Concluding

"But darling, they will offer the election. The State will."

"Who said they would?"

"Miss Edge heard, Liz. When she was up in Town. This morning."

"You don't mean to say you've talked over Gapa again with that woman?"

"Of course not, dear. She just mentioned it at lunch."

"So that's what you've been at, then?" He stayed miserably silent.

"Don't let's mention them even, any more," she said, as though she had made up her mind this was all a stupid misunderstanding. She kissed his cheek. "Shall we go down to the Lake?" she said.

"Oh, not there, Liz, I'd want to bathe," he extemporised." They've put out an order against that on account of the weeds."

"All right, where? The beech tree?"

"Back to our private beech, Liz?" he agreed, nervously. She kissed him twice.

"Dear me," she said, very shy all of a sudden. "You have become loving." And they made off, hand in hand once more.

* * *

The staff, as well as the students, were allowed half an hour in which to be down for tea today, nevertheless it was unprecedented for Miss Edge to be the ten minutes late she was, and still more so for her to be faced with the fact that many of her colleagues could be even more unpunctual than herself. There was no sign of Marchbanks, which was, perhaps, to be expected after the ridiculous misunderstanding that had been uncovered about not calling the doctor, but Miss Baker was absent, and, most significant of all, Sebastian Birt had not put in an appearance, which was inexcusable after what had occurred, and, for that matter, was still going on, perhaps. Because they still had no news of Mary.

Edge literally itched to get to grips with Merode in spite of the rules and regulations, but now Dr Bodle had seen her at last, he'd forbidden even the simplest questioning, an injunction which Miss Edge would have been inclined to ignore, or forget, only Baker rather lost her head, had grown quite insistent. The thought of a girl laid by in full possession of her faculties, with a key to the whole mystery, protected even from points her own mother should put by the too hasty opinion of this fool of a medico, angered Miss Edge so much, now she had drunk some tea and felt restored, enraged her so deeply that, from the dais, she turned another terrible look on her charges, and several were caught in the middle of huge yawns; the soft, brilliant wetness of their pink mouths, and shining pearly teeth, being struck at her glance to pure enchantment, under wide, astonished eyes.

"Can Dakers and I help with the flowers afterwards, ma'am?" Winstanley asked.

"Thank you. I really feel I can manage," Miss Edge answered. She glared around. There was one good thing, she told herself, the girls were no longer at their whispers, there were none of those stares as at luncheon. But, on the other hand, the atmosphere was lax. They sat over tea as if washed out.

Next she examined her pile of blooms. Was it imagination, or had these in some way settled? But surely not by their own weight?

How absurd that, at lunch, she had had this feeling the child was underneath.

And certainly the flowers — were fading.

She took another glance at the students. No, they showed small interest in High Table. They entered by dribs and drabs, lazily, slack. Miss Edge clenched her thin fists.

She sent a frightful look at the gigantic, repeating gramophone, dumb in a corner.

"Has it been overhauled?" she asked at large.

"What is that, ma'am?" Winstanley questioned.

"Why, the music for our Ball of course," Edge replied. "We do not want to be suspended, so to speak, by a breakdown."

"Oh, the old thing's in a good mood now, ma'am. We tried the records as late as Tuesday."

"A mood, Winstanley? Will you arrange for the car to go at once over to Bradhampton to pick up Edwards, that is his name, Edwards? Then he can give the mechanism a thorough doing."

"Your car, ma'am?" Winstanley said. "But Miss Baker's taken that."

Edge felt her heart lurch. Hermione take the car and not say a word? What was this?

"Dear, dear, where is my memory?" she lied. "The truth is I have so much before each of these Festivities I sometimes wonder how I shall get through. Then you might send word, and he can come up on his bicycle." Like the policeman, she thought. But Baker must have something up her sleeve which could only have to do with Mary. How disloyal not to have mentioned it.

Miss Edge once more began to feel nervous.

She looked about the great room. By good fortune none of the girls seemed to watch the pile of blooms.

"Did she say when she would be back, then?" she asked.

"Miss Baker, ma'am? She's upstairs, resting."

"I distinctly understood her to tell me she had to run over somewhere," Edge lied again, to save her face. But she let all the anguish she felt sound in the voice she used.

At this precise moment one of the orderlies brought her Principal the post. A letter, marked O.M.S. in great black capitals, was addressed to her personally, and she opened it at once.

"Dear Miss Edge," she read, "I am directed by Majesty's Secretary of State Swaythling to inform you of the following, reached by the Secretary's State Council as conclusions, and with which he is in agreement. He intends to implement these conclusions by means of a Directive to be issued as soon as possible.

(1) That, generally speaking, there is insufficient opportunity at present for those girls under tuition for State Service, throughout the various Institutes, to take part in practical management.

(2) That, for this purpose, it is advisable they should be provided with pigfarms.

(3) Under the supervision of their Principals, students should run such an undertaking themselves, cooperatively, but in strict conformity with all Directives as may from time to time be issued by Majesty's Minister of Agriculture to professional pig farmers.

Finally: It is anticipated by these means that students will avail themselves of the opportunity afforded to learn from practical experience the day to day problems which arise in Administration.

Bearing in mind the need for stringent economy which obtains at present, your suggestions as to how this scheme can best be set in motion, together with those of your colleague, who should have received a similar communication by the same post, can be addressed to me, so that I have these on my desk not later than today week. Your fellow worker. John Inglethwaite"

Miss Edge was quite pale when she had finished.

One of the juniors seated below the dais said, to make conversation with an older girl, "Gosh, will you just look at Edge now, again."

"She's not so bad," the senior tolerantly answered. "It's your first summer here, I suppose? She's always a trifle nervy before the dance. But she'll be very different once we're under way."

Edge folded the communication from Inglethwaite and laid this on the table. She pressed the flat of a thin, open hand down over it. She was breathing heavily. Pigsties all over the wonderful Place? And the Stench? There were times, indeed, when one's ultimate loyalties were tested.

Not a scrap of help could be expected from Baker, who would find the whole idea quite practical; no, Miss Edge decided, no, her colleague would just remark. . 'how quaint, how black and white.'

She looked with anguish about the great room in which they were to dance. It had been The Banqueting Hall, burned down in Edwardian times. When the owner rebuilt he had replaced a vaulted roof of stone by oak, and put flat oak panelling eight foot up the walls, all of which, including a vast bow window over the Terraces, had been varnished a hot fox red, then, at some later date, treated with lime, until the wood turned to its present colour, the head of a ginger-haired woman who was going white as her worries caught up, in the way these will.

But Miss Edge's glance, now, was seeking the familiar, she sought comfort in what she had known so long, there was a long appeal about her look.

"Oh, we must give them a good Time," she said aloud. "It shall be a real Success."

A younger girl turned under this gaze to another, and whispered, "I bet Edge is a bit inside out to do with Mary."

"Why, whatever for?"

"Haven't you heard? There was a telegram to say the sister Doll was badly ill at home, and she was to go at once. Muriel had it from one of the seniors, who was there when this wire came. Rotten luck, on the night of the dance."

Her friend said, "I thought I hadn't seen Mary today," and went on to speak of the time she'd had to wait before she had been able to iron her dress.

An evening air, entering cool by wide windows, wafted the scent of that pyre of flowers to Miss Edge, reminded the lady that she had not yet had her stroll, that there could be no leisure for that now, with all she knew she had still to do. At the same time it carried a small buzz to her sharp ears. She at once looked more closely at the azalea and rhododendron. With a great rush of horror, she realised the whole pile of blooms was alive with bluebottles.

For a moment she thought she might faint.

She looked again. She forced herself to admit that, at first glance, she had exaggerated. There were not as many as she had thought. Yet the scent was distinctive, sickly. So what did this new frightful-ness portend? And how could they ever dispose, now, of this huge mass of blooms? While the whole idea, that there must be the body underneath, was unhealthy, morbid, too absurd, would she have to face it, after the girls had made these flowers into great swags of fragrant colour at her direction on the walls, would it be that buzzing flies might stay round the bouquets, turn all to decay and desecration?

Her mouth and throat burned dry. Try as she might, she could not swallow. She picked up the cup of tea with hands atremble, but before she could bring it to her lips, she retched.

She supposed there was no-one who had not noticed. She looked about, clinking the cup down. And not a soul seemed to have seen.

How idiotic to start an illness at this juncture, when she would get small help from Baker, goodness knows, and with the Dance upon them. But she swore she must protect her Girls; they should never know. It was Founder's Day. Everything must proceed, and in due order.

At this moment she saw their little red State tourer come up the drive past these Banqueting Hall windows, attended by its cloud of dust. A middle-aged woman, on whom Miss Edge had not set eyes in her life, sat alone in the back. The worst was, if this should turn out to be some new plan of Baker's, she could not ask who in the world might the creature be. Then Edge wondered whether Mr Rock had a younger sister, or perhaps it was even Elizabeth's mysterious aunt. She watched the staff, but they seemed to pay small heed. Mr Dakers entered.

"You are not last," Edge said, at her most gracious, in an allusion to Marchbanks and Sebastian, the intense curiosity making her feel livelier already.

"My apologies, ma'am," the man replied. "I do not know how it can have happened."

"You need not insist," she assured him. "Founder's Day is one occasion in the year when we may all relax. Until evening, that is, when the real business of our holiday commences, with music, with the first waltz." She smiled in a friendly manner. And the smile stayed frozen on her face as Marion entered from the direction of the Sanctum. The child had been in tears again. She bent to Edge's ear.

"Miss Baker says, ma'am," she whispered. "Can you spare a minute. Mrs Manley's just arrived."

Manley, Edge asked herself as she rose, Manley? Why Merode of course. Merode Manley. Oh, what devilry was this?

When Edge came in Baker was pouring a cup of tea for the woman. She remarked, "Dear, this is Mrs Manley, Merode s aunt."

"How d'you do, Mrs Manley," Edge said, while she took her hand, "I'm sorry we've had to bring you all this way," she added, so as not to admit ignorance of her colleague's intentions.

"How d'you do," the woman replied. "But I still don't quite understand," she said to Miss Baker.

"I was just explaining to Merode's aunt the predicament in which we find ourselves," Baker suggested diplomatically, because it was quite on the cards this woman might give trouble. She had the air of a determined creature. "There is nothing the matter with Merode," the Principal went on. "On the contrary, we've always found her so helpful, haven't we dear? But I must say, in the present circumstances, we hardly know what to decide."

"It is Miss Baker, isn't it?" Mrs Manley addressed Edge's colleague. "Then I'd be so grateful if you could tell me what this is all about. You say she is quite well?"

"Yes, Mrs Manley, I'm glad to assure you the doctor's given a clean bill. But the truth of the matter is, she was out most of last night."

"Who with?" Mrs Manley asked sharp.

"Another student," Edge replied, as quick.

"A girl?" Mrs Manley enquired, turning what Miss Edge decided was a hostile look upon her.

"We have no male students here," Edge spoke out severely, so much as to suggest that a joke in bad taste had been cracked.

"And the other girl is not home yet," Miss Baker explained.

"Yes, I see," Mrs Manley said, not in the least apologetic.

"So we were wondering if you could help," Edge announced, as though her colleague and herself had hatched a curious plot.

"I wonder if I could see Merode?" the woman asked, but in a hard voice.

"I think that would be best," Miss Edge agreed.

"But, dear, the doctor," Baker objected. "He said she was on no account to be pressed. And we have our regulations."

"Surely the child's own aunt. .?" Mrs Manley asked.

"She was in pyjamas," Edge interrupted, as if this explained all.

"Well of course, since it was at night," the strange woman said.

"Do have another of these cakes. We rather pride ourselves on them," Miss Baker offered, and it occurred to Edge that, everything considered, this particular aunt and guardian was having a fine tea. Did they have nothing at home, for them to eat so enormously whenever they came over? Was it fair to the girls in the holidays?

"Thank you," Mrs Manley accepted. "No," she went on, "had you said Merode wore her day things, then I would have been worried."

"She has torn the leg," Miss Edge pointed out.

"But you told me she was not hurt."

"The trouser leg," Edge patiently explained.

"On a briar, because it was dark, no doubt," the guardian answered, and again showed relief in her tone of voice.

"Oh, it had occurred to us this thing might have been worse," Miss Edge commented, at her most dry. Baker gave a glance of warning.

"We wondered if we could put our heads together," she said in a conciliatory way.

"I'd like a word with the child first," her aunt insisted.

"Of course," Miss Baker said. "The only trouble is the doctor. ." and she did not finish her sentence.

"You surely did not get me over to forbid my seeing my Merode," Mrs Manley objected, and appeared to harden.

"There are also our regulations," Baker pointed out, in embarrassment.

The relative snorted.

"All the more reason, then," she said, starting to get her gloves and bag together.

"I think what my colleague tried to explain, without having to cross the i's and dot the t's, is this," Miss Edge announced. "You cannot, of course, be familiar with the Directives under which we carry on our work here. They are designed to protect us, as well as the students, from day to day inconveniences that may arise where a community of young people exists."

"But you are not going to tell me this happens commonly, Miss Edge."

"In the ten years we have been here, I do not know when we have had someone over at such short notice," the lady answered, then waited. When there was no retort, and she had given Baker a look to express her disagreement at the summoning of what had turned out to be a recalcitrant witness, Miss Edge continued, "We are fronted by an entire scaffolding of Reports. In certain circumstances we are obliged to render a Report of behaviour to our Superior Authority. And, if we are to do so, the most stringent Rules obtain. Access to the party concerned before she has given an explanation is rigidly excluded. I cannot see her, my colleague even cannot do so, no-one can intervene before she has given her own story."

"Then why have me over?"

"We thought it the human thing," Baker interjected, miserably.

"But what's behind this, what has she done?" Mrs Manley complained.

"There's a man in it, I'm very much afraid," Baker muttered.

"No really Miss Edge. ." the aunt began.

"Miss Baker," Edge corrected, as if to dissociate herself from the line which was being taken.

"… I can't accept that," Mrs Manley went on, with a look of venom at Edge. "Only sixteen, and not ever a hint of the kind at home."

"We sometimes notice with families. . where the parents are no longer together. ." Baker uttered in a faint voice, mixing Mary with Merode.

"Their orphans wander about the garden at night in pyjamas?" Mrs Manley asked, and actually laughed aloud.

"Miss Baker has written the standard work on this difficult subject," Edge said, thrown back on the defensive.

"Well I don't know that my husband wouldn't agree with her," the woman announced in what could only be termed a fruity voice. "But you and I realise it's hardly usual, don't we?" she had the impudence to ask Edge.

"I am afraid we shall not see eye to eye," this lady said, while Baker made a gesture of weariness.

"There's a whole history of such cases," she explained "I've no doubt," Mrs Manley agreed, conscious perhaps that she had gone too far. "And of course I'm grateful to you for the chance to put our heads together," she added with what was, to Edge, an altogether offensive familiarity. "But I have the right to see my ward at any time, I hope?"

"Of course," Miss Baker said.

"Yes," Edge put in. "The question is, how not to make it harder for her."

"In view of your rules about reports, you mean?" the aunt enquired.

"Just so."

"Oh well, Miss Edge, I hope it won't come to that, indeed not," Mrs Manley answered, in such a way that the lady felt this relative was in full command. Then the aunt tried a shot in the dark. "But I do feel I have a right to learn how it was you came to the conclusion there might be a boy in it, before I go up to see my niece," she said.

"She told Miss Marchbanks," Baker explained, quite unaware.

"Exactly," Mrs Manley said. "But did she write out an account?"

"Oh no," Baker replied, with signs of distress because she saw looming ahead the awkwardness that Merode had fainted. But Edge could see further. She was on tenterhooks.

"Then this Marchbanks person questioned her?"

"Yes, and such a distressing thing occurred," Baker hurried on, regardless. "The dear child fainted."

"Fainted?" Mrs Manley echoed, in a voice of horror. It was then that Baker saw the pit she had dug for herself.

"Oh, not what you think at all," she said pettishly. "It was what made the doctor diagnose shock."

"Third degree shock," Mrs Manley snorted. Edge had to keep herself from clicking her fingers together she was so exasperated.

"Really, madam, I cannot have this," Baker said, with great firmness, rising to the occasion. "I asked you here to have a quiet talk about what was best in the child's own interest, and you make suggestions as to our competence. Perhaps I should remind you that the State, when It delegated Responsibility to my colleague and myself, gave us a large measure of protection, or latitude if you prefer the word. I asked you over because I felt that was the human thing to do. If you insist you must see your niece before she has voluntarily made her explanation, then my Report shall go in and I'll note the fact in what I have to write, which may go hard with her. After all, I can lay claim to some experience."

"There is one of our students missing yet," Edge added, white of face.

"But what d'you get out of your girls if you won't allow anyone to go near 'em?" Mrs Manley asked, in a humble voice. Baker, at this point, was misled.

"My dear Mrs Manley," she said, back at once to her most expansive. "We are not like that with our children. There is perfect confidence."

"And if they won't talk?"

"Well then, that is very difficult, isn't it?"

"But Miss Baker, who is this Marchbanks?"

"Our deputy. We both have to go to London Wednesdays, and while we are away she takes our place. We have complete faith in her, isn't that so, Edge?"

"Of course," Miss Edge agreed, showing in her voice the disapproval she felt at the line their little talk was still taking.

"And, in spite of the rule you have about interviews with your students, she was brought before Miss Marchbanks?"

"She was found hidden," Edge interrupted, finally taking charge.

"Then who hid her?"

Miss Edge answered with a prolonged shrug of the shoulders.

"That's one point on which I'd like to see Merode, of course," Mrs Manley said. "But this woman interviewed the child?"

"Certainly not," Edge objected. "When Merode was discovered she was brought before our deputy, as she would have been before us if we had not been obliged to be elsewhere."

"She was asked no questions?"

"Miss Marchbanks has thirty years in the State Service. I am confident she would never betray her Trust."

"But excuse me, Miss Edge, you haven't answered my question."

"I have some regard for accuracy, madam. Since neither myself or my colleague were present. ."

"And yet my little girl fainted?"

"She blurted something out about a man and then she fainted," Edge agreed.

"You see, it is just this point that I find so difficult to understand," Mrs Manley appealed to Baker. "What man? Where is he? If she volunteered what she did, why don't I know about him? And in her pyjamas, too."

"But my dear lady, it is precisely why we asked you to come over. Merode has been simply splendid the whole time she has been here. We just wondered if she had given any indication in her letters?"

"There is one of our girls we cannot account for yet," Edge repeated, in a warning voice.

"But I've had not a hint from the child," the aunt protested. "She's always been so very happy with you both. Of course, I don't say she has no secrets from me. I know I never told my mother a word, and I don't expect any different from my poor sister's girl." Edge sniffed audibly, but was not noticed. "Yet I'm sure, if she'd fallen under the influence of an older child, then I'd have had at least an idea."

"And there's been no sign?" Baker asked, hoping against hope.

"Not one," Mrs Manley answered. "But I'll tell you a perfectly simple explanation of the whole affair."

"By all means," Baker encouraged, dubious to the last.

"Sleepwalking," the aunt announced, in barely concealed triumph. And Miss Baker was so flabbergasted at this forgotten echo of the dawn that, without more ado, she took the woman up to Merode at once.

Edge did not stay to argue. There was no time, she felt. As soon as Baker had led the woman out, she herself hurried off to get the decorations done because, now they had decided to hold their Ball, it must be the most successful ever. The girls simply must enjoy themselves.

She found a number of her charges waiting, unconcerned, by the side of that horrible pile of blooms.

She concentrated on Moira, in whom she had sensed almost an antagonism these last few weeks.

"Here we are, dears," she cried out gaily, at her most genuine. It would be enough, in a day or two, to think of the implications with Merode s aunt, when they came to write out their Report.

"Moira, will you take the satin ribbon out of that drawer and divide it into twenty-one inch lengths? You will find scissors at the back. Then you must cut it square, with two v's afterwards at each end. Be as neat as you can, child. Tie the branches in bundles. Now the others," and she approached the pyre with a distaste they did not seem to share. "We'll have you parcelling bundles up." She flicked with a long handkerchief at the blooms, was relieved to find no flies. They misunderstood the gesture.

"Oh, we sprinkled with water to keep fresh," two or three sang out. "We've put sheets of paper round to save the floor," they added, and then scent from that mass of flowers came over her again. She was heartened to find this sharp as wine, now day was cooler.

"How will I tell the inches?" Moira enquired, while her companions attacked the pile.

"Hurry, Moira," they called. "We'll catch up in no time."

"Marion, fetch the steps," Edge ordered, relieved that the senior had recovered from her last bout of crying. "Judge the best way you can, dear," she said to Moira, and thought I must have been poorly at lunch, it was the heat, forgetting she had felt so bad at tea. "Busy as bees, aren't we?" she added aloud, standing dead still in the midst of commotion, while that heap of lovely blooms was robbed and diminished by her charges.

When several swags of azalea had been tied in neat bows, Miss Edge led a short procession down, through evening sun, to the alcove which looked over descending Terraces towards the trees beyond, the blessed, dear prospect. She closed her mind to Mrs Manley. After she had given directions, she stood at one of the windows and lovingly, sun in her eyes, watched the Park. Until she remembered.

"Oh my dears," she called out. They turned beaming faces which she could not see for sun, for this was the mood in which they most liked Edge. "We are going to be allowed to keep pigs, have you heard?"

There was a descant of small cries.

"But where, we haven't been told, of course," Edge said, her wrinkled face back to the prospect. "How shall we hide them?"

"Down by Mr Rock's, I'd say," Moira proposed, because she would then see more of the old man.

"Not a bad idea at all," Miss Edge approved.

"And he could look after ours," Moira went on. "He's done such wonders with Daise."

"We shall have to think about that," Edge objected, showing signs of reluctance. The idea is you should manage everything yourselves, under supervision of course."

"Oh, what a good plan, ma'am," they said, although several, if she had only known, were no keener than their Principal. And this lady did not disclose her fears. Why should she?

"We shall go into everything," she promised.

"When will it come about?" one of the girls asked.

"All in good time," Edge answered. "Now back with you and fetch more bundles, or we shall never be done." She was, for the moment, left alone with Moira.

"He really would be best," the girl informed Miss Edge. "He knows everything about them."

"I'd not tell him so, if I were you," the guv'nor said, certain the child would rush to do it if advised against.

"Why not, Miss Edge?" Moira asked, and went beyond what was permissible when she omitted to call the Principal madam. However Edge contented herself by merely saying, "Think."

Blind sun, three quarters down the sky, was huge to the right. A soft breeze swayed curtains. Miss Edge regretted her walk, which she usually took about this time. She could have gone by the old man's cottage to prospect for a site to place the pigsties, up wind of course.

"He has ideas about himself, you know," she added.

As they were still alone for the moment, Moira thought she would make the best use of her chances.

"Is that right, ma'am, when they reckon Merode's aunt's here?" The scissors went snip into the ribbon, shiny, primrose yellow.

"Why yes, Moira," Edge answered, then screwed her eyes up against the sun. Was that Mr Rock, or not, afar off there, skirting the beeches to get down to the Lake?

"Is she all right again?" the child asked, about Merode.

"There's never been anything the matter, not so far as I know," Edge replied of Mrs Manley, aloof and absent. For it was Mr Rock after all. Much worse he was deliberately exercising his animal. How intolerable, if she had taken her stroll, to have come upon him driving the slobbery pig.

"But isn't it strange about Mary, ma'am?"

Miss Edge barely heard.

"Moira," she said. "You have younger eyes than I. Look over there and tell me what you see. Is that Mr Rock? And what has he got with him?"

The child collected her face into an expression which the old man, had he been present, would have found adorable in the effort to pierce the slanting sun, which turned her skin to coral, her red hair to live filaments.

"Why how sweet," the child exclaimed. "Yes, it is him. He's taking darling Daise for a run."

The others came up, then, with bunches of red and white rhododendron.

"But not loose, dear?" Edge protested.

"Oh, she's absolutely safe, isn't she?" Moira appealed to her companions.

"Why Mr Rock's often let her out while we've been there, when she's stayed so busy and well-behaved."

At this moment there was the sound of a motor car engine. Coming or going? The Principal looked left, then right. Almost at once their little red State tourer came down the Drive, its cloud of dust not yet martialled but already falling in behind. Mrs Manley was seated in the back. She looked straight ahead. By some trick of the light, perhaps, her face was purple.

"That's Mrs Manley, isn't it?" Moira cannily enquired.

"She's been to see Merode," a child said.

"I'll bet she asked some posers," yet another suggested.

"We'll have to hasten if we're ever to get through," Edge propounded, and saw, or thought she saw, that Mr Rock had stopped to look. Their car, so soon invisible to Edge, must have just been entering the Trees. For a cloud of dust now lay afar, at the Drive's opening, and was a delicate pink.

The old man seemed to stand fast, the better to watch.

The decorations for Founder's Day were already traditional, although the Institute had been open for only ten years. In consequence there was no need for Edge to give orders, her presence was designed to preclude innovation, such as the fir branches Marchbanks had so foolishly suggested. Hooks were fixed permanently in the walls at proper intervals, and the work of tying azalea and rhododendron to hang head downwards in separate, glistening great masses went on apace without Edge having to give a thought to the proceeding. Indeed, despite a renewed preoccupation with Mr Rock, she was already conscious of a glow within her at the prospect of so much that would inevitably please, and which was to be enjoyed and enjoyed; when the trees' shadows crept at last over the mansion, and then there was moonlight; when Baker, with herself, in front of all the students dressed in their clear frocks, could sway out in one another's arms at last to open everything to that thunder of the waltz.

She had dismissed from her mind each carking memory of the Manley creature. The die was cast. They were to go on with the Dance, any other course would be unthinkable. So she was happy in anticipation, culpably at rest. She could even forgive the sage his sow.

Accordingly she had, at first, no qualms when she heard a child back at the pyre exclaim, "Why, whatever's this?" And paid no heed to the giggles which followed. But when, in the girls' chatter, she caught one say gleefully, "It's the living spit of Mary," she did turn, then, with a sickening premonition of the worst, to have the quick comfort to realise they had found what was only a short, small object. Yet she moved down upon them at once.

"What's this?" she demanded, horrified by the agitation in her voice. The students parted. And she saw, and it gave her such a frightful turn she straightaway fainted, a rabbity Rag Doll dressed gaily in miniature Institute pyjamas, painted with a grotesque caricature of Mary's features on its own flat face, laid disgustingly on a bit of mackintosh, embowered by these blooms.

When Edge came to, she was laid out on her chaise longue in the Sanctum. Miss Baker ministered with smelling salts, while Marion stood at a cut glass bowl in which were cubes of ice. The late sun caught these with sufficient force to distress Edge, and she closed her eyes once more. The minutes passed.

"It's been so hot," Baker said finally, with vexed accents. Miss Edge looked at her, and again had to turn her face from the intolerable insistence of salts on top of light. She even squirmed in protest.

"That's right, dear," came Baker's voice. "Now rest." Upon which, Edge raised a hand to her hair and looked about. She fastened on Marion.

"What a remarkable thing," she said, not without effort.

"Don't give it another thought," Miss Baker ordered, bright as the day outside.

"But did you see too, Marion?" Edge enquired. The girl seemed so weighed down by guilt, almost as though she were in for another bout of crying. Her Principal noted this from a vast distance of lassitude, which allowed her to ask questions out of a calm, almost intellectual curiosity.

"Yes, ma'am. Oh, I have it here."

"Plenty of time, Edge," Miss Baker warned. "Now, wouldn't you like Dr Bodle?"

"So foolish of me," Miss Edge lied to the child. "I thought it was a… a dead rabbit," she said in anticlimax, voicing the secret, known throughout the Institute, that she had a terror of rabbits dead. "And then I did realise, only too late, too late." A tear began to roll from each of her blue, old eyes.

"I'll never forgive myself," she ended, in a small voice and a hiccup.

"Nonsense," Baker said, "It's the heat. You're overstrained."

A silence followed, while Miss Edge pulled herself together.

"But was there, really, a Doll?" she asked. Her colleague turned away, anguished. Miss Edge did not notice.

"Oh yes, ma'am. Someone in the kitchen said she'd lost hers."

"Someone said. .?"

"Who was that then?"

"I can't remember exactly. But she did know Mary had lost it," Marion explained.

The older women could not disguise the fresh shock this was to them. Miss Edge sat bolt upright even.

"Who?" Baker gasped.

"Mary, ma'am."

"No, but who informed you?"

There was another pause.

"I can't seem to remember, quite," the girl told Baker.

"Well," Miss Edge said, better already now that she was following a cold scent. "Suppose you go up to Matron and inform her from me that you are to stay with her until you do?"

"Oh but ma'am, and the dance?"

"It will come back before then. Yes, run along, Marion."

The moment the door was closed on the girl, Miss Edge burst out, "Were there Pins in? Had it a painted Heart?"

"My dear," Baker expostulated. "This is practically no more than a golliwog."

"Oh my heart," Edge said. "How terrible."

"Now, I'm sure it isn't what you think," the other tried to comfort her colleague. "This is all a mistake."

"I knew, right through lunch," Miss Edge insisted.

There came a knock on the door.

"Come in," Edge cried, trembling, and sat up straight again.

"I thought I ought to tell you, ma'am," Marion said, as she sidled in, "But I just remembered I heard Mary got a wire. She's gone home."

"Gone home?" the two Principals burst out.

"When?" Edge demanded.

"Mrs Blain told us there was a wire to say the sister was sick," Marion announced in a shocked voice.

"Did any telegrams come last night?" Baker asked her colleague, because all communications to the students were read before being handed over.

"You can go to Matron now, Marion," Edge ordered.

"And remember, not a word about any of this to the others. You still have something to tell us, child."

As soon as the girl was out of their room Miss Baker got on the telephone to Marchbanks. The reply was that nothing had come for Mary in the past week.

"She could have stopped the postman," Baker suggested.

"My dear," Edge said faintly, "I still cannot believe it, and now this terrible Doll in her image. At her age too."

"Then what d'you really think?" Baker asked, her voice trembling.

"The Lake," Miss Edge insinuated, almost hoarse.

"Oh no, not that, dear."

"You see, Baker, I understand now why Rock should have been on his way down."

"Last night?"

"No, just a moment ago, with his pig."

"With his pig!"

"In South Eastern Europe, Hermione, they are used for tracking."

"But listen," Baker announced, "this is too mysterious. The child's alone in the world, except for her parents living apart in Brazil. She has nobody to send wires."

"Are you sure?"

"I looked up the card this morning, don't you remember?"

"Then it must have been a man," Edge said, from the depths.

"No, I don't think so. I'll tell you why. They may simply have invented the whole tale."

"Oh, Baker, what is the matter with the Police that she cannot be found?"

"They have just made it all up," Baker insisted.

"We must cancel the Dance, there is nothing else for it," Miss Edge then said.

But her colleague was on the house telephone again. She found out the postman had not been yesterday, after the second delivery at lunch time.

"And she laid our tea, that was the last I saw of her, Edge. There was nothing, then, not in the way she looked."

"That is as may be," Miss Edge replied. Like a spoiled child, she put her face away from Baker along the back of the chaise longue.

"Of all our children she was the truthfullest, dear," Miss Baker continued. "They are good girls. It's some misunderstanding."

"I blame myself, now, that I went to London," Miss Edge announced, but in stronger tones.

"What else could we have done? We can't have a hue and cry, dear."

"You think not?" Edge asked coldly.

"Well, not yet, can we? We don't know much for sure."

"What did that ridiculous Manley woman say after she had seen Merode?" Edge demanded, at her driest.

"My dear, I so regret ever having called the creature over," Miss Baker protested. "How wise of the State to lay down that the girls must be held incommunicado after serious affairs like this, until they have written their own account."

Miss Edge listened in silence, thus forcing her question which was a reproof.

There was a pause.

"Still sleepwalking," Baker confessed at last.

"And Mary?" Edge insisted.

"Nothing to do with Merode, naturally," Miss Baker replied in a bitter voice. "I blame myself," she volunteered.

Her colleague did not help in any way. Still holding her face averted, she began a cold silence.

"But I do feel, dear," Baker tried once more, "that it would really be unwise for us to cancel our arrangements, at any rate before we learn the truth. It will go so much the harder with the child when she does turn up."

Edge sniffed.

"After all," Miss Baker went on, in a soft voice. "How does a dolly alter matters? We were going ahead before we came across that, weren't we? What d'you think?"

There was a longer pause. Then, from the same remote position, Miss Edge was so good as to say, "Let me see it once again."

When she had the thing in a hand, she did not raise her head but laid the Doll out along the chair back, on a level with her eyes. Its limbs were intolerably loose, as before rigor mortis. The flat, white, miniature, flannel face of Mary was, of course, unwinking, and Edge saw the eyes, the mouth and nose had been drawn with blood red lipstick. But her heart grew lighter as she began to believe it was not, after all, altogether like the child. Yet she held the thing elegantly over a cushion, with a kind of high bred weariness. At last she said, "You know this could be Merode, or even Marion."

"D'you think?" Baker asked, with hope.

"You understand they are too old, Hermione, for dolls?"

"But, Mabel, are they? We've known it here, you know."

"There is just this about the pyjamas," Edge went on. "Merode was found in hers, I recollect. It may only be a stupid prank."

"That is certainly an angle," Miss Baker said with rising spirits, as ever the optimist.

"I might confront the child," Edge suggested. She sat up, laid the Doll on her lap.

"Oh but Mabel, don't you consider you ought to rest? You must remember you've had a turn, quite apart from our directives."

"I feel somehow the whole future of this beautiful Place is at stake, dear," Miss Edge answered. "Of course, I would not say a word to the girl. I might just go into her room with it."

"But how d'you feel?"

"I am quite all right, thank you, Hermione."

"Then in that case," said Miss Baker, to whom it had become imperative to escape, "I was thinking I'd just run down by the Lake. It would ease my mind."

Edge made no reply. She picked up the Doll by its short neck, and left, staggering a little.

As Mr Rock drew near the water he was more than ever sure it had been a mistake to bring Daisy. She was not ringed, and, now that they had moved once more under the beeches, she kept turning last year's leaves with her snout, also the ground beneath, but so slowly and with such loud delight that they hardly progressed forward; and the ends of sticks of sunlight, pointed down from high trees, moved across his pig's flanks like pink and cream snails, then over his own face in little balls of warmth.

There were even moments when Daisy actually knelt, and all was still.

He would never get her home, he knew. She would have to be left to make her own way back at meal time, but there had been no other excuse to go down by the water, and someone had to after the poor girl, because those evil ninnies, whose absolute power so absolutely corrupted them, were too muddleheaded, or imperious, to see what must be done in merest human charity. Ted, his goose, covered a deal of ground each day, besides he had no call to look for her, and then pigs, as was well known, possessed a sense of smell which might come in handy amongst thick reeds. Imagine not organising a search as soon as they had learned, the fabulous Neroines, already tuning their fiddles before the rout, the fireman's ball.

He wiped his forehead with the back of a hand, after which he polished the spectacles. He clucked at Daisy to encourage her, then found that he had come into full sunlight, and could see the lake at last.

On the side by which he was approaching, water was dammed well up above ground level, a white mirror almost to the level of his eyes, and out of which grew rushes, pink and green, with willows and other smaller gray bushes everlastingly leant over their several likenesses in a faint lakeside, sunlit smell of rotting, for perhaps all of three times seventy years.

He reminded himself that he should not come out from the shelter of the trees, must not be seen. Daisy would be his eyes.

At the scent of the lake she suddenly trotted forward, burst through a little undergrowth with a great amount of noise and, while he stepped back into concealing shade, she halted at the brink, nose up, ears folded forwards over violet eyes, and with deeply heaving flanks, by which Mr Rock assumed she must wish to challenge, or had sensed, someone on the further bank to whom, in her startled whiteness, she might seem his goose, he thought, if the person had not got his or her right spectacles.

All was still, not a bird moved, but the sun was already turning edges of green leaves red, and soon it would be time for russet pheasants roosting.

Meantime Miss Baker, going down to this lake another way, for all her fat moved silently to come upon the sergeant seated on a log in the traditional attitude, a high helmet on the ground at the side, mopping his brow with a red, bandanna handkerchief.

She was much settled at the sight of him, took it for proof that Edge, when that lady interviewed the man, had counselled his keeping an eye upon the place.

"Why sergeant," she said, therefore, in an arch voice, "this is a pleasure I must say's entirely unexpected."

He jumped as though he had been shot.

"Why Miss Baker, ma'am," he exclaimed. Getting up he replaced the helmet with a guilty movement.

"It has been warm, certainly."

"It has that," the man replied.

"Take a few steps with me," she invited. "And to what do we owe this pleasure?" she asked, as he fell in at her side.

"I was up at the house this noon, ma'am," he answered.

Baker did not know how much her colleague had given away, but she, like Miss Edge before her, would never be so injudicious as to disclose that what one of them did could be without the consent, and full agreement, of the other.

"I don't fancy there's much in all this," she said about the disappearance. He kept in mind Miss Edge's hint as to men of a certain age and replied, "I'm right glad to hear you say so, ma'am."

"Really?" she asked. "You've some information that hasn't yet reached us, perhaps?" She was overconfident. She was so sure that all would yet be well.

"Not us, we haven't," he said. But he considered these two women were not being straight with the police. It was why he had returned to what he called 'the scene.' So he added, "Then you've a student still missing, ma'am?"

Baker did not realise that her colleague, when she talked with the sergeant, had, as usual, pursued a devious course.

"Why yes," she answered. "Well, after all," she went on. "What does one mean when one says missing?"

This struck an answering note in the sergeant's head. At the station much of their time was taken up with young women adrift, who, after fourteen days, returned brown and happy from a fortnight with a boy by the ocean.

"You've got something there, ma'am," he agreed.

"It's a question of degree," she elaborated.

"I wonder if I might put a question, ma'am?" the policeman said, his doubts back again. "What does Miss Edge have in view?"

"I'm afraid she's very worried, sergeant."

"On what grounds, miss?"

Baker then made the mistake of taking the man for a fool. "Why because we have a girl absent, of course," she said.

"Strange Miss Edge should never mention the disappearance, when she had me along only this morning." Baker's heart fell. The sergeant had spoken quite disagreeably. It was now obvious that one had to be careful with him. Oh, what had her colleague been about?

As warily as possible she began to explain the danger of Reports, and how fatal these were to a girl's chances if they had to be written.

"In their own best interests we leave it to the very last, except for impossible cases, of course. To tell you the honest truth, as one State Official to another," she tried to humour him, "in nearly every instance we manage to forget to make one out, sergeant."

"Yes, ma'am, we also have reports to render. And it goes hard with us if there's a fatality we don't know all about, almost before it's happened."

"A fatality?" Baker echoed, with a wail.

"To a manner of speaking," the policeman said, in a low voice.

At this moment they came within sight of the water and Daisy, from a considerable distance, saw them first. She gave a warning grunt, which made Mr Rock look twice. He then noticed Baker with the sergeant, and again had the unreasoned impulse that he must explain his presence, for which he could not, he felt, account by merely saying he had taken Daisy for a stroll. So, instinctively, and with the swill man's yell, he called out "Ted."

Because he faced the great house, the echo volleyed back at him, "Ted, Ted."

"Good heavens, what was that?" Baker asked.

"Man shouted," the sergeant said, his eye on the middle distance.

"It was a man, wasn't it?" Miss Baker quavered, to be reassured.

"I do believe it's Mr Rock, miss," the sergeant replied, in a careful voice. "Indeed, if I'm not much mistaken, he has the porker with him."

"He may have found something," Baker objected.

"In such case, no doubt he'll sing out again."

"But shouldn't we go over at once, sergeant?"

"One moment, ma'am, if you will allow me. I just wanted to put a question regarding Mr Rock."

"Yes?" Oh what had Edge done?

"Does he see much of your girls, ma'am?"

"He lives on the place, you understand," she said.

"How did that come about?"

Baker then gave Mr Rock's history, in some detail, to explain his presence, and added what she knew of the coming election to an Academy of Sciences or State Sanatorium. The sergeant was left with the idea that Mr Rock was joyfully packing up to leave.

"I see, ma'am," he commented, heavily non-committal.

"Now, since he hasn't called a second time, shall we go over?" And they started off.

It was not until they were half way, that the policeman was certain of the pig.

"He's got his sow along after all," he confirmed.

"Good heavens, not his pig, surely?" Baker echoed Miss Edge, afraid the sergeant might be referring to Elizabeth.

"He'll have his work cut out to drive her home when he wants," the man said, with satisfaction.

In another few minutes they came up to Mr Rock, who stood his ground. Daisy fled a few paces, and squealed in what was perhaps simulated horror. And Baker gave a small gesture of distaste, which did not escape the sage.

"Good evening, sir," the policeman said. "Just the weather for a stroll."

"So I notice," Mr Rock innocently answered, but Miss Baker's heart began to pound.

"We fancied we heard you call, sir?"

"Only after Ted." Baker noticed the pig watched them with disrespect, thought it seemed to hold a muttered conversation half under its breath, judging by the petulant squeaks which issued from that muddy mouth.

"Now she's not disappeared, I hope, sir?" the sergeant asked, in fat jocular tones.

When a man, such as he, becomes civil it is just the moment his type wants watching, Mr Rock told himself. But the truth was the sergeant had come only for a look around, in which he felt he could not indulge with so many present. Also he was parched for a cup of tea, and had been of the opinion that Mrs Blain was an understanding sort of woman who knew better than to offer a glass of flat beer, this had been his thought as Miss Baker stole up on him.

"Disappeared?" Mr Rock echoed. "I know nothing."

"That's good," the sergeant answered absentmindedly, his eyes to the ground.

"They stray," Mr Rock added, and once again agitated Miss Baker. "According to their age," he added.

"Yes," the sergeant said, as vague. "Well, if you'll excuse me now, I'll have to get on, miss," he said, to the lady's surprise. And he went off without another word, left her flat.

"The Law," Mr Rock tried the Principal out, looking full at her with, behind their spectacles, his enormous, magnified eyes.

"What a shame in this beautiful Place," she agreed, quick as quick.

"Makes you wonder."

"I never wonder, Mr Rock. I take things as they are," she corrected him.

"Daisy," he exclaimed and, indeed, she was nowhere to be found. "Excuse me, Madam," and made as if to move off, stumbling a trifle.

"One minute," she said, in the voice of authority he so hated. "Is she safe?"

"Who are you asking?" he fiercely demanded. She did not understand.

"This is your pig, isn't it?"

"Daisy?" he enquired, and, extraordinary man, she could see he now actually laughed at her. "Wouldn't hurt a fly." She unbent a trifle.

"Yet, you know, where I was brought up in the country, on a black and white farm," she lied, "where all the animals were that, you understand, well, I shall never forget, but I was out to pick apples one day and the pigs were loose in the orchard. It was rather thundery weather, so I had my mackintosh, which I left below while I was up the ladder. But I suppose I must have been preoccupied, because they ate it, every scrap."

He bowed.

"Madam," he said, "never fear, we are not in for rain the next few hours."

Blushing with humiliation, she turned on her heel and left without another word. Really, she thought, the man must be malevolently hostile.

As Baker tramped back to the great house along a ride, fanning herself with a dock leaf, she came to within sight of the fallen beech. She did not know, but the sergeant had not preceded her by many minutes. Neither of them could tell this was where Merode had been found, or they might have stopped to investigate. It was lucky for Sebastian and his Liz they did not do so, because these two were lying stark naked in one another's arms, precisely at the same spot in which Merode had been found. For Elizabeth saw how it was with her lover after he had come upon the girl lying stretched out in pyjamas. And now, a second time, Liz had taken him back to wipe off the memory of Merode, on this occasion by cruder means. As the policeman was coming by, Sebastian and his Liz had lain stark, scarcely breathing for fear they might be uncovered. Then, as Baker minced past, apparently tracking the sergeant, it was far worse, more than the cottage depended upon their not being caught, and Sebastian had nearly burst a vein in his forehead. Yet, before the Principal was out of earshot, Miss Rock thought of the expression there would have been about the Principal's nose if this lady had come upon her lover as he now was, which jolted Elizabeth into such a loud, gurgling laugh of cruel, delighted ridicule, that it sent Sebastian wooden with horror.

When she heard, Miss Baker, her blood run cold, looked back the way she had come, like a hen, at night, watching behind for a fox. She did not stop to investigate. It was all she could do not to break into a trot. Oh, she thought, our beautiful Park seems suddenly full of vile cross currents.

When Edge got to the door behind which Merode was locked away, she still held the doll by its thick neck. She paused before she entered, and tried holding the thing by its middle. But that was ridiculous because, with no backbone, it simply flopped. So she took a blunt hand, and this would not do, for the head, when released, hung sideways. Finally she cradled it on one arm like a baby, turned her key in the lock without a sound and crept forward, not waking Merode, whom she found astride her chair, asleep.

She put the dolly on Merode's lap, under the child's dreaming head which lay, with all her hanging hair, over crossed arms along the chair back. This small weight woke the girl who, when she first opened eyes, saw what she dizzily took to be Alice, exactly as Miss Marchbanks had offered the animal curled up at rest. But in a second she realised, and sprang to her feet.

"Oh," she cried out. "Not puss."

Edge stood there astounded.

"Merode," she said to warn the child, in fairness, of her presence.

"Oh ma'am," Merode gasped.

"What has so frightened you, dear?" Miss Edge demanded.

There was no reply. The girl kept looking back at Edge then away to the doll on the ground.

"Pick it up, won't you, Merode?"

The Principal was relieved to find the child seemed able to do so reasonably quick. She had feared there might be something about the absurd doll, after all.

"Put it over there, dear," she said. "Now tell me, what is this to do with a cat?"

"I was dreaming, ma'am."

"What about?"

"That Miss Marchbanks had given me Alice."

"Mr Rock's cat? But why, Merode?"

"You see, she did, ma'am, when I saw her after I was brought in."

"Hardly hers to give, was it?"

"No, she put puss on my lap, ma'am."

"And then you fainted?"

"Oh that was later, ma'am," the child said, quite collected.

"So the animal did not frighten you," Edge pointed out. "Is this doll yours, Merode?"

The child winced.

"No, ma'am," she said.

"Look at her well, dear. Whose is it, in that case?"

Merode swallowed.

"Mary's, ma'am."

"Are you quite sure now? I should have thought a big, grown girl, would be too old for such things."

"The others did laugh at her," Merode said unwillingly.

"I expect so," Miss Edge encouraged. "And did she mind?"

"Oh, not really, ma'am," the child replied, in a bright voice.

Edge felt it was curious how confident the bit of a thing seemed.

"And one point you are sure of, this is not yours, Merode?"

"Oh no, ma'am."

"The others were not laughing at you, then?"

"Me? I wouldn't have bothered."

Edge sat down in the only chair. She picked the doll up, placed it on her lap. Her face took a peculiarly innocent expression. Merode again got the idea that all this had happened once before. But she felt better, now she had seen her aunt.

"Why would you not have bothered?"

"I just don't pay attention to them, ma'am."

Yet, for all her being confident, Edge felt, the girl seemed never to take her eyes off the doll while this was in evidence.

"And Mary did?"

Merode swallowed, then joined hands behind her back.

"She was so tired, ma'am."

"Tired? What about? I'd like to have seen myself tired at her age."

"It was all the work she done."

"Oh, do speak English, child. But how do you mean? She is quite well on in her work."

"It was the waiting," Merode explained, with a kind of limpid simplicity.

"Waiting for what?" Miss Edge demanded.

"Orderly duties, ma'am."

These words came as a complete, and genuine, surprise to the Principal. So much so that she even doubted her own ears.

"Say that again, Merode. The orderly duties?"

"Yes, ma'am."

A cramp was forming round Edge's heart, or that was how the lady felt. Then a reasonable explanation occurred to her. Mrs Manley must have put the child up to it. Because they all knew that attendance on Baker and herself was an honour for which every one of the girls longed, it was just the little extra to be intimately close to them both. Nevertheless, she saw how the whole thing could be made to look if Mary did not come back soon, how black if this latest fantastic story was allowed to creep around. She managed to bring out a laugh.

"Really, the ideas you children do get hold of," she exclaimed. "Honestly, Merode, I never heard such silly stuff and nonsense in my life. It might even be ill-natured, I am sorry to say, from one aspect. Now, who told you?"

The girl had flushed under Miss Edge's blue eyes. The lady thought really, in time, she is going to be extraordinarily attractive. There was no answer.

"Very well, then, we'll leave it. Now, about yourself, dear. Have you written your Account yet?"

"Must I, ma'am?"

"We shall see," Edge answered, affable but, at the same time, at her most wary. "You know what the Regulations are. I am not sure whether we shall have to make a Report, that depends on a number of things, quite a number of things. But until you have written out your story, you understand, I cannot ask questions. Which is to say, there is nothing to prevent me asking, but you are not obliged to respond. I think it very fair of the State. Now then, where were we?"

"I'm afraid I must have been sleepwalking, ma'am." The girl spoke up easily, with every appearance of candour.

"Sleepwalking?" Edge demanded, as if this were the first she had heard of a dishonourable, yet prevalent custom. "I trust you don't often engage in that."

"Me, ma'am? I did when I was a baby."

"Does anyone else know of this?"

"Auntie does."

"Of course," Edge took her up with a heavy irony that was wasted, because the girl did not notice. "But anyone here? Were we told? There is the essential point, isn't it?"

"I told Miss Marchbanks, ma'am."

"When?"

"After I got back."

Edge was stupefied, but did not show a sign. A pause ensued. "When she came up to see you after you were locked here?" she tried again.

"Yes, ma'am."

Another silence began to stretch between them. Then the Principal thought she saw light at last.

"Merode, tell me something," she said in a voice full of hope. "When Miss Marchbanks asked her questions, did she caution you? What I mean is, did she tell you as I have done, about your writing an Account and not being obliged to answer before you had written it?"

"Why no, ma'am, I don't think so."

"Well all right," Miss Edge cried out in triumph. "Nothing you told her has any substance. Indeed you might just as well not have said a word. That is to say that as far as we are concerned you did not speak."

Thereupon she quickly got up and left the room, locked the door behind. At least I have left the whole thing open, she congratulated herself. We are not committed to any story yet.

For her part Merode was well pleased. Really, she thought, old Edge may not be such a bad old stick, when you get to know her.

Evening was drawing in. Mr Rock had decided willy nilly it would be best to attend the dance. So he must get back to wash and change. Only there was Daisy. He had found the animal once more but she had been recalcitrant, would not be driven, and, when he did catch up, she looked back over a white flank, waited till he was within three paces, then, with a toss of that drooling, overweighted head, with a flurry of grunts, she trotted off a short distance and halted, to allow the whole business to start all over again. This happened two or three times, until, in making her escape, she was frightened, made off through the reeds with high squeals, and he lost sight of her altogether as he squelched about over soft ground that bordered the water. He stayed to search a little, because he feared she might have sensed the girl's cold, wet, crumpled body. But he did not find a trace, and, by the time he was about to desist, sweat fogged his spectacles and the shirt was plastered to his body. He chanced to be hard by a dense withy which he thought he would investigate before he gave up both Mary and the pig, when a voice addressed him from the heart of it, in querulous tones which could only belong to the forester Adams.

"What would you say you're after?" the man enquired.

"Who's that?" Mr Rock asked, knowing full well, but put out by the brutal question.

"I know what I know," Adams said. He spoke in a higher voice than usual.

Mr Rock straightened his back to wave a hand at the cloud of gnats which rose and fell before his eyes. He reached for a handkerchief to clean the glasses, and, when he had done so, searched from where he stood for the still invisible Adams, while he put a finger between his collar and wet skin.

"Have you seen my sow?" he demanded.

"She's been gone this long time since," the forester replied. There was a pause. Mr Rock felt hotter. Really, amongst the reeds it is intolerably warm, he said to himself. And what an idiotic situation.

"Where are you, man?" he insisted.

"Where I can remain unseen," the fellow answered.

"Then come out and have done," Mr Rock sternly said, turning slow on his heels, in a circle.

"I've as much right as the next man to ask my question and receive the answer," the man replied. "I'm not the one single one round here," he said. "Ask this, ask that, 'Adams, where were you?', 'Adams what're you doing', "Ow about your work, Adams?' Well then, perhaps you can tell me, Mr Rock," and he stressed the Mr. "What might you be after?"

The old man was facing the withy again. The insulting lunatic could only be hidden away there. So Mr Rock said not a word.

"I've kept me eyes open this long time to what goes on around," Adams continued bitterly, after a pause. "I may not be educated but I wasn't born yesterday, not by many a year. I saw the shape of things right enough this morning when you asked after my cottage. You people, you, and your granddaughter, and her boy," he said, "you're as mean as wood ashes, every one."

He waited for an answer but the old man said no word just stood to wipe at his face with a handkerchief in a palsied hand.

A gnat got up Adams' nose so that he sneezed. He scratched at his leg. Then, beside himself, he went on, "You never intended to give me the wire," he accused. "I saw through that like I look out of my windows, it was clear as day you sought how you might get me shunted, shift it over on to me, while up at the house as they're scheming to lay their hands on your place. Likely enough you or your girl done away with 'er yourselves, for a dark purpose. Because I tell you, from now on you and me is strangers of another country, so we don't pass the time of day even. You and me speak a different language, Mr Rock. You and your sort." For the last few words, Adams had dropped his voice. The old man could not entirely catch what had been said. So it was with intent to make the fellow ridiculous that he asked, "Lose the fort?"

The forester began to laugh. "Booze the port" he echoed, to make a mock of his adversary. "Ah, and after every meal I don't doubt," and slapped his thighs. "Living like a lord," he went on. "There you are, back at your lies once again," he yelled. "Makin' out you're better nor the rest of us." He dropped his voice. "Like enough you've forgotten the spot you dug the hole, and you're back to see where you can recollect."

"It was the State gave me my place," Mr Rock, who had not meant to answer these bumpkin idiocies, found himself stung to reply about his general position. This mention of the all-powerful sobered Adams.

There was another silence.

"Time I went," Mr Rock muttered, outraged and confused.

"Ah, slink off like you crept out," Adams said, in as low a voice. "But you won't come up on me unbeknownst, not with me on my guard."

The old man waited. It was intolerable. His granddaughter and he had fallen so low that any lunatic could thus address them, and stay unmolested. He blamed it on Miss Edge and the Baker woman.

"I saw," Adams started once more, but not so violently, "I seen you hold your tryst with that shiner and old Edge. The moment I set eyes on you I knew the game. Put it all on a working man who's alone in this world," he said, tears in his voice.

"For all my weak eyesight I only noticed Baker," Mr Rock announced with triumph.

"Which don't alter facts, that you never come upon what you sought," Adams replied. "It takes more'n glasses to see round your kind," he said.

"I'm an older man than you, Adams," Mr Rock answered at last. "Civility between neighbours is worth a coal fire in the grate, any time."

Conscious that he had hardly, perhaps, said all he might, and with a feeling that he had not heard the last in consequence, Mr Rock walked off and out. For his ludicrous position was, he realised, that whether or no he had been elected, he must hasten to curry favour with those two mewing harlots up above for fear they might listen to this madman's ravings.

"Get on off out," he heard Adams yell after him.

When Baker arrived back in the Sanctum, she found Edge ready to take over.

"I was just going up to change," Miss Edge greeted the lady.

"I know," her colleague said, a little out of breath. "It took longer than I thought. I met the police sergeant with Mr Rock."

Miss Edge accepted the statement without comment.

"In many ways," she said, "I think this has been the most miserable day of my life."

"Why dear? There's nothing fresh, then? No bad news, I mean?" She had been thinking that laugh she heard behind her must have been imaginary. Now she was not so sure.

"No, on the whole, no," Edge comforted her. "But the intentional stupidity, Baker, is what I find so fatiguing. Take Marchbanks, now. Merode definitely admitted, only a moment ago, she had told the woman she was a sleepwalker."

"Well," Miss Baker said, and forgot that laugh once more. "It lets the child out to a certain extent, doesn't it?"

"Yes, until we go further into all this," Edge replied, with a weary gesture. "Up to a point, yes," she agreed. "But wait until we know more tomorrow, Baker. We may have a day of decision there. I dread it."

"Marchbanks is so experienced she's hardly likely to have made a mistake over a man," Miss Baker assented. "Although she may have jumped to the obvious conclusion. But we are at one, now, over the dance, aren't we? It must proceed. In the present state of our knowledge at all events. We may even laugh at each other, dear, within the next fifteen hours, at having been so worried and upset."

"I feel that is hardly likely, Baker," Edge objected. "For we still may not have done all we might under the circumstances, which is no trifling matter, placed as we are. Still, I am with you that our little Tamasha shall succeed."

"Then let's not say another word now, even to one another, about what's occurred."

"But the way those two girls could, Baker? On the very day before. Our children don't get much fun here, my dear. We have to keep them pretty well to the grindstone. And then these two little wretches, if they do not merit a harsher word, to endanger the whole affair with an escapade, it is hardly credible, is it?"

The sinking sun partitioned their room into three, as it came in by three windows. Miss Edge sat shaded between the first and second, Miss Baker similarly between the second and third windows, so they addressed each other across a thick wedge of colour-bearing sunlight in which motes of dust descended, now day was done. Left of one, and to the right of the other, was a vase of azaleas that had not wilted yet, a brilliant crown, which one of the girls had saved over from the decorations to place between their desks of office. Miss Edge reached out to push this into shadow, and Baker remembered.

"We still have time before we need go," she said, forgetting that she had just suggested they might leave the whole matter alone for the moment. "I wanted to ask, dear. D'you think the anonymous letter yesterday could have some connection with all this?"

"We should not attach the slightest importance, Baker." Miss Edge spoke with complete confidence. "I know I never do. Whoever stoops to send a thing like it deserves immediate punishment, but, above all, to be ignored. When we have cleared this up, we can try to trace the poison pen, if you like. While, for the present, I strongly counsel you to put it out of mind."

"All the same, what did the horrible thing say, Edge? 'Who is there fornicates and the goose'. That's rather extraordinary, surely?"

Miss Edge looked. The door was shut.

"Furnicates, dear," she corrected, in a low voice. "F.U.R.N." she spelled.

"Well, don't let's quarrel over details," Baker said, with a sort of laugh. "But it all does rather point one way, you see?"

"Even then I am not certain you are quite accurate," Edge elaborated. '"Who is there fornicates besides his goose?' was the charming message, if my memory serves me right."

Miss Baker gave an embarrassed laugh.

"How should we know about anonymous letters, dear," she agreed. "Perhaps we should ask Mr Rock?"

"Yes, what would two old spinsters, which is, I am led to believe, how Elizabeth Rock describes us, know of such a subject? No, Baker, dismiss it entirely from your mind."

"Does fornicate mean what I mean?" her colleague ventured. But she was to remain in ignorance.

"Forget all this, Baker," Edge said with decision. "I do not know, and I care less. What I have determined is, that our dear girls should have their Time tonight. There will be leisure for every kind of tiring foolishness tomorrow, I'm only too certain. But how curious you should bring that unspeakable message back to the disastrous Rock. However, no more of it, please."

"Well, it seemed the only possible conclusion."

"I agree, dear," Edge said. "But do remember. Only this morning you would not have that."

"No, Edge, we never discussed the note, did we? Surely we were talking about Sebastian Rock?"

"Birt, dear. They are not married yet, and if I know much of the young man, they never will, not if he can help. Such a pity, with Winstanley making sheep's eyes at him. But that is the sort of creature he is, to pick on a half crazed woman like the granddaughter."

"I say now what I said then," Miss Baker warned. "Go carefully. We must not exceed our duties."

"You and I are here to protect our girls, Hermione," Miss Edge announced in her strongest manner. "We stand on guard over the Essential Goodness of this Great Place. And when we sense a threat, our duty is to exercise the initiative the State expects to avert a danger. Now something, we do not yet know what, has occurred, and it is for us to stamp out the evil, or better still, get rid of it quietly, without fuss, as one does with swill."

"You're reverting to the anonymous note, of course."

"Far be it from me, Baker. I refer to two misguided children who have cast a shadow this year over Founder's Day, probably in a fit of pique. Do you know Merode actually claims she told Marchbanks about the sleepwalking."

"Does she?"

"Yes." There was a heavy pause. And then inspiration visited Edge. She saw the way out in a flash.

"What, after all, can one make of it?" she began right away in a great voice. "Creeping down at dead of night in her pyjamas and then, hours later, to be found comfortably ensconsed within a fallen beech, having made herself a nest, thank you, and not forgotten the coat, which she still had with her. What is one to think? Finally, discovered by Sebastian Birt of all people, well on in the morning, as if he did not know where she was the whole time, oh then she is quite composed, of course. A little fuss at first, naturally, when she finds herself the centre of attention, but no excuses, Baker, mark you. So what is the inescapable conclusion?"

Her colleague got up, began to pace to and fro across a thick shutter of sunlight.

"It's all very difficult," she said.

"Do you think so? And how about Mary, after she turns up, as she will? For she must. But let us not meet her trouble half-way. Time enough when the girl returns. Because do you still not see it, dear? At least for Merode. Why, I gave you the answer to our riddle not ten minutes since."

"What riddle, Edge?"

"The quandary in which we find ourselves. How to explain Merode's absence without this horrible rigmarole of Reports. Though we owe it to the Trust, with which you and I have been privileged, Baker, to cast out evil hanging over the heads of our Students root and branch, this we must do, or forfeit all self respect. For I have watched the situation grow, and I have held my hand. Rock, who I deeply suspect, his disastrous granddaughter, and a weak young man. You will agree I have given you my views on them many a time the past few weeks. No, they must, and shall, be sent packing. But don't you, even now, see the way to explain Merode?"

Her colleague, in perplexity turned towards Miss Edge, and was blinded by sun. She screwed her face up into a pathetic maze of bewilderment before a hot dazzle of evening.

"My dear," she began, and could not go on.

"Sleepwalking," Edge brought out at last in an even louder voice, jubilant as a trumpet.

"But she. ." Miss Baker started to object, only to be ruthlessly interrupted.

"Has told three people the same," Edge insisted. "Marchbanks, her aunt, and myself. No doubt Mrs Manley encouraged the child to stick to the truthful account of what had occurred. But I simply cannot understand, now, that I could have been so blind as not to accept it, at once, face value, immediately. Because this is, in an exact measure, sufficient to our purpose, Baker. Of course we do not want the playing truant to be known, for the child's own sake. Not many of the girls have learned. Merode was just sleepwalking, that's all, and the Dance can go ahead. Of course she will rest in Quarantine, until Mary comes back with her tail between her legs. It is amazing to me, after what has occurred, that I always trusted the girl. Yet in justice to ourselves, we must leave no stone unturned to rid the Precincts of the three persons I have named. That's all."

"But Edge. ." Baker began once more.

"Not another word, dear," Miss Edge said firmly. "And will you do me the favour to look at the Time? If we are to be ready we shall have to hurry, Baker."

Miss Edge watched her colleague out of the room. When the door closed on her, Edge's face took on a look of triumphant satisfaction.

Later, Mr Rock and Elizabeth were on their way up to the house for the dance. She wore a trailing black silk dress, with a yellow ribbon in her hair. Both walked in rubber boots because he feared the dew. He carried his shoes, and hers, in a despatch case which went back to the days of his youth.

Daisy was not home yet, or Ted. He had left some milk outside for Alice, but then she spent most of her time these days away at the Institute, currying favour, as he would, if he were wise, he smiled wryly to himself. And Elizabeth had been too silent, he thought, so quiet there must be something yet to come; from her poor starved heart, no doubt, under that stained mackintosh hung over the shoulders. She was spent and sad, he knew.

The first blackbird, up on a branch, gave heed that night rode near, the light grew ever softer, rhododendrons stared, air was still, the boots they wore gleamed wet so soon; it was cool, and gnats had departed to the last bars of sun which, high above, slanted from one beech to another that dwarfed the azalea bushes where bluebottles no longer waited, whence butterflies were gone, and whose scent had faded, whose honey was now too late for bees in the hush of sunset preparing in the west that would lie red over the sky like a vast bank of roses, just time enough for lovers.

He saw an empty bird's egg lying on grass and glanced upward to find the nest. He then realised his evening heavens, which precisely matched that blue.

He thought she had said something he was too deaf to hear.

"What is that?" he gently asked.

She, who had not yet spoken, told him then, "About Sebastian, Gapa."

"Yes dear," he said. He had known it would be this.

"Oh Gapa, I want you to be marvellous to me now. I mean you always have. But there are times, aren't there? The thing is I'm in terrible trouble. In my mind you understand. About him. And I do so want you to promise."

"You tell me," he suggested, gentle as before.

"But you may not agree, not look at it the way he does. Yet he didn't ask, you needn't think, because honestly he never did. In fact if he thought for a minute I was talking to you he would be furious. Really he would. He's so worried."

"Is he?"

"Yes, oh, you wouldn't know. About that silly girl who's missing."

"Why, dear?"

She swallowed.

"It's not what you imagine at all," she hurried on. "He's absolutely true to me, you can be sure, and they fling themselves all the time at his head. I don't think they ought to have masters, Gapa, at these places, do you, since they're only children, the girls I mean, and sex is unconscious at their age. It's such a temptation for a man." He winced, as Sebastian himself had earlier, at the assumption of sexual knowledge.

"Come to your point, Liz," he said firmly. "I'm so worried for him. It's not what he's actually mentioned, yet he couldn't help but drop hints, poor sweet; you know, underneath, he's half out of his mind with the torture of it all. Oh, everything's my fault, I should never have met him. They blame it all on Seb, you see. Isn't that inconceivable, but so wicked, so wicked of them? You were absolutely certain from the first, oh Gapa you really are the most wonderful man. I know when I was all right, and I used to come down to see you, I had no idea, I thought there was just a bee in your bonnet, but you were sure. They're dangerous. The two of them should be behind bars."

"Edge and Baker I presume?" he said.

"You see, when you're young and all that," she went on, "starting in the State Service, because I know, Gapa, I've done it, things have so changed since your day, well then, the slightest bad report he gets and he'll never receive promotion. Never. It isn't a story, honest. No redress, nothing. And you realise what an Enquiry means, if you appeal against one of these awful Reports. It's the end. Absolutely. Even if you think you've brought it off, it boomerangs back onto you. So I want you to promise you'll lend a hand." He judged from her tone that she was near tears.

"I'll do what I can," he said for comfort, though he could not but show the bitterness in his voice. She mistakenly took this to be aimed at the two Principals.

"And I do really realise what it costs to say that," she announced, "I understand how you hate to speak to them, even. If you weren't the most splendid man you'd never have promised to talk to Miss Edge." She brought this out quite naturally, and he did not contradict. "You needn't do much, Gapa dear. Get her to sit out one dance, just like that, she'll be thrilled, because they truly appreciate you here, the staff does, despite all you speak against them when you get out of bed the wrong side of a morning. Seb's often told me how Miss Edge talks about you," she lied, while the famous old man had to hold himself back in order not to squirm from his granddaughter, that she should be so transparent. "Get her quietly alone somewhere," then she laughed and it was worse, so that he drew himself away.

"Come back, Gapa," she ordered, hanging her whole weight on the arm to pull his old shoulder back to hers, "just take the woman quietly somewhere she can watch her sweet students dance with each other, because they're fiends, those girls, you simply must believe, I'm a woman and I know, they're sincerely dreadful, I couldn't possibly tell. Of course you must not admit to anything, she'd see us at the bottom, she's quite sharp enough for that, but will you? Well, I mean, you have promised, surely? Just tell her you won't under any circumstances report a word of the evasion to Mr Swaythling."

The old man was alarmed.

"In which respect has Swaythling to do with this?" he asked. "In any case, what evasion?"

"Why, that's Seb's word," she answered, almost gay. "I think it's so smart of him, don't you? Two girls who escape, and a couple of old women who, what he calls, evade the whole issue. But you told Seb you were going to send in a report to Mr Swaythling, Gapa."

"I did nothing of the kind," the old man truthfully protested.

"Must have slipped your memory, then," she said, altogether sure of her facts.

"There are times you remind me of Julia," he said, with a grim laugh.

"Didn't you know a woman will always get her own way," she replied as obviously. She laughed, then grew serious again. "Oh, but Gapa it is so important, this is. You see I'm planning my future on Seb," she said. "If anything should happen to him, I'd die. And what chance has he got, if Miss Edge and Miss Baker turn against Seb, I mean? It's his first post, you see. Oh, wasn't that a pity we came across the wretched girl?"

"Look Liz, don't lose your head. What have they against Sebastian?"

"But nothing, dear, nothing naturally. What could they? It's so difficult to explain. After all, you've lived out of things a long time, Gapa. You see, I'm frightened for the reprisals. Don't you understand, and of course, I know, they're so fiendish, those two old creatures, it must be hard to believe, yet Seb has studied them, he's told me, the point is they watch like pussies, they've learned all Seb and I mean to one another, and he's certain they'll strike back, if you should do anything, you see, right at your weakest part, the chink in your armour."

"Which is?" he patiently enquired. She was biting her lower lip.

"Why me, of course," she wailed, but he thought she seemed well satisfied. "They're capable of anything," she explained. "Oh Gapa, I'm dreadfully worried. You will, won't you?"

"What?" he asked.

She stopped dead. She turned, and stamped a foot. Unseen, a rabbit, which had come out of its hole fifty feet away, stamped a hind leg back.

"You know perfectly," she accused. "Only sometimes it suits to pretend you don't, like often when you say you can't hear. No, Gapa, you must promise you'll never let on to Mr Swaythling about what's happened."

"Yet suppose they just hide it up?" he asked calmly. "What then?"

"How on earth?" she demanded, searching over his face with her eyes, as if she feared for his sanity.

"I've some experience," he told her. "They're caught in a trap those two, like the cruel weasels they are." He spoke with great patience. "They drove that poor child to this," he went on. "She's been over to me about them. Only because they liked the colour of her eyes they pushed her unmercifully, set her to fetch and carry all day through, 'Just bring my pince nez from the Sanctum'," he quavered, in a horrible mimicry of Miss Edge. "No, Mary will never come back now."

"Did she tell you?" his granddaughter asked him, wide eyed.

"Of course not," he said sharply. "If she had, I'd have known where to look, wouldn't I? No, but she has complained, Liz, often and often, the poor girl. All she's got in the "world is out in Brazil, she has no relatives besides."

"Oh, Gapa dear," she cried. "You shouldn't listen, you really mustn't. They're so deceitful at that age, you can't imagine."

"And do you know how Mistresses Edge and Baker will act next?" he went on. "They'll cover up. They have made one or two gestures today but they're only sitting back, they're saying to each other 'Mary must turn up tomorrow', and when she does no such thing, perhaps she's not in a position to oblige, they'll tell one another, Liz, 'Wait for the next day'. And so on."

"Now, Gapa, they can't hide it altogether, I mean they have their lists, haven't they, Mary won't simply disappear into thin air, surely, you see?"

He stayed silent.

"They won't, will they?" she pressed him, with rising terror.

"I'm not one to look into their dark minds," he said at last. "But they must find something, a means to put the blame onto her however it turns out. I do know that," he said.

"And then the cottage?" she wailed.

"Don't let yourself get upset, Liz," he said in a loud voice. "Just allow me to handle this my way."

"But it's our whole future, Seb's and mine," she almost shouted, unmasking herself. "When we're married, where are we to go? I didn't mean to ask you like this, but I've been thinking. Oh Gapa, you wouldn't mind, surely now, I mean you'd hardly notice. But I had felt when we're married we could live on here with you, the both of us."

When Mr Rock heard this, he was terrified for his granddaughter. She could not have them both.

"Dear, you know the Rule," he said gently. "When one of the staff takes a wife the State always moves him to another post."

"Yes, but you could put in a word with Mr Swaythling. You wouldn't mind. You see I'd never get over leaving you. It's hard to set these things to words, but you're my life, Gapa, you understand."

He kissed her cheek clumsily. She began to cry.

"So my little girl is going to be married," he said.

"Oh, there's nothing absolutely fixed yet," she replied, stepping back to blow her nose, and sent a sharp look at his face. "I never meant to tell, then I'm such a fool, I get upset at times and bring it all out. You won't breathe a word, will you, Gapa, not to Seb either, because he's funny that way, and of course, if Miss Edge got to hear before we were ready, it would be the end. I mean, I've considered this for ever so long, because I'm sure the only way is to run off one morning, and get it over, almost before you know you're doing it yourself. Get married, you see. All those tremendous preparations are simply no good. Next, soon as Miss Edge saw it was finished, after I'd shown her my certificate, I mean, there'd be absolutely nothing for her to do, would there?"

"It wants thought," he said, reminding himself, if he were to show opposition, that it would drive her into the man's arms and then he would lose her finally. But he was not so blind, he said under his breath, spectacles or no, he could see Birt coveted the cottage, would move heaven and earth to have him sent to the Sanatorium once the ring was on her finger.

"I hardly know that I should bother Swaythling," he said about the cottage, and began to walk away from the house.

"Wrong way, Gapa," she said. He turned without a word, marched up to, and past her. She followed at his heels.

"You mean you won't get on to him, then," she started. "Not one teeny word, when all the time you've sworn if anything happened to this Mary you'd move heaven and earth?"

"I intended nothing of the kind," he said, over his shoulder.

"No, but that was what you said, didn't you?"

"We shall be late, Liz."

"Why are you, I mean, what's all the hurry?" she called, unable to catch up.

"Justice," he cried. Looking at his back, she thought oh dear he's upset.

"What's that? And must you go so fast?"

"Do you really consider I should leave Mary be? Have you any idea what you've said?"

"Oh I just don't understand," she wailed.

"It is a matter of simple justice, Liz."

"Yes, Gapa."

"I'd do as much for any dog I saw maltreated, I'd report it."

But not for me, she felt. Their skins and hair simply allowed these wretched chits to get away with things. However, she had the sense to say no more. His pace slackened.

"Don't be afraid of life, Liz," he said. "Everything settles itself in the end. I've lived long enough to know that."

"Yes, Gapa," she agreed. Now she could see his face she noted it was red with more than the sunset, and puckered into deep wrinkles, an infallible sign of distress.

"You want me to write to Swaythling about yourselves and the cottage while not mentioning this girl?"

"Oh my dear," she lied. "It's not that at all. I explain myself so badly, ever since I've been ill. You know, sometimes I feel as if I'd something in my head and I simply can't get out the words. Have you ever? No, it's silly to ask. The whole thing, you see, is Seb. He's worried."

"Yes, Liz," Mr Rock encouraged, reminding himself that she must not become distressed, the doctor had been insistent.

"He knows them so well," she was going on. "He lives all the time within sight and sound of Miss Baker and Miss Edge, so he can watch and judge, day in day out, he has to. He really understands, you see. And he's worried for the cottage. Oh, of course, he wants to live there, but he's true, Gapa, you must believe. Because, naturally, I realise you don't like him. But I do know what you don't, that you will in time, you'll come round, there's no-one in the world who wouldn't, once they'd seen the real person underneath the skin. Still, I do realise, it isn't a little thing I ask, I do honestly."

"Don't fuss, dear, we'll find a way," he said.

Then, as they came to where the trees ended, and blackbirds, before roosting, began to give the alarm in earnest, some first starlings flew out of the sky. Over against the old man and his granddaughter the vast mansion reflected a vast red; sky above paled while to the left it outshone the house, and more starlings crossed. After which these birds came in hundreds, then suddenly by legion, black and blunt against faint rose. They swarmed above the lonely elm, they circled a hundred feet above, until the leader, followed by ever greater numbers, in one broad spiral led the way down and so, as they descended through falling dusk in a soft roar, they made, as they had at dawn, a huge sea shell that stood proud to a moon which, flat sovereign red gold, was already poised full faced to a dying world.

Once the starlings had settled in that tree they one and all burst out singing.

Then there were more, even higher, dots against paler pink, and these, in their turn, began to circle up above, scything the air, and to swoop down through a thickening curve, in the enormous echo of blood, or of the sea, until all was black about that black elm, as the first mass of starlings left while these others settled, and there was a huge volume of singing.

Then a third concourse came out of the west, and, as the first birds swarmed upon the nearest beech, these late comers stooped out of dusk in a crash of air to take that elm, to send the last arrivals out, which trebled the singing.

The old man wondered, as often before, if this were not the greatest sound on earth. Elizabeth stood quiet. The starlings flew around a little and then, as sky faded fast, the moon paled to brilliance, and this moment was over, that singing drooped, then finished, as every bird was home.

"I'm glad I had that once more," Mr Rock said aloud. Behind them the first cock pheasant gave a challenge.

"We're to have the most lovely night," Elizabeth told her grandfather.

They went on their way again.

"I want you to know," she said, from the heart, "in spite of everything, whatever happens, absolutely, if Seb asks me to marry him even, there'd be nothing could alter the way I love you, Gapa. I wouldn't let it."

"Don't allow yourself to grow sentimental, child," he answered.

She gave a soft laugh.

"And don't you be gruff with me, my darling," she said. "Not tonight of all nights. Listen, I think I hear their music already. They'll have every window wide. Yes, I'm almost certain."

"Good," he said, alone with blank thoughts, in his deafness.

"I'll dance every dance," she murmured happily.

Down a dank Passage which led to the Banqueting Hall Miss Winstanley, hurrying at the far end, saw a bunch of students outlined against great, wide opened double doors to the ballroom. They were in their long, white dresses. She smiled through her misery, they looked so serious, and thought, as she watched them wait for music, that one and all were in what she called 'the mood', that, once Edge and Baker had opened proceedings, the first waltz would send each child whirling forward into her future, into what, in a few years, she would, with age, become.

"Couldn't care less," a fair child asserted, "but I won't ever speak to Merode now, it's perfectly rotten of both to upset our whole show. What, we might've had the thing cancelled, thanks to those two."

"I don't know why you gripe, Moira," another objected. "We're to hold it after all, aren't we, or I can't see what we are waiting for, then. Of course there've been whispers. But that is the whole trouble with this academy. A fat lot of talk and no do, in my opinion."

"Will anyone quite say what Merode and Mary have actually done?"

"Needn't ask me. I don't want a summons to be put through the old mangle in the Holy of Holies. But all the same I do think those two have at least given everyone a bit of excitement."

"Even so," Moira protested, "and you can't be too sure we've heard the last yet, I still think it beastly selfish to have picked on this one date of the entire year. If they let her come down in the end, I'll tell her straight."

"You needn't worry. She's safely locked away."

"How d'you know?"

"Because I've been to look. But I heard someone I shan't mention got through to her all right." Moira took this without the slightest sign.

"How d'you mean?" she asked.

There was no reply. And all the girls listened.

"You realise, probably, they've still not gone so far as to put telephones along the bath corridors?"

"I thought everyone knew how, Moira."

"Some people are certainly bent on having a mystery at any cost these days," the girl said.

"It's only there's a grating right through to the floor above. Whoever this was must have used it," a student informed them all, unaware that she was telling the girl who had first found this out.

Then Marion protested.

"I'd just like to say, I think it's beastly to deliberately plague poor Miss Edge and Baker, and get into touch with Merode in spite of what they said. Because they're not too bad considering."

"All right, Marion, but who put the whole dance in danger herself? After all, you did tell them both that Mary had gone to Matron, didn't you?"

"Oh? Then what would I be doing down here now? You can't suppose they'd have let me come if I was in disgrace, surely to goodness."

There was rather a pause. It began to seem probable that Marion, in some way, had bought permission to attend, had tendered treachery over the counter.

"If anyone wants to know what I think, in my opinion you were decent to cover for them as long as you might," a girl volunteered.

"Just you wait till I catch Merode," Marion commented.

"But need there have been all the embroidery with that silly doll business?"

"Who did anyway?" Moira joined in.

She was given no answer. Everyone feared her tongue.

"Well, I shan't lose a night's sleep," a girl, who had been yawning, informed the company. "Praise be that a couple of us rustled up the gumption to do something in this dead-alive hole."

Moira took her on.

"But have you got the latest?" she demanded. "Right before the finish, pipped at the post, one minute before the whistle, two seconds left for play, guess what? Liz has hooked him. He's buying the hoop Saturday, and they'll be married in September."

"Who's he?"

"Why Sebastian, naturally, old 'Cause and Effect'. Or have you been asleep till now? Isn't it splendid for Mr Rock, though." And it was plain from her voice that Moira meant this. "He might be a great grandfather extraordinarily quick. Only nine months, and what's that in his lifetime?"

The news was taken reflectively. Then someone asked, by way of fun, "I wonder what Edgey'll give for a present?"

"A stuffed goose."

"One of those lucky cat charms."

"Or a black and white china pig money box."

"No, listen, Baker is not too bad really, you know. I bet she even signs them a fat cheque."

"However he could. Why, Liz's a million."

"Pity does it, dear. That's the way to get a man. Go weak up top."

"But she must be years and years older."

"D'you imagine the proper reason's that husband and wife mayn't give evidence against one another?"

"If you really believe what you've just said then all I can say is, you've been having a sight too much of old Dakers in class."

"Plenty of time for slips betwixt cup and the lip, between now and September, in class and out."

"What d'you mean, because they won't wait six weeks. They'll be wed at the end of a gun."

"Only what you said, Moira, wasn't it, not till the autumn?"

"I say, isn't everyone confusing, in white dresses for once? I'm frightfully sorry, I'd never have spoken to you if I'd seen you were a senior."

"That's all right. This is your first summer term, I expect. Else you'd know that tonight of all nights we're all in the party together. You can even ask Edge for a hop round if you want."

"Oh her."

"Don't be too sure. She does it divinely. You simply can't tell just by looking at people."

"Or their dolls," someone else put in.

"Oh, shut up."

"But I could never have imagined about her dancing. Anyway, it's awfully decent of you not to mind when I spoke."

"Well, my point is, Mary's a curse."

"Can you imagine? Mrs Blain doesn't know even yet."

"You suppose she'll go into hysterics when she does find out? My dear, the whole of that ancient stuff about her favourites is simply my eye and that Betty Martin. It's just she can't cook without she must make an almighty fuss of someone."

"Lord, things are slow. When on earth is it all due to start?"

"No hurry. I've been sick of the whole business for days."

"Well, there might just be some more on downstairs, remember."

"Watch your step, Melissa," Moira warned. "It wouldn't do, now, for everyone to learn."

"I tell you," a girl said from the back, "I agree with Marion. This making blue eyed well-done-girl stuck up posters out of those two is perfectly crazy."

"Who has?"

"You, only this morning. When you promised us all they were wonderful. And started to cry even, as you thought of what might have happened to Mary."

"Oh I did, did I?"

"Stop squabbling, children. But please, I mean it. In another minute I shall be saying 'oh my poor head'." This was a tolerable imitation of Marchbanks.

"How will Ma manage?" one of them asked. "That sinus of hers's been really bad."

"How could she ever dare not? We'll have a laugh over the love birds anyway. Someone might cut in a bit on S. just to make her wonder."

"Good for you, duck," another greeted Moira over this last remark. She was an unpopular girl.

"Anyway three cheers for the old State Service."

"Nobody's to touch the crab sandwiches if they know what's good for 'em. They're poison."

"We made the lemonade too sweet again, for that matter."

"There won't be much downstairs, you know where."

"For the third time, Melissa! Shut up, will you?"

"So what about downstairs?"

"There you are, all of you."

"Nothing."

"Oh, for the love of Mike, tell her."

"That's just one item. Because is it right we're to look after pigs now? Aren't pigs rather the end?"

"Old Mr Rock will be in charge," Moira assured them confidently. "I've already told him," she lied.

"Why, what are pigs to him?"

"Pearls before swine."

"Well, of course, he wouldn't like competition for Daise. After all? Can you imagine his precious darling set down in the middle of a hundred sties?"

"It'd be company. I feel Daisy's so alone."

"Anyway, I think Mr Rock's an old sweet."

"He's afraid for her most of the time with this filthy swine fever," Moira explained. "If I was to be a vet I'd do something about it. Perhaps I'll wed one and make him."

"I didn't expect you of all people to poke fun at Mr Rock, Moira."

"I'm not. I meant every word. After all, it's always the end for the poor pigs."

"And the waste when they die. 'A drain on the whole economy of the State'."

"I say, Midget, you do take S. off beautifully. Will you give us a star turn later?"

"Why, do they allow turns at the dance?"

"Not up here, we don't."

"Everyone this evening seems to imagine other people are poking elaborate fun. But swine fever's a true waste, isn't it?"

"So what?"

"Oh, you're hopeless."

"I'm sorry to say, children, I don't fancy Mr Rock will be here much longer."

"Oh, not another death, Mirabel?"

"There's been nobody died off of late, has there, or if so, then I've not heard."

"He'll be shifted, you'll see."

"Lucky old, old man."

"But they can't. It would be the finish. Being with us is everything for him."

"Why? Has he told you, Mirabel?"

"Anyone knows just by looking in his sweet old face."

"At least be sure of this. If they are to get married Edgey will slide all three out one way or another."

"But why on earth?"

"Jealousy."

"Oh no. You can't be so absurd."

"Can't I? But it's right enough, mark my words. She won't have anyone wed just under her nose. And if the old man is broken hearted it will be that silly Elizabeth's fault. Honestly I've got now so that I loathe my own cloth, I hate all women."

"Not if we have the pigs, Edge won't. Why, there's no-one else but Mr Rock."

"You're dappy where he's concerned, Moira. He's too aged to look after a fly even."

"How can you say that, when he's made such a success of Daisy and Ted?"

"What about Adams?"

"You don't include the granddaughter, I notice. No, he's nursing the viper in that woman, all right."

"You're all of you crazy," Moira said.

At this precise moment, and out of sight of these girls, Miss Inglefield, without warning, started the gramophone just once more to see if it would work. The loud speaker was full on so they could even hear the conductor, dead these many years, tap his stick at a desk some thirty summers back, and the music, with a roll of drums, swayed, swelled into a waltz. The girls, each one, gave a small sigh, moved, as one, each to her long promised partner, took her by the hand; they held hands as women but in couples, what had been formless became a group, by music, merged to a line of white in pairs, white faces, to the flowers and lighted ballroom, each pair of lips open to the spiralling dance. Then it stopped sharp into silence when, satisfied out of sight round the corner, Miss Inglefield lifted the needle. At once these students broke away disappointed, years younger once again.

"False alarm," someone commented severely.

A single pigeon, black in thickening sky, flew swift and on past the Park.

It was dusk.

Light from wide open windows increased by strides, primrose yellow over a dark that bled from blue.

With a swoop an owl came down across and hooted while Mr Rock and his granddaughter crept up the last stone flight when, unheralded, unannounced, and they could not see inside for the windows were yet too high above their heads, the gramophone crashed out once more, so loud now the old man halted entranced by the first bars of another great valse of drums and strings which, a second time however, was no sooner begun than cut off again by Inglefield.

"False alarm," Mr Rock said in a loud voice, and was about to elaborate with an attack on Edge for not keeping the instrument in proper order, when he was silenced, made mute, because, through his deafness, he had caught the last echoes of this music sent back by the beeches, where each starling's agate eye lay folded safe beneath a wing.

"We've started well," he then contented himself by suggesting.

"He said we'd meet out here," Elizabeth remarked. "To unlock us the side door."

"Better not," Mr Rock answered. "I'll ring the bell at the main entrance and be decently announced, or not attend at all," he said.

"Now Gapa," she wailed. "Who promised he'd be good?"

They slowly advanced across the last Terrace.

"Liz," he said, "in this world one should do a thing right, or leave it. If I'm to help as you've asked, you must give me credit for being able to see into their minds. I tell you they are dazzled by the position they hold here. We have to make our impression."

"Yes, Gapa," she agreed, not to upset him.

"They behave like the Begums of British India in my young days," he continued. "Besides there is no-one need creep like a thief, particularly in our circumstances."

"Very good, Gapa. But will they let me see myself in a mirror, if only for a moment, then?"

"I'll be bound they gaze at their reflections on the glass at all hours," he replied. He was invigorated at the prospect of a strange, difficult night ahead.

"You will speak all right?"

"You can be quite sure I'll get you your chance to prink."

"Oh, you know I didn't mean that. About Seb and me, I was trying to tell?" she asked.

"If their Byzantine obliqueness will allow, I might," he answered gaily, when a man hailed low and soft.

"Liz," he called.

"There he is, oh at last," she exclaimed.

"Birt, can that be you?" the old man cautiously raised his voice. "And if so, don't skulk."

A dark, short figure rose, almost from under their feet.

"This is not Guy Fawkes night, after all," the sage commented.

"Sorry, sir, but you know the way things are," Sebastian excused himself, adopting the hearty voice of a junior who was there to report present.

"Have they found my other child, then?" Mr Rock asked.

"Good Lord sir, not yet," Birt replied, still the shy, deprecating junior.

"Then you may lead us to the front entrance, for my granddaughter and I to be announced like civilized beings," he said.

The younger man was struck silent at this effrontery. He felt that Mr Rock should on no account so flaunt himself.

"It's this way, Gapa," Elizabeth prompted, resigned to disaster.

They turned, and at once became aware of the new powered moon, infinitely more than electric light which, up till then, had seemed, by a soft reflection from whence it cut into the Terrace, pallidly to surprise by stealth these mansion walls. For their moon was still enormous up above on a couch of velvet, blatant, a huge female disc of chalk on deep blue with holes around that, winking, squandered in the void a small light as of latrines. The moon was now all powerful, it covered everything with salt, and bewigged distant trees; it coldly nicked the dark to an instantaneous view of what this held, it stunned the eye by stone, was all-powerful, and made each of these three related people into someone alien, glistening, frozen eyed, alone.

"I'll leave you now," Sebastian said, as if to announce the moon had found him out.

"Thank you, I don't fancy that," Mr Rock objected. "They shall not come upon us unawares in this light." He also had on his mind the winking pairs of silvered eyelashes, still unseen, there might be watching from out black caverns of unlit, shadowed upstair casements.

"Oh, is this wise?" Elizabeth half wailed.

"He's to escort us in good order," the old man explained of Sebastian who had no torch.

"Well sir, I'd really rather not," Sebastian attempted to insist.

"Nonsense. Never try to duck when you're in the open."

Thus it was they came, one hydra-headed body to the enormous, overhanging portals, and Mr Rock pressed the bell which, by the moon, shone like a pearl on a vast hunk of frozen milk. To do so he had to enter and be lost, as if by magic, in a cube of impenetrable shade.

Elizabeth almost cried out after him, until his dead hand came forth to stab the bell a second time.

"Did it ring before?" he asked, out of his deafness.

"The girls are off duty," Sebastian said. "Tonight."

"Then we'll stay on notwithstanding, till we are made welcome," the old man answered, sure of himself, from the dark.

Steps made themselves heard within, at the advance. And, with a fearful creak, the great door was opened. Miss Baker stood silhouetted. It was Elizabeth she saw first, and she mistook the girl.

"Mary," she cried, in a small voice. But she did not take long to come back to earth.

"Oh do enter in," Miss Baker said, bright as the light behind, to three silent people.

Mr Rock took time to dry his gum boots after which, through what to them was blinding electric, copper illumination they followed Baker, without another word, the short distance down this corridor on into the sanctum.

Each of these two Principals thought the other had invited Mr Rock and his granddaughter, yet, while Baker did the honours, and Edge rose to greet them with the words, "How kind to have troubled," this lady had twin notions at one and the same time; that Sebastian, since he was a member of the staff, had no business unsummoned in the Sanctum; and also that, on no account, must this sudden rush of guests mar Baker's and her own triumphal entry, by which the Dance was ever opened. Thus she observed, while shaking hands, "You are rather late, you know." And added, "which is naughty," as she received Mr Rock, letting the smile die when she came to face Sebastian.

The old man bowed with the servile courtesy that he could assume at will.

"The pleasure is ours, ma'am," he announced, attentively serious. He was aware how, washed and brushed, he made a fine figure. Not so Elizabeth, for all her effort to seem at ease, while Sebastian could look no-one in the eye, had even to shift his weight continuously from one foot to the other.

"I regret we have nothing in the way of light refreshment," Edge lied. She was not to put herself out for these people. "It does seem absurd on a Great Night like this, but there things are, we have to abide by our Regulations," she went on. "And if we were to make an exception the once, then we would do no more than to give rise to a Rule, should we not, in a contrary sense?"

"We are not here to eat and drink," Mr Rock pronounced stoutly. "It is just that Elizabeth would like to change her shoes."

"So kind. . sorry. . such a nuisance, I fear," the younger woman stammered.

But, although it was now more than time for the Principals to declare the ball open by making a personal appearance, Miss Edge, who had not wanted to give them more, did not seem able to leave her guests.

"And what is your news?" she asked of Mr Rock.

"At my age, ma'am," the old man answered, "one day is much like another. Which is what renders tonight memorable," he added, with a gleam in the huge eyes behind spectacles. "Because, on this occasion, I must insist that you allow me a dance."

"Oh Mr Rock, how splendid," Baker warmly said.

"But I always do dance with you, whenever you ask. What about last year? You remember?" Miss Edge put in at random, almost whinnying with nerves.

"I have not attended these three years past," Mr Rock, who had never been to one of their dances, announced with a small bow. "The year before I was indisposed, and on a previous occasion, I remember, I had hurt my leg."

"Twisted his knee. . sprained his ankle," Elizabeth supplemented.

"Yet what I feel is, it only seems like yesterday," Edge announced, with a wee inclination from the waist. "And Sebastian," she ordered, turned on him for the first time, "you are not to shrink now. Not sit out continually."

"He won't. I promise," Elizabeth shrieked.

"These special Occasions mean so much to the Girls," Baker added.

"Because, while we're here, and if you permit, of course, I have a small suggestion I might offer," Mr Rock said to Miss Edge.

"By all means," she agreed. "And let it be now rather than later. Otherwise we could seem to be sharing secrets, putting our heads together before the children, and that, even at our age, might seem curious," she added with a sort of sneer.

"You flatter an old man," he said.

"My dear Mr Rock," Miss Baker cried, delighted, unaware.

"It was only, ma'am, it came to me I could, perhaps, render a small service. But, naturally, this is a mere suggestion."

Edge felt the urge to consult her wristwatch, then restrained herself.

"I'm positive my colleague and I would be more than willing. ." she faintly encouraged him, all the less enthusiastic because of her pressing anxiety to get the Dance begun.

"I thought I might lecture, say once a week, to your older girls, ma'am," Mr Rock brought gravely out. His granddaughter and Sebastian were astonished, as also the two Principals.

Miss Edge could recollect little of the subject in which he had made his name great so very many years ago, but her first determined thought was, not suitable for younger Students, even nowadays.

"Well now," she said, as she believed cordial to the last. "This is generous indeed, is it not, Baker? You have quite taken away my breath."

"Why, Mr Rock," Miss Baker assented, wondering at last.

"We shall ponder this. Believe me I am truly Grateful," Edge went on, and experienced the most acute impatience. "Is that not so, Baker?" Then showed her hand. "Yet it just does occur to one. . Oh I know, living as you have the best part of a lifetime with your great Discovery, at this late hour it must seem plain as day. Yet I cannot but put the question, would it be quite right for our dear Girls?"

Mr Rock found himself literally choked by momentary rage. How could these two dastardly trollops for a moment imagine he would ever so demean his nature as to discuss the Great Theory before children? He felt it so much that he reeled, and bumped into Sebastian, who had taken shelter. He controlled himself.

"We are at cross purposes, ma'am," he said. "What I had intended," he went on, in the self-absorption of old age, and a pathetic kind of dignity which they took for mere insolence, "was this. In fact a brief weekly homily on the care of pigs."

"You did?" was all Edge could bring out for the moment, while Baker gasped. Elizabeth took her young man by the finger of a hand, but, from the misery of his embarrassment, Birt shook her off.

"By the time they're older, one or more might be encouraged to have a go at this filthy swine fever," Mr Rock surmised, at his most bland and serious.

"Not many of our Students enter the Veterinary Service," Miss Edge said, in a distant voice. She began to move off. "Baker," she commanded. "We must not keep the girls."

"Now run along, Sebastian," Baker urged. He did not have to be told twice.

"But of course," she went on coldly, to the Rocks, "how thoughtless. I think you had both better come this way, to our washroom. You'll find a mirror for yourself, dear."

"Do hurry, Baker," Miss Edge called.

So the old man came upon himself alone with his granddaughter in front of a white enamelled door.

He was silent for a minute. Then he said severely, "Barbarous of them to mix the sexes."

"You go first," Elizabeth commanded. As he fumbled with the handle she caught at his sleeve.

"Oh Gapa," she exclaimed, "you didn't… I mean, what an extraordinary idea… to keep the cottage for us all, wasn't it… oh, are you sweet."

"I'll leave your shoes inside," he answered, shutting her out.

When the music began a third time, eighteen children waiting in the corridor lifted heads from their confabulations but did not immediately move off towards the Hall because of two previous disappointments. Then the valse continued, on and on, and they could see couples circle into view, their short reflections upon the floor continually on the move behind swinging skirts over polished wax, backwards and forwards, in and out again as each pair swung round under chandeliers. And at the sight these others walked on the lighted scene, held white arms up to veined shoulders, in one another's arms moved off, turning to the beat with half shut eyes, entranced, in a soft ritual beneath azalea and rhododendron; one hundred and fifty pairs in white and while, equally oblivious, inside their long black dresses, Miss Baker and Miss Edge lovingly swayed in one another's bony grip, on the room's exact centre, to and fro, Edge's eyes tight closed, both in a culmination of the past twelve months, at spinsterish rest in movement, barely violable, alone.

Above, locked safe into a sick bay, curtains close drawn against the moon, Merode's infant breathing told she was asleep.

Still farther off, in their retiring room, unaware that the dance had opened, the staff sat to make scant conversation. They were embarrassed; and, out of sympathy, perhaps, for the lovesick Winstanley, had chosen to pretend, by ignoring him, that Birt, who seemed most ill at ease, was not present in fat flesh amongst them. All over the Institute hardly a word more was now spoken, not one down the Hall where Inglefield had taken up her stand to drive the deafening music. Then, suddenly at a doorway, there loomed unheralded the figures of Elizabeth and the old man. Both were dressed as black as those two Principals.

His great white head nodded to rapt, dancing students. "The first will have to be with me, then," he announced to the granddaughter loud under music, for Inglefield had turned the power full on and because, as he looked around, he had seen no sign of Sebastian. Then Moira whirled past, hair spread as if by drowning over Marion's round, boneless shoulder. He let his arms, which he had held out to Elizabeth, drop back as he followed the child with carefully expressionless, lensed eyes. And Liz gave a gasp of disenchantment as she bent to raise the old hands from his sides; after which they launched out together onto the turning, dazzled floor. But not for them, as with the others, in a smooth glide. Because Mr Rock went back to the days before his own youth, was a high stepper.

He stepped high, which is to say he woodenly, uproariously lifted knees as if to stamp while he held the granddaughter at arm's length, but did not cover much ground. Still the one man on that floor, they made a twice noticeable pair because they were alone in paying heed to where they went, in his case to avoid a fall when he might break a hip, certainly fatal for a man his age, and she for the boy who remained, at the moment, her one hope of continuing to live.

"They are here," Baker, who kept an eye half open, murmured to Miss Edge. The news came to this lady as though from a distance.

"Let all enjoy themselves. They must," she mumbled in return.

There was just one note might have jarred at the outset, though it passed unnoticed. Mrs Blain had, as was natural, been amongst the first starters. She'd grabbed hold of an orderly, and was saying while she blindly danced, "Oh, we're champion."

"You do waltz beautifully," her girl replied.

"Soft soap," the cook answered. "But I've one matter on my mind. Why my Mary's not here to enjoy things. I can't make out the reason she never phoned." Mrs Blain panted, because puffed.

"Perhaps she couldn't," the child lazily suggested.

"Oh, aren't we all dancing?" Mrs Blain enthused. "Just look at us," she said, from closed eyes. "I do wish she could be here, though. She might've given me a ring. Mind now, will you look how you go? This night's for all to enjoy, isn't it, bumpin' into people? Yes, I'd've liked to get a word. Illness in the family can be a terrible upset."

"I hardly think it is," this vague girl told her, after they had danced some more.

"There, you're only dizzy, a bit. What do you know?" Mrs Blain demanded.

"I don't fancy she's home," the child softly insisted.

"Then where is she?" Mrs Blain cried out, and opened green eyes rather wild. It seemed they danced like a whirling funnel.

"She's gone, you'll discover."

"Nowhere to be come upon?" the cook wailed, and pushed that spiralling orderly away at arm's length until, she felt, the girl revolved about her like a wisp of kitchen paper. "Lost?" she yelled, but it was drowned by music. "What's this? So that was it, then? Oh, you wicked things."

"Not to do with me, Mrs Blain," the orderly gently protested, given over to her shivering, glazed senses.

"Wicked deceivers," the woman said, in a calmer voice. "I'll have my enquiries to make on that, all right."

"We think it's pretty rotten of her to want to spoil this heaven evening."

"Well then," the cook said, quietened at once, and folded the child to an enormous bosom. Upon which both gave their two selves over, entire. As they saw themselves from shut eyes, they endlessly danced on, like horns of paper, across warm, rustling fields of autumn fallen leaves.

Quite soon, girls began to cut in. While Inglefield kept the instrument hard at it, the original partners began to break up, to step back over the wax mirror floor out of one another's arms, moving sideways by such as would not be parted yet, each to tap a second favourite on a bare, quiet shoulder. Then the girl so chosen would give a little start, open those great shut eyes, much greater than jewels as she circled and, circling yet, would dip into these fresh limbs which moved already in the dance, disengaging thus to leave her first choice to slip sideways in turn past established, whirling partners until she found another who was loved and yet alone.

Less satisfactory was the crush of fortune hunting children, with more fabulous gems for eyes, round Baker and Miss Edge, both of whom affected to ignore their riches as, oblivious yet well aware, they danced out together the dull year that was done. One after the other they would be tapped on a hard, black garmented back. But, as was traditional on these occasions, they lingered in one another's orbit, until at last Edge had had enough. When that moment came she simply opened eyes, from which long years had filched the brilliants, said "Why Moira," in simulated wonder, and so chose this child who, of all the suitors, was the first she saw in her hurried tiredness.

"Oh, ma'am," the girl said, delighted, while they drifted off on music, Moira leading.

"Isn't it wonderful?" the child asked, when she proudly noted the Principal had once more closed her eyes.

"I could go on for ever," she murmured further, when there was no response.

Then, as was usual at these Dances, but which came, as it always did, in all parts of the room at one and the same time because it occurred to almost everyone at once, there was mooted the project of a gift to their Principals.

"Why don't we get up a sub for Edgey and Bakers?"

"I think we ought to do something for both. They're sweet."

"This is too marvellous. We must manage a present in return."

"Ma'am," said Moira to the dreaming guv'nor like a black ostrich feather in her arms. "You're wonderful. So good."

The music was a torrent, to spread out, to be lost in the great space of this mansion, to die when it reached the staff room to a double beat, the water wheel turned by a rustling rush of leaf thick water. It was so dispersed and Winstanley, seated alongside Sebastian, could, for the conversation of her fellow teachers, hear no breath, neither the whispering in the joists from a distant slither of three hundred pairs of shoes, nor the cold hum of violins in sharp, moonstruck window glass. She did not know until Sebastian, who could not tell why, other than that he was restless, got up to open a door, when at once she realised the house had come to life, and recognised the reason. He would never listen for me, she accused Elizabeth.

It came to all the staff along the outside passage, first as a sort of jest, a whispered doublemeaning almost, then as a dance master's tap in time with music. After which, at any rate for the women, a far rustling of violins once recognised called as air, beaten through stretched feathers, might have spoken to the old man's goose, that long migratory flight unseen. So they rose, as Ted had never yet, and, with a burst of nasal conversation, made haste toward their obligations in the excitement of a year's end; not without a sense of dread in every breast which, in Sebastian's case was even more, for him it was the violin conjured, sibilant, thin storm of unease about a halting heart.

While they hurried closer the whole edifice began to turn, even wooden pins which held the panelling noiselessly revolved to the greater, ever greater sound. Thus they almost ran to their appointment, so giddy they were fit to tumble down; but, once in the room, paired off quietly, decently as best they might.

Sebastian stood against a wall, Winstanley could only take on Marchbanks, and Dakers was left with the last woman he would have picked.

"He's here," Miss Rock said to her grandfather, but he did not catch on.

"Care? Of course I care," he replied, in the deepest voice. Yet she took her hand out of his, was slipping from his arms.

She detached herself and, not unnoticed, made her way to where the young man waited. As for Mr Rock, when he saw himself abandoned, he moved clumsily over to the dais. Moira steered past with Miss Edge, whose eyes were tight closed. The child's lips sent "Later," at him, and he read them. Then, when he reached the sort of throne he had picked out, he climbed up and sat himself heavily where none but the Principals had a right to be seated. He was proud.

It was such a grand sight Mr Rock was almost glad he had attended.

Miss Winstanley noticed Elizabeth make for Sebastian, and it turned her sick as she circled about Marchbanks.

"How are you, dear?" she asked the older woman, thinking of herself.

Miss Marchbanks danced with great concentration, and the little smile of a martyr.

"Thank you, my shoulders are broad enough," she replied.

"There is something presumptuous in all this," Winstanley said of the evening with what was, for her, an unusually sad voice. She was watching Elizabeth give herself over, dance as one with Sebastian, deep in his arms. They moved as though their limbs had mutual, secret knowledge, were long acquainted cheek to cheek; the front of their thighs kissed through clothes; an unconscious couple which fired burning arrows through gasping music at her.

"Our dear girls must have a marvellous time," Marchbanks volunteered, with conviction. "But if you spoke of Mr Rock, the uninvited guest, then you knew of this fresh honour, that he is to be elected? I expect he feels sure of himself now."

The repetition of the beat, and her lazy misery about Sebastian, began to make Winstanley drowse.

"How goes your head?" she asked again.

There was a silence between them. Then Marchbanks murmured, "I'm so used to my heads I don't notice."

"There's anaesthesia in a valse."

"But I do wonder time and again, dear," Miss Marchbanks dreamily answered. "Do we not meet this modern music the same way, in the old days, as they used to go to fairs? You will have read of it. People plunging into the hurly-burly to forget their miserable condition, their worries."

"Ah, they weren't fools, then, they seldom are," Winstanley said at random, and shut her eyes tight. Through a blinding headache Miss Marchbanks guided the younger woman, who still had hope.

"Darling," Elizabeth said to her young man, out of shut eyes also, "I spoke to him. He'll do it."

"Oh Liz," he answered, looking over his shoulder. "But you should neither of you have come."

She smiled the little smile of satisfaction.

"Aren't you glad we came?" she asked.

He did not answer. Still from her closed eyes she thought how the hand she had on his shoulder must seem to him like his heart's white flower.

"I'd have imagined you'd be glad," she said, still satisfied.

Moira had long been succeeded in Miss Edge's arms by other partners, but Mr Rock had forgotten the girl in his wait for the Principal to be vacant. He sat on alone, a monument, determined to buttonhole Edge the first moment he might. But she was too popular. Even when he saw Moira come crabwise through the serious, frantic dancers, he did not imagine she was after him. As he concentrated on the guv'nor, he did not notice the child again until she stood below his chair, to make the usual offer of herself, to present, as she always instinctively did, the endless prize of her fair person.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"Hullo," he said. "I've danced enough."

"Mr Rock, d'you mean to say you've forgotten?" she protested. "I was to show you," she lied. "Now, don't you remember?"

He did not wish to appear confused in a crowd, or by this music.

"Where do we go, then? Lead away," he said, blithe, and got up with difficulty.

"Over here," she told him, took the little finger of his right hand.

Once they were outside, the passages seemed quite deserted, although there was one girl yawned alone in the pantry.

"Not many down yet, Moira," she greeted, unlocking a door which opened onto a steep flight of stairs that led to the depths. There was no hand rail, only a length of rope looped to some rusted stanchions. Mr Rock's courage failed.

"Have I to negotiate these?" he pleaded aghast, unwilling to admit his disabilities. "I don't think I can manage."

Meantime, the other girl bolted the door through which they had entered.

"Oh, but you must," Moira said, calm but firm.

"You might tell them to hurry my relief," the first child suggested.

"It's my eyes," Mr Rock confessed, and put a foot forward as though about to enter an ocean.

"Come on," Moira begged, started to descend in front, still holding his finger. "We don't want to get caught, do we?"

When he thought over the episode a day later, Mr Rock felt this last remark, with its suggestion of conspiracy, had been the prime factor, squalid as it was to have to admit it, which induced him to embark on the first venture.

"Wait," he said, abandoning himself to the descent. As soon as he was fairly engaged on these stone steps, the other child locked the door above, and, with it, shut away a last murmur of the dance. So they haltingly crept down into blinding silence, lighted by dirty bulbs festooned with cobwebs.

"Where are you taking me?" he demanded, and awkwardly pulled the rope.

"Wait. You'll find out," she answered.

Age made a man very dependent, he thought, for this was like the pretty child that led the blind. Indeed his eyes were adequate, even if thick lenses distorted edges of vision, but it was his feet were blind, which fumbled air. Then, with a great feeling of relief, he had arrived; he stood on a level cellar passage, but nevertheless, still groped forward, with the forefingers of his free hand brushing a wall, and picked up more cobwebs. He was on the way to wet wine and dry coke, he thought, for this was the region of bins and boilers, and also, presumably, of somewhat else.

Moira, in order not to dirty her frock, led the old man as if they had to pass through a tall bed of white and black nettles. She walked sideways, delicately, held his other hand high which seemed to protest in the traditional manner of the sightless.

"Isn't it awful?" she exclaimed.

"Now look, my dear," Mr Rock said, "All this is very flattering, I don't doubt, but we have to get back upstairs, some time. Surely we've done enough."

Then he saw the bare corridor turn to an upended empty crate and a green baize door.

"Stay two minutes," she said, going round one and through the other, to leave him alone.

"What foolishness is this?" he pettishly demanded aloud of his solitude, hard of hearing, yet with an idea he could catch whispers, even more the other side. Then she was back, and had closed the door. She looked sad, listened a moment. But she climbed onto the crate, so that the rajah's hoard of her eyes was on a level with the old man's spectacles.

"We're too soon," she said. "You mustn't look before they're ready. Come here," she demanded. He went up. She laid a cheek against him, and, before he knew what she was at, had rolled her face over until soft lips brushed his that were dry as an old bone.

"Stop it," he muttered, and stepped violently away until his back became covered with powdered whitewash. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, left a cobweb on the corner.

"You're mad, Moira. You did this for a bet," he said frightened.

"Yes," she lied. It was only part of the routine; also she had wanted to make up to him, of course, for the fruitless journey.

He hurriedly started off towards the stairs. Her eyes, as they turned to watch, hung out more diamonds.

"Come on at once, my poor girl," he ordered, and did not look for her. Mopping at his face with a handkerchief, as Dakers had at breakfast, he set the pace out of it. He trod high again, as though afraid of a wire that might trip him. She followed obediently, in immodest silence.

When Inglefield allowed the instrument its first interval, the usual twenty minutes, and that Banqueting Hall spun down to a flower hung cavern of still white couples, Elizabeth had the sense not to make at once for moonlight with Sebastian, but joined a sideways drift which had begun to the buffet next door. In front of the willow pattern, hand-basin of lemonade, however, they became quite a centre of interest. For word had gone round that at last they were engaged; the students, one and all, were in a giving mood; and the idea, which seemed to each gently panting chest to be unique, the possessor's very own, took shape, flowed spontaneously into a project of the wedding gift. But not so loud that it could be expressed, not yet at least, not all at once.

"Careful with the lemonade," they said to her.

"It's poison. I ought to know, I made it."

"Isn't your grandfather wonderful? I'm so proud he came."

"Sweet for us that Edgey asked you."

"Do try one of these."

Elizabeth simpered at the girls about, accepted all they offered with small cries.

"What of your Daise," a student began. "Will she like company?"

Liz took this up.

"What does one, I mean it isn't possible, is it? Animals you know. There's no way, can there be? But you see all I'm trying to say is, you may never tell, and not only with pigs when everything's told, you can't be sure of human beings, either?"

Sebastian hurried to the rescue.

"Surely this much could be assumed," he said, unaffected and serious, in his lecturer's voice. "That where waste occurs, and, mark you, waste as such, in normal times, is not so bad a thing, it can represent no more than the effect of a high standard of life, then, in those conditions, isn't it better that what waste may naturally exist should be diverted to a guise in which those who cause the self same waste may employ it to replace what has been wasted? I'm afraid I've got a bit involved, you know. In other words, if you are in a position to be able to afford not to eat potatoes in their jackets, why not feed the peelings to pigs?"

"But that's what happens, surely, Mr Birt," one of them objected.

"Daisy doesn't have all," he said. "The rest goes to pig farms, I agree, but here we touch on what might be termed the ethics of political economy. I wouldn't exactly recommend your using this in exam papers, but I do put it forward that, if there is waste, then you should keep your own pigs. Clean up so to speak, behind."

"Then what are they going to eat on pig farms?"

"But, surely, that is the affair of the State?" he asked. "A mass feeding of swine should not be haphazard. The surplus of a hundred thousand State factories must be made up into balanced pig foods."

"And what if the pigs don't like?"

"They will. That is the purpose of the State," he said.

"But how can you tell, which is my whole point, don't you see?" Elizabeth rushed in. "You never know with animals, or anyone."

"Yet, Liz," he explained patiently, "the one goes thin, the other complains aloud, and both go thin."

"Oh it's not only food, I wouldn't be so silly, there's lots of things people are as silent as animals over. In what way is any single person sure how a certain matter will turn out?" She told him this with such intensity that he grew cautious. "Whether they will like it, or no?" she explained, about their sharing the cottage with Gapa.

"I'm not sure I follow," he said, as well he might.

"Wouldn't you say that was like a man, all over?" she exclaimed, favouring the girls about with a delighted smile. "Why it's quite simple." Then she sheered off again. "If you had to cook for someone, you'd soon learn," she said. "There need be no question of waste in the least. What does count is what's available. Don't you see how? Suppose I know my grandfather likes prawns and I can only get shrimps. As a matter of fact," she elaborated to the students, "he adores a prawn tea," pretending that she invariably arranged his meals every day. "But very likely I can only manage the other. What's the difference? Why, shrimps give him a pain." Then she had an urge to be open with them. "As a matter of fact," she went on, "I had a breakdown at work, you may have heard, and I haven't seemed able to do a great lot lately. Oh, Gapa's been marvellous, hasn't he, Seb? He's cooked for all of us," she said, to underline the special, though as yet unpublicised, relationship between her and the young man. "Of course, it's not a mere matter of food and cooking. There's everything comes into this. Someone wanted to know whether Daisy would like all the other pigs on either side. Well, what about us? Who can say if we shall like? D'you see what's back of my mind?"

She gave Sebastian a piercing glance. Some of the students had already had enough, were discussing other topics.

"My point was, dear, you would feel better if what you had to support was nourished on your left overs," Sebastian said.

"That's not so," she cried. "How about children?"

"When they're nursed, it exactly bears out my point."

"I don't think we need go into biological details here," she said. "Anyway, after six months or so they're weaned, surely? No, but when children are growing up. You don't give them your leavings then."

"We were on the subject of pigs," he insisted.

"You will, sometimes, be so dense, well pigheaded," she archly complained. "Oh my dears, what must you think of us?" she asked the girls who, for the most part, had long ceased to pay attention. "You know Gapa's notion, about what he might decide to do," she said with a loaded look at everyone, which even Sebastian did not seem to understand. "The last one, of course. What he suggested to Miss Edge just now? Well, could anything be better?" She referred to Mr Rock's unexpected offer to give talks on pigs. "To hold you know what," she ended, to make it doubly plain she meant their cottage.

"Isn't it splendid Mr Rock's to teach about Daisy," one of the students took her up, innocent as the day, obviously under the impression that she was opening a fresh topic.

"Why whoever told you that, then?" Elizabeth asked, delighted at what she took to be confirmation.

"Oh everyone knows. Don't they, girls?"

"Sebastian, did you hear? Isn't it marvellous?" Miss Rock crowed. "You see? It means Miss Edge must have thought of our plan first." In such a way the granddaughter both claimed the idea for her very own and assumed Edge's acquiescence, thus wilfully ignoring the heights, or depths, of gossip prevalent amongst these children.

* * *

Miss Edge, when the gramophone stopped a second time, once more found herself the centre of a slightly panting group plying her with invitations. She shooed them off towards the buffet, and stalked to the dais that she might rest herself. She had not gone far before she perceived Mr Rock up there again, alone, as though lionised. She paused. But, after all, it would be too absurd if the man's presence hindered one of the Principals taking her rightful place. So she glided over despite him.

With an acute struggle against his old joints, he rose to this approach.

"My congratulations, ma'am," he said. "A memorable sight we have tonight."

"My dear Mr Rock. Sweet indeed to bother."

"I trust your exertions will permit, later, your partnering an old man."

"My dear Sir, how could I forget? I shall hold you to it." In no time they were seated side by side, Miss Edge delicately inclined towards the sage. Her eyes roved over the Hall of her girls, in stiff pairs as if bereft at this interruption of music. He, for his part, looked on the old fashioned dancing pumps he wore, while he leaned in her direction to minimise the deafness.

"Takes me quite back to my young days," he persisted.

"And mine, if you please," she countered.

In this he lied, however. It was true the more distant past now made a sharper picture; the time at school, hard work, then six months chasing girls and finally the signal triumph; but he was concentrated now on his granddaughter, on how best to approach Miss Edge. "I do know a little about these things. It is your powers of organisation, if I may say so, which I especially applaud," he said.

"You understand our Tamashas are traditional," the lady condescended. "They run themselves. All Baker and I must do, is to watch that there are no departures."

Departures? Escapes? Was this a reference to poor Mary, he wondered?

"Ah, the sudden, the unexpected," he tested her.

The sudden, she asked herself? Could he be aiming at that unfortunate child? The whole trouble really was, too many knew about Merode and Mary.

"The odious deviations from what is usual," she corrected, dashing him a glance. "One of the things we should provide here is memories, which is why I strive for the repetitive. It is a minor function, of course, in a great Place like this, but we must send them out so they can look back on the small pleasures shared. I dare say there are several reunion parties to celebrate Founder's Day in many a State Recreation Room this selfsame moment. You know, it is not long since that Baker and I were privileged by the State to create the Institute out of a void. Believe me, Mr Rock, it was a vacuum indeed when we first came. But already our old girls would be distressed to hear of change in any shape."

"It is a sadness in old age," he agreed. "One's contemporaries die. One can no longer share one's youth."

"Ah, you have lived the lonely life," she said.

Now what could she mean? He wondered. He waited.

"But there have been compensations, surely?" she continued. "Of course, no-one can speak for another, life has at least taught me that, I hope. Yet to remain on in this beautiful Place, as a reward for great work well done, must be a remarkable privilege I cannot help feeling."

"One has a pride in achievement," he answered, to show that he, at any rate, need not be modest. "Still, old age is a lonely condition, as you'll find in due course, Miss Edge."

What could the wily old man be hinting, she impatiently asked under her breath?

"Yet you do have company," she insisted.

He reminded himself to be careful. Doubtless she intended a sly reference to his habit of speech with certain students when they strolled down to the cottage.

"Not the life shared, memories in common," he brought out, conscious of his deep, pathetic tones.

"But your granddaughter?"

"She's only here when ill."

"I have noticed, Mr Rock, how much improved she seems in herself."

Now, what was she after? Was this to be the clean sweep, to rid herself of Elizabeth and him at the single, Machiavellian stroke.

"I wish I could think so, ma'am," he said, with anxious care.

"Just look at Moira," Miss Edge then changed the subject without warning. The old man wildly raised his head, in guilt. "Really she stares out of those great eyes of hers as though she were going to be ill."

He said not a word. Did these two blockheaded Principals never have any idea of the strains and stresses, he wondered? And what was all this about sickness? He kept his face a blank for the child's sake.

"Yes, I'm sure she's ever so much better."

"Moira, ma'am?"

"No, your granddaughter Elizabeth, naturally. Tell me, what are your plans for her?" This was to come out into the open with a vengeance, he thought.

"It is in the hands of the doctor, of course," he replied, with a sidelong glance.

"Sick notes seem quite to govern all our decisions these days," Miss Edge agreed, to abandon the subject. She fell silent, the better to watch her girls at rest.

This silence made the old man increasingly nervous.

Then, with no further word exchanged, the Principal made a sign to Inglefield, who at once restarted the gramophone.

The crowd of girls in white poured back. Even before they were in one another's arms they twirled in doorways.

This music was heavy, stupendous for Mr Rock.

"May I have my honour now, ma'am?" he enquired.

"How kind," she answered. "But I wonder if I might rest a little."

"I never knew you had trouble with your eyes, ma'am," he said. 'How blind', was what he had heard.

"Kind," Miss Edge shouted, with a brilliant, fixed smile at her circling throng of children. It will be such a tiresome bore if I have to try to make him hear above this perfectly heavenly valse, she thought.

"You did not catch what I said. Only Tired, want to Rest a minute," she explained in a great voice.

Why must Moira watch him like it, as if he had done her injury, he asked himself? The foolish little intriguer. She was perilous. Because Edge who had noticed already, might end by getting it into her narrow skull.

Then, at that precise moment, Elizabeth came just below, dancing, as he thought, in a manner which could not be permissible in any era, so as to flaunt the fact of Sebastian no doubt. He assumed an idiot look of pride, in the way he could the swill man's cry, and turned towards Miss Edge to note her reaction. He saw she had not bothered to see them, which was a relief, though at the same time he resented the culpable blindness. Perhaps she is really having trouble with her eyes, as I with my ears, he wondered.

Edge may have sensed he watched, because she swung her head round with a dry smile.

"The dears," she said. "They must and shall enjoy themselves."

Now the music was in full flood he could not be sure of what he heard. When he thought he caught what had been said, he was often wrong; and the few times he was confident he had the sense, he still knew he hardly ever did have it when, as now, under a difficulty. So he assumed she was speaking of Liz.

"Thanks to you, the time of her life," he assured Miss Edge.

Why cannot the sad man realise I will not be bothered tonight with individuals, she asked herself?

"There must not be a child who does not take a happy memory of this away in her, for the rest of her days," she answered.

"And so they ought," he agreed stoutly, leaving the Principal in ignorance as to whether he had heard.

Another silence fell between them. But there was a deal he had to tell her yet. He was determined to have it out. Accordingly he tried to bring the conversation back somewhere near the more immediate topics.

"Is this correct, what I hear about pigsties, like mushrooms after rain, over the magnificent grounds?" he asked.

"Why, whoever gave you that idea, Mr Rock?"

"A flat idea? I don't quite follow, ma'am."

Really, the man was intolerable. It was indeed time for him to go where he could be properly looked after with his deafness and everything, she thought.

"I never question a decision of my Superiors," she reproved. "No, I asked how you had learned?" She yelled this at an ear. He took it in.

"Amazing the way things get about a community such as ours, ma'am," he replied. She wondered at his effrontery, that he should claim kinship with their Work. "No," he went on, "of course I have given a hand with the swill in the past, and now, I suppose, you will want all of it for yourselves? But to tell you the truth, ma'am, time has lain a bit heavy on my hands. In fact I don't know that I've been pulling my weight. It is a privilege to lead my existence," he said with an irony just sufficiently controlled to escape her notice.

"What I had wondered, since you don't seem to be too keen that I should give them a few plain talks on pigs, was whether I could not, after all, work up a little course of lectures on what I may have done. Something along the lines of the joy, and reward, of achievement," he ended in great bitterness, effectively disguised behind a mandarin smile.

Of all bores, Miss Edge moaned to herself, the persistent ones are worst. He could not have appreciated then, what she had told him on this very subject in the Sanctum.

"Well," she said genially. "Well! That will need thinking over. But how lucky for the Girls."

"No trouble at all," he lied at random.

"Shall we leave it till tomorrow, Mr Rock?" she suggested. "I hardly feel, just at the crux of our little jollification, that we can give your project the attention it deserves."

Whatever you say, ma'am," he agreed. At least Elizabeth could hardly now make out that he had not explored every avenue, he told himself.

Soon after, he got up and left Miss Edge. The lady was so obviously lost in happy contemplation of her charges. And he felt he had done enough. Honour was satisfied, he thought.

Perhaps forty minutes later, Edge — was joined on the dais by her colleague who declared she could dance no longer, and sat herself heavily down, to fan a cheek with a lace bordered black and white handkerchief.

"It is excellent, dear, quite excellent," she cried.

"I think so, Baker" Miss Edge answered, in an exalted mood again.

"What a good notion of yours, Mabel, to ask the Rocks," Baker, full of enthusiasm, gaily cried above the music. "It will give those two so much pleasure later, when they get home," she added.

"I did no such thing," her colleague said, but did not seem to pay attention.

"The old man really cuts quite a distinguished figure," Baker insisted, to all appearances not having taken in Edge's negligent reply, perhaps because of this great spring tide of music.

"Nevertheless," Edge enquired, "what was it led you to ask them, Hermione?"

"I?" Miss Baker demanded. "I never invited anyone, dear."

Edge leaned over her colleague in one swift movement, as though to peer up Baker's nostrils.

"Then you mean they are here unasked?" she hissed. "Oh no, Hermione, not that, for it would be too much."

"I didn't," Baker promised. They looked wildly at one another. "Now careful, Mabel," she went on. "We don't wish to make ourselves conspicuous."

"But this is preposterous persecution. It could even be wicked."

"Mabel don't, I beg of you. Just when we were so enjoying ourselves. If you could only catch sight of your expression, dear. We shall have everyone look our way in a minute."

"Hermione, they shall leave at once," Miss Edge proposed.

"To brazen themselves like this," Baker hastily agreed. "Why, it's wrong."

In time, however, both ladies gained sufficient control to be able to look straight out over the Hall with a glare above the dancers. But when Elizabeth came by once more, still in Sebastian's arms, hair still disarranged, still dancing as though glued to him, they both deflected their vision through the degrees necessary to take in this orgiastic behaviour, which they had not previously bothered to notice. They then followed the couple with palsied indignation, rooted to valse trembling chairs.

"You saw?" Miss Edge brought out at last.

"Yes, and alas I still do, Mabel."

"Well, whatever else we may decide, dear, their little display of animalism must be stopped at once."

"Whatever you think," Miss Baker agreed. But seemed hesitant.

"Yes, Hermione, and why on earth not?"

"Is it always wise to bring matters of this kind out in the open? The thought just flashed through my mind, that's all."

"Hermione, I wish I could follow your reasoning."

"It's just I can't quite make out that any of the children appear to have caught on, particularly. You see?" Miss Baker asked.

"Should we wait for the girls to copy this themselves?"

"It does seem a most ambiguous style to dance, I must admit, Mabel."

"In a moment, when the first flush of this glorious music has worn off, I'm very much afraid the cat will be out of the bag, Hermione."

"Where has Mr Rock got to, then? I don't see him," Miss Baker said, to draw a red herring across the trail. She was a cautious woman.

"Oh drinking, undoubtedly drinking outside," Miss Edge proclaimed.

"But there's no more than lemonade, dear."

"He had a flask, Hermione. I saw the bulge myself, in his pocket."

"You appal me."

"Ah, if it were only that."

"Oh surely, Mabel?"

"I insist he is far too close to some of the girls."

"Be that as it may," Miss Baker sternly said, pulling herself together, "I do beg you to take this fresh affront in a Christian spirit."

"Why should I?" her colleague demanded. "When he flaunts our authority?"

"You know how deaf Mr Rock is. Perhaps he misheard some time this week. Thought you had invited him?"

"Oh no, no, that simply will not wash. You must realise all he misunderstands is just what he does not wish to hear. Besides I have not said two words to the man in months."

"Of course there may have been. . but I don't think. . wait, I'm trying to remember," Miss Baker said. "He might have thought, when I mentioned, when we met by the Lake," she delicately hinted, to scale down Mr Rock's offence. "But of course I'm in no two minds. A member of the staff has no business whatever dancing with the misguided woman. If we don't pull together on occasions of this sort, what good are we, after all? And to go about it in that disgraceful way is too bad of Sebastian. As to her, I cannot believe she can be responsible for her actions. Oh no, don't think I don't agree with you, dear."

"Then, Hermione, I am going straight onto the floor. I shall simply tap him on the shoulder, gesture him Off. I shall not say a word," Miss Edge announced, and made as though to get down from her chair.

"But Mabel, is this wise?" Miss Baker asked, in a sort of shriek to pierce the double basses which, at the moment, held the recorded melody.

"There is more to our duties than a kind of still-born native caution," Edge complained, but stayed seated.

"Yes, dear," her colleague comforted, satisfied that she had, at least, held off immediate action.

"If we see another woman ridiculed before our very eyes, are we to sit by without a word?" Miss Edge demanded. "There is a double obligation on us, surely. To call Elizabeth Rock to order, for she is leading him along to make a fool of her, to compromise herself with him, Baker; and, second, to show our girls we shall not turn a blind eye upon wrongdoing, which this disgraceful behaviour most surely is."

"You are right, Mabel, of course. But how will Mr Rock react?"

"He should be eternally grateful. You cannot tell me he wants his girl compromised with Sebastian Birt."

"No, Mabel. But you know the way he is. He might take our reproof for an affront."

"And if he did?"

"My dear, he is such friends with Mr Swaythling. This can hardly be a moment to invite publicity, the attention of the Supervisor, just when we are face to face with the enigma of Mary, not to mention Merode."

"Yes, but there must be some justice in our affairs, Baker. If we are to harbour the informer in our midst, let us have nothing to hide, at least."

"Leave sleeping dogs lie, Edge."

"And what have we done? My conscience is clear. Can you point to any single circumstance under which we could possibly be said to have countenanced the girl's disappearance?"

"Of course, this whole thing's absurd," her colleague answered. "At the same time, I didn't quite care for Mrs Manley's attitude. After she had seen Merode she rather made capital out of Mary's being such a favourite of ours."

"I trust, whenever we make friends with one of the Students, that will not be considered sufficient justification for the child concerned to make off at dead of night, and in her pyjamas." Miss Baker laughed elegantly at this sally.

Just then Sebastian bumped Elizabeth, through carelessness, into another couple and she opened hers to find herself gazing into the Principals' four eyes.

"Look out Seb," she said. "They're glaring like a couple of old black herons down in the meadow, over the daisies."

After this, they danced with more circumspection.

"It is a matter of elementary justice, Baker," Edge insisted, but in so much calmer a voice, now Elizabeth was no longer dancing cheek to cheek, that her colleague could be satisfied the danger of an open breach was past. "If one sees wrong done, one cannot sit idly by, dear."

"Of deportment, or behaviour? Even on a special occasion?" Miss Baker asked.

"But really, sometimes you astound me," Edge said, mildly warming to the subject. "That sort of thing is like an infection, surely? I refer of course to the way those two have been dancing. If you find scarlet fever in a community, you isolate it. There is the fever hospital."

"I dare not look at Winstanley" Baker replied.

"Then I will do so for you," Miss Edge offered. "There she is, with a look on her washed out face of weariness, and disgust, poor child. I do not know if we should not get rid of her as well," she ended, but in an uncertain voice.

"No really, dear, there must be limits."

"It is the risk of infection again," Edge explained, all at once rather magisterial. "Jealousy is an epidemic, can even lead to crime."

"Now, Edge, I really should. ."

"Yes, Baker, but there is so much which is unexplained. That is the reason I feel we must have a clearance, a real spring clean," Miss Edge interrupted. But, now the tension was relaxed, she spoke in almost languishing tones.

Miss Baker became unusually confident. The music, the dance, the air of festivity had loosened her tongue.

"So long as we ourselves don't get swept up into the dust pan along with the wet tea leaves," she said.

"Baker, surely that is rather fanciful," her colleague reproved, in an idle voice.

"This is hardly the time and place to discuss it," Miss Baker admitted. "Why, look at Mr Rock and Moira."

"Where? Dancing?"

"No, Edge, over in the doorway. Really he imagines he has particular manners, to use the Institute idiom."

"So long as they do not sample moonlight," Edge exclaimed. Miss Baker laughed, then she said, "Of course if there was really anything of the sort I'd never hesitate. Out they'd all go, neck and crop. But until we have cleared Mary up, and got quite to the bottom of Merode, we mayn't be absolutely sure, you know. Even his turning up tonight with Elizabeth looks suspicious from a certain angle, I agree. Yet there's Mr Swaythling, not to mention Hargreaves. Both are old friends, remember."

"The way to handle all matters of this sort is to act in the name of the State at once, then congratulate the State on what has been done afterwards," Edge propounded, with a sudden dryness.

"My dear," Baker replied. "Those tactics may have served when we had to have another corridor of bathrooms, but I venture to think this an altogether different problem."

"I must have that cottage," Edge good-humouredly insisted.

"And so you shall," Miss Baker promised, in the voice she would have used to a little girl who was wanting more chocolate, in the one day, than was proper. "Now, shall we postpone all this until tomorrow?"

"Very well," Edge agreed, content on the whole to let things slide this night of nights. "But I must just mention one thing, Baker," she added, as a last gesture, and in a rising voice, as though to yell defiance.

"They can go too far," she shouted under the music, but kept her face expressionless. It was like a prisoner, confined with others to a workshop in which talk is forbidden, and who has learned to scream defiance as an unheard ventriloquist beneath the deafening, mechanical hammers. "They can outstretch themselves," (she was working herself up), "there is a Limit, and this," when, at that precise moment, the music stopped dead into a sighing silence, "this Rock" she continued, and could only go on, in a great voice, heard throughout the Hall, "upon which our Institute is Built," she recovered, and beamed at the Students.

"My dear, magnificent," Miss Baker approved, in praise of the recovery.

Mr Rock had had a grand time, so close surrounded by children that he was protected even from Moira's pressing attentions.

Very likely because, on this occasion, it would be one way a girl could draw attention to herself, or, at any rate, that was how he explained it, he had been deluged by pretty, laughing invitations to be amongst his partners, all of which he had known how to refuse. It was enough that he had danced with Liz, would be ready again for Edge when the spirit moved her, and that he should be at hand if Liz lost her Sebastian even for a moment. One or two carefully done evenings like this, and she'd come right in no time. Nevertheless he was charmed with the fuss these children were making.

"Why don't you, Mr Rock, this once?"

"You might, you know. It's rather particular, with me I mean."

"We needn't finish the whole thing out. Come on, just three times round the floor."

After the dancing there had already been, these children were hot despite windows wide open onto sky-staring white Terraces, and, as several tugged at his old hands, Mr Rock could feel their moist fingers' skin, the tropic, anemone suction of soft palms over rheumatic, chalky knuckles.

"You do me honour. But no, I think not," he was saying.

"Why can't you leave the man be?" Moira demanded, on the outskirts.

"Well, it's not fair for you to have all," one objected.

"If I were fifty years younger," the old man fatuously said.

"I'll bet you were terrific, Mr Rock."

"Then what I say is, I wish I'd been about at the time," another cried.

"Now, will you let him alone?" Moira objected.

"All right, my dear, I'll call for help when I'm in need," Mr Rock told her.

"But you know you promised," she lied.

"What? Did I?" he asked, contrite at once. These last few years he had been nervous regarding his memory.

The others began to drift away, at this uncalled for intrusion of privacy.

"I wish poor Inglefield wouldn't hesitate so long between," one said.

"I'd something particular I wanted you to see below, now d'you remember?" Moira told him. She spoke right into his good ear, having to stand on her toes to reach.

"I'll not have that nonsense a second time," he said in a low, gruff voice.

"Oh I'm so sorry, and if you don't want, of course you shan't," she answered.

"Well, what is there?" he relented.

"Come and see."

"Certainly not."

"Then I'll never tell," she announced with a voice of authority, as she turned away.

"But need we go just the two of us?" he weakly asked. He considered the suggestion that another might come along must provide the impediment he sought.

"Naturally not. Whoever said?"

He misunderstood what he heard of this last.

"That's that, then," he concluded, much relieved.

She immediately caught hold of his hand once more.

"All right, come with me, tag on," she laughed. "Here, Melissa," she called, and lugged both off. "For better or worse," she ended.

"Where are we going?" he appealed, as soon as he was led into the pantry. A different girl stood guard.

He was ignored.

"Never those stairs again," Mr Rock weakly protested.

"Not much doing yet," the new child said, as she locked up behind.

"Why you managed last time like a bird," Moira said, with greater authority.

"Must I?" he pleaded, horrified at the thought that he could only make a fool of himself a second time on the scramble down. At his age it was a sort of rock climb.

"Yes," Moira insisted, Melissa laughed, and they began to whisper. As he painfully negotiated the steps, he thought his children were rough with him, but was too confused to protest. He could not understand, nor hear. When at last the thing had been managed, he was hurried along that dead silent, underground passage until, once again, they came to the green baize door and the upended case. As soon as Melissa had clambered up on this, he was so muddled he did not connect the action with what Moira had previously done, perhaps because neither of the girls had yet gone through the door. And he was painfully out of breath because he had been bustled. So, when the child said, "Come over," and Moira gave him a great shove in the back, he went forward, an old lamb offered up. Exactly the same recurred. Melissa laid a cheek against him, then rolled it over until her lips brushed his.

"Stop," he demanded, stepping back, but not so far that he got whitewash on his clothes this time.

"Oh please don't be so dreadful, Mr Rock," Moira laughed. "It's only our Club rules and regulations. I must now enjoin you to silence," she recited.

"Mum's the word?" he asked like a fool, ashamed, blaming his deafness that he had been let in for this, afraid.

"You can talk all you want, you know, once we're inside," Melissa said as she jumped off the case. "Quiet a moment, just the same." She knocked on the door, which was opened forthwith. She gave what must have been the password. Upon which a child opened it wide, and all three came forward into a quick flicker of candlelight.

The first thing that arrested him was a notice, "INSTITUTE INN" The next he knew he was warmly surrounded by six or nine children, who clapped their hands, giggling. Then Moira stepped through them.

"My job's to welcome you," she said in a loud, formal voice. But she grew embarrassed, poor old Mr Rock did look pathetic. "Make yourself at home," she added on a much weaker note, at the verge of helpless giggles.

Melissa handed the old man a glass, as though it were a goblet.

"What is it?" he enquired, glad to be able to ask the familiar question.

"Will you be initiated now or later, Mr Rock?"

"You have to drink this down. The Club Special," Melissa told him.

"I'm not sure if you realise a single thing," a girl severely said. "But you're the first outside one has come down here. When we voted to ask you tonight, it was most particular."

"Yes, and when I'm caught, as will doubtless happen, I'll be the last," Mr Rock dryly said. He was recovering.

"That would be an honour," the child approved. "Oh, for us too," she corrected herself.

"How idiotic."

"You're perfectly sweet," Moira assured him. "And we've our guard up top. They change every three quarters of an hour so they can get some dancing. She's got a bell up there. The moment the alarm goes, look here it is, we just lope out the back way. Though we've never had to yet, thank goodness."

"I see," he said, and at last sat down. He sipped what was in the glass. He judged it to be a kind of medicated syrup.

The girls having begun an argument, he was left to himself for the while. He looked around. He felt rather flattered. At the same time he began to have a gross feeling of immoderate amusement, such as had not come his way in years.

What would those two idle, no good, boasting spinsters say to this, he wondered of the underground passage, widened here like a green bottle from its neck, and blocked off at the far end by a blue rug. More coverings in faded canvas had been hung to cover the walls. Pinned up in a continuous and beautiful arabesque, were single sprays of azalea filched from above stairs. In the light from a row of candles, on a trestle set back, so he found, too close for safety to the canvas, these flowers, laid flat against tarpaulin, cast each one a little shadow by which it was outlined from above; a medieval fancy, he thought; the sweet tented furnishing for a campaign the women followed, a camp in Flanders in an old war of bows and arrows, he opined, and smiled.

The children had come to an end of another of their discussions.

"Lord, it is slow, isn't it? Couldn't we have our music?" one demanded.

"Something's the matter with the thing. Margot's gone to fix that."

"Why don't we all go off, then?"

"Outside? Why Melissa, whatever for?"

"Haven't you heard, even yet?"

"Shut up," ordered another girl.

"Do you relay the music from above down here?" the old man enquired, and thought to identify himself with youth by the question.

"That ancient stuff?" Marion demanded. "You must think us properly out of date. Lord no. We get on to. ." and she mentioned a source of which he had no knowledge. And he could not be sure he had caught the name.

"I do wish Mary might be with us," he remarked, suddenly regretting the child, ill at ease.

"Oh she's all right, don't you worry your head," Moira answered. Unseen by him, she pouted with jealousy.

"But where is she, then?" the old man persisted.

"I thought just everyone had a very good idea," Moira replied. "I'd not trouble myself if I was you. She's not worth it."

"She never bothered much where we were concerned," one of the others elaborated. "She put the whole show in danger. You wait until I catch Merode."

"No, but what has happened to Mary, please?" Mr Rock begged. He was frightened again.

"That's a secret. We're bound to silence, don't you realise?"

How could one be certain these children were not simply prevaricating? Because he felt some true friend of Mary must get to her if she was hidden.

"Not an entirely intelligent mutism in that case," he tried, one more.

"It's the way it is," was all he got for his pains.

"Many of you see much of Adams, nowadays?" he next enquired, across the chatter they kept up at each other.

"Him?" Moira said, and laughed. "We call that man the answer to the virgin's prayer."

"Now Moira, duck," Melissa protested. "Who's gone too far this time?"

"Well, a person has only to look, haven't they? He's enough to bring on anyone a miscarriage."

"You're crazy."

"Am I?"

"What is the matter with Adams, if you will excuse my persistence?" Mr Rock tried once more, floundering after information.

"Look. Some of the girls in East block go out at night to find him."

"Oh no, Moira, it's too much," protested another.

"Not Club Members, of course," Moira admitted.

"But anyway, how are you sure?" the same child asked.

"Because I can afford to save my beauty sleep up, thank you, until I need. I mean, I don't have to go hogging it the whole night through in case I get pimples next morning on account of I stay awake," she proudly answered.

"Careful the stable clock doesn't toll midnight and catch you making faces at the horrid Adams, then. Under a new moon."

"Me?" Moira demanded. "I wouldn't be seen dead beside him." Mr Rock was less than ever at ease. He began to ask himself how it would look if he were caught down here.

"But you do claim you have a lot on him," the first child insisted.

"Why shouldn't I? Who's to prevent me?" Moira demanded. There was rather a pause at this last remark. "After all's said and done, we're only young once," she said, with a trace of malice, at Mr Rock. But when she continued, it was after she had correctly interpreted the lines of distaste that had formed about his mouth. "Oh, you needn't pay attention, please," she said directly to the old man. "This is only a lot of talk. Fun and games," she added, as though to explain everything.

Upon which a couple of atomic cracks sounded from the amplifier up in an angle. Immediately followed, crescendo, by a polka which had been out of date even in the days when the old man had had his few months dancing. So he waited for a howl of protest from the children.

When none came, he looked up, and was amazed. With rapt expressions on their fair faces, they were already rocking to the ancient music.

"Isn't it marvellous?"

"Sh. . Melissa. How can anyone listen if you. ."

For the second time, Mr Rock was moved to suppress a smile despite his fears.

Then the apparatus stammered a few notes, gave out, broke down.

"Oh, isn't that just like this beastly hole?" Moira wailed.

"She's hopeless. She'd never repair a thing."

"Perhaps you'd like to go up and have a shot, then?"

"If I did, I wouldn't stop by the old apparatus, thanks. I'd find somewhere else, I expect, a little farther out."

"Will you shut up, Melissa, and for the last time?"

"I say, Mr Rock," Moira said. "If I asked, would you be dreadfully angry?"

"I can't say until you have tried, can I?" he answered.

"Oh, so you will. No then, I'd better not."

"Come on out with it. Get along with you," he said. He had not the slightest suspicion, was even beginning to be thoroughly amused again.

"We've all been so thrilled," Moira began. "In fact we don't know if it will be announced some time upstairs. And if she does, you might send word down, won't you? I mean we'd hate to miss that, through being stuck in the Inn, wouldn't we, girls?"

"What is this?" he demanded, at his most assured.

"Why, your granddaughter's engagement, of course. Don't pretend you haven't kept that dark from us when. .", but his face so clouded over that Moira bit her fat lower lip. "Oh, Mr Rock, have I said something awful?" she meekly asked.

"Never heard such arrant nonsense in all my born days," he blustered. "Why, Elizabeth's a sick woman."

"I'm frightfully sorry, Mr Rock," Moira apologised, while the others watched, mouths open.

"Just gossip," Mr Rock thundered, rather white. He was furious. "Not a word of truth."

"Yes, Mr Rock," they said.

"And if you catch anyone repeating what you've just told I'd be glad if you would deny it, once and for all," he continued, trembling. Then he struggled up. "I'm tired. I shall go back home to bed."

"Oh, Mr Rock, it isn't anything we've said, surely?"

"We live in an ungrateful world," he replied. "I'm sorry, but there are times I have had enough."

He stalked off with dignity, and, for a short while, left behind a silence.

Then someone said, "Oh Gosh," and laughed.

Mr Rock came away in a flustered rage. He banged on the stair door and a new girl immediately opened. She, also, was chewing. He thrust straight past, shambled off uglily and at speed to where they danced.

A white bunch of children, stood in the doorway, fell open to let him through like a huge dropped flower losing petals on a path. Then the thunderous, swinging room met him smack in his thick lenses, the hundred couples sweating glassily open-eyed now it was late; each child that pulled at her partner s waist to speed it, to gyrate quicker, get much more hot, to keep pace.

Elizabeth saw him. She considered if she would hide, but knew it might be wicked. Accordingly she yelled, "See Gapa, darling." Even then, Sebastian, cheek to her mouth, barely caught what she said. In any case, he paid no heed.

At the same moment the old man had a dark sight of them both. He made such an immense gesture to summon Liz, he almost smashed off his nose the spectacles that reflected reeling chandeliers.

"In a minute," her lips shaped back across the shattering valse. He did not take this in, misunderstood it for impertinence.

But when, inevitably as tumbled water, the dance delivered them over, two leaves that touch beneath a weir, caught in the eddies, till they were by his side, she awoke Sebastian as she drew off from the young man's arms. He said, "Why hullo, sir?"

"We must go. We are not welcome," the grandfather told Liz.

"Hush, Gapa," she said. But he walked away, they followed, and a second time that group of children opened, reclosed behind the couple trailing after, having parted as another vast bloom might that, torn by a wind in summer, lies collectedly dying on crushed fallen leaves, to be divided by one and then two walkers, only for a strain of wind to reassemble it, to be rolled back complete on the path once more, at the whim of autumnal airs again.

The three left music.

"Hush," she at last repeated, when he could hear.

"There is no use. We are not wanted," Mr Rock announced, in a low voice.

"Why? What? I insist, has anything happened?"

"We need never have demeaned ourselves," he said.

"Oh do say," she wailed. "Was it dreadful? But Gapa, you're making me nervous."

"No. We have to get out, that is all," he explained. "D'you hear?" And came to a halt.

"Don't go now, sir," Sebastian cravenly protested.

They stood, a miserable trio in black cloth, in the dank dark; music at their heels.

"What?" Mr Rock demanded.

"I said why just yet?" Birt asked, pale and obstinate.

"I've seen enough," the old man proclaimed. "Miserable children that they are. Too much freedom here. Lack of control. All they have to do is chatter," he ended.

"Was it about your lectures, then?" she enquired.

"They're downright ill-natured," he replied, at a tangent. "And inclining towards a dangerous mentality in which I shall take no lot or part. I hope a man of my years would know better. Come out."

"But Gapa, don't you think, I mean mightn't it all look rather odd if we simply just walked off? Oughtn't we at least to say goodbye, you must agree?"

"Everything comes if one can bide one's time," Mr Rock said, to ignore her. He's certainly waited long enough, Sebastian considered.

"Whatever you say, of course," Elizabeth consented. "But we must at least offer thanks, surely? And I'm sure I don't know where Miss Edge's got to, do you Seb? I've a notion I haven't set eyes on her this last half hour, have you?"

"I don't like it, I don't like any of it. I'll shake the dust from my feet," the old man insisted. He was very upset.

"Yes, Gapa, but at the same time, after all, when we're merely uninvited, I mean you can't just come in and out as you please, can you? We should thank them. Don't you feel we'd better? Come on, of course you. . you know you do."

"Well then, where is Miss Edge?"

"Powdering her nose to pretend she's what she's not," Sebastian brought out in his parson's voice, to cheer them.

"Well, you can't chase after her in there, however you feel," Elizabeth protested, almost contemptuously, to the old man.

"Might I make a small suggestion?" Sebastian proposed, his own self again at last. "Could Liz and I finish this dance? We'd keep our eyes skinned for the guv'nor all the time."

The old man seemed visibly deflated, he thought. He wondered what had punctured him. No more than some second-hand foolery about Mary, he decided, satisfied Mr Rock was now in such a state of tired confusion that he would swallow, entire, any ancient guff the girls chose to hand out.

"They're fiends," Mr Rock protested all at once. "Fiends. Every single one."

"It's the girls are, Gapa. You listen to a woman," Elizabeth said of herself. "Miss Baker and Miss Edge aren't so bad." He glared. But he was not going to admit he agreed.

"So you won't come?" he challenged.

"Why, of course. Anything you want," she answered in a rude, spoilt voice. "But one must say thank you, surely?" she wheedled.

You know full well I'm afraid outside, alone in the dark, the old man accused Liz, in his heart. Her carelessness for his feelings made him tired and sick, twice over.

"Then I'll seek Miss Edge for myself," he replied, and stamped off towards the Sanctum. Sebastian made as if to follow.

But Elizabeth put a hand on the young man's arm.

"Let Gapa be," she said. "It's his pride. Don't I know, oh so well, so often. I can tell you what's happened. One of those horrid children, and they're out to simply ruin our lives, darling, yours and mine, has mentioned something about his lectures. But tonight I don't care, I'll just not allow anything to come between. Let's nip back for a minute. Oh, this heavenly tune. He'll cool off. He doesn't mean to go."

So they slipped back into the whirlpool to forget, to join in again. But she soon found she could not put Mr Rock out of mind, not yet, not all at once at all events.

Edge had retired for the treat of the day, a cigarette. Because one of these made her feel she had both feet up on mantelpiece, she usually kept herself to the one, night and day. It was delicious, so bad for her heart she even had the sensation she was drunk, and this evening, in the Sanctum, as a special, exceptional indulgence, she had started on another immediately the first was finished. And had no sooner done so before she heard leather shuffled outside. Upon which, while she could hardly get so far for that heavenly lassitude she inhaled, she went over to the door, pushed it wide, and came face to face with the sage.

Light was dark in the passage. He must have had difficulty to get along it to collect the rubber boots. And, as she swayed at his unexpected appearance, she found, without surprise, she now had nothing but pity for the old man.

She leant, a lightweight against a doorjamb, he brittle and heavy against the wall over on the side away from her.

"I'm off home," he announced abruptly, curious, for his part, to find he no longer seemed to hate the woman, all the go gone out of him.

"Why so soon, Mr Rock?" she asked, the butterfly gently fluttering in a vein at one of her temples, from the cigarette.

"Passed my bedtime," he lied.

"Won't you come in for a minute?" she invited, by the entrance to the Sanctum, then took another long draw at the weed to exquisitely drain more blood from her thin limbs. He made no move however.

"Can't help but worry about my cat," he replied, at random. "If I don't get her in she'll be out all night."

"Ah yes," she said, "the splendid creature."

"She comes over here such a deal," he added, rather petulant.

"So sweet," the Principal agreed, still with no trace of irony, speaking as though from another existence. Mr Rock was amazed. He had never known the woman so amenable. And then he himself could hear so well, away from the music.

"And has your granddaughter enjoyed it?" Edge enquired. Ah well, he thought, day is done, this is a truce.

"Liz? Of course she is older than the others."

"I saw her take the floor with Sebastian," the Principal said, in an approving voice.

"Those two are great friends," Mr Rock agreed, cautiously.

"I'd much like to have a little chat with you one day about that young man," Edge suggested, gentle, undangerously soft. The sage was not yet to be drawn, however.

"Yes?" he asked, to gain time.

With a languorous gesture, Edge took one more anaesthetising puff.

"I would really appreciate your advice on Sebastian," she said, in the laziest voice he had heard her use.

"You would?" he countered. He almost surrendered then.

"My dear sir," she murmured. "Need we be too formal the one night of our Founder's Day Ball? I don't really fancy so, do you?"

There was a pause. The old man struggled with a lump in his throat. Then he let go, gave way.

"She's all I have," he said, given over to self pity.

"She loves you," Miss Edge dispassionately stated.

Mr Rock swallowed twice.

"But I can't care for him, ma'am," he admitted, still as if in spite of himself.

"Nor me," the lady answered readily. They looked at each other with great understanding.

"I can't stomach parlour tricks," the old man elaborated, stronger.

"So curiously unwise," Edge agreed. "A word which is out of fashion nowadays," she added. "The girls don't seem to know the meaning, but there, I bless them," she ended.

"Liz has been ill…" Mr Rock began, mistaking the object, prepared to take offence at once.

"Why I declare, after all," she soothed him. "I spoke of the man, the tutor, the untutored tutor, please. I trust you would not think. ."

"My deafness," he explained, to cover the slip.

"D'you ever have treatment?"

"What's the good. I am too old."

"Never that, good heavens no," she countered, through a film of weakness.

"Well, there you are. I have to lump it," he said, and smiled.

"You of all men," she murmured.

"I've been most fortunate in my life," he admitted, weak as water yet again. All this sympathy was so unexpected.

"Look, come in, please. I can't tell what we are standing here for, could you?" she invited. "As a matter of fact, if you will keep our little secret, we've some sherry in the cupboard, Hermione and I."

He suddenly wondered if she could be drunk. He was not to connect the cigarette with her mood, because he had never previously seen the lady smoke. Yet it seemed he should be on guard. Nevertheless this was now a remarkable opportunity, he had to admit. He made up his mind.

"And I, for my part," he said, for better or worse weakly entering the Sanctum, "would appreciate if I could have two words with you? A domestic matter."

"My dear Mr Rock I make it my rule never to interfere." This was on the assumption that he could only be referring to Elizabeth.

"To do with your students, ma'am," he announced.

"Ah yes."

"They talk so."

"They do indeed," she languidly assented.

"There must be limits, after all," Mr Rock argued. She slumped quickly down, in an elegant attitude, to hold her cigarette like a wand.

"Where would you draw them?" she asked, at ease.

"Where would I draw the line?" he echoed, but without conviction. Then he pulled himself together. "Yet there must be human decency," he said in a firmer voice. "The give and take of a civilized community," he said. "Justice," he ended.

"Of course," she admitted. "Naturally, of course." This time with her first trace of malice which, however, was lost on him.

"Yes," he said, in a muddled way of the girls below. "I mean, they can go too far, can't they?" He was desperate.

"Yes?" she enquired.

There was a pause. Came again the lump in his throat. Once more he surrendered.

"I love her. She's all I have," he said. He could have sobbed.

Edge was so distant, so absent that she had forgotten Mary and Merode. What she could do, and did without the slightest sense of shock, was to ask herself if he had meant Moira all along.

"My dear," she murmured. "As time goes on one clings to what one has."

"She's all I have," he repeated, still about his granddaughter, secure in self pity.

"But is it wise, or fair, to foul the nest you have built?" she archly enquired.

"In what way?" he demanded, at a loss.

"Weren't you complaining of the child's behaviour?"

"Never," he protested, of his granddaughter.

She remembered she had not brought out the sherry, but let this go. She was too tired.

"Believe me, I think sometimes you are inclined to misjudge us, Mr Rock," she said. "We have eyes in our grey heads. And we prize your friendship for the child," she lied, a white lie.

"I don't follow," he said.

"Why, Moira of course," she patiently explained.

"We are at cross purposes, ma'am," he concluded with pride, suddenly and finally disgusted. Then he noticed that she had finished the cigarette. He offered another from his case, as a matter of course. She knew it to be madness, but how was she to refuse? So she lit up, as though this were the last action she would have strength for in life.

"We are just two old women trying our best, but we do have eyes in our heads," she repeated, obstinately gentle, unaware of the effect she had produced.

"Well, I don't think this Birt is up to any good here, either," the old man said, angry and tart. He had gone back to the doorway, so as to make good his escape, if need be, at a moment's notice.

"Where are you? I can't tell," she demanded.

And only an hour since, she would insist she had no trouble at all with her eyes, joyfully he reminded himself.

"Are you sure you feel all right?" he asked, after he had narrowly regarded her. He almost hoped she would fall sideways, flat on an ear.

"I'll let you into a little secret," she said. "It's these smokes. My one small indulgence. They make me rather giddy. But it's true I had a nasty turn this afternoon."

"How was that, ma'am?"

"Where on earth have you got to, man?"

"Here," he replied, and came forward a second time, betrayed by curiosity, only to sit, without thinking, in her own place, behind the great desk of office.