "Ted," in exactly the swill man's voice he had used to announce his presence in the kitchen, only louder. He turned this way and that, but there was no sign. Then he saw a sergeant of police push his bicycle onto the path from the road. The blue uniform gave Mr Rock a jolt. Already, he asked himself, so soon?

The old man's cottage stood, like the hub of a wheel, on a spot at which several rides met. As he watched the policeman he saw, out of the corner of an eye, his goose come in a rush, absurd sight, its neck outstretched, wings violently beating to help cover the ground it had never left. Sun now made the bird a blaze of white.

"Morning, Mr Rock," the sergeant said. "Might turn out warm," he said.

"Yes," the older man replied and then, as Ted came up hissing, the policeman walked round his bike to put this between the goose and himself.

Mr Rock threw balls of bran as if to sow dragon's teeth.

"She'll do you fine at Christmas," the sergeant said.

The sage, who had no intention of ever killing Ted, merely grunted.

"Did I hear you call her Ted?" the policeman asked. So much a detective he should be in plain clothes, Mr Rock sneered to himself. "Because it's a funny thing," the man went on. Would be, Mr Rock shouted in his mind. "Yes, very strange," the sergeant mused aloud. "We have a cat at home, a torn, and we call her Paula."

"Poorer?" Mr Rock enquired, in his deafness.

"Why how's that?" the policeman asked.

"I don't know," the old man answered, putting on an idiotic look, as he often did. He knocked the bran tin against a boot to clean it.

"What I was going to ask was, if I could leave my bike against your shed, thanking you Mr Rock?"

"Shall you be long?"

"I've to go up to the house, that's all."

"Then why not ride there?"

"I came this way," the policeman said.

"Who are you going to arrest in any case?" Mr Rock asked. He was being made garrulous by his dread for Elizabeth and the cottage.

"Likely they'll kick up a fuss when they see me," the sergeant answered at a tangent, and laid his bike down on the grass. "It's only a matter for a few enquiries, but Miss Marchbanks would have it the Inspector must come himself. Didn't want another. But he's hard pressed, that man is. And of course he's not the only one."

"They've found the one," Mr Rock announced, as though he had been questioned. He was watching the policeman, from behind his spectacles, with the same idiot look.

"How's that?" this man enquired, carefully expressionless, eyes on a now peaceful goose.

"Close to here," Mr Rock said. "Hurt her leg."

"You found her and she'd hurt her leg?" the sergeant echoed, reaching into a pocket for what the older man was sure would be the official notebook, but which turned out to be his handkerchief.

"No," Mr Rock said, and warned himself that he should be careful. There was a pause.

"I just wondered," the policeman said. "The lady came so serious over our telephone how nothing should get about. Close by, was it?" His manner, all at once, Mr Rock thought, was no other than threatening.

"Yes," the old man agreed.

"Then, I'd best get on up, of course," the other said. "Take particulars," he added, but did not move off.

"There's another of their girls missed yet," Mr Rock volunteered. "A nasty business," he said, with decision.

"How's that, sir?" the sergeant asked, mildly this time, giving him the courtesy because, after all, they did say he had been someone.

"Well, if you live on a place you take part in the day to day affairs," Mr Rock said. The goose, having finished what there had been, made off, wagging its tail.

"Ah, news gets about," the policeman agreed mistakenly.

"You come to feel part of it," Mr Rock corrected.

"Still missing, eh?"

"They have a dance tonight. This has made them nervous," Mr Rock volunteered.

"How come, sir?"

"They're to celebrate the Anniversary of theirs. Only natural."

"As to that, Mr Rock, I couldn't say. And it was you found the one?"

"Mr Birt, who is a tutor, did. Together with my granddaughter. There's a holiday today, they were out for a stroll before breakfast. Brought her back here," Mr Rock explained quite freely, because he knew this would be eagerly reported later. "Gave her a cup of tea," he added, to make it all seem most harmless.

"You gave her a cup of tea?" the sergeant echoed in a blank voice. Mr Rock did not bother to correct him.

"Tea," he agreed.

There was a pause.

"Well then, if I could leave the old bike, I'd best be on my way over," the policeman said, having missed his cup, and made off. He left the machine where it lay on the ground. Mr Rock noticed, with a dreadful reluctance, that its uppermost pedal still revolved.

Not long after, and several hours before the usual time on Wednesdays, Baker and Edge were driven back into the Park in their little red State tourer, which hummed up the main Drive at twenty miles an hour. A cloud of white dust attended it, was always at a respectful distance, following behind.

"I love this Great Place," Miss Edge shouted to her companion as though the lady were as deaf as Mr Rock, then put her face out of one side. With the colour of the car, with the driver, a stout woman in black livery, and the smallness of the back and its occupants, then with the great sun beating stretched earth as a brass hand on a tomtom, they seemed no less than wicked, up to date fairies in a book for younger girls who had just started reading.

But it was not entirely in search of malice that Edge scanned the now high, almost unbroken ramparts of flowering rhododendron which whisked past in vast, red and white splodges, it was not, say, for a sight of decapitated frogs the artificial cherries, which matched the car's paintwork, bobbed and scraped to either side of her black London hat, nor could it even have been for the perfume of those eunuch scentless flowers that her thin nostrils opened and shut like a rabbit's, and little blue eyes, continually darting sideways to catch up with the car's speed, found no repose or a girl's face anywhere on which they could read the answer to the question she dared not put, where was Mary, where Merode? She turned back to Baker.

"I hope they have at least got ahead with our decorations," she said.

"If they've had time," Miss Baker dryly answered.

"I was watching to find if they might have cut any on this exquisite Drive," Edge excused herself. "I had blamed myself for telling Marchbanks they were to take care, when they robbed nature, that it should be where we could not see. For you know how it is, Baker. Usually one has only to suggest what must not be done to find it carried into practice far quicker than any order, however sensible my dear, but there."

"It'll always be so, till such time as we can engage our own staff," the other woman said. Edge made a face at the driver's back, and another at her colleague.

"I know," Miss Baker replied. "But there's no secret after all." What she had in mind was that, in any case, the staff, for their part, as they knew very well, could not leave either, at any rate not without scandal. Everyone was frozen in the high summer of the State.

"Well, as I invariably insist," Edge said, to change the subject, "whatever our duty has called us to in Town, this glorious Place repays a thousandfold on our return."

"It's a help today certainly," Miss Baker commented.

"You know I can hardly believe it yet," Edge wilfully misunderstood her.

"Both Commissions cancelled and not a word or hint reached us. The thing is preposterous."

"We still have the training of them, Edge."

"I trust it was not one of our girls to skimp her duties in such a disgraceful way."

"There's worse, there's what we left this morning," her colleague said, coming out with it.

"Now, Baker, if we had not been reasonably certain how that little mystery would clear itself up by luncheon," Miss Edge expostulated, again grimacing at the driver's back, "we could never have travelled all the way to London." At this moment she caught the driver's eye stolidly watching her make faces by the mirror that was aimed to catch the cloud of dust behind their rear window, but which reflected as faithfully the features of any passenger in Edge's seat.

"I can't help being nervous, dear," Miss Baker admitted.

"Evershed," Miss Edge said sharp. "Do pray watch where we are going."

When they drew up outside the house Edge found her mouth was dry. Accordingly she went straight to the sanctum, ordered two cups of tea over the telephone, and asked for Marchbanks to come along at once.

"Why ma'am," this lady said, after she had knocked and been told to enter, "there's no trouble, I hope." She stood before the Principals sipping tea behind their desks.

"Trouble, Marchbanks? That is what we are back here to find."

"But we weren't expecting you till after five."

"Which will have to be gone into when I have time," Edge said, then was so good as to relent. "The sittings were cancelled. Whether the fault that we were never told lies at this end is another matter. Now, have you any news?"

"Merode's found, ma'am. She's resting."

"Resting?" Edge cried out incredulously. "Is she hurt then?"

"Not exactly, ma'am."

"Marchbanks, there are no two ways about this incredible affair, is she hurt or isn't she?"

"She complains of her knee and she fainted," Marchbanks replied. She started to twist fingers together, when Baker interrupted, "Wouldn't that be one of my orphans?" she asked. When told it was so, she closed her eyes.

"Then the other cannot be far then," Edge continued, with greater confidence.

"There's no sign of Mary, ma'am."

"I dare say not, but mark well what I tell you. If the one is found it will not be long before the other puts in an appearance, as though nothing had occurred."

Miss Marchbanks breathed a sigh of released suspense.

"When did she faint, I wonder?" Edge enquired, almost gay, now, in the relief it had become to have learned that one at least was back.

"While I questioned her, ma'am."

"Ah," Miss Edge said, "ah," as though she suddenly noticed something dirty in the corner. Nevertheless she left well alone for a time. "And what does Dr Bodle say about her condition?"

"We haven't had the doctor in," Marchbanks explained, shifting her feet.

"You haven't had him in?" Miss Edge cried, and her voice rose. But Baker most definitely interrupted.

"I told you that child was an orphan," she said, eyes still closed.

The other waited for a moment to see if her colleague had more to say. When nothing came she proceeded, "Well, you must summon him at once, Marchbanks. And while you were about to question her too? We have our Directives, you know. And he should, perhaps, have been in the room with you all the time. How will it look if they hold an Enquiry?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Tell me, where is the child now?" Edge enquired.

"Oh, Matron's on guard, ma'am. She's locked safely in."

"That is one thing to be thankful for, then," Edge announced. "But who found her, Marchbanks, or did she just come on her own out of thin air?"

"Elizabeth Rock and Mr Birt I believe, ma'am."

Miss Edge glanced sideways at Baker. In that lady's sightless condition there was no way of telling how much she understood.

"Did you hear that, dear?" Miss Edge asked. "It may be significant."

"Can't say I see a great deal to it," Baker muttered, after a pause. Thus it came about that the doctor was not called. Miss March-banks was under the impression Miss Edge would do this, and that lady had believed she had only to give an order to be obeyed.

"And what about the Inspector of Police?" Edge went on.

"Of course I rang him at once, ma'am, but he seemed rather occupied. However he said he would be up in no time."

"Hasn't he made an appearance, then?"

"Not yet, ma'am."

"Well, perhaps that may turn out a good thing, although it strikes one as feckless of him, does it not?" Miss Edge turned to Baker. But her colleague had still not opened her eyes. Then she spoke.

"And Mary? She has a father and mother I'm certain," Miss Baker announced, getting to her feet to reach the file. To do so she had to look where she was going, and, when she stumbled, they realised she was in tears. Upon which Edge made a face at Marchbanks so much as to hint, pray take no notice.

"What did I tell you?" Baker asked. "Parents living apart and in Brazil," she read out from the card she held, openly wiping tears off her cheeks with the back of a hand.

There was a silence. After a moment Miss Edge arrived at the conclusion her friend's virtual collapse was best ignored.

"But, come to that, how was it?" she began again on Miss Marchbanks, who turned a horrified look round to her. "What induced them to act like little thieves? Is there a man in this, Marchbanks?"

"Why I'm sure there's nothing missing, ma'am. No-one's reported. ."

"Please," Edge interrupted, with a weary gesture. "I never said anything of the kind, did I? Who got at them, then, and planned it all? Have you found this out yet?"

"I was careful not to press too closely ma'am. . "

"And she fainted," Miss Edge again interrupted.

"She was very tired, I think," Ma Marchbanks said with dignity. A loud sob came from Baker.

"There is no need to lose our heads," Miss Edge rebuked her colleague, although she addressed the underling. "Rather it is a moment to keep what wits we have about us. As to being tired, the doctor will see to that, no doubt. The question I asked was quite simple. Is there a man in this, or not?"

Marchbanks had certainly begun to lose hers.

"Yes," she said, almost at random.

"I thought so," Edge said, satisfied almost to jubilation. "And has he any connection with our Mr Rock?"

"Careful dear," Baker implored, with a trembling voice.

"But we must know, you know we must," Edge said. "Well, has he?"

"I'm sure I can't tell. I don't imagine so," Miss Marchbanks told her, with obvious resentment.

"You can't tell, you do not imagine, what is this?" Edge echoed.

"That's how things are," Miss Marchbanks said, happily hating her Principal.

"But why? Surely you can see? Why, Marchbanks?"

"Because she fainted just when she was going to tell, ma'am."

"Where is the girl? I…" Edge was beginning, when Baker broke in.

"Thank you, Marchbanks, I'm sure you've done all that was possible, you can go now," she said, and Miss Marchbanks walked straight out. As she closed the door she heard Baker, pleadingly, start to reason with Miss Edge, "Now dear," she said, "now dear, in our Directives…"

"The OAFS," Miss Marchbanks spat aloud in the passage, to relieve her feelings, the first moment she was out of earshot."Oh, the oafs."

Moira came out of a ride into the small open space before Mr Rock's cottage. Its hideous mauve and yellow brick was swamped in shade, marked out by sunlight, for the beech trees were tall but not thick together hereabouts.

Sun lit up blue smoke, spiralling out of the chimney for two full yards in this stillness.

She could not see the old man but heard a chopping of wood within the trees, and moved towards the sound, knowing it must be him for he was the one to work round here.

"Hello," she said, confident she was the favourite, when she came upon Mr Rock in shirtsleeves, clumsily using his hatchet on a block.

He straightened up. The old face cracked into a real smile. She saw he was not wearing teeth, also that he could do with a shave.

"Well?" he asked. She came close, to let him take her in.

"Why don't you use the tree Mr Birt found Merode under?" she asked.

"Not dead enough," he said.

"But you'd have more wood. You are silly," she said, while he examined her youth. It made him think of a ripe plum, on a hot day, against green leaves on a wall.

"Mr Birt found her. There's a laugh," she began again. They stood watching each other comfortably.

"How d'you look so cool?" he asked.

"He would," she said about the finding. When this drew no comment she went on in a lazy way, "Because I'm not hot, not yet, silly. I don't wear all the clothes you do," she added, shifting the position of her hip.

He had a fallen branch to cut into faggots, and he set to work once more.

"Let me help," she said, though she made no move forward. When he did not answer, she repeated, "Let me." He's a hundred if he's a day, she said to herself.

"Just leave an old fellow get on with what he's about," he said.

"All that wood's for Daise, isn't it?" she asked. "Well, I'm not stopping anyone."

"Yes, for Daisy's swill," he answered. "To boil it. Too many won't trouble, which is the cause of so much of this filthy swine fever." She nibbled at one of the azaleas in her arms. She knew she made a picture, but he paid no attention. She waved away a bee.

"Have you seen your cat?" she enquired.

"No. She's all right I trust?" he said, not looking up.

"Oh, in her glory," the girl replied. "At the Institute, of course, with Ma Marchbanks. She'd better look out for herself, though. The Marchbanks mayn't know it, but Edge and Baker's back."

"Are they. .?" he asked, and drew himself up to his full height, but checked his tongue in time. "Why, what about my animal?"

"They don't like pussy cats, those two, do they?" she answered.

"Two faced, cats are," he said, watching her closely. She took a whole azalea right into her mouth. "Cupboard love," he said, and wiped his spectacles.

"Why shouldn't I, if I want. They taste good," she said, after she had got rid of the flower into a hand and dropped it behind her back.

"Not you," he said.

"Cats."

"What's cupboard love, exactly?" she asked, knowing full well, but to cover herself.

"Greed, that's all."

"You are queer, Mr Rock," she said.

There was a pause while he put his spectacles on once more. "Have they come upon the other girl yet?" the old man enquired, getting on with his task. "Or why have they returned?"

"Mary, oh I know where she is," Moira told him.

"Where's that?" Mr Rock quietly demanded.

"She's down under water in the lake of course," the girl said.

"Is she now?" this old man commented, but did not look up from what he was at. "Have you been to see?"

She gave a small, affected shriek. "Me? Who d'you think I am? Oh, I simply couldn't."

"Then how d'you come by your information?"

"That's easy," the girl said. "Winstanley asked permission for the staff to bathe as today's a holiday, and Ma Marchbanks said better not, because Mary was drowned in it."

"When did you learn?" he enquired, selecting another stick to chop.

"Why everyone's heard." A silence fell.

"Where's George Adams at work?" Mr Rock asked next.

"He's to fetch the pine trees she wants round the Hall for tonight. We're to put salt over to look like snow. Only Miss Edge won't be so keen. Why?"

"Because in that case I should have thought he would be better employed if he dragged the water," Mr Rock said. He was watching the girl now.

"Oh Mr Rock you are dreadful, really," she cried out. "The horrible things you think."

"Dear, dear," he said, and bent down again. There was a pause.

"What did you make of it when Mr Birt found Merode?" she once more asked, with a giggle. He made no reply.

"She told me all," she went on. "You see, they'd locked her into the bathrooms so she could have a good cry, you know what a tremendous cry baby she is, but there's a grating on the floor above, or there's two, one above and one underneath. Anyway Matron hasn't discovered yet, so I was able to get on to Merode."

"Moira," he said uneasily, "you'll grow up an old maid."

She laughed out loud. "Me?" she said. "I don't think," largely understating this. "Why, Mr Rock?"

"Because you will."

"No, why?"

"All this chitter chatter."

"But I'm only explaining what happened, aren't I? No she, that's Merode, confessed up she'd gone out at night to meet him. Lots of the girls do."

"Oh? Go out to meet Sebastian Birt?" His voice was sharp.

"Oh, why Mr Birt specially? But they do at night."

"But how do you know?" Mr Rock asked. The jealousy he felt over this man obscured his judgement, so that he was not sure what to believe.

"That's easy," the girl replied. "He said he was off to London last night, for the holiday, then stayed after all."

"Who told you? Was it Merode?"

"I said, didn't I? Marion's senior girl at orderly duty today, and Mrs Blain said so. Which reminds me. You mustn't keep me here to pass along the news the way you are. I'm due back in the kitchen. I might tell you it's hard work jollying Mrs Blain, with all she's got on."

"Why do you say Miss Baker and Miss Edge are back?"

"Because I saw them come up the drive. Is that good enough for once? But they didn't see me, no thank you."

"Well, well. They missed a sight then, didn't they, Moira?"

"Oh you are dreadful this morning. Now I'll ask you a question. Where's Dan?"

"Who?"

"I mean Ted."

"The goose? She's fed. It was a good thing I had plenty."

"Why, how's that?"

"Because she's down by the water, this minute, if I know much of Ted," Mr Rock said.

She gave another little shriek.

"Mr Rock that's foul," she cried.

"Grubbing about," he added.

"I shan't stay if you're like this. All you ever want is to give me creeps," she said.

"You'll stay," he countered.

"Why, how's that?" she repeated, making no move to depart.

"You told me you'd have to get back a long while since."

There was a pause while she pouted. But he did not bother to notice.

"Will you come to the dance tonight?" she asked, in a small voice.

"I might," he said.

"Because, if you did, I'd sit one out with you."

"That's a more sensible suggestion than saying you'd spare me a dance." He chopped harder at the branch.

"Because, if you did, I might even give you a kiss," she continued. The chopping stopped. But he did not look up.

"There's an absurd idea," he said loudly. "If you want to know I've completely forgotten about it."

"I mean what I promise," she insisted.

"All I intended to convey," he said, frightened and embarrassed, "was, thank God, I've reached an age when I've long since forgotten everything to do with all such nonsense. Now do you understand?"

"No," she answered.

"Then why not?"

"Because I bet you haven't really," she said. He went on with his work rather fast.

"Well, well," he tried to pass it off, uneasily.

"I don't know what else a girl can promise," she suggested. He let this go.

Then she began again. She dropped her voice to a whisper, so that he unwillingly stopped work to catch what was said through the disfiguring deafness.

"Now this is really secret," she informed him. "Have you heard about Mr Adams?"

"Look, Moira, I'm not here to chatter with students."

"Oh, if someone doesn't want to listen, I can't make them, can I?"

"All right," he said. "There's no need to be forward." She inferred from this last remark that she had his blessing.

"There's some of the juniors meet Mr Adams of a night time. If we could only find which, we'd put an end to that, double quick."

"Who's we?" he asked, surprised into going on with it.

"Why, the seniors."

"Miss Baker and Miss Edge don't know, then?"

"Those two old pussies," she protested. "They'll never learn what really happens here. But that's why it's so silly your saying what you just did. You and he are the same age, anyway there can't be more between you than there is between me and one of the juniors."

"You're out of your mind, child. I'm old enough to be the man's father. And in any case, I don't like this."

"I'm sorry," she said, with an extraordinary look of innocence.

"That's all right. I've forgotten all about it," he repeated severely. But he straightened his back, and took off the spectacles once more, to wipe them.

"Then you will come to the dance tonight," she announced.

"I might," he said. "Will Miss Edge and Miss Baker be in attendance?"

"Of course. They've come back already, like I told. Anyway they only go up for the day, Wednesdays. No, they had to come home in a rush because of Mary and Merode. And when we gave them all the start we could."

"What?" he protested, laughing at last. "If this is any more of your nonsense then I don't want it, that's all."

"Well you see," she said, "Mary was almost forever on orderly duty. Edge said she always was so neat. Marion's the senior today and when Mary didn't turn up, because I promise I never heard a word about Merode till later, Marion asked what she should tell the old grumps. And sure enough Edge spotted Mary wasn't there at once, so Marion told her like I said, that Mary had gone to Matron."

"I don't understand a word," he protested more cheerfully still, and went back to his work.

"Oh, you are dense," she cried. "D'you know while I stand here to pass the time of day with you my arms are simply dropping from all these branches for the dance?" She was indeed a lovely sight as she stood before him. But he laughed once more.

"Then you'd better rid yourself," he said.

"You are in a dreadful mood today. Goodbye for now," she said, and went off, happily pouting.

"Now dear our Directives," Baker said as Marchbanks left the room. "Be careful, do dear. You said yourself the child should not be cross-examined."

"But, Baker, she has not been crossexamined, has she?" Edge cried out, and pushed the saucer away with its empty cup. "If she has, this is the first I have heard."

"Her parents are not living, dear. If they hold an Enquiry they'll call it cross-examination."

"Oh, it does so aggravate one, Baker. Because she holds the answer to Mary's whereabouts."

"Wherever the poor child may be, with her parents away in Brazil, she can stay for a while yet," Miss Baker said, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, rather in the same way that Mr Dakers had patted his mouth at breakfast.

"Why, what on earth do you mean?" Miss Edge protested. "You are surely not going to suggest. .?"

"I suggest nothing, dear," Baker insisted in a tired voice. "All I say is that Mary can't have got very far, unless of course she has a conveyance. We left instructions about the station and the coaches, and now you have a policeman to see you. No, we must remember the poor mite was sick."

"I know nothing of it," Edge objected. "Her name is not down on Matron's list."

"But don't you recollect, dear? It was you who asked what had happened to Mary at breakfast, and Marion told you she'd gone to Matron!'

"So she did," Miss Edge exclaimed. "That puts an entirely different complexion on the matter. In fact, when I come to consider, I cannot understand how Marchbanks has not been able to drag the wretched girl back to us already. So unnecessary, too, to send for the Inspector. Because he will need some good reason to explain our bringing him up here. The staff simply will not take in what I keep drumming into them about undesirable publicity."

"We haven't found her yet, dear."

But Edge had now gone to the opposite extreme, was overconfident. "Why," she said, and left her desk to go over to the window, "the whole affair is a mare's nest, something tells me." Miss Baker had also risen. She moved over to the telephone.

"And such a shame," Miss Edge continued, holding on to folded curtains at either side with both hands, to face a bright prospect as though crucified. "What a very real shame to torture our nerves in this glorious weather just when the old Place is at its own great best."

"Madam here," Baker said into the receiver. "Would you have Marion sent along at once."

The child must have been expecting it, for, in next to no time, there was her knock on the door.

"Marion," Miss Edge asked, as though Baker had telephoned on her instructions. "When did Mary go to Matron?"

"I couldn't say, ma'am."

"But you told us at breakfast, surely you recollect."

"Yes ma'am."

"When did you see her last then, child?"

"I didn't see her, ma'am."

"You didn't see her?" Edge echoed, an ugly note in her voice. "Oh but, excuse me, you must have. You told us." Marion stood in silence. She looked guilty. "You mean you connived at this disappearance, Marion? Just when my sixth sense had led me to ask you where she was. You say now she never went to Matron?"

"They told me she had, ma'am."

"And who was that, pray?"

"The other girls, ma'am."

"Then you never even saw her this morning?" Miss Baker asked, white about the lips once she found her fears confirmed.

"No ma'am." There was a silence. Edge came away from the window, went right up to the child.

"You can go now, Marion," she said. "But we shall have to see you later about the whole wretched business, once we have got right to the bottom of it. I fear you may not have been quite straight with us, child."

"But I…" the girl began, raising limpid, spaniel's eyes to Miss Edge, and that were filling with easy tears, when the lady broke in on her.

"Yes, you can go, Marion," she repeated. "Perhaps you did not quite catch what I said?"

A call to Matron told them she had not seen Mary since last night.

"If you would manage the Inspector I'll just have a word with Matron, I think," Baker informed Edge.

"I shall get rid of the man," this lady agreed, with decision.

When the sergeant came he mopped his brow.

"Such lovely weather we have had, and it continues," Edge said, as she took him by the hand. "Tell me, would you like a glass of beer after your long ride?" she asked, for she had not reached the position she now held without learning the ways of this world.

"Thank you, ma'am," the sergeant accepted. He sat down before the two desks, one of which lay vacant. His face was traditional, the colour of butcher's meat. When she had ordered his ale over the telephone, she asked, "And how is my friend the Inspector?"

"Ah," the sergeant said. "He was put out, there you are. He asked me to make his excuses, ma'am."

"Yes, the paper work does not grow less, does it?"

"There you are," the man repeated, in agreement. Edge bit her lip with impatience to be rid of him, for she felt there was so little time, and then, at that very instant, a scheme began to form in her mind. "It's not often he gets outside," the sergeant ended.

"Now, this is your beer," Edge announced brightly as one of the juniors on orderly duty carried it in. "Wonders will never cease. They have not forgotten the opener. Time was when a great Place like this brewed its own. You prefer yours in draught, perhaps? But then those days are not missed, not as we are now," she said, with fervour.

He hastily agreed. Behind his big, blank face he wondered once more. He took a pull at the glass. As might have been expected, the beer was flat.

"Which way did you come? It looks so beautiful today, I think," she said.

"By the back," he answered, and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief in such a manner that, for a moment, she wondered if it could be to hide a smile. "I saved a half mile," he said.

"Oh so you came along by Mr Rock's, then?" she made a sure guess, at her most affable. "What a wonderful man for his age."

"He is that," the sergeant said.

"And I dare say you saw some of our dear girls," Miss Edge went on. "At their search," she said, then pulled herself up. "Seeking out our decorations," she explained. "You could not be expected to know, of course, but today is our Anniversary, and we are to hold a little jollification for the children. Oh, no-one will come in from outside," she assured him. "Just a small private gathering and, naturally, we have to dress the premises. So then, because we take pride in what has been entrusted to us, I gave the strictest instructions that they were not to cut the blooms where this could make itself felt, because at the present glorious season, down here, to see is to feel, sergeant."

He had a vision of six hundred golden legs, bare to the morning, and said, "Yes, ma'am." At the same time he had not forgotten what had been hinted on the way, and saw one pair of dripping legs.

"Yes," she agreed, "today our routine is disrupted. But that was not why I needed the Inspector."

The sergeant waited.

"No," she said. "The fact is, Miss Baker and I are made really anxious by what we have noticed in the Press these last few weeks. Up and down the country, sergeant, there have been such distressful cases, so horrible, so inhuman we think, because we have discussed the thing, naturally, though not outside these four walls, of course. I refer to all this interference with young girls, sergeant."

Ah, now we are getting somewhere, he thought to himself. Although it was not to be quite what he expected. "Interference madam?" he asked. But she seemed not to know how to proceed.

"Oh hardly anything really serious," she went on. "Though I always maintain the indictable offence is encouraged, or perhaps provoked would be a better word, by the other party." Here she paused once more.

"By the complainant?" he prompted.

"Exactly," she said. "You will realise that it is a little difficult for me to express myself, how delicate. .," she said, leaning back in her chair, smiling at him defiantly. "But we have noticed so many cases, up and down the land, where girls have been stopped by strangers. And here, it so happens, we are particularly vulnerable. I mean by that, not only our old tumble down Park walls, which are a positive invitation to itinerant labour, but our Mission here which, from the very nature of it, focuses attention upon our little Pursuits."

"Tramps," the sergeant broke in, not quite caught up with her.

"Because we are Trustees, you understand," she went on, after a short silence to give him time. "We stand in the shoes of our students' parents, it is a very real trust which the State has put upon us here, and, as Its Servants, we should not leave a stone unturned…" She seemed to search for the right phrase. He watched as she closed her eyes. He waited. "After all, prevention is better than cure," she brought out at last, smiling at him, bright and sharp.

"What exactly did you have in mind, miss?"

"It was more a premonition, sergeant. But Miss Baker and I experienced what we did so acutely that we decided to talk it over with the Inspector. I suppose we felt in need of advice as much as anything. Because we particularly noted in the papers that it always seems to be the older men, I mean of a certain age."

"Have you anyone in view, ma'am?" the sergeant asked. The drift of her remarks had not escaped him.

"But I have just told you," she said, with another bright smile. "Our Park wall that we rightly cannot get the labour to have repaired. Anyone can step over."

"You feel you would like a watch kept?"

"I hope I have more sense of the urgency of the times in which we live," she replied, with a slight show of indignation. "No," she went on, "we are aware how you yourselves are short staffed also. And of course it is not our girls," she said. "In that sense they are above reproach, absolutely. They are hand picked. As you realise, it is a privilege, a reward for preliminary work well done, for them to be sent to us. No," she wound up, leaning slightly forward while at the same time she took her eyes off his face, "to tell you the truth, we did wonder if you might have information of any characters locally."

He thought for a moment. Then he decided he must pretend he did not understand.

"What characters, miss?" he asked.

"Well, men of an age," she said, "I mean really old men," she said, "who, from what one hears and reads, are more liable to let themselves collapse in that disgraceful way." Then she sheered off. "If I may refer to what is common knowledge, how in the course of your duties you take particular stock of the inhabitants of your own district," she went on with almost a sneer, "then what I am getting at is this, that you should warn us of any such sinister person. Forewarned is forearmed," she said, and gave a really brilliant smile to hide her mounting irritation. He hesitated.

"We've been fortunate round about," he said at last. "I don't think there's been a case of the kind you mention for some years past, ma'am."

"But then, will there never be?" she enquired, assuming a discouraged voice.

"Ah," he said, "now there's a question."

Upon which, her point made, she changed the subject, and, not long afterwards, politely dismissed him.

Winstanley, hastening along a ride, came to where it crossed another. She looked to the right, saw Sebastian with Elizabeth Rock. They were standing within each other's arms, alternately kissing their eyes shut against an azalea in full flower half fallen across the ride. This mass of bloom in the full sunlight was almost the colour of Merode's hair in her bath, a slope of deep golden honey with its sweet heavy scent and a great buzz of bees about; caparisoned with primrose yellow butterflies, some trembling spread wings, some clapping theirs soundlessly together, some tight closed.

"Hey, you two," she called, but then, as she began to approach, and like wings, they came apart, though still holding one another by the hand, she felt such a distress she halted. It was long since she had been kissed like that, and sometimes she wondered if she would ever be again.

"I was just on the look out for you," she continued, in hopes that she had not made a fool of herself, and shown what she felt. But they seemed as dazed as the noisy insect life around, which droned and shuddered while these flowers trumpeted the sun.

"Miss Edge and Miss Baker are back," she said. The others came slowly to her. Beastly woman she's fairly drunk with him, she thought.

"But I'm off," he objected, in what he imagined to be cockney, yet hesitantly, as if he had not entirely found his feet, "I've got the day off, lidy, I'm not 'ere, you 'aven't seen me." And this moment he chose to wink, to cajole her not to speak of what she had just witnessed. She was immediately more than disgusted.

"That excuse would do if this was an ordinary day," she replied. "But there's a bit of a shemozzle on, my children. As you may have heard."

"What's brought them back so bloody soon?" he asked, keeping up the part he had seen fit to choose.

"I was wondering if you'd caught what I said," she remarked, stubbornly.

"Why you don't mean, you can't be trying to explain, what is… it's about Mary, is it?" Elizabeth asked, with dread.

"Oh no, there's no news. It appears their Commissions were postponed, so they came rushing back again, that's all. Evershed says she'll have to cool their car off like a horse. But they've held a staff meeting and you can guess who it was noticed you were absent."

"But gor' love a duck, guv'nor, I'm not on today, I'm tellin' yer."

"I spoke up to tell her, and then that silly ass of a prisoner's friend, Dakers, asked if he should go to find you, even went on to say he happened to know you had slept in after all. But it passed, anyway for a time. The thing is, my lad, I think you ought to put in an appearance."

"That goes for the two of us, then," Mr Birt said in a last attempt to keep up his attitude. "I seen you dashin' about the grounds."

"I made my excuses prettily," she answered, again with some impatience. "There's one of the girls still loose, after all."

"Oh it's my fault," Elizabeth broke out in a wail, while Miss Winstanley observed, not for the first time, how a person's lipstick, when it was smudged halfway to her nose, wounded the whole face like a bullet. "We took what's her name back, you see, then we thought, well it was only natural really, my grandfather's all alone, I had to get dinner, so the thing is, and of course we didn't know they were coming, we just began to walk along but as a matter of fact it was my fault. I know I'm silly but you've heard, haven't you, I haven't been really well, and I asked Seb to see me to the cottage, so foolish when you come to think, as though it was dead of night, in time of course, but then I have been made rather nervous. What I mean is, we none of us know, do we?"

"Don't you fuss, my dear," Mr Birt said in his natural voice, which Winstanley heard so seldom that she was not sure to recognise it, "I'll take you, then I'll nip along and go on duty," he ended, lamely.

"Look Sebastian," the other woman said, "If I were you I'd get there right away. Make some excuse to show yourself."

"But gor' love a duck, what went on, then, at their extry special meeting you're so wrought up about?" he asked, returning to his best cockney, which he knew only from books.

"It was old Edge, "Winstanley told him. "Studying her as I have to I think it was to set her mind at rest. Baker's not much in a crisis. She wanted our support, or so she said. If you ask me, I think she just had us all in to explain what she intended not to do. In other words, to cover herself by being able to say she'd had a staff meeting to discuss 'this unprecedented occurrence', and that we'd all decided, in an ad hoc committee, to proceed on a certain course."

"Which is?" he enquired, in his ordinary voice.

"Why to do nothing at all," she answered. He came out with a disgustingly high, screamed laugh.

"Seb," Miss Rock protested sharply. He broke off at once.

"Well Sebastian, I don't know what else they, or we, can be about. They can't set the girls on to search," Winstanley said. She was distressed. "Well now we're not sure what they'll find, are we? We don't want general hysterics. And they've told the police. Dakers has it for a fact the roads are to be watched within a radius of twenty miles. The sergeant left an hour ago after he'd seen Edge. Besides I believe Merode's told some story which doesn't sound too improbable and is reasonably reassuring." Most of this was false, if Miss Winstanley had only known. The child had said nothing. "But you'd better make a show. I would if I were you. We're all to keep our eyes sharp open, she says."

"I won't ask what else I'm a'doin' of," he commented, "an' in their Park into the bargain, where it will likely do most good," he said.

"No Seb," Elizabeth Rock spoke out. "You're not to… I can't imagine why. . it's so silly after Miss Winstanley's been so kind. Go back at once, I'm sure Gapa would say that, yes, at once, don't clown."

"Look here, let me walk you back," the other woman offered.

"All right then," Birt said, and went off fast towards the Institute, without another word.

"I haven't been quite well, I had a breakdown at work," Elizabeth told Miss Winstanley, as they set out along a great hill of rhododendron twelve foot high with flowers the colour of blood, and the colour of the flesh of bathers in open air in sunless country. Winstanley, as she bent her head to listen, took her companion's hand in hers as a sort of tribute to this woman's being drenched with love. But after a few yards she let go of that hot hand.

"Would you like my mirror?" she asked, and rummaged in her bag.

Lunch at the Institute this day was cold, to allow Mrs Blain time to prepare the buffet for their dance. The students waited at long linen covered trestles for Miss Baker and Miss Edge. The noise of their talking was a twitter of a thousand starlings.

The hall in which they took their meals was that used whenever there was an entertainment. The tables could be removed, were lightly constructed, as also High Table, on a dais at which the staff were served, and which could be taken to pieces although built to a massive, shining, mahogany front. Behind it, neatly stacked in a great pile or pyre on the floor, was a mass of cut azalea and rhododendron the seniors had gathered to decorate the room later, but in time for their gramophone when this was set to endlessly repeat one valse. When the staff filed in, Edge and Baker bringing up the rear, that clatter of conversation stilled as, with a rustle of a thousand birds rising from willows about a warm lagoon, the girls stood in silence to mark the entrance. Then, after Miss Edge had been last to sit down, the three hundred budding State Servants, with another outburst of talk as of starlings moving between clumps of reeds to roost, in their turn left to collect plates of cold meat and vegetables ready laid out in the kitchen.

"Ah Marchbanks," Miss Edge called out above the bustle, "I see they have not neglected our tamasha." She was looking at the mass of flowers.

"I'd thought pine branches with salt," that woman answered with a blush. "So cool, in this hot weather, for the Dance. A soupcon of snow," she elaborated.

"Indeed," Edge said, unenthusiastic, while conversation, for the moment, became general around High Table.

"In their white dresses," Marchbanks explained, painting the picture.

"I hesitate to think what our Supervisor would say," Edge objected, referring to a Government Inspector whose visits, in order to check up, were exhaustive and unannounced.

"Yes, there is that of course," Marchbanks agreed.

"What a time they are being, Baker, with our luncheon," said Miss Edge. And her confidence was now such that she continued, having for the moment forgotten, "What can have happened to Mary and her girls?"

It was Mary whose privilege it had been to serve them, each day almost. Right from the very first she had shewn such diligence.

Miss Baker winced. Once more she closed her eyes. There was a noticeable pause.

Winstanley offered up a topic to bridge the awkwardness.

"Ma'am," she said. "Have you ever thought of Chinese pheasants for our grounds?"

"Chinese?" Miss Edge enquired.

"The plumage," Winstanley explained. "A perfect red and gold. They aren't any trouble either, they live off the land."

"I seem to remember Mr Birt telling us there was no such thing," Edge expatiated, with a glance of malice at this man.

"Ah," he said, bowed in her direction, and assumed a close imitation of Mr Rock's party manner which they could all recognise. "We admit of no domestic animal as self sufficient under the State. But it would certainly add a touch of Babylonian splendour to the walks."

"It might startle his goose," Edge objected with a knowing look. All laughed at this allusion, Sebastian Birt excessively.

"They need no attention, ma'am, for sure," Winstanley insisted. "They roost in the nearest tree, and feed off acorns."

"Like cats and pigs then," Miss Edge said, with a smirk benign.

"Where I was brought up there used to be a black and white farm," Baker announced. "A half timbered place, piebald horses, black and white poultry and so on."

"I often wish I had been reared in the country," Edge said, throwing a bright smile at her colleague to mark this lady's return into the fold of conversation. "Sometimes I wonder if our girls appreciate how fortunate they are to find themselves in magnificent Parks and Woodlands."

"Oh they do that, I'm sure, ma'am," came from Marchbanks.

"And someone like Mr Rock, again," Edge pursued, her eye on Sebastian Birt. "How truly privileged."

There was another pause.

"The amenities of urban life in sylvan surroundings," the young man said at last, still with an exact imitation of the sage.

"More, I think," Miss Edge said. "Indeed I fancy that taking Youth, as he has it round him now, and in this beautiful great Place, one of the State's ornaments, a veritable crown of Jewels, a man could be expected to live out his life at rest with himself, and the world."

"But it must depend on one's physical condition. There can be no comfort in age as such," Winstanley, who loved an argument, objected.

Miss Edge looked gravely at her. "In that case," she said, as though to refer to incurable illness, "there is another alternative. The State looks after its own. There are Homes of Repose for those who have deserved well of their Country and who, with advancing years, find the burden of old age detracts from the advantages of a life of quietude they have been permitted to lead at large." Sebastian squirmed. She saw this, then turned to Baker, who looked woodenly at her in warning.

"There are great mercies," Miss Marchbanks said.

"And great responsibilities, Marchbanks," Edge corrected, upon which she swept over the hall of students with an imperious slow swing of her eyes. She did not, at once, go on with what she had been about to say, or here and there, below, she could perceive a mood she particularly detested, and which today she could not have after all that had occurred, girls whispering. She was unable, of course, to hear this. But it was the heavy heads leant sideways into one another's hair, the look of couples as though withdrawn upon each other, in one word, the air of complicity, which startled and disgusted Edge.

"A community at peace within itself," she went on, but her attention was no longer directed onto those immediately around, "can well be a corrective," and then she saw how many of these whisperers seemed to watch someone at High Table, "can canalise," she said, in wonder could it be Sebastian Birt? "will influence all those who come under the sway," she continued haltingly but no they seemed intent on someone or something beyond, "must bring out the best," she said, then realised it could only be the mass of flowers, "can but. ." she continued, and there she stopped. Her colleagues, who turned in surprise, saw Miss Edge go pale. It was one of these deadly rumours had taken hold of the students, the Principal knew, was spreading through their ranks in poison. She pulled herself together. "Can but turn all those who come under its influence upwards and onwards to the ideals, to the practical politics, that is, the High Purposes of the State," she ended in a forced rush.

She blew her nose, then, to hide her face a moment. What idea could it be had taken hold, she asked herself?

"The greatest good of the greatest number," Sebastian echoed, in a peculiarly servile manner.

"I think your suggestion about these Chinese pheasants excellent," Baker said to Winstanley, with a nervous eye on Edge, who, at that precise instant, rose up from her place. She went slowly over towards the mass of flowers. The staff's anxious conversation covered the guv'nor's halting step. But they began to keep their girls in view also, and could see those who whispered fall silent the better to watch Miss Edge. Then, when this lady reached the pyre of azalea and rhododendron, which towered well above her head, and which must at once have assailed her with its burden of hot scent, one child even rose to her feet she was so curious about Miss Edge, only to be brought back by a neighbour tugging on her skirts at which she subsided, rosy cheeks covered by blushes, and in a fit of giggling which she managed to choke off too easily, too soon.

It was uncanny for Edge to leave her place at mealtime. But, having found little at fault with the pile of blooms, not even a nettle, she came back as though nothing were the matter. Only, once she was seated in her chair again, she fairly glared out over the students.

"The scent's so strong it quite puts one off one's feed," Miss Baker remarked, to offer Edge a motive. She pushed her plate away untasted.

"My dear," Edge said, almost as though from a dream. "This excellent cold roast beef! You surely do not propose to forgo your luncheon?"

But she paid no real heed to Baker's antics. It was the girls. That whispering had spread once more. Several, like her colleague, had ceased to eat. Fifty or sixty, even, sat heads bent, their thick hair, dark, gold or red hanging across eyes which, behind this warm screen, watched the flowers, or watched herself so Edge sensed, as well as whatever else it might be had attracted them, unfortunate children, and that drew sharp jewelled eyes this way, and muted voices.

On a sudden Edge felt deathly hot.

"Are all our windows open, I wonder?" she asked. Dakers half rose from his chair, which was entirely unnecessary because their table on the dais was raised well above the three hundred heads beneath.

"It's stifling," Baker agreed.

"No, I'm sure they're wide as can be," Miss Marchbanks said.

The eyes, Edge asked herself, and then came over deathly cold.

Because she knew, now.

It could only be the body under the flowers, a corpse.

"Sip some water, dear," Baker suggested.

"The early start," Marchbanks murmured, while Sebastian was on guard as though to see the hag die before his eyes. Then Edge made a stupendous effort and came through.

"What?" she asked. "Yes of course," she said. "Yes, I daresay they may be a trifle overpowering." Then she began to address herself under her breath. Mabel, she murmured, Mabel, pull yourself together, this is ridiculous. After a short time she looked guiltily over the girls and was relieved to find they did not appear to have noticed, indeed they already seemed to talk more freely.

"Azaleas can bring on hay fever," Miss Winstanley suggested.

"And pine branches asthma," Edge said, rather wild, not yet herself quite.

"Oh I don't think Adams cut any in the end," Marchbanks protested, intolerably nervous and sensitive at one and the same time.

"It was the salt," Miss Edge explained at random, recovering poise. She fanned herself with a handkerchief. "The Supervisor would never pass it."

But, as often as her thoughts turned to the absent Mary, who, she knew well, could never be under those flowers, they reeled away back to Mr Rock and his granddaughter Elizabeth.

"Mr Birt," she began once more. "You have seen our sage this morning. Has he news of his election?"

"I believe not," Sebastian said, in furtive embarrassment.

The girls were filing out to fetch the sweet. Miss Edge felt rejuvenated.

"Strange," she exclaimed. "It was yesterday they sat, surely? I made certain I would hear at the Commission, only to find we had been cancelled. I set great store by it for him."

There was a silence. The staff waited to have their plates removed. Edge took a sip of water.

"Because, you know," she went on at large, "he is too old to live the life he does. He needs help here," she explained.

"Amazing the things he did," Miss Baker put in, and a look passed between her and Edge. The subject was dropped.

"Marchbanks, I do not want any of the decorations touched before I am ready to supervise all that myself, directly we've had tea," Miss Edge ordered, and then at once felt almost completely well again. What she had been through she saw now as just a moment's weakness.

"The great thing is, ma'am, they're to all intents and purposes practically self supporting," Winstanley began once more.

Because Miss Edge had just asked herself if the horror Rock could have sheltered Mary she was startled.

"How do you mean?" she fiercely enquired.

"The Chinese pheasants."

"Yes, I had gathered that," she lied. "But the point occurred to me, how would they do in winter, in snow?"

"Oh, ma'am, I'm sure they must be hardy. Why, think of the giant panda," Marchbanks said.

"Yes, there's another black and white animal," Miss Baker agreed.

"But the bran," Edge announced. "We came across that only the other day. Did we not, dear?" she asked Miss Baker. "Oh, I make no bones," she went on, raising her voice so that the staff, and in particular Sebastian, should not miss the implications. "Mrs Blain has her little preferences, perhaps we all have, and in any case I do not want this mentioned away from High Table. But it seems she has a weakness for his goose, which, to my mind, is nothing less than a danger. A blow from one of its great wings," and her voice rose so that the nearest students heard, even stopped eating their cherries the better to listen, "one blow, in one of its savage tempers, and the miserable bird could smash a leg."

"You don't suppose, you know who. ." Miss Baker began, in an obvious reference to Mary and Merode, when Edge interrupted her.

"My dear," she said. "No shop at meals."

"They might need a little grain," Winstanley admitted.

"And how so?" her Principal demanded.

"The Chinese pheasants, ma'am."

"Of course," Edge replied, who had, in fact, forgotten these decorative birds. "I do not deny the wheat. But there lies my whole difficulty. If Miss Baker and I are exercised in our minds over this matter of our Supervisor and the bran, and really it is peace at any price these days, for I do not suppose we shall mention it in the kitchen," she sneered, knowing full well that her remarks would be repeated to Mrs Blain, in all probability by Sebastian Birt, "I do beg leave to question the wisdom of additional food at certain seasons. We already have an unofficial cat," she added, not looking at Marchbanks, no longer afraid.

"But ma'am," Winstanley said with tact, "it's swans, I'm certain."

"What is?"

"That break a person's leg with their wings."

"I'm sure Alice doesn't get anything," Miss Marchbanks interjected. At just a momentary glance they could, each of them, see that she had flushed with rage.

"Quite, Marchbanks," Edge said in a soothing voice. "I never even suggested it. We all respect. . there can be no question. . Well, in a word, it is Mr Rock's white Persian, and who is there can stop a cat making free with the Grounds?" She seemed almost embarrassed. She was still not quite herself.

"She never even gets a sup of milk while over here, it's a shame," Miss Marchbanks said. She could not let the matter drop. Miss Edge gave her a small bow.

"But a goose is not much less large than a swan," Edge went on, turning to Winstanley. "And consider the power they must have in their shoulder muscles for long migratory flights. I know some of my girls are simply in terror of the bird."

Sebastian Birt cleared his throat, as though about to speak. But Edge glared at him, and Baker gave such a glance of doom that he did not have the heart. Then Miss Inglefield made her first contribution.

"Grace, ma'am," she said.

"Good heavens," Edge exclaimed, verifying the fact that all the girls had finished. "Whose turn is it, Baker?"

"Yours dear, I think."

Upon which Edge rose, and, with her, all the staff, and each one of the students. When the noise had subsided Miss Edge brought the session to a close with a shout of two prime, immemorial words. "Thank you," she cried in a great voice, looking brilliant.

"Thank you, ma'am," they all replied traditionally, and luncheon was over.

The buzzers went for tea.

It was five o'clock. Most of the students were on their beds, after waiting in queues all afternoon to iron the cotton frocks they were to wear that same evening, for the dance. These first floor dormitories overlooked the Park, with tall windows brilliant in summer sky, as the variously bedded girls lay yawning, stretching, happy to take time because today they were allowed half an hour in which to be down for tea.

Panelling around the walls was enamelled in white paint, as also the bedsteads with pink covers, the parquet floor was waxed and gold, two naked Cupids in cold white marble, and life size, held up a slab of green above a basket grate, while white and brown arms were stretched into the tide of late afternoon pouring by; a redhead caught fire with sun like a flare and, out of the sun, eyes, opening to reflected light, like jewels enclosed by flesh coloured anemones beneath green clear water when these yawn after shrimps, disclosed great innocence in a scene on which no innocence had ever shone, where life and pursuit was fierce, as these girls came back to consciousness from the truce of a summer after luncheon before the business of the dance.

For already shadows were on the creep towards this mansion.

Beech trees were pointing fingers out along the quiet ground. Day was committed to night; the sequence here is light then darkness, and what had been begun in this community under the glare of morning, is yet to be concealed in a sharp fresh of moonlight, a statuary of day after sunset, to be lost, at last, when the usual cloud drifts over the full moon.

"Hasn't it been hot?" a girl's clear voice announced. How warm it had been, Miss Edge shaped five words without a sound as, at the noise of the buzzers, she turned on a chaise longue across which she was stretched in the sanctum. Then she sat up straight. How could she have dropped off, she asked herself, with Mary missing yet? She reached out for the telephone and spoke to Matron. No, there was still no news. Then, as her head cleared and she moved a dry tongue about her mouth, she felt more than ever this temporary disappearance must only be an escapade; that, at all events, their little Fiesta, as she now termed the coining entertainment, could not be cancelled at the whim of a single student who, in a moment of jealousy perhaps, had hidden herself from some adolescent qualm, thus laying their Institute open to the Grand Inquisition of a State Enquiry, and the horror of Reports.

Meantime the lovers, Sebastian and Elizabeth, were asleep in that same corner of a fallen beech found by Merode, and to which they had returned. They lay under lace of gold, through the hush of an afternoon's fine heat, at rest in one another's added warmth, in a peace of sleep.

Her tangled head lay on his arm, her left hand between the tutor's shirt and jacket. She stirred, and it woke him. When he moved, she came awake in turn. She yawned, and her tongue, too, was coated. She said, "Oh darling, it's cooler." She kissed his sticky cheek. Then she sat straight with a jerk.

He lay on his back, wore a sulky expression.

"Good heavens," she went on, "Here we've been snoring, isn't it awful, and all the while that poor girl's lord knows where, dear. What d'you think? Isn't it awful?"

He gently said, "Don't fuss."

"Yes but I've got to think of your position, haven't I? I mean it's no use to make pretence that what Gapa calls the Babylonian harlots just aren't here, is it? Particularly when they've got it in for you, darling."

"The child's probably back now," he murmured.

"Why be beastly about her, Seb? I expect, you know, she couldn't help herself, poor soul. Driven to it, don't you see, by something or other, wouldn't you say?"

He raised himself. He kissed her. Then he looked at his watch.

"Tea," he said, and got to his feet.

"Well we did search about, I mean before, didn't we?" she asked, scrambled up, and tried to smooth her slacks, at one and the same time.

When she heard the buzzers, Ma Marchbanks took a wet towel off closed eyes and let her hand fall back, which still held this towel, over the far side of the armchair. She had a splitting headache. She had been backwards and forwards in the Park through blazing heat of afternoon, and now her head drummed with sun, roll upon roll of pain behind the eyes to cauterise her brain. And she could not ignore that scene she had had with Adams.

She'd come on him at such a curious spot, the clearing by the New Plantation, where he was seated in a sort of hut, which she did not recognise, that seemed to be made entirely of old doors, and which, if behind a dwelling house instead of out in the open, could have been taken by anyone for the outside privy back of an uncultivated garden of a few wild, gay, separate flowers.

"Adams," she'd said, as she thought secure in his sympathy, for they had always got on well, "Oh Adams I am so worried." Just that. And he'd answered with a really rude voice, "It's what every man and woman living is heir to, miss."

"Which does not make anything easier, does it?" she'd replied, and wondered if he spent every afternoon like this, not chopping trees. At that he had come right towards her, away from that hut or whatever the thing was, and, when all was said and done, likely enough he would have acted much the same whatever she said, but he'd cried out in the revealing sunlight, and she had seen he was shaking, "Why do you keep on at me, the lot of you?" he had shouted, looking dreadful, and it was then she'd remembered he had lost his wife.

"Adams," was all she was able to reply, "you are not yourself," and had walked off. But, after this, she'd searched too fast, she reminded herself to excuse the headache, had looked everywhere at twice the speed. One or two parties of girls were out as well. It showed the right spirit. And there was the haste, the haste she'd used, dashing empty handed to and fro, after she'd met Adams, must have brought on this ghastly head. But she knew the time was not now, with Miss Edge in her present mood, to dare not to put in an appearance at tea, down in the Hall.

Tremblingly, therefore, Marchbanks got up to dash cold water on her brow.

Mr Rock had been doing his kitchen out all afternoon, at work with an old man's painful slowness. Then he'd brewed himself a cup and left the pot, in case Birt and Elizabeth came, parched, in from their ploys about the grounds. Now he had lit a pipe, and gone to his pig. He leant against the sty to watch the animal laid down, in shade, with feebly twitching ears and an occasional weak grunt, given over to the heat and comfort of summer.

Mr Rock, as well, had thoughts for Mary; now and again considered whether he should not take a turn round the lake, in case the girl was floated three inches under water; and his excuse for going, if he was seen, or if he made the discovery, would of course be Ted, his goose. For that child had been driven to desperation, he told himself, there was never a clearer case, he'd eyes in his head, he had noted for himself the overwork other children were already whispering about. Hadn't he the example of his own granddaughter before him? It was savage the extra hours they made Mary do in their kitchen just because they liked the way she served a plate, and all the while driving her on to those final examinations, with that power they had, and which was now revealed, or, so he feared, proved, of life and death.

Back in the great kitchen which the sun, now in another quarter, no longer cleft as with an axe, so that the cookers were visible and shimmered no longer, where windows, opened wide, let in a breeze which, fanning between more trestle tables set high with sandwiches and cakes, carried for some unexplained reason a smell of lemon, Marion sat beside the girls on orderly duties, at rest after the preparations for the Dance, their work finished, side by side over cups of milk coloured tea with an exhausted Mrs Blain.

It was all grey and white, then golden confectionery, and pale, tired, faces.

"Where's my Mary now this great while?" the cook demanded. "I declare I've been so rushed I never missed her."

"Why Mrs Blain," one of them answered "haven't you been told?" The others, dead beat, looked with open distaste at this girl. Only Moira pricked up her ears, who had done the least all afternoon.

"No-one bothers to inform me whatever," Mrs Blain said. She sat over the kitchen table, her chin propped on a hand. "But I won't have Miss Edge in here, she well knows. Baker's different. As you'll not have appreciated maybe, I never had an order for what I'm to get ready this evenin', not a word. If I've done what I have on my own responsibility, it was for you children. But I've had a feelin' nag all along at me. I'd something or somebody short, only I couldn't seem able to set a name, and there you are, it's that girl."

"Didn't you hear?" Moira asked, after a silence." She lost her Dolly."

"Now don't speak riddles, thank you," the cook objected, not knowing what to make of this, and deaf to some gasps the child's remark had provoked round the table.

"That's right enough, isn't it, you others?" Moira appealed, but had no answer. "She always was a one to cry," she said. Mrs Blain fastened onto this.

"She always was a worker, if that's what you mean," the cook announced. "Has she had to go home, then, and in haste?"

"I expect," Moira said.

"Oh why will they make mysteries in this perplexed establishment?" Mrs Blain wearily accused Miss Edge. "When there's a death in the house and a girl has to haste back to comfort her old parents, well, it's natural, surely? As you would do well to remember, Moira. I'm sad to hear this news, that's all, and I can't tell why I wasn't told." She took a sip out of the cup.

Moira made some remark to a neighbour, in order to change the conversation.

"But I don't see what call there was for you to pass remarks," Mrs Blain went on to the child. "I'd go your own way and let others follow theirs. You can't tell how close they was together. Death comes like that, my girl, in every home, as you will kindly recollect next time you sit to my table."

Moira blushed. There was awkward silence.

"Say nothing, do nothing, but with a helpin' hand for them's in need," Mrs Blain ended, with satisfaction.

The cook was not a woman to allow herself to be contradicted, or even corrected, in her own kitchen. Accordingly they could not tell Mrs Blain, or at any rate not yet, not all at once.

Sebastian and Elizabeth came back to the cottage for tea and, as they passed the pigsty, there was no trace of Mr Rock. When they entered the kitchen he was not there either, nor in the living room where the sage kept his letters unopened in a trunk, because Elizabeth took the precaution to look see. She knew he would not be upstairs.

"But he's left the pot, isn't that sweet?" she said. "And done the room out, which is so dreadful. He does make me ashamed."

"I don't know," Birt said. "He's old."

"But that's exactly it, darling," she objected, while her young man switched off the electric kettle.

"When they get beyond a certain point they do as they please," he said, still in his own voice.

"What a lot you know, Seb. At your time of life."

"Well you can't force him to act any different, can you?" he enquired in self defence. "It stands to reason he'll keep himself occupied. You mustn't let his managing the housework be an upset. You've been ill. There'll be plenty of time when you're better."

"But I'm not ill now," she said, almost as though to ask his opinion.

"Of course not." He refilled the teapot. "Sit down," he said, as if he owned the place. "Do you want to eat, because I'd have thought today too hot for food? I feel liverish after the afternoon."

She looked round and round the kitchen, without a word. "But one thing you might say to him," he began. "Liz,are you there? About this Mary." She seemed not to pay the slightest attention. "I've an idea he's being tempted into error."

"My love," she said unexpectedly, in a contemptuous voice.

"You must listen, dear" he pleaded, but she seemed taken up with all the work done by the old man.

"After so many years they get fixed in their notions," he continued. "If you and I have grudges, likely enough we'll cultivate enormous ones later, like goitres over our back sides to weigh us down, dear. And I'm sure now, he's out to make a cardinal blunder."

She glanced at him, lit a cigarette, looked away again.

"He'll report this girl's disappearance, sure to," Birt went on. "He's not said a word, of course, but I can even tell who he'll report to, Swaythling. So he can get his own back on Edge."

"And why shouldn't he, if he wants?" she asked, at her most practical. But she got up and stood by the low window. Her lover saw she drooped.

"It would be fatal," he said, with increasing embarrassment.

"Look, Seb, will you understand, once and for all, I won't have a word of criticism of Gapa, even?"

"But this is not criticism, dear. If you watch someone stumble away into fast traffic, just about to be run over, you don't stand there and not take action, do you?"

She started to write her name on window glass with a forefinger that left no trace, making the trapped bluebottles buzz.

"Dear," she said sadly, "you don't love me, you can't." He got up at once, came to her side. But she turned from him. He stood helpless.

"You can't," she repeated, in a wail.

"We weren't talking about ourselves," he pointed out.

"He is me," she said.

"Then listen to this, Liz please, I beg."

She moved off to the door, watched the copper in its shed. Because she had not walked out right away he felt it was safe to continue, yet was so nervous he fell back on the voice of the sort of lecturer he was not, and which he did not often use when with her.

"Consider for a moment our whole position here," he said. "A complete community related in itself, its output being what is, of course, the unlimited demand for State Servants, fed by an inexhaustible supply of keen young girls. Staffed, as well, by men and women who are only too well aware they can be replaced almost at a stroke of the pen by the State, from which there is virtually no appeal. In fact, we have here a sad bevy of teachers lying wide open to be reinvigorated, as it would be called, by new blood of which, worse luck, there is only too plentiful a supply in the Pool."

Still with her back towards him she laughed.

"Darling, you do do it well," she said. He thought, anyway she seems to listen, and was encouraged to pursue the matter.

"It follows," he proceeded, "that for the present an equipoise can be claimed here. There are, naturally, individual tensions, what one might describe as instances of disintegration or even of centrifugal action, whereby certain appear, now and again, to be flung out into the periphery of outer darkness. In other words we do not always agree between ourselves. Nevertheless I claim that we have a general measure of contentment in spite of what are, no doubt, inherited differences of outlook. To sum up, we exist together to earn a living by teaching others how to gain theirs. By and large we go about it in peace, and so I claim that there is what I can call a condition, which is to say a self compensating mechanism, in, or of, equipoise."

He paused. He was about to lose the thread. She said no word.

"But an incautious movement towards the centre," he went on with an effort, "towards the shaft upon which our little world revolves, that is to say upon the State which employs us at our main function, that of spinning like tops on our own axis," and here he gave one of his cracked laughs to point the jest, "can only fracture the spinning golden bowl, the whole unit, and bring the lot to nought, in other words, reduce us to the lowest, the unemployable."

"What is it, dear?"

"He's worried about this cottage, Liz," Sebastian replied promptly, but in his own voice.

"If he's worried, then he only is about me. I do blame myself," she said.

"Oh no, he's not," he said. Then Birt lost control. "He's past the age," he rushed on. "Besides he's ending, dying on his feet, I tell you. More than ever capable of some incredible folly."

"Don't be absurd, please," she said, and walked out in the sun in a sweat, as if she had been dowsed with cold water. He followed.

"Why, you don't mean he could have been upstairs all the time?" he whispered.

"There you are," she said, then turned on him in the sharp light. "You're terrified of Gapa, you all are, every one of you, and quite right. He'll do what he thinks fit, so he should. They've been at you about our house, though I don't know exactly how or what, and I don't want, I wouldn't stoop so low."

"Justice," Sebastian began almost to shout. "Old men have no idea at their age. They're too old."

"But darling I'm sure I didn't say a word, even, about justice."

"Yes Liz, but that's the essence of what we're discussing, surely. He's got his teeth into some injustice he thinks they've done this student, he will talk too much with the children you understand, and he's out to make trouble. But the bad part is, don't you see, he'll do it in spite of our cottage."

"It's me he wants to protect, it's me he loves," she said, showing signs of great agitation which he was too excited to notice.

"Yes, yes, he is, and that's why, and. ." he answered in a jumble, but she burst into tears and hurled herself at him. She forced herself on his chest as he stood there, arms hard around his neck.

"Oh Seb darling, why do you frighten me so?" He clutched her, speechless.

"If you love me like you say you do?" she went on. He held her tight, as though to crush the fears out.

"Forget it," he said. "This girl's disappearance has bowled me over."

She relaxed a trifle in his arms.

"But you said yourself Gapa was too old, and had to be let do what he wanted."

He stiffened.

"Why, you don't mean he really has anything on with this Mary?" he asked.

"Of course not," she said. "You must be mad. At his age? Really."

"It's all very well, Liz," he said, and relaxed his hold. "They do, you know." Then he put on the lecturer's voice again. "There have been regrettable instances," he intoned. "We have only to recollect the Police Court cases in the old regime."

"Stop that, Seb. I won't have you go on like it about Gapa. He's worth the whole lot of them." But she gave him a Judas kiss on the mouth.

"I love you," he mumbled, against lips which were thin as grass. He drew back. "No," he said, "Baker's all right. It's Edge is the trouble."

"They have no men," she said of these spinsters.

He winced. He even squirmed. But she did not notice.

"Baker can, and will, listen to reason, but the guv'nor's a real terror," he brought out at last. He took her hand. They wandered over to the sty. "She'll stop at nothing. She'd a light in her eye at lunch which made me uneasy, I can tell you. And to say what she did into the bargain."

"All right then, what did she say?" Miss Rock asked in a tired, bored voice.

"Oh not in so many words," he answered. "But it would do no harm at all to watch most conscientiously. She'll fight."

"What about?"

"To win her own way, of course. D'you suppose he could ever be persuaded to accept this election if it comes?"

"So that you can take over the cottage?" she asked with extraordinary perspicacity in a small, languid voice, while she glanced at him.

"Hullo, what's this?" he said, halted in his tracks.

"You're not being open with me," she said, and did not meet his eyes.

He knew this was so, but could hardly admit it. He had also to bear in mind that she must be spared shocks.

"I am," he protested. "Darling, we've not kept things from each other, have we?"

"You must remember Gapa's everything, Seb."

"Everything, Liz?"

"Well, after all he's done, when he's worked his fingers to the bone, and his discoveries from the time he was young, I do think he's entitled to lead his own life from now, I mean we owe it to him, don't we, and if you loved me, darling, you'd see it that way too. I mean if he's good enough for the State, for them to let him and me live on here, then I don't see we've a right to tell him whatever it is might suit us at the moment."