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Title: Miss Bunting
Author: Thirkell, Angela (1890-1961)
Date of first publication: December 1945
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Hamish Hamilton, February 1946
   [second printing]
Date first posted: 16 October 2015
Date last updated: 16 October 2015
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1277

This ebook was produced by Alex White, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






                              MISS BUNTING


                              _A Novel by_

                            Angela Thirkell





                     H A M I S H   H A M I L T O N
                              L O N D O N




                    _First published December 1945_
                       _Reprinted February 1946_






                        PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
               BY WESTERN PRINTING SERVICES, LTD. BRISTOL




                              Miss Bunting




                               CHAPTER I


The great Duke of Omnium, as is well known, not only disliked railways
but refused to acknowledge their existence. After the death of the old
Duke's successor, formerly Mr. Plantagenet Palliser, the next Duke found
it necessary to come into line with the times and even to sell land, but
by this time the network of railway that connects the outlying parts of
the far-flung county of Barset was finished, the contractors had made
their fortunes, been knighted and died of drink, the Irish navvies had
gone back to Ireland to die of drink themselves till their wages were
spent, and Parliament was not interested in more railway bills. This
state of things lasted into the new century, when a branch line was
constructed which leaves the main line just outside High Rising, links
the parts of Barsetshire that lie outside the Omnium estate and runs
within five miles of the Castle. With Gatherum Castle itself we shall
not be concerned and we are happy to say that the Duke and Duchess can
still afford to live there and that although all three sons are in the
Army they are so far safe and there are several grandsons, while Lady
Glencora and Lady Arabella, who both married well, have flourishing
nurseries, besides doing valiant work in the Red Cross and W.V.S.

Among the villages or small towns on this line is Hallbury. It is on the
Omnium property, but as the estate is now for the most part a limited
company, it does not have with the Castle the friendly feudal relations
of former days. Until the coming of the railway it had remained almost
untouched by progress; a street of little dignified stone houses and
equally dignified red brick, living its own life, viewing from the
gentle eminence on which it stands mile upon mile of pasture land, a
certain amount of arable and the downs in the distance. It was the
rising land that saved it from the degrading suburbs that so often
accompany the march of progress. The railway, with one angry look at the
town, kept on its course across the level, avoiding the river Rising,
here no more than a stream, and pursued its way to Silverbridge and so
into foreign parts. In course of time some marshy land was drained and
the local speculators began to build. Tradesmen and small business
people from Barchester began to settle there, followed by people from
London, who wanted to walk or fish at the weekend and were well served
by the excellent trains before the war. The roads were prettily laid out
and planted with flowering trees and shrubs, the architecture was just
what we might expect, for Pattern and Son, the builder and estate agent,
had what he called Ideas, which included every style of building from
half-timbered and pebble-dash to Mixo-Totalitarian with semicircular
ends and windows that rushed round corners. So far the foundations (not
that there were any because Old Pattern, now succeeded by Son, said it
stood to reason where you'd got a space under a house you got rats) had
endured, and the present Mr. Pattern was always ready to rehang a door
that a warped jamb was causing to stick, or push a window-frame
gradually extruded by the pressure of sagging brickwork back into place,
or even to poke at a blocked waste-pipe with a mysterious upward bend.

As may be imagined, the town on the hill did not mix with the town
beyond the railway, and society fell tacitly into two groups: the Old
Town, consisting of the original inhabitants of the stone houses and the
aboriginal cottagers and work-people, and the New Town, the status of
whose citizens was almost indefinable, but may be expressed in the words
of Engineer-Admiral Palliser at Hallbury House who, inarticulately
conscious of a house at least five hundred years old in parts, held by
his family since the Commodore Palliser who did so well in the matter of
prize-money under Lord Howe, remarked that those houses on the railway
line were always changing hands, and so dismissed the whole affair.

Admiral Palliser, a distant connection of the Duke of Omnium, was a
widower. Deeply attached to the wife from whom the sea had separated him
so often and so long, he sincerely mourned her and as sincerely believed
that the best he could do for her, as she was now probably able to see
from wherever she was exactly what he was doing and even know what he
was thinking, was to carry on; to think as well of his neighbours as
human nature would allow; to do all for them that a certain amount of
money and a certain local influence could ensure. Both his sons were in
the Navy, both daughters married to naval men. The elder daughter lived
in Sussex and could rarely leave her young family. Lieutenant Francis
Gresham, the husband of the younger daughter, had been missing since the
loss of our battleships in the Far East, so Jane Gresham with her little
boy Frank had come to live with her father. She would have liked to
drown her sorrows in a factory or in the Wrens, but her father needed
care, her little boy needed a mother, and she probably felt, as
inarticulately as her father, that her mother, being rather unfairly in
a position to know all that was being done or thought, would like to see
that Admiral Palliser was being properly looked after and the old
servants kept up to the mark.

It was not an amusing life for her. She loved her father and Hallbury,
but all was changed. Her father was as often as not in Barchester where
he was on the board of a large engineering works, or in London on
business connected with it. Nearly all her contemporaries were away on
various war jobs. The girls came home on leave from time to time, the
young men more and more rarely as their duties called them overseas. The
houses formerly of friendly leisure in the Old Town, were mostly
servantless and packed with relatives or paying guests, there was no
point in going to Barchester as there was nothing in the shops and it
was impossible to get lunch anywhere unless before 11.30 or after 2.30,
she did not like to go to London and leave her little Frank, and to take
him with her would have been foolish. So she stayed in her father's
home, glad of its shelter, always waiting to get away, and blaming
herself for feeling depressed. And deeper than all these griefs was the
knowledge, for she did not willingly deceive even herself, that the
longer Francis Gresham was missing the less she minded. It was not that
she didn't love him, or that the dull ache at the heart, the dreary
waking from dream to real life every morning grew any less; but the
whole thing seemed so infinitely far away, and the longer he was absent
the more difficult it would be, she feared, to begin their life
again--if ever he came back. Sometimes she almost prayed to hear that he
was dead. Then she blamed herself bitterly and knew she would die of joy
if the door suddenly opened and he were there. But of course none of
these things happened, and she sank into an almost painless monotony of
life and always thanked charmingly the people who asked if there was any
news of her husband.

"There's something you could do for me, Jane," said her father at
breakfast one morning. "You know Adams."

Jane Gresham had often heard of Mr. Adams, founder and proprietor of the
big rolling mills and engineering shops at Hogglestock. Her father took
a great interest in his work on the board and usually told her what he
was doing, for she liked to hear about what she called "real things" and
had even made one or two very intelligent suggestions, but she had never
met the director.

"It seems he wants a house outside Barchester for the summer holidays,"
said the Admiral, "not for himself, but his girl is going up to
Cambridge in the autumn, and he wants a place where she can get some
extra coaching. Apparently he has found a woman coach for her, but he
says if she stays in Barchester she will be in and out of the works all
day. He asked my advice so I said I would speak to you. He is a good
enough fellow," said the Admiral, by which his daughter perfectly
understood that Mr. Adams was, not to put too fine a point upon it, by
no means a gentleman, "and I've a great respect for his business
methods. What do you think?"

Jane Gresham thought and gave it as her opinion that there was not a
house to be had in Hallbury, and probably not even room for any more
paying guests, but that she would go to Pattern and inquire.

"He will pay anything so long as he gets value for his money," said the
Admiral, getting up and taking the Times with him to read in the train,
which always irritated his daughter, because more often than not he
forgot to bring it back with him. And then he kissed her and went down
to the station.

It was an unpleasant morning in July, though no more unpleasant than
most, for Providence in its inscrutable incompetency had altogether
given up the question of summer for the duration of the war. A winter of
much wind and no rain had been succeeded by a windy and arid spring,
followed in its turn by a chill summer of grey skies and drought, with
the weary sound of wind still flapping aimlessly about. The rivers were
low, many springs were dry; overworked and understaffed farms were
having to water the cows and horses and sheep. At Grumper's End over
near Pomfret Madrigal water was being carted, and Sir Edmund Pridham,
the local magnate, had had violent passages at arms with the Barsetshire
County Council and the Water Company. No prayers had been offered for
rain, for most people felt it was really safer not to interfere with
Powers who had obviously let everything get out of their control. So
gardens and fields lay cold and untidy, and everyone's temper was daily
exacerbated.

But not the temper of Master Frank Gresham, aged eight and a half, who
had a snub nose, a wide grin and the best opinion of himself and the
world, so that whenever his mother looked at him she felt that things
weren't so bad after all, and what a good thing it was that he didn't
remember his father well enough to miss him; for four years is a long
gap out of eight and a half. In the autumn he was to go to the
preparatory school at Southbridge, and at present attended a small class
at the Rectory every day, coming home for lunch.

When she had done her share of the housework and talked with the elderly
cook and parlourmaid, Jane Gresham took her shopping-basket and went out
to do the shopping. No sooner had she closed the front door behind her
and gone down the garden path into the street than a buffet of wind
drove down on her, whirled her hair into confusion, tossed a few bits of
paper and straw into her face and blustered itself away, thus setting
the key for what she felt sure would be a difficult morning. Her one
comfort was that she had admitted defeat at the very beginning of the
day and put on a woollen skirt and cardigan instead of the washed-out
summer frock that most of the other shoppers were wearing, so she would
at least be warm.

The fish was visited, also the grocer, the little linen-draper and
all-sorts shop, and the stationer. The fish after some fifteen minutes'
wait produced an anonymous piece of stiff whitish slipperiness called
fillets, the grocer at last had in stock a little washing soda for which
she had been waiting three weeks, the linen-draper's had just got in its
quota of non-elastic elastic and was able to let her have a yard, the
stationer had one copy of the month's local bus and train guide.

Her luck being for the moment in, she decided to begin her search for
lodgings and went straight to the office of Pattern and Son.

The late Mr. Pattern, founder of the firm, had always been, or so he
said, one for practising what he preached. As no one knew what he
preached, the accuracy of his practice was a matter for speculation, but
he undoubtedly built as he would be built by. His office, for which he
had been designer and contractor, was erected on a corner where some
very picturesque cottages had stood. The cottages, it is true, were
below ground level, insanitary, a home for rats and bugs, the thatch a
mass of decaying vegetation, and it was high time they went. But while
the gentry were beginning to talk of doing something, Mr. Pattern, who
though not exactly on the Council had a good many friends there, had got
in first, bought the cottages and erected a stately pleasure dome to his
own heart's desire. And when we say pleasure dome it is not poetical
licence, for the crowning feature of his resurrection-pie architecture
was a pepper-box turret, precariously attached to the corner of the
building, with a small wooden dome which he caused to be painted to look
like verdigris'd copper.

Though the late Mr. Pattern had built a great many houses in the New
Town and owned many of them, he had never left the Old Town, preferring
to live over the shop, thus earning the reputation of being one of the
old school, though of what school no one quite knew. Young Mr. Pattern,
having married slightly above him into a bank manager's family,
preferred to live in the New Town and had let the upper part of the
house at an excessive rent to various mid-European refugees who
mysteriously always had plenty of money and got very good jobs,
replacing local men and women who had been called up. Young Mr.
Pattern's ambition was to build what are known to the trade as
Californian bungalows on the banks of the Rising, and to make what is
almost universally called a Lye-do, and it was only by the special
intervention of the German Chancellor that his plan came to nothing. For
in 1937, scenting trouble ahead, the Duke of Omnium's agent Mr.
Fothergill had persuaded his employer to make over two mile of the River
Rising with a wide strip of land on each side to the National Trust, and
it was said that old Mr. Pattern's death was hastened by this deliberate
waste of building land.

Often had young Mr. Pattern cast a longing eye upon Admiral Palliser's
property, comprising a large garden, a small paddock for horses, and a
field beyond, usually let for grazing to a farmer. But the Admiral was
pretty well off, had no occasion to sell and would probably have been
very short with anyone who had suggested it. So Mr. Pattern continued to
regard him with admiration as an old buffer who knew his own mind and
with contempt as one who kept good money locked up in land. He would
also dearly have liked Mrs. Francis Gresham to become acquainted with
his wife, but though the war had mingled all races and creeds, it had
not as yet mingled Old Town and New. Why the Old Town butcher's wife,
Mrs. Wandle, should attend working parties and committees at Hallbury
House and the Rectory, while Mrs. Pattern (as he called his wife) was
never invited, he could not understand. Nor will he ever understand. We
perhaps may.

After exchanging a few genteel commonplaces, Jane Gresham asked Mr.
Pattern if he knew of any house of a moderate size to let in Old Town,
New Town or the neighbourhood, from the end of July for two or three
months. After making a great show of running through the pages of a
large book, during which Jane felt sure she heard him say: "Mrs. Aggs,
Mrs. Baggs, Mrs. Caggs, Mrs. Daggs, Mrs. Faggs, Mrs. Gaggs _and_ Mrs.
Gresham," he looked up with a fevered brow and said there was simply not
a house to be had.

"I know there isn't," said Jane. "There never is now. But what I want to
know is if there _is_ one."

This request Mr. Pattern appeared to find quite in order.

"Well, there _is_ The Cote," said Mr. Pattern, "and I dare say The
Cedars might consider a let."

"I don't think they would for a moment," said Jane. "They've got three
ex-Land Girls each with a baby and her husband abroad, so things are
quite comfortable. And The Cote is far too large. The friend who wants a
house only wants it for his daughter and a governess, and he might come
down at week-ends himself."

"Well, there _is_ Mrs. Foster's house, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Pattern,
warming to the game, as he always did. "Quite a small nest but cosy. She
might be thinking of going to her sister at Torquay for the summer."

"That wouldn't do a bit," said Jane. "You know there are only two
bedrooms and an attic where no servant would sleep even if you had one.
Well, I'll have to try Barchester."

"Just one moment, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Pattern. "Slow and sure wins
the day as they say. I suppose your friend wouldn't care to try the New
Town, or further afield?"

As Jane had already mentioned both Old and New Towns, not to speak of
the neighbourhood, she only said she thought he would. Mr. Pattern, with
damped forefinger, then made an excursion through various large books
and loose-leaf holders, while Jane wondered if a woman would do it
better, and came to the conclusion that she would probably do it far
more quickly and efficiently, but would also wreck herself in the
process, and this Mr. Pattern was quite obviously, and perhaps rightly,
determined not to do. So, being quite used to waiting for nothing to
happen, she waited.

"Ah!" said Mr. Pattern, shutting a large book with a lordly gesture, but
keeping his finger in the place he wanted, "_here_ we are, Number 28 De
Courcy Crescent, three bed, one large sit. with alcove dining, kitchen
and usual offices. Bath is in kitchen, Mrs. Gresham, but it's a luxury
bath, with a splendid cover that your friend could use for an
ironing-table or for the sewing-machine."

Jane said she didn't think her friend would want to iron or use the
sewing-machine as he was in Barchester all day, and she was sorry Mr.
Pattern had nothing suitable. Besides, she added, De Courcy Crescent had
the railway on one side and the gasometer on the other, and everyone
knew the smuts were dreadful, especially when the washing was out.

"Of course if I'd known the gentleman wished to wash at _home_," said
Mr. Pattern, sibilantly and pityingly.

"Well, thank you so much, and you'll let me know if you hear of
anything," said Jane, getting up.

"Now, just one moment, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Pattern, who was enjoying
to the full the age-old conventions of bartering. "There's a house just
come in this morning in Riverside Close."

Abstracting her mind from an unbidden vision of a peripatetic
house--perhaps on chicken's legs like Baba Yaga's--Jane said she would
look in another time.

"Three bed., two sit., lounge hall, lock-up garage, constant hot water,
fridge, tiled bath and ekcetera," said Mr. Pattern with a resolute
display of his fine uppers.

"I can't wait now," said Jane. "But if you'll give me the address again
I might look at it. Is there anyone there or shall I take the key?"

"Well, Mrs. Gresham, there is someone there," said Mr. Pattern. "I don't
think I made it quite clear that it's not to let, Mrs. Gresham, at
least, not _as_ a house if you see what I mean. The owner, Mrs.
Merivale, takes paying guests. She is a widow and she always makes
everyone very comfortable. Canon Banister's mother was with her for some
months before she died, and I know some of Mrs. Crawley's daughters have
been there with their children during the war."

The mention of Canon Banister and the Dean's wife, both old Barchester
friends, made the whole affair seem much more possible. Jane took the
address, thanked Mr. Pattern and, for much time had gone in shops and at
the house agent's, had to hurry to the Rectory to fetch Frank home to
lunch. This was not really necessary, for Frank had taken himself to and
from school unaccompanied since he was quite small, but it was a
pleasant diversion for her before lunch, and as Frank had not yet
reached the stage of being ashamed of her, she profited by his
tolerance.

Hallbury Rectory was a modern building by Hallbury standards, certainly
not earlier than 1688. The original Rectory, which stood on the north
side of the church and almost against it, naturally got no sun from the
south. Owing to a thick screen of clerical vegetation such as dark
conifers, ilex, a kind of cypress and high laurel hedges, it got little
or no light from the east or west, and on the north looked across a wall
on to a large barn. As there was also a well in the cellar, fed mostly
by the town drainage, the incumbents and their wives and families had
died off like flies until a lucky fire one Guy Fawkes Day had reduced it
to a blackened shell. The Rectory was then moved to a commodious brick
and stone house and produced quantities of valuable children, among whom
was the Augustus Palliser who had served under Lord Howe and bought
Hallbury House. As a thank-offering for this mercy the special prayers
for Guy Fawkes Day were regularly read on the Sunday nearest to November
the Fifth, and though, owing to a deplorable access of broadmindedness,
the Rev. the Hon. Reginald de Courcy had suppressed them in the
eighteen-thirties, many of the old prayer books still had them, and
Admiral Palliser always made a point of reading them to himself with
some ostentation during the sermon on the appointed day.

The church, one of the many beautiful and unpretentious stone churches
of these parts, with a tower and battlements, was called St. Hall
Friars. The origin of this name was rather obscure. Early local
antiquarians with simple enthusiasm had decided that Saint here stood
for Holy or Blessed, and referred to a supposititious hall or lodging
house for monks from the great abbey at Brandon, now utterly lost. As
there was known to have been a church on that spot in one form or
another since the conversion of Wessex, and no indication of the monks
from Brandon Abbey having ever lodged there or anywhere but in their own
house and in any case monks are not friars, this theory was held up to
ridicule in the Barchester Mercury (one of England's oldest provincial
papers, now incorporated with the Barchester Chronicle) in about 1793 by
a notorious freethinker, Horatio Porter, Esq., who subsequently died of
a stroke while having a debauch in his kitchen with his cook. Such was
Mr. Porter's profligacy, and such the weakness of the owner of the
Mercury who was heavily in his debt over cards, that his letter was
printed entire, with an ingenious suggestion that for Hall Friars,
Hell-Fire should be read. Mr. Porter's death (accompanied by a violent
thunderstorm and the birth of a calf with six legs at Brandon Abbas) so
shocked the public that the whole matter dropped until a disciple of
John Keble, digging among old papers in the Bishop's library at
Barchester, found that a certain rude Saxon swineherd named lla had
been slain by the bailiff of the monastery to which he was attached for
refusing to drive the pigs afield during Lent, owing to which saintly
action, most of the pigs (six weeks being a long period) had died of
hunger and thirst, while the swineherd was in due time canonized. As
there was no corroboration of any kind for this story it obtained great
credence and even caused a weak-minded young gentleman of good family to
draw back from Rome. Under the influence of Bishop Stubbs a variety of
further research was made, leading nowhere at all, and there the matter
rests. It is true that the Hallbury branch of the Barsetshire Mothers'
Union has a banner heavily embroidered in gold representing St. lla in
mauve and green robes with a shepherd's crook, but the present Rector,
Dr. Dale, is rather ashamed of it and keeps it reverently in tissue
paper in case the gold should tarnish.

When Jane Gresham got to the Rectory she passed the front door and went
through a gate in the wall into the old stable yard. Here what used to
be a stable with grooms' quarters above had been converted into a light
and airy two-story building with a furnace to heat it, and from it came
a chirruping of young voices, high above which Jane, with mingled love
and irritation, could hear that of her son. She looked cautiously
through an end window, but her caution was not necessary, for the whole
school of seven or eight little boys was tightly clustered round a young
man who was showing them something. She sat down on a stone
mounting-block and looked about her. A deceptive gleam of sunshine lit
the stable yard, though with no warmth in it; the smell of horses and
leather still lingered in the air, she could almost hear the rustle of
straw, the pleasant jingle of harness, the steady champing of oats,
almost hear the clank and splash of buckets being filled at a pump and
the hissing of the grooms at work. Then the half-hour after noon sounded
from St. Hall's tower. The babel inside was suddenly stilled, a little
boy ran out and began to pull the wrought-iron handle of the yard bell
and out came the whole class, nearly tripping up their master.

"Hullo, Robin," said Jane Gresham.

"Hullo, Jane," said the young man, and sat down on the horse-block
beside her.

"What was all the noise?" said Jane.

"I promised I'd show the boys how my foot fastens on," said the young
man, "and now I can't get the foul thing fixed again. Do you mind?"

Without ostentation he pulled up his right trouser leg and busied
himself with his artificial foot. Having accomplished the job at last to
his satisfaction, he smoothed the crease in his trousers.

"Ass," she said. "One day you'll do it once too often. Anyway, they've
all seen your foot about a hundred times."

"I know," said the young man. "I expect it's showing off. It isn't
everyone who has a foot like mine. I remember when I was little I had a
book called Otto of the Silver Hand, with illustrations, woodcuts I
think, rather grim and frightening, and always wished I had one. I
didn't think of a foot. But a silver one would be a bit heavy."

Jane Gresham looked at him. Robin Dale whom she had known all her life,
the Rector's only son by a late marriage, had been a junior classical
master at Southbridge School just before the war. Then he had gone into
the Barsetshire Yeomanry, got a commission, fought all through Africa
and Sicily, and finally had his right foot so badly shattered in the
Anzio landing that it had to be amputated, and he had been discharged.
Southbridge School would willingly have taken him back, but he still
felt too crippled and self-conscious to face the school life. His
father, a widower for many years, living alone, wanted Robin to stay at
home for a time. Robin had done his best to be valiant, but he moped
sadly till Admiral Palliser, who did not like to see people mope and
found work a cure for most evils, suggested that he should give little
Frank some tutoring before he went to Southbridge. The tutoring was a
success, other little boys in the Old Town joined the class. The Rector,
who had private means, managed to get the stables altered and the
furnace installed, and Frank Gresham was the first pupil. When we say
that the horses' racks and the original narrow box staircase to the
grooms' quarters had been left untouched, as had the rather terrifying
kind of gallows over which sacks of oats and bales of straw were hauled
up to the loft, the reader will realize what an unusual and delightful
school Frank and his fellow scholars had.

"I think a silver foot would be horrid," said Jane. "You'd have to keep
it clean and if there's anything I loathe it's the feeling of plate
polish on my hands."

"There was Gtz with the Iron Hand," said Robin, entering
enthusiastically into the subject, "but I daresay it got rusty and
anyway it wasn't a foot. And Nez-de-cuir; but that was his nose, so it's
different. I never heard of a Leather Foot."

"No," said Jane, thoughtfully. "There was Leather Stocking, but he had a
leg inside. And there are leather-jackets in the garden, beastly things.
Oh, Robin, I do wish it hadn't happened."

"However much you wish it, I wish it more," said Robin. "Any news of
Francis?"

Very few people asked Jane this question now. Partly they thought it
might wake painful thoughts ("thinking of the old 'un," she said
sardonically to herself), partly they had honestly forgotten about it,
for the whirligig of time has so bruised and stunned us all that
yesterday is swallowed in oblivion almost before to-day has dawned. Jane
did not want inquiries, nor did she resent them. Her surface self
responded pleasantly to the kindly and sympathetic and was unmoved by
the forgetters. As for her inner self she did not quite know what it
thought, and sometimes wondered if it knew itself. A sense of duty made
her say to Frank from time to time that they would do this and that when
father came home: and what this meant to him she did not know and had no
means of knowing. And as he was very cheerful and ate enormously and
slept like a dormouse, she saw no reason to delve deeper.

"No, no news," she said. "But I don't expect any. It will come some day.
Or else it won't."

At this moment Master Gresham came up, bursting with suppressed giggles.

"I say, mother," he began, "do you know this poem?

    'It was the miller's daughter,
       Her father kept a mill,
     There were otters in the water,
       But she was 'otter still.'

Tom Watson told it me. There are a lot more verses. Shall I tell them
you?"

Horrified at the resurgence of this hoary and vapid echo of early
Edwardian humour, Jane said they must hurry up or they would be late for
lunch.

"But, mother, isn't it _funny_," said Frank, dancing from one foot to
another.

"I know a much better one," said his mother, "in Latin."

"You don't know Latin, do you, mother?" said Master Gresham, obviously
incredulous.

"Not as well as Robin, but much better than you," said Jane, manfully.
"Can you read this?"

She took a pencil out of her bag and wrote something on the back of an
envelope.

"_Caesar adsum jam forte_," Frank read. "That's not Latin, mother. I
mean it doesn't mean anything. Sir," he added, appealing to his master,
"it doesn't mean anything, does it?"

"If your mother says it does, it does," said Robin not wishing to commit
himself.

"Mother, it's nonsense, isn't it?" said Frank. "It _is_ nonsense, isn't
it, mother?"

"What you tell me two times is true," said his mother enigmatically to
her son. "I'll say it to you. 'Caesar had some jam for tea!'"

It touched and amused her to see her son's round face, temporarily
serious, his soft brow puckered, his eyes remote, till the light of
reason began to dawn and he broke into a joyful smile with a toothless
gap at one side of it.

"Oh, _mother_," he shrieked. "I'll tell Tom in afternoon school. I'll
bet him I know Latin better than he does. Oh, mother! Is there any more,
mother?"

"Quite a lot," said Jane, "but I don't remember it all. I expect Robin
knows it, because he knows Latin properly."

"I'm ashamed to say I'd forgotten that one," said Robin. "But there's
another awfully good one that I can't quite remember too; something
about 'here's a go, forty buses in a row'--how does it go, Jane?"

"Lord! I had quite forgotten it too," said Jane. "The boys used to teach
me odd bits in the holidays. Didn't it go on something about _trux, As
quot sinem: pes an dux_?"

Frank looked perplexed.

"But that's English," he said.

"Well, come along now," said his mother, feeling herself out of depth,
"or we'll be later for lunch than ever. And it's fried fish with lots of
fried parsley."

Robin went back to the Rectory while Jane and her son walked home. And
when we say walked, Master Gresham's mode of progression was rather in
the nature of a hop, skip and a jump, hanging on his mother's arm the
while, highly fatiguing to the hung-upon.

Lunch which was also new potatoes and early peas from the garden and a
summer pudding having been despatched, Frank went back to afternoon
school, and Jane, having no particular job that afternoon, thought she
might as well pursue her inquiries about a house for Mr. Adams, so that
she might have something to tell her father when he came back that
evening. So she rang up Mrs. Merivale and asked if she might come and
see her, being authorized thereto by Mr. Pattern, and a pleasant voice
said yes, adding that the house was three houses down Riverside Close
from where it branched off from Rising Crescent and the name was on the
gate, Valimere, and anyone would tell her.

Accordingly Jane, after picking some strawberries for supper and doing
some ironing and mending some places where the laundry had wrenched or
hacked holes in sheets and pillowcases, went down the hill, crossed the
railway by the footbridge and entered the New Town. Rising Crescent was
about ten minutes' walk from the station and near its farther end she
found Riverside Close, so called for no reason at all as it was neither.
Owing to the ravages of war many of the names on the garden gates were
almost effaced and she thought she must have heard the instructions
wrongly, but on retracing her steps she found the name, Valimere, almost
invisible, on a gate which had sagged away from its gatepost and could
never be shut again. As she walked up the little path she noticed that
the garden, though bright with flowers, was also quite out of hand and
the hedges running riot. The house was just like a hundred other New
Town houses of so many styles that it had no character at all.

She rang the bell. The door was opened by a plumpish woman of about
fifty who must have been very pretty and still looked very agreeable,
with a kind expression, rather anxious eyes, and grey hair which curled
becomingly round her face.

"Mrs. Merivale?" said Jane. "I am Mrs. Gresham. It was very kind of you
to let me come."

"Oh, how do you do?" said Mrs. Merivale, and shook hands. "Please do
come in. We can talk more cosily in the lounge."

Owing to Mrs. Merivale's great politeness, Jane found it quite difficult
to squeeze past her in the narrow hall, but by dint of a kind of sidling
high and disposedly the difficult passage to what Mrs. Merivale had
called the lounge was effected. This was a good-sized room at the side
of the house, full of sun and looking into the tangled garden. It was
furnished with two hideous elephantine chairs covered with sham leather,
a hideous cupboard with some ugly silver on it, two more hideous bulky
chairs with a kind of plush covering, a tottering little bookcase of two
shelves with some magazines on them, and a couple of what Jane could
only think of as occasional tables. There were a few water-colours
obviously of "abroad" hung very high on the walls, and over the
fireplace was a flight of wild ducks in china, being as it were
Elle-ducks with a bulgy side for the public and a flat side which only
the wall could see. They were of various sizes and Jane felt that they
were of great value to their owner.

As Mrs. Merivale, though obviously friendly, was twisting her hands
together in a demented way and quite speechless, Jane thought she had
better break the ice and said she had heard that some of Mrs. Crawley's
married daughters had been with her.

Mrs. Merivale said, "Yes."

"And Canon Banister's mother," said Jane.

Mrs. Merivale, wrenching her fingers nearly out of their sockets, said
"Yes."

A friend of her father, Admiral Palliser, said Jane, had asked if they
would find some lodgings for his daughter and governess during the
summer holidays, and would like to be able to come down himself at
week-ends. Could Mrs. Merivale consider that kind of let?

"Well, I suppose you'd like to see the rooms," said Mrs. Merivale after
a choked silence and looking desperately about her.

"Please, if I may," said Jane. "And may I say how much I was struck by
those flying ducks. I have never seen anything quite like them before."

Mrs. Merivale twisted one foot round the other in agony but appeared
gratified.

"This is the lounge," said Mrs. Merivale as if she were saying a lesson.

"And what a lovely view of the garden," said Jane, feeling herself
getting sillier and sillier.

"It is pretty," said Mrs. Merivale, and untwisting her feet she stood
up. "And if you look through the glass door you'll see we've a nice
lodger."

Jane also got up and looking through the glass door at the far end saw
that there was a little veranda where one could sit enjoying the view,
but the lodger was not visible.

"This makes a nice room for a gentleman, or a party," said Mrs. Merivale
in desperation.

Jane said yes, of course it was and how nice, especially the little
green china hearts let into the back of the sideboard.

"And this," Mrs. Merivale continued, opening another door, "is the
dining-room, it's all fumed oak, you see; and this would be the
sitting-room, with a nice view."

"And what a lovely vase of flowers," said Jane gazing awestruck upon
another Elle-figure, this time the face of a rather depraved girl, its
flat back glued and hooked to the wall, a bunch of floppy yellow roses
in an opening in the top of its head.

Mrs. Merivale said it always made her think of the Lady of Shalott and
Jane, to her horror, found herself saying that it was quite out of the
common.

After another minute of politeness, the ladies got to the first floor
where Jane was shown three light, airy bedrooms each with fixed basin
and gas-fires; also a good bathroom. Mrs. Merivale insisted on her
looking at the mattresses, which Jane's expert hand and eye admitted to
be excellent.

"There's another room, the one we just call the Other Room," said Mrs.
Merivale, showing Jane a slip of a room with a bed in it and otherwise
occupied by a table and sewing-machine. "If your friend wanted a spare
room at any time he could have this. It's really Annie's room, that's my
girl in the A.T.S., but she's abroad now."

Jane thanked her, and so genuine had she been in her praise of the
obvious good points of the rooms that Mrs. Merivale further unbent and
asked if she would like to see the top floor. So they went up a very
steep stair.

"This," said Mrs. Merivale, opening the door of a kind of superior
attic, "is Elsie's room, that's my girl in the Waafs, but she's overseas
now. And this little room next hers," she continued, showing Jane a
smaller attic, "is Peggie's, that's my girl that's in the Wrens, but
she's at Gibraltar. If they bring a friend home we can put a mattress on
the floor and they talk all night. We've had as many as seven sleeping
here, Mrs. Gresham, not counting myself. That was the time Evie was at
home, that's my girl in the Foreign Office, but she's in Washington
now."

"Where did Evie sleep?" Jane asked, deeply interested in this life of
doubling up, unknown to her.

"Oh, she came in with me," said Mrs. Merivale. "We've got a little camp
bed. The girls laughed all the time and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.
We've got our own bathroom up here."

She opened the last door and disclosed to the visitor a room evidently
scooped out of one of the gables that were a feature of most New Town
houses. A large cistern occupied most of it and a very small bath was
squashed into a corner. On the sloping wall beside it was a notice
saying, "MIND YOUR HEAD," below which was a rough drawing of a head
banging a beam with stars and exclamation marks radiating from it.

"Evie did that," said Mrs. Merivale. "She's the artistic one. Peggie's
the musical one, she's got some lovely records."

"Are the others artistic, too?" said Jane.

"I suppose you would say so," said Mrs. Merivale. "Elsie was studying
dancing in Barchester with Miss Milner before the war and Annie isn't
exactly artistic, but she crochets shawls and doileys and things quite
beautifully and used to make quite a lot of pocket-money."

As she spoke she was leading the way downstairs again, and in the most
friendly way offered to show Jane the kitchen, which was quite the
nicest room in the house, spotlessly clean, with gay yellow paint,
bright curtains, a dresser with pretty china, a long old-fashioned sofa
under the window, and a cooker with an open-fire front, before which a
large cat was dozing. Jane expressed her admiration and Mrs. Merivale
beamed.

"I quite agree with you, Mrs. Gresham," she said. "It is so cosy here
and if I'm tired after getting the supper I just put my feet up on the
couch and turn on the wireless and write a letter to one of the girls.
And when any of them are at home we have such fun in the evenings that I
have to say: 'Hush, girls, or you'll disturb the guests!'"

Rather humbled before such capacity for cheerful gratitude under such
cramped and hardworking conditions, yet extremely thankful that she was
not called upon to show gratitude for that particular form of enjoyment,
Jane felt she really must inquire about terms and so bring her talk to
an end. Thanking Mrs. Merivale for letting her see the house she said
she thought her friends would be very glad to hear of it and what would
they pay for the rooms.

Mrs. Merivale became dumb and began to twist her hands again in a most
distressing way.

"I'm so frightfully sorry," she said, in a tearful voice, "but when
people ask me how much I charge I could _kill_ them."

Jane looked at her with some alarm.

"I know I'm _horrid_," said Mrs. Merivale, "but it's so _awful_ talking
about money. I'd rather let the rooms for nothing if I could afford it."

This, though highly creditable to human nature, was hardly helpful and
indeed rather silly. Jane, who really did not know what to suggest,
stood silent.

"Would three guineas be too much, do you think?" said Mrs. Merivale,
nervously.

Jane at once said it would be far too little, especially if the boarders
were to have a dining-room and sitting-room to themselves, not to speak
of the lounge, and begged Mrs. Merivale to name a higher figure. But as
that lady would do nothing but repeat that she knew she was horrid but
it seemed so unkind to ask people for money, Jane had to say that she
would tell Mr. Adams how nice the rooms were, and probably he would come
and settle everything himself, to which Mrs. Merivale agreed. As they
went towards the front door Jane paused to look through the glass door
of the lounge into the garden.

"It is nice to have a lodger," said Mrs. Merivale. "Especially on a
summer evening."

It seemed a curious preference, but there is no accounting for tastes.
At the front gate Jane said good-bye.

"It was very good of you to let me take up so much of your time," she
said. "I'm sorry I was late, but I missed your house and went right to
the end of the road. What a pretty name Valimere is," she added,
untruthfully.

"Thereby hangs a tale, Mrs. Gresham," said Mrs. Merivale.

Seeing that she wished to be encouraged, Jane encouraged her.

"When Mr. Merivale bought this house, Mrs. Gresham," said Mrs. Merivale,
earnestly, "we didn't like the name. It was called Lindisfarne."

She paused. Jane said it was certainly a horrid name for a house, and
was ashamed of herself for time-serving.

"That's what Mr. Merivale felt," said his relict. "So we talked it over
thoroughly, till we were quite at our wits' end. But Mr. Merivale said
not to worry and I went to stay with Mother for a few days for her
eightieth birthday, poor old soul, and when I came back the name was on
the gate."

"How _very_ nice," said Jane, feeling this a distinct anti-climax.

"You see it's Merivale, only the letters all mixed like the crosswords,"
said Mrs. Merivale. "It seemed so original. The girls love it and Elsie,
she's my baby, the one that's in the Waafs, sometimes calls me Mrs.
Valimere, just in fun, and we all thoroughly enjoy it."

Jane then managed to get away. As she walked home, she pondered on the
niceness of Mrs. Merivale; also upon her exhaustingness. What her
father's Mr. Adams would think of it she could not guess, but she knew
he was rich and wanted accommodation, and hoped that Mrs. Merivale and
her daughters might benefit. All she could do was to give a good report
of the rooms and hope for the best.

When she got back she found Master Gresham and his friend Tom Watson
having their tea in the garden. Beside them was a large iron dipper
containing a quantity of snails frothing themselves to death in salt and
water.

"How disgusting," she said, unsympathetically.

"Well, mother, you don't want the snails to eat the vegetables," said
Frank, reproachfully. "Oh, mother, I told Tom about _Caesar adsum jam
forte_, but he's only just begun Latin so he didn't laugh."

"I don't think it's kerzackerly funny," said Master Watson, who had
perhaps inherited from his father, the Hallbury solicitor, a habit of
thinking before he spoke and speaking with rather ponderous authority.

"Never mind, Tom, when you know Latin properly you'll laugh like
anything," said Master Gresham, with a kindly patronizing manner which
his mother found intolerable, but which Master Watson appeared to take
gratefully. "Oh, mother, Mrs. Morland rang you up. She's going to ring
you up again. She says Uncle Tony is fighting in a canal. Mother, Tom
got twenty-eight snails and I got thirty-three. Oh, mother, can we pick
lettuces?"

"I don't think we want any to-day," said his mother, answering his last
remark first.

"I don't mean _us_; I mean for Tom's rabbits, mother. Tom's cook told
him the gardener had sold all the lettuces so Tom said he'd get some of
ours. Can we, mother?"

Jane found this vicarious generosity rather embarrassing. The lettuces
were not Frank's, they were not hers. They belonged in theory to Admiral
Palliser, in usage to the cook and the gardener. There had already been
words about them, the cook accusing the gardener of neglecting to bring
any in, so that she had to take a basket and go down the garden just as
she was if the Admiral was to get his dinner that night, the gardener
maintaining that in the gardens _he'd_ been in the cook never set foot
in the kitchen garden and he'd rather not bring the vegetables up to the
house if it was going to make unpleasantness. To which the cook had
replied, if kitchen garden _meant_ kitchen garden, it was for growing
kitchen stuff and she'd put the gardener's elevenses in the wash-house.
All this Jane, unfortunately for her own peace of mind, had heard from
the bathroom window, as she was washing Frank's vest and stockings.

"I think they are grandpapa's lettuces, Frank," she said, trying to
sound as if she knew her own mind. "But if Tom's rabbits really need
some, we'll go to the kitchen garden after Chaffinch has gone home, and
see if there are some very tall ones. Cook won't want them."

On hearing this joyful news the little boys fought each other with
bears' hugs and the snail-pot was upset.

"Come on, Tom," said Frank to his friend, "we'll pretend the snails are
Japs and put them on a stone and scrunch them."

"I don't like Japs," said Tom stolidly.

"All right. Yours can be Germans and mine can be Japs," said Frank.
"Come on. I bet I'll scrunch more than you."

Leaving the little boys to their war-time avocations, Jane went back to
the house, wondering if children ought to be allowed to hate enemies.
Being pretty truthful with herself, she came to the conclusion that if
enemies were not only unspeakably horrible, but highly dangerous, it was
just as well for everyone to hate them. And if hating them meant being
un-Christian, she was jolly well going to be un-Christian. And if she
saw a real Japanese she hoped she would be brave enough to hit him with
the first sharp and heavy object she could find, or throw him down the
bricked-up well in the churchyard. Full of these reasonable thoughts she
telephoned to several people about the camouflage netting work-party,
and was answering some letters when Mrs. Morland rang up.

That well-known but quite unillusioned novelist was an old friend of the
Pallisers and though she was really old enough to be Jane's mother, the
two had always been very intimate and Mrs. Morland's youngest boy, Tony,
had adopted himself as an uncle to the small Frank, who thought him the
cleverest and most delightful person in the world and copied faithfully
all mannerisms least suitable for a boy of eight. What Mrs. Morland
wanted to say, in her usual circumlocutory manner, was that the
Fieldings had asked her to dinner and spend the night next Wednesday,
and would Jane and her father be there. Jane said they would.

"I'll tell you everything at dinner," said Mrs. Morland, "or at least
after dinner, unless it's the kind of war dinner party where we sit next
to a woman because of not enough men, which is very restful but not
exactly what a dinner party is for. Not that there's anything to tell.
There never is. At least not here."

"Sadly true," said Jane. "Nor here either."

"I'm sorry," said Mrs. Morland, who understood by this that Jane had no
news of her husband, just as well as Jane had understood that Mrs.
Morland was asking if she had heard of Francis. "Oh, Jane, do you know
anything about a Mr. Adams? Mrs. Tebben's son Richard has been turned
out of the army, I don't mean for cowardice or drink or anything, but
some tropical disease I think, though nothing that _shows_," she added,
in case Jane envisaged a hideous leper or an acute case of
elephantiasis, "and I saw her in Barchester, and she says he has been
offered a job at this man Adams's works who is immensely rich and
Richard has had very good experience before the war in some kind of
business and can talk Argentine, or whatever they talk in Argentina
which seems to me a most _disloyal_ place, and Mr. Adams is going to
have a branch there and it sounds very suitable, but Mrs. Tebben
wondered if it was all right."

When Jane was quite certain that Mrs. Morland had said all she had to
say for the time being, she was able to reply that she had never met Mr.
Adams, though her father was on his board, but that she believed he was
coming to Hallbury for part of the summer and she would tell her what he
was like.

"Oh, if your father is on the board it is _quite_ all right," said Mrs.
Morland, "and I'll tell Mrs. Tebben. I'll see you on Wednesday then."

Jane would have liked to ask after Mrs. Morland's boys, but as this
would have meant at least ten minutes' monologue she said good-bye.

Then she took the little boys to the kitchen garden where she gave
Master Watson four lettuces that had run to seed and sent him home. The
evening was as cold and blustery as the day. As she gave Frank his bath
she thought with unpatriotic dislike of Double Summer Time. All very
well in peace when summer _was_ summer, she thought crossly. But in
wartime when the weather was always beastly and we had hours of grey
north daylight after dinner and it was too cold to garden or sit out, it
was a horrid infliction and what was more it kept Frank awake and while
he was awake he talked and sometimes if he talked once more she thought
she would burst. But when she saw him clean and pink in his pyjamas, she
knew she wouldn't really mind if he talked from now till Doomsday, as
indeed he showed every sign of doing.

It was Admiral Palliser's habit after doing his business in Barchester
to go to the County Club and then take the 6.20 to Hallbury. Before the
war he had got home well before seven, but now the train did not get to
Hallbury till 7.10, an unconscionably long journey, so that by the time
the train had been held up en route and the Admiral had walked up the
hill, often with Sir Robert Fielding, it was dinner-time. Frank, being
eight years old and going to real boarding-school after Christmas, and
the evenings being so light, was allowed to sit at the table in his
dressing-gown and eat his supper with the grown-ups, with the proviso
that he must go to bed at eight exactly or never come down again. It is
probable that if left to himself his doting grandfather would have given
in to his pleadings for another five minutes, but his mother had
determined that she would have the leavings of the day to herself, and
steadfastly resisted all attempts on grandfather's and grandson's part
to modify her rule.

Supper was enlivened by a classical discussion between grandfather and
grandson. Frank, who had been learning Latin under Robin Dale since the
preceding autumn, for Robin believed in catching them young, was rather
uppish about his knowledge, and certainly Robin had found him, with his
quick mind and retentive memory, a very promising pupil. Which was just
as well, for Southbridge School under old Mr. Lorimer and later under
Philip Winter, now a colonel in the Barsetshires, had attained a very
high level of scholarship, Percy Hacker, M.A., senior classical tutor at
Lazarus, winner in his time of the Hertford and the Craven, being their
high-water mark. So Master Gresham, finding it necessary to be a snob
about something, as indeed we all do and perhaps bird snobs are the
worst, did boast quite odiously about deponent verbs and gerunds,
finding an appreciative audience in the kitchen, where the old cook,
Mrs. Tory, said to hear Master Frank (for to the effete and capittleist
title of Master she grovellingly clung) say all his dictation and stuff
(which was, we think, a portmanteau word for conjugation and declension)
was as good as chapel; though the Reverend (by courtesy) Enoch Arden,
Mrs. Tory's pastor, who believed in direct inspiration and that Greek
and Latin were works of the devil, would have denounced this belief with
fervour.

Frank, who had spent half an hour in the kitchen treating Mrs. Tory and
the old parlourmaid Freeman to the first line of _Caesar adsum jam_,
with a promise of the rest when his schoolmaster could remember it, was
bursting to try it upon a more widely educated audience. So as soon as
the Admiral had begun his dinner Frank, pushing a large mouthful of
biscuit into one cheek with his tongue, said, rather thickly:

"Grandpapa, did you do Caesar at school?"

"I did," said the Admiral. "And if I didn't do my work properly I was
caned."

"Mr. Dale doesn't cane people much," said Frank apologetically, "but
when one of the boys threw the ink at Tom and it went on the wall
instead, he gave him three good ones."

"I'm glad to hear it," said the Admiral. "Have you been caned yet, young
man?"

"Not quite," said Frank, feeling that he was wanting in the manlier
qualities. "But Mr. Dale said if I gave him the vocative of filius as
filie again he'd kill me."

He looked hopefully at his grandfather.

"And are _you_ doing Caesar?" said the Admiral.

"Not quite, grandpapa," said Frank. "But mother told me a poem about
him. Oh, grandpapa, do you know the poem about Caesar had some jam?"

"Caesar had some----? Oh, yes, of course I do," said the Admiral, and
gravely repeated that short but admirable lyric. "And what's more both
your uncles know it."

"The boys taught it to me one holiday," said Jane, going back to her
childhood. "And I told Frank the first line, but I couldn't remember the
rest."

"Do you suppose, grandpapa, that Caesar _did_ have jam for tea?" said
Frank, anxiously. "I mean did Romans have jam?"

"I couldn't say for certain," said the Admiral, "but they did have
honey. When you get to Southbridge you'll learn Vergil, and he will tell
you all about bees and honey."

"Will it be funny?" asked Frank.

"No," said his grandfather, decidedly. "Even better than funny. But if
you like funny Latin," he continued, noticing that it was nearly eight
o'clock, "I can tell you a good poem. It begins:

    Patres conscripti
    Took a boat and went to Philippi...."

Frank listened gravely to the end.

"I don't think it's funny, grandpapa," he said, "it's more what I'd call
schoolboyish. I think Tom would like it when he knows Latin better."

"Touch," said the Admiral to his daughter; and the clock melodiously
struck eight and the bells of St. Hall Friars sounded from the
battlemented tower through the chill July evening.

"Grandpapa," said Frank, quickly. "Mr. Dale said the Romans had water
clocks. Have you ever seen a water clock, grandpapa?"

"Bed, Frank," said his mother.

"Oh, mother, can't I just wait? Grandpapa hasn't had time to say if he
saw a water clock. Did you ever see one, grandpapa? I should think it
would make rather a mess. Tom's mother has a sand-glass, grandpapa, that
tells you how long it takes to preach a sermon. Did you ever go to
church where the clergyman had a sand-glass, grandpapa. Tom preached a
sermon when Mrs. Watson was out, but the sand-glass took much too long
and he couldn't think of anything more to say. He said----"

"Bed, Frank," said his grandfather.

"Yes, grandpapa," said Frank. "And Tom said: 'Oh, people be good and you
will go to heaven, but if you are not good you will go to a far worse
place.' Do you think that was----"

"_Bed_," said his mother and grandfather in one breath, and this time
Frank recognized the voice of doom. Getting down from his chair he
pressed his face with careless violence against his grandfather's naval
beard and his mother's cheek, left the dining-room door ajar, came back
in answer to his mother's call, shut it just as Freeman was going in
with the coffee, and went upstairs clinging to the outer side of the
banisters, as he had frequently been forbidden to do.

Left to themselves Admiral Palliser and his daughter drank their coffee
in peace. Jane told her father about her visit to Mrs. Merivale; the
Admiral engaged to speak to Mr. Adams on the following day. Then they
did a little chilly gardening and so the evening passed.




                               CHAPTER II


Sir Robert Fielding, Chancellor to the Diocese of Barchester, had a very
handsome house in the Cathedral Close next to the Deanery, and before
the war only made use of Hall's End, his charming little stone house in
Hallbury, as a villegiatura, or as a convenient residence for his only
child Anne who had perpetual chests and coughs and colds in Barchester;
for the houses on the Deanery side of the close are very little above
river level and for the greater part of the year have a tendency to
damp, while a winter rarely passes without the river coming into the
cellars. Indeed in the winter of 1939-40, as our readers will not
remember (and we have had the greatest difficulty in running the
reference to earth ourselves), rumour had it that the flood carried the
Bishop's second-best gaiters as far as old Canon Thorne's front
doorstep; and as the Bishop had accused the Canon, who was extremely
popular, of Mariolatry, everyone hoped it was true.

In spite of all that care and money could do, Anne Fielding was still an
anxiety to her parents. Dr. Ford, who had known her all her life, still
maintained that two or three winters in a warm dry climate would do the
trick, but this was out of the question, so Anne continued to lead a
contented but rather remote life, going to Barchester High School when
she was well enough. About a year before this unpretentious narrative
begins, being then sixteen, she had had to register under the
Registration of Boys and Girls Act which frightened her parents a good
deal, but Dr. Ford, who knew the Labour Exchange people very well, and
had been of considerable assistance to them in one way and another by
refusing to give medical certificates to various would-be exempteds
(notably in the case of the Communist hairdresser with fine physique and
no dependants, in the winter of 1940-1), told them that no Labour
Exchange would even look at Anne. This was doubtful comfort, but her
parents took it in the best spirit and retained a firm faith that as
soon as the war was over they would take her to the Riviera, or even to
Arizona if necessary, and see her make a complete recovery.

The question of Anne's further education also occupied their minds. As
the war went on it was evident that she could no longer go to the High
School, which was crowded to bursting point and though an excellent
school, no place for a semi-invalid. Her parents, both extremely busy
people, enmeshed in really valuable war work as well as their ordinary
work, were at their wit's end. If it was a case of dire necessity Lady
Fielding could give up everything and live at Hallbury: but she knew it
would not be a success. She would be too anxious about Anne and Anne not
quite at her ease with her. Then, by a great piece of luck, Lady
Fielding happened to mention her difficulties to Mrs. Marling of Marling
Hall after a W.V.S. meeting in Barchester. Mrs. Marling had sympathized
and looked thoughtful. As they stood talking outside the Town Hall a car
stopped beside them, driven by a commanding young woman in Red Cross
uniform.

"You know my girl Lucy, I think," said Mrs. Marling. "She is going
abroad with her Red Cross next month. Lucy, Lady Fielding doesn't know
what to do about Anne. She gets too tired at the High School and Dr.
Ford says she must stay at Hallbury. It's all very awkward."

"I'll tell you what," said Lucy Marling, who was obviously going to
stand no nonsense from anyone. "Why can't Bunny go to Lady Fielding for
a bit? Now Lettice and the children are in Yorkshire she can't even
pretend she's governessing."

Now Bunny was Miss Bunting, an elderly ex-governess of high reputation,
who had taught Mrs. Marling and her brothers in their schoolroom days,
and had come as an honoured and very useful refugee to Marling Hall soon
after the outbreak of war. Mrs. Marling, a very practical woman of swift
decisions, was struck by her daughter Lucy's suggestion and asked Lady
Fielding to meet Miss Bunting.

The upshot was that Miss Bunting consented, with her own peculiar
mixture of gratitude and independence, to come to Hallbury for an
unspecified length of time to keep an eye on Anne's health and
wellbeing, and to assist her in her studies; the whole for a very
generous stipend.

We doubt if even Miss Bunting, for all her practical sense and power of
organizing, could have run a house in Hallbury in war-time, but that
Lady Fielding had already found and installed a Mixo-Lydian refugee
recommended by Mrs. Perry, the doctor's wife at Harefield. She was an
unusually plain and unattractive young woman of dwarfish and lumpish
stature, with manners that struck an odious note between cringing and
arrogance, named Gradka. As for her surname, it had so often been
rehearsed and so often found impossible to say or to memorize that no
one bothered about it. Gradka was studying with all her might to pass
the Society for the Propagation of English examination by correspondence
course, and had already successfully tackled several subjects. When Lady
Fielding discovered this she was anxious, feeling that the housework and
food might suffer, but to the credit of Mixo-Lydia it must at once be
said that Gradka did the housework and cooking excellently and never
wanted holidays, because she barely tolerated the English and actively
disliked all her fellow Mixo-Lydian refugees.

Miss Bunting came to Hallbury with Lady Fielding to inspect her new
domain, and in one interview reduced Gradka to a state of subservience
which roused Lady Fielding's admiration and curiosity.

"How did you do it?" she asked Miss Bunting subsequently, awestruck.

"I was in Russia before the last war with a daughter of one of the Grand
Dukes," said Miss Bunting. "The Russian aristocracy knew how to treat
their inferiors. I observed their methods and have practised them with
some success."

"But you can't exactly call Gradka inferior," said Lady Fielding,
nervously wondering whether she was listening outside the door. "Her
father is a university professor and very well known."

"I think," said Miss Bunting, "that you will find the facts much
overstated. The young woman, who is probably listening outside the door
at the moment, is an inferior. No wellborn Mixo-Lydian would dream of
being connected with a university. Until this war they kept up the
habits of a real aristocracy: to hunt and get drunk all autumn and
winter, and to go to the Riviera and get drunk in the spring and early
summer. For the rest of the year they visited their palaces in
Lydianopolis where they entertained ballet girls and got drunk."

Whether Gradka overheard this or not, we cannot say, but from that
moment she recognized Miss Bunting as a princess and the household went
very well, with excellent cooking, and Anne, in her governess's firm and
competent hands, looked better and felt happier. That her charge was
grossly uneducated was at once evident to Miss Bunting, who had no
opinion at all of Barchester High School and its headmistress Miss
Pettinger (now by a just judgment of heaven an O.B.E.), and a very poor
opinion of the whole system of women's education and the School
Certificate examination in particular. It was too late to go back to the
beginning, as she would have liked to do, so she contented herself with
encouraging her pupil to read. Anne, like so many young people of her
age, even with a cultivated background, had somehow never acquired the
habit of reading, but Miss Bunting, by reading aloud to her in the
evenings from the works of Dickens, Thackeray, Miss Austen and other
English classics, besides a good deal of poetry, had lighted such a
candle as caused that excellent instructress to wonder if she had done
wisely. For Anne, a very intelligent girl who had never used her
intelligence, fell head over ears into English literature and history,
and made excursions into many other fields. Never had Miss Bunting in
her long career had a pupil who had tasted honeydew with such vehemence,
or drunk the milk of Paradise with such deep breaths and loud gulps; but
it didn't appear to do Anne's health any harm, so the two of them had a
very agreeable time in spite of the war, the weather and their rather
lonely life; for though the Fieldings were liked in Hallbury, they were
not natives, as were the Pallisers and the Dales; and were still treated
with caution by most of the old inhabitants.

Pleasant exceptions to this were Admiral Palliser who had known Lady
Fielding's family well, and Dr. Dale, the Rector, who after paying a
parochial call upon Miss Bunting had conceived the greatest admiration
for her peculiar qualities, and talked books and families with her by
the hour, which was a good education for Anne; for say what you will, to
know who is whose mother-in-law or cousin among what we shall continue
to call the right people is as fascinating as relativity and much more
useful, besides being a small part of English, or at any rate county
history. His son Robin too, back from the wars with his shattered foot,
found in Anne another human being who was handicapped physically, and
though neither of them complained, each recognized in the other,
inarticulately, a disability which had to be fought and as far as
possible overcome. With Dr. Dale Anne also began to read some Latin as a
living language, and when her father approached with nervous
determination the question of pay for his instruction (for Dr. Dale was
a good scholar and his articles in the Journal of Classical Studies were
models of precise thought), Dr. Dale accepted his wages and put them
aside for Robin's benefit.

As may be imagined, Miss Anne Fielding, now nearly seventeen years old,
had not seen much of life in the way of parties, so the thought of
Admiral Palliser and Mrs. Gresham and Dr. Dale and Robin Dale, all of
whom she saw quite often, coming to dine was so exciting as to make her
feel rather sick. To add to the excitement her father and mother, who
usually only got down from Saturday to Monday, were going to stay at
Hall's End for a whole week and Mrs. Morland was coming, and Anne
wondered if it would be rude to ask her to write her name in her latest
novel which Anne had bought with her own money, or rather with a book
token given to her by a dull aunt. Gradka was also excited, for she was
going to make a Mixo-Lydian national dish for dinner which needed sour
milk; and what with milk rationing and the difficulties of keeping what
milk could be spared till it was exactly of the right degree of
sourness, she got a good deal behindhand with her work, which was to
write an essay about the influence of Hudibras upon English comic
rhyming, as exemplified in Byron, the Ingoldsby Legends and the lyrics
of W. S. Gilbert. And how Mixo-Lydians could be expected to write such
an essay we do not know, but write it she did, and got very good marks:
probably because the examiner had just about as little real sense of
humour as the examinee.

The great Wednesday dawned as grey and blustery as all other days, but
the east had gone out of the wind, which was veering, with many
capricious rushings back to find something it had forgotten, through
north into north-west. By noon it was a mild summer breeze and great
loose clouds were billowing away to the south-east, leaving a blue and
not unkind sky. By one o'clock it was almost warm, and on the south side
of the house really warm. Gradka was in a frenzy of preparation which
included decorating the dinner-table with trails of leaves from the
outdoor vine. This vine, popularly supposed to be coeval with "the
monks" (a date embracing practically everything between St. Augustine's
conversion of Kent and the Reformation), grew against the south wall of
the house and brought forth in most years rather lopsided bunches of
little hard green grapes which occasionally under the influence of an
exceptional summer turned purplish, but were none the less sour and
unwelcoming, while this year, the weather having been uniformly not only
cold but very dry, the miserable grapelets had withered and fallen
almost as soon as they formed.

Here, to leave the field clearer for their staff's activities, Miss
Bunting and Anne ate a frugal but sufficient lunch of a nice bit of cold
fat bacon, salad from the garden, baked potatoes with marge (an
underbred word, but it has come to stay) and some very good cold pudding
left over from the night before. While they ate they talked of the
party, and Miss Bunting watched complacently her pupil's happy
anticipation of what a year ago would have made her so nervous that she
would probably have run a temperature.

Owing largely to her poor health, Anne was still immature compared with
most of her contemporaries. At present her nose was a little too
aquiline for her young face, her hands and feet though well-shaped too
apt to dangle like a marionette's and her body seemed to consist largely
of shoulder blades. But Miss Bunting's Eye, in its great experience and
wisdom, knew that if things went well her pupil would, at nineteen or
twenty, be a very much improved creature; that her face would fill out
and her nose appear in scale, her hands and feet would be brought into
obedience and co-ordination, and her figure be very elegant. In fact,
she would be a handsome young woman, very like her father, though Sir
Robert's leonine head was rather large for his body; and _that_ Anne's
head would _not_ be, said Miss Bunting to herself, defying any unseen
power to contradict her.

"Miss Bunting," said Anne after a silence, during which the governess
had been thinking the thoughts we have just described. "Do you know who
I think you are like?"

Miss Bunting ran rapidly through, in her mind, a few famous governesses:
Madame de Maintenon, Madame de Genlis, Madame de la Rougierre, Miss
Weston, the Good French Governess, Jane Eyre: but to none of these
characters could she flatter herself that she had the least resemblance.
So she said she could not guess.

"I think," said Anne, her large grey eyes lighting as she spoke, "that
you are like the Abb Faria."

Even Miss Bunting, the imperturbable, the omniscient, was taken aback.
For the life of her she could not place the Abb. Meredith's Farina
dashed wildly across her mind, but she dismissed it coldly. No, think as
she would, the right echo could not sound.

"Because," continued Anne, pursuing her own train of thought, "I really
was a kind of prisoner and getting so stupid and you did rescue me in a
sort of way. I mean telling me about books and about how to write to
Lady Pomfret or the Dean if I had to--oh and heaps of things. I don't
mean making a tunnel _really_ of course."

Light dawned upon Miss Bunting. Finding that Anne's book French was
pretty good she had turned her loose on the immortal works of Dumas
_pre_: that is to say, on about ten per cent of his inexhaustible and
uneven output. And this was the result of Monte Cristo.

"What would you do if you were _really_ in a dungeon, Miss Bunting?"
said Anne, who was evidently examining the whole subject seriously.

"I should use my intelligence," said Miss Bunting, and there is no doubt
that she meant this.

"I expect you'd unravel your stockings and make a rope and strangle the
jailer and dress up in his clothes," said Anne, gazing with reverent
confidence at her governess.

Miss Bunting did not in the least regret having led her young charge
into the enchanted world of fiction, but she certainly had not bargained
for this very personal application of the life story of Edmond Dantes
and found herself--a thing which had very rarely occurred in her
life--quite at a loss. So she said Anne had better finish her lunch so
that Gradka could get on with her work.

The beginning of Anne's exciting party was to go down to the station to
meet her parents who were coming by the one good afternoon train which
runs from Barchester to Silverbridge on Wednesdays only, getting to
Hallbury in time for tea. As Wednesday is early closing in Barchester,
it is useless for shoppers besides being too early for business people.
We can only account for this by guessing it to be the remains of the
system by which the railway companies had got their own back on such
parts of England as had stood out against their coming.

This expedition she was to undertake alone, as Miss Bunting always
disappeared from two to four, when according to the belief of all her
friends, though they had no ocular proof of it, she took out her teeth,
removed her false front and reposed upon her bed with a hot-water bottle
to her respected toes. Anne also was supposed to rest after lunch, but
Miss Bunting in her wisdom had relaxed this rule as the year advanced,
and her charge's health had improved. Accordingly Anne, too excited to
try to rest, betook herself to the kitchen where she was allowed to help
Gradka by reading the Ingoldsby Legends aloud to her while she got the
vegetables ready, Gradka interrupting from time to time with questions
of an intelligent stupidity which Anne found rather difficult to answer.

"There is overheadly," said Gradka, "something that I should like to
understand, which is namely the lines,

    In vain did St. Dunstan exclaim, '_Vade retro_
    _Smallbeerum! discede a layfratre Petro_,'

which to me is incorrect. Or perhaps it is doggish-Latin, yes?"

Anne, who was laughing so much that she had hardly been able to
communicate the words of St. Dunstan, said she thought it was meant to
be funny: a kind of parody of the kind of Latin the monks spoke, she
supposed.

"Aha! parody!" said Gradka. "Then do I understand perfectly. The author
wishes to make a laughable imitation of the mon-kish Latin, and
smallbeerum is the accusative of a jocular form of small beer. That is
highly amusing. Please go on, Prodshkina Anna," for, as our readers have
quite forgotten, Prodshk and Prodshka are the Mixo-Lydian names for Mr.
and Mrs. (or possibly Count and Countess, for nobody knows or cares),
and thus Prodshkina is probably equivalent to Mademoiselle; or so Mrs.
Perry said, whether anyone was listening or not.

So Anne, impeded by giggles, read to the end of that moral work and then
went down to the station. In her anxiety to miss nothing of the treat
she arrived a quarter of an hour too early, so she went up the stairs
onto the footbridge and had a good look up and down the line, which here
runs in a dead straight line through a cutting for two miles in the
Silverbridge direction, finally vanishing into a tunnel, and is often
used for testing engines. In the far distance a puff of dirty smoke
appeared, followed at a short interval by a distant rumble, and a very
long goods train came out of the tunnel and clanked towards her. There
is to all ages a fearful fascination in standing on a bridge while a
train goes under it. The poor quality of war-time coal has considerably
lessened this attraction for those of riper years, but to Anne the
sulphurous stench, the choking thick smoke were still romantic. Just as
the engine was nearly under her, a voice remarked:

"Rum, how those Yank engines keep all their machinery outside, like
Puffing Billy."

Anne looked round and saw Robin Dale.

"Hullo, Robin," she said. "I didn't know it was American."

Robin began to explain that our allies were lending us railway engines,
but the noise of engine, trucks and ear-splitting whistle made it
impossible to hear, so Anne shook her head violently. When the train had
got through the station she turned to Robin and said: "I love watching
trains come under the bridge. It makes me feel like Lady Godiva."

"And might one ask why?" said Robin, "especially in view of an almost
total wacancy of the kind of hair needed for the part?"

Anne's grey eyes gleamed in appreciation of Robin's Dickens phraseology
and she said, seriously, "I mean the beginning;

    'I waited for the train at Coventry.'"

"Well, I always thought that half my intellect had gone with my foot,"
said Robin, "and now I know it."

"It's Tennyson," said Anne, with an anxious look at him, fearing that
she had said something silly.

"Then I must read him," said Robin.

"Haven't you ever?" said Anne, incredulous. "Oh Robin, you _must_."

"Well, I have and I haven't," said Robin. "When you are as old as I am
you will despise him: and when I am twenty years older I shall read him
again like anything and love a lot of him as much as you do. I promise
you that. I've got a nasty bit of ground to get over--disillusionment
and so on--but I'll meet you again on the other side."

Robin was talking half to himself, finding Anne as he often had in the
past years a help to self-examination. Sometimes he told himself that he
was a selfish beast to use that Fielding child (for as such his lofty
twenty-six years looked on her) as a safety-valve. But having thus made
confession to himself he considered the account squared and again made
her the occasional awestruck recipient of his reflections on life.

"Well, I must go and see about a parcel from Barchester that hasn't
turned up," said Robin. "Are you coming down?"

"Not your side," said Anne. "I'm meeting mummy and daddy's train."

"Goodbye then till this evening," said Robin and went downstairs again
towards the parcels office.

Shortly after this the Silverbridge train was signalled, and after what
seemed to Anne an endless wait, came puffing round the curve and into
the station. Whenever Anne met a train she wondered if the people she
was meeting would really come by it. So far they always had and to-day
was no exception for out of it came her father and mother, delighted to
see her, ready to hug and be hugged. In happy pre-war days the
footbridge at Hallbury had been within the platform railings, though
open to all, but so much cheating had there been that the authorities
had been obliged to put a new railing and gate to make it impossible for
people to get into a train without a ticket. At the gate a little crowd
was waiting for Godwin the porter, who was always doing something on the
up platform when the down train came in, to come and let them loose.
Anne noticed a large heavily built man in a suit which looked too new
and too expensive, who was steadily squeezing his way to the front. The
man saw her parents, sketched a kind of greeting, gave up his ticket and
got into a waiting taxi. The Fieldings then gave Godwin their tickets
and went out of the gate and over the bridge.

"Who was that man that knew you, daddy?" said Anne, as they walked up
the hill. "That rather enormous one."

"A man called Adams," said Sir Robert. "He owns those big engineering
works at Hogglestock. I came across him last year when he insisted on
being a benefactor to the Cathedral."

"But you like benefactors, don't you?" said Anne.

"Within measure, within measure," said Sir Robert. "But he gave so large
a sum that even the Dean was a little embarrassed. He fears that Adams
will want to put up a window to his wife and that would not do at all."

Anne asked why.

"It is rather difficult to explain these things," said Sir Robert, who
though he thoroughly believed in class distinctions to a certain extent,
felt he ought not to influence his daughter.

"I suppose it might be rather an awful window," said Anne thoughtfully.
"Oh, mummy! Gradka is making a perfectly lovely pudding with sour milk,
and Miss Bunting and I had our lunch under the vine to-day, and Miss
Bunting had a letter from one of her old pupils called David Leslie and
he says it is very wet where he is."

Sir Robert and his wife heaved a silent sigh of relief. That any window
given by Mr. Adams would be quite out of place in the Cathedral they had
no doubt, even as they had no doubt that his benefactions were his
protest against E.P.T.; but chiefly did they wish not to become socially
embroiled with that gentleman who, finding that they had an only
daughter, had talked a good deal of his own, now in her last term at the
Hosiers' Girls' Foundation School, temporarily housed at Harefield Park.

"I'll carry your suitcase, mummy," said Anne, gently but forcibly
wresting it from her mother's grasp. It was only a small affair, for the
Fieldings kept at Hall's End such clothes as would be useful and only
brought a few extras with them when they came.

"Carefully then," said Lady Fielding. "There's something in it for you,"
which made Anne flush with pleasure.

When they got to Hall's End they found Miss Bunting in the drawing-room
and tea spread.

"Anne, dear," said Miss Bunting, "will you get the teapot from the
kitchen and the hot-water jug. Gradka," she explained to her employers,
"does not wish to be seen till after dinner, when she says she will come
in and receive the compliments of your guests before she begins her
evening studies. It is, I understand, a Mixo-Lydian custom."

"I can't say that I'll miss her," said Sir Robert, who liked those about
him to be pleasant to the eye. "I've never been in Mixo-Lydia, and if
they are all like that I hope never to go."

"Robert!" said his wife anxiously, for she had an amiable though often
embarrassing weakness for oppressed nationalities and was afraid that
Gradka, busy in the kitchen at the other end of the house, might hear
her husband's words and give notice. Then Anne came back with the teapot
and hot-water jug on a tray and they talked comfortably. Presently Lady
Fielding went up to her room with Anne and there unpacked her little
suitcase and showed her daughter a charming flowery silk dress
exquisitely folded in pre-war tissue paper.

"Oh, _mummy_!" said Anne, "for me? Oh, how _did_ you do it?"

"I found this silk in the cupboard in the sewing-room," said Lady
Fielding. "I had quite forgotten it. So I took it to Madame Tomkins and
asked her if she had your measurements and she looked at me with great
contempt and said: 'Je connais par coeur le corps de Mademoiselle Anne,'
which frightened me so much that I went away."

"She wouldn't have taken any notice of you if you'd stayed, mummy," said
Anne. "Mummy, do you think that Madame Tomkins is really French? It
doesn't _sound_ French."

But Lady Fielding said she knew she was, because she remembered how
Tomkins, the boot and knife man at the Palace, had brought back his
French wife after the last war and had shortly afterwards disappeared.

"Had she murdered him, mummy?" said Anne, hopefully.

Lady Fielding said: Oh no, but she had a frightful temper and Tomkins
had gone to New Zealand and was doing very well there and sent Madame
Tomkins a card with a kiwi on it every Christmas.

"And now I think you had better rest before dinner, darling," said Lady
Fielding, with solicitous care for her daughter.

"Oh, mummy, I hardly ever rest now except after lunch," said Anne, and
she looked so well and seemed so happy, her mother agreed.

The next two excitements of the day for Anne were rather badly timed,
for if she went to the station to meet Mrs. Morland, which she had very
daringly thought of doing, she would have to hurry to put her new frock
on afterwards: and if she put her new frock on first she could not go
and meet Mrs. Morland. From this dilemma, which had made her quite pale
with agitation, she was rescued by her father calling her to walk round
the garden with him. So they walked, and then sat in the evening sun,
while Anne prattled about her work and her reading, and was altogether
such an alive and eager creature that her father felt very grateful to
Miss Bunting, the author of the improvement. So pleasant in fact a time
did they have, that when Sir Robert looked at his watch and said it was
seven o'clock, both were surprised. Anne fled upstairs to put on her new
dress, and so much enjoyed herself peacocking before her mother's long
mirror that when at last she went downstairs, Mrs. Morland had already
arrived and was having a gentlemanly glass of pre-war sherry with Sir
Robert and Lady Fielding.

What Anne expected a well-known female novelist to look like, we cannot
say. Nor could she have said; for any preconceived notion that may have
been in her head was for ever wiped out by the sight of the novelist
herself, her unfashionably long hair as usual on the verge of coming
down, dressed in a deep red frock which bore unmistakable traces of
having been badly packed.

"You haven't seen Anne since she was quite small, I think, Laura," said
Lady Fielding to her distinguished guest.

"No, I don't think I have," said Mrs. Morland, shaking hands with Anne
very kindly. "At least one never knows, because you do see people in
church or at concerts or all sorts of places without much thinking about
them, and if you aren't thinking about people you don't really see them,
at least not in a recognizing kind of way. And I'm getting so blind,"
said Mrs. Morland, proudly, "that I shall soon recognize nobody at all."

Had any of Mrs. Morland's four sons been there, and more especially her
youngest son Tony, now in the Low Countries with the artillery of the
Barsetshire Yeomanry, any one of them would unhesitatingly and correctly
have accused his mother of being a spectacle snob. For Mrs. Morland, who
had never taken herself or her successful novels seriously, had, in her
middle fifties, suddenly made the interesting discovery that she was
really grown-up. This day comes to us all, at different times, in
different ways. It may be the death of one of our parents which puts us
at once into the front line; it may be the death or removal of a
husband; it may be some responsibility thrust on us; in the case of Mrs.
Turner at Northbridge orphan nieces; in the case of the present Earl and
Countess of Pomfret the succession to wealth and estates. But Mrs.
Morland's parents and also her husband had died before she was, as she
herself expressed it, ripe for grown-upness, and with her four boys she
had felt increasingly and very affectionately incompetent and silly,
which indeed they, with equal affection, would have admitted, so she had
found no real reason to be grown-up.

This fact she had lamented, though with her usual detachment, till two
or three years before the date of this story, when she became for the
first time in her life conscious of her eyes. Oliver Marling whose
mother had supplied Miss Bunting, had strongly recommended his dear Mr.
Pilbeam, lately released from the R.A.M.C. to look after the neglected
civilian population. Mrs. Morland had visited Mr. Pilbeam, read as far
as TUSLPZ quite easily, boggled over XEFQRM and failed hopelessly at
FRGSBA. She had then been quite unable to make up her mind whether the
left or right arm of a St. Andrew's cross looked darker or lighter,
furthermore insisting that even an X cross couldn't have a left or right
because each arm went right through, if Mr. Pilbeam could understand,
and what he really meant was the north-west to south-east arm, or the
north-east to south-west, and he oughtn't to say: "The right arm is
darker than the left, isn't it?" because that was a leading question. A
busy oculist might have been excused for losing his temper at this
point, but Mr. Pilbeam not only had great patience, partly natural,
partly acquired, but was a devoted reader of Mrs. Morland's books. So
disentangling with great skill what she said from what she meant, he had
finished the examination and written her a prescription for spectacles.

"I believe," said Mrs. Morland, after pinning up a good deal of her hair
which the putting on and off of spectacles had considerably loosened,
"that when it is a specialist one puts it in an envelope on the
mantelpiece. But as I don't know how much, I can't. Besides, it might
fall into the fire. But I did bring a cheque-book and if my fountain pen
is working, or you would lend me yours, I could write it now. Unless, of
course, you'd rather have pound notes because of avoiding the income
tax, though I'm afraid I haven't quite enough if it is five guineas
which Oliver said."

"Will you let me say, Mrs. Morland," said Mr. Pilbeam, "that I have had
such pleasure from your books that I could not think of charging you for
this consultation?"

Upon which Mrs. Morland, who never thought of herself as being a real
author, let alone a pretty well-known one by now, was so much surprised
that she sat goggling at her oculist while her face got pinker and
pinker and a hairpin fell to the floor.

"But that doesn't seem fair," said Mrs. Morland at last.

Mr. Pilbeam, both gratified and embarrassed by the effect of his words,
picked up her tortoiseshell pin and handed it to her.

"I shall be more than satisfied," said Mr. Pilbeam. "Especially," he
added, "if you will give me one of your books with your autograph in
it."

"Of _course_ I will," said Mrs. Morland. "Only I'm afraid they are all
exactly alike. You see I wrote my first book by mistake, I mean I didn't
know how to write a book so I just wrote it, and then all the others
seemed to come out the same. But if I gave you the last one, would it
do? My publisher, who is really very nice and not a bit like what you
would expect a publisher to be," said Mrs. Morland, "I mean he is an
ordinary person, not like a publisher I once met who simply sat in a
room and depressed one, says I could afford to write a few bad books by
now, but I think this would be a bad thing because someone who hadn't
read any of my books might think they were all bad, and not read any
more. Not," Mrs. Morland continued, standing up and clutching various
pieces of portable property to her in preparation for her departure,
"that I would really _mind_, only I do earn my living by them."

At this point Mr. Pilbeam who, much as he enjoyed his new patient's
spiral conversation, had his own living to earn, managed by a species of
stage management perfected by him over a number of years, to waft her
out of the room and into the arms of his secretary and so into the
street. Her latest book was duly sent to him and since then she had
revisited him once or twice, always on the same very friendly footing.

Now writing is a rum trade and eyes are rum things, and what is all
right one day is all wrong the next. Mrs. Morland's sight was affected
as most people's is by health, weather, heat, cold, lighting, added
years, and by the sapping strain of some six years' totalitarian war.
She was impatient with her eyes as most people are who have always had
very good sight and nearly went mad with rage while accustoming herself
to the bifocal glasses Mr. Pilbeam had ordered on her second visit.
Finally she had collected four pairs of spectacles of varying power,
from a rather dashing little semicircular lens for reading only, through
the hated bifocals to which use had more or less reconciled her and an
owl-like plain pair for cards (which she never played) and music (which
she had almost entirely dropped), to a much stronger pair now really
necessary for close work. To these she had added what she quite
correctly called her face--main, feeling a pleasant inward disdain for
her friends who said lorgnon or lorgnette. And what with mislaying all
four pairs in every possible permutation and combination and catching
the ribbon of her face--main in her clothes and the furniture, or
bending it double by stooping suddenly, she hardly ever had the pair she
needed. But the gods are just and of our pleasant vices do occasionally
make something quite amusing, and we must say that Mrs. Morland got an
infinite amount of innocent pleasure out of her armoury of glasses, and
as she never expected people to listen to her she maundered on about
them with considerable satisfaction to herself.

What Mrs. Morland would have liked to do was to raise her face--main to
her eyes, examine Anne with the air of a grande dame (to which phrase
she attached really no meaning at all) and then dropping it greet her
warmly and say how exactly like one of her parents she was. But the red
dress she was wearing had red buttons down its front, and the red ribbon
(to match, for this also gave her much innocent pleasure) had got
entangled in the buttons, so she had to give it up as a bad job, and
being really a simple creature at heart she embraced Anne very
affectionately.

"Tony always says that I fly at people and kiss them in a kind of higher
carelessness," she said. "But I do assure you I never kiss people I
don't like. If I did begin to kiss the Bishop's wife, even by mistake,
something would stop me."

"I only met her once," said Anne, finding it, to her own great surprise,
quite easy to talk to someone as celebrated as Mrs. Morland, "at a
prize-giving at the Barchester High School and she said prizes really
meant nothing, so all the girls who got prizes hated her. If I'd had a
prize I'd have hated her too. But I hated her anyway because she had a
horrid hat."

Mrs. Morland looked approvingly at a girl who had such sound instincts,
and then Miss Bunting came in, preceding Admiral Palliser, Jane Gresham
and the Dales, who had all walked up together, enjoying what afterwards
turned out to be the one warm evening of a very nasty summer. The
newcomers were all acquainted with Mrs. Morland, so there were no
introductions to be made. Sherry was offered, talk was general. The
sound of a gong was heard.

"Oh, mummy," said Anne, "that's to say dinner is ready because Gradka
doesn't want anyone to see her yet, so will you come in, and Robin and I
will do the clearing away."

Accordingly the party went across the stone hall into the dining-room.
Here Gradka had draped vine leaves and tendrils most elegantly if a
trifle embarrassingly on the shining mahogany round table, among the
shining glasses and silver. Steaming soup was already on the table in
Chinese bowls. Mrs. Morland was loud in her admiration of the exquisite
way in which everything was kept, much to the pleasure of her host who
had inherited beautiful things and added to his possessions with great
taste.

A slight poke on her left shoulder made Mrs. Morland look up. Robin was
standing beside her holding a bowl of tiny cubes of bread fried to a
perfect, even, golden brown.

"Excuse my manners," he said, "I'm only here on liking."

"One moment," said Mrs. Morland putting up her glasses. "Oh, crotons!
Heavenly. But I must find my spectacles. I can't hold these things up
and help myself at the same time."

She routed about in her bag, found a red spectacle case and put the
spectacles on.

"It is so _stupid_ not to see," she said in a voice of great
satisfaction as she helped herself. "Thank you Robin. What is so
boring," she continued, turning to Dr. Dale on her right, "is that
though I can see my soup--what divine soup it is--with these glasses, I
can't see faces across the table. Mrs. Gresham and Anne look almost the
same. To see them I need this pair."

She grabbled about in her bag again and drew out a blue spectacle case,
exchanged the glasses and announced with pride that she could see both
ladies quite well and how nice they looked.

"But for my soup, I must return to the first pair," she said, taking the
second pair off and putting it away.

"Do you know that you put the spectacles you have just taken off into
the red case?" said Dr. Dale. "I don't want to interfere, but I think
you took them out of the blue case."

"Oh, thank you, I am _always_ doing that," said Mrs. Morland. "And
sometimes I get so mixed that I don't know which pair is which until I
suddenly can't see."

"Why not have different-coloured frames?" said Dr. Dale.

Mrs. Morland laid down her spoon, took off the spectacles she was
wearing and looked with deep admiration at her neighbour.

"That," she said, "comes of having a good classical education. Now a
person that only knew economics or things of that sort would never think
of a really sensible thing like that."

Dr. Dale looked flattered: though more on behalf of the classics than
himself, for he was a modest man as well as a good scholar.

"Next time I break the legs of one of them, which I'm always doing,"
said Mrs. Morland, "I'll have a new frame the same colour as the case
and then I'll know."

"But suppose you break the glass and not the frame," said Dr. Dale.

"I expect I shall," said Mrs. Morland resignedly. "And that is a great
nuisance, because it takes at least three or four months now to get new
lenses and by the time you've got them you may be squinting in quite
another direction. I did ask my oculist if he couldn't give me a
prescription for the kind of glasses I'd probably be wanting six months
later, but he thought not. I don't see why not myself, because my eyes
just go on gently going bad, so surely he would know how bad they ought
to be by October."

Dr. Dale said his sympathies were on both sides and then, the
conversation now being well sustained all round the table, Mrs. Morland
asked him about Robin, which she had not liked to do before in case he
felt he was being discussed. Dr. Dale, who realized her sympathy, was
able to give her a good account of Robin's progress and said the
difficulty now was to decide whether he should go back to Southbridge
where they wanted him for classics or keep on his pre-preparatory class
for little boys and make it his profession. Mrs. Morland, who had known
Robin since his own schooldays at Southbridge, where he was a couple of
years senior to her youngest boy Tony, was very much interested in these
plans and forgetting her spectacles managed to eat a large helping of an
excellent chicken pilaf with a wreath of young vegetables of all kinds
surrounding it.

Meanwhile Lady Fielding was having much the same conversation with
Admiral Palliser, inquiring about Jane and whether she still hoped for
news of her husband, to which the Admiral replied that the whole
position was very trying and they had stopped discussing it.

"We are used to losing our men in naval families," he said. "Jane knew
what the chances were when she married Francis, just as my sons' wives
did--one is a brother Admiral's daughter you know, and the other the
granddaughter of the captain of my father's first ship. But it's
different now. Killed in action is bad: but you do know. This Japanese
business is as black as midnight," said the Admiral, his face darkening.
"She behaves excellently, but what kind of life is it? It may be months
and years of uncertainty. She may never know. And she is young."

His face softened again and Lady Fielding guessed what he was thinking.

"Young and very charming," she said. "And all among older people. It is
going to be very hard for these young wives, half widows."

"One may as well say, straight out," said the Admiral quietly, after
glancing at his daughter who was deep in the kind of middle-aged
flirtation that Sir Robert enjoyed, "that if any of them fall in love
with a man on the spot, one won't feel able to blame them. My Jane is a
good girl and it's going to be far more difficult for the good girls
than the easy-going ones. But no good looking for trouble. Your Polish
girl is a wonderful cook."

"She would probably run a knife into you for that," said Lady Fielding.
"She's a Mixo-Lydian."

The Admiral began to laugh.

"I met the Admiral of the Mixo-Lydian fleet once," he said. "The fleet
is an old Margate paddle-steamer that patrols the River Patsch where it
forms the eastern boundary of Mixo-Lydia. She came round by the
Mediterranean and up the Danube under her own power, I believe, about
1856 when Mixo-Lydia broke away from Slavo-Lydia. He was a smuggler and
gave me some very good brandy."

A good deal of noise now stopped their talk. The noise was Robin and
Anne taking away the pilaf with its accompaniments and bringing in the
sour-milk pudding, Gradka's masterpiece. A piece of exquisitely flaky
pastry, about the size and shape of a huge omelette lay on a large china
dish. It was encrusted with some kind of delicious nutty-sugary
confection, and when cut was found to contain a species of ambrosial
cheese-cake. With it was served a bowl of hot sauce of which we can only
say that if everyone will think of the supreme sweet sauce and add to it
an unknown and ravishing flavour, it will but feebly explain its silken
ecstasy. Conversation was stilled while sheer greed took its place.

"Well," said Robin reverently, "I never thought much of Hitler, but as
he made the Mixo-Lydians be refugees, I suppose we must give the devil
his due."

Anne industriously scraped the last flakes from the dish and handed him
the spoon.

"God bless you for that kind act," said Robin. "One more mouthful of
that pudding and I feel my foot would grow again."

His father looked at him, half in distress, half in pride.

"And two more mouthfuls and I'd be sick," he added thoughtfully.

"Oh, please, everybody," said Anne's light voice.

The table was silent, everyone looking at her.

"Oh, it's only," said Anne, blushing furiously and pleating her table
napkin with agitated fingers, "that Gradka will come in now. Please,
daddy, say something nice to her. She will bring the coffee in. Come on,
Robin, and get the table ready."

While she and Robin tidied the table and put fruit from the garden and
glasshouse upon it and took the pudding-dish away, Sir Robert went to
the sideboard.

"Only Empire port, I fear," he said. "But we must drink Gradka's health.
I wonder if it would be etiquette in Mixo-Lydia to offer her a glass."

As he spoke he was walking round the table, filling glasses.

"Put an extra glass beside me, Fielding," said the Admiral. "I think I
know what Gradka likes."

Surprised, but willing, Sir Robert did as the Admiral asked and returned
to his seat. Robin and Anne came back, shutting the door behind them and
sat down.

"It's all right, daddy," said Anne. "She has to knock at the door, and
you must say----"

But before she could finish, there was a loud single knock or rather
bang on the door. Everyone felt nervous, for the capability for taking
offence among Mixo-Lydian refugees is well known to have no bounds, and
it was probable that whatever they did would be wrong.

"Oh, daddy!" said Anne in an agonized whisper, "say----"

But the Admiral, who had been looking on with some amusement, uttered a
loud and barbarous monosyllable, the door was opened and Gradka came in.
Seldom had she looked less attractive than at this moment, her large
face and the plaits encircling her head damp with the heat of cooking,
her lumpish figure enveloped in a checked apron.

The Admiral handed the spare glass to her, raised his own, and uttering
some more barbarous words, drank the contents. Gradka replied in her
native tongue, drank her wine and raised the empty glass shoulder high.
The Admiral, with a peculiar expression which Mrs. Morland, sitting
directly opposite him with her right spectacles on for once, thought
unaccountably amused, spoke once more. Gradka shrugged her shoulders,
put the glass on the table, said a few words to the Admiral and left the
room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

"It's all right," said the Admiral to the gaping party. "The proper
thing is to break the glass, and I thought you had rather not. She says
I am her grandfather now: but it doesn't mean anything. My
smuggler-friend was her uncle."

"I have always said," said Miss Bunting, who according to her own
peculiar habit had sat almost silent through dinner, observing and
making her own reflections, "that we should thank God for the British
Navy."

Everyone except Miss Bunting felt slightly uncomfortable, and when a
second loud knock was heard Lady Fielding almost jumped. But it was only
a warning that the coffee was there, and Robin fetched the dinner-wagon
from outside with the coffee equipage on it and the talk fell into more
familiar channels again as Miss Bunting asked Dr. Dale about the next
meeting of the Barsetshire Archaeological Society, of which he was a
vice-president.

"I saw in the Barchester Chronicle," said she, "that it was to be held
here. If there is any part of the proceedings to which the general
public is admitted I should very much like to be there, and bring Anne."

Dr. Dale said there would be, if the weather permitted, a visit to the
churchyard to inspect the ruins of the earlier Rectory and the disused
well, over which a controversy had been raging: some saying that there
were traces of Roman brickwork in the well, others again that there were
not.

"That," said Miss Bunting, "would be very nice for Anne. Any educational
excursion of that kind is good for her and she responds to it."

"May I say, Miss Bunting, how much your pupil has improved under your
care," said Dr. Dale. "It is rare to find a girl who can enjoy her work
so intelligently. And she looks so much better."

"That is partly Gradka's excellent food," said Miss Bunting. "As for
Anne's education, I was lucky in finding almost virgin soil to work
upon."

Dr. Dale said he thought Anne had been at Barchester High School.

"That," said Miss Bunting, "is precisely what I mean. School Certificate
and Honour of the School. All very well for the daughters of Barchester
tradesmen, but most unsuitable for Anne. When she came into my care she
was in a pitiable state of nerves over this examination which any girl
of average intelligence can pass. You only have to look at them to
realize how little real education it means."

Dr. Dale was delighted by these reactionary sentiments and Sir Robert
moved to a chair near them the better to take part in the discussion,
Mrs. Morland and Jane Gresham who had been talking across him about the
boys for some time hardly noticing his absence.

"Tell us, Miss Bunting," said Sir Robert, "what your idea of a really
good education for a girl would be."

"In the first place," said Miss Bunting kindly but firmly, "it is much
better, I might say almost essential, to have a large family."

Both gentlemen felt there was nothing for it but an apology. Each had an
only child and it was far too late to do anything about it. And neither
had felt so convicted of guilt since the crimes of boyhood.

"But I recognize," said Miss Bunting, straightening the little black
velvet bow she wore at her neck, "that there are small families as well
as large."

Both gentlemen breathed again.

In spite of an uneasy feeling that they were in Eton suits with inky
collars and dirty finger-nails, the gentlemen much enjoyed their talk
with Miss Bunting. Both believed in standards now almost submerged and
both would uphold them to the end though their faith was often sorely
tried. In Miss Bunting they recognized an unwavering faith and a habit
of looking facts in the face unflinchingly and very often staring them
down, which they found comforting and refreshing.

The party then drifted to the drawing-room, still lit by the sunset.
Robin and Anne cleared the dining-room table and washed up the glass and
silver in the pantry (Gradka being now locked into the kitchen grappling
with the Ingoldsby Legends) and Robin told Anne a good deal about what a
fool he felt when one thought one's foot was there and it really wasn't;
to which Anne listened as usual with sympathetic interest, saying
little, but in her mind drawing not unfavourable comparisons between
Robin and such mutilated heroes as Benbow directing the sea battle with
his shattered leg in a cradle, or Witherington with both legs shot away
fighting upon his stumps, or even Long John Silver. But this last
comparison she recognized to be a poor one and resolutely ignored it.

Jane Gresham would have liked to be in the pantry too; nor, we must say,
would Robin or Anne have minded a third person in the least, and if it
were Jane they would have welcomed her. But she had gradually slipped
into a quite unnecessary feeling that she was not much wanted by what
she rather conceitedly called young people. The foolish creature was
only four years older than Robin, and even if thirteen years lay between
her and Anne, those years were bridged by so many things: by Anne's
rather invalid life which had in some ways marked her, by their common
friends and interests in Hallbury, by Anne's very friendly nature when
once the barrier of her timidity was down. But Jane, otherwise a
sensible young woman, had invented for herself a theory that people who
didn't know if their husbands were alive or dead and sometimes forgot
about them for hours and even days at a stretch, who had to plan
everyday life as if their husbands would for ever be wanderers in
Stygian shades, their words unheard, their thoughts unshared; that such
people were on the whole not wanted. In which she was undoubtedly silly,
for she was both wanted and needed by a quantity of people, beginning
with her father and her son and including quite a number of people in
Hallbury and the neighbourhood of Barchester. But the heart does not
always quite know its own folly, especially when it lets an overwrought
mind interfere.

So Jane, looking elegant and unruffled, drifted to the drawing-room with
the rest, and continued her conversation with Mrs. Morland about little
boys, on whom that gifted authoress was something of an authority,
having had four whom she liked very much and never pretended to
understand. To do her justice she rarely spoke of them unasked and never
made a nuisance of herself by motherly pride, but if encouraged in a
friendly way was quite ready to talk.

The least egoistic of us like occasionally to dramatize ourselves. Mrs.
Morland's trump card in this direction was the grandchildren she had
never seen, as her two eldest boys had married shortly before the war,
one in Canada, one in South Africa, and had never been able to bring
their families home.

"You see," she said to Jane, "things are never so bad as you might hope,
and I do really get the _greatest_ pleasure out of my grandchildren,
because it is lovely not to have them all living with me as I probably
would have to if they were in England, and I can be as sentimental about
them as I like without any fear of having to honour my bill, if that is
what I mean. And when I think I have three grandchildren I feel so
splendidly snobbish. And I sometimes hope that people will be surprised,
for though I know I look quite fifty-four, which is what I am," said
Mrs. Morland, pushing her hair off one side of her face with her
face--main, "I don't think people expect a person who writes books to
be a grandmother. Oh dear, I am all entangled."

Jane, skilfully extricating the face--main from the Rapunzel net in
which it had become involved, asked why writers shouldn't be
grandmothers.

"I can't imagine," said Mrs. Morland with an air of great candour, "for
if they have grandchildren it stands to reason they must be
grandmothers. But people will write to me as Miss Morland, a thing I
never was, and probably if they know I have grandchildren they think
they are illegitimate. But there is one very good thing," she added,
earnestly, putting on the spectacles from the red case as she spoke,
"which is that Henry, my husband you know, died such a long time ago,
because I do not think he would have understood my grandchildren in the
_least_. He did not really understand his own boys--not that I do
either, but that is so different--and I used to think it would really
have been far better if he had died before the boys were born instead of
after, because it would have simplified everything."

Jane said that if Mr. Morland had died before his boys were born, he
might not have had any.

Mrs. Morland took off her spectacles, closed them and put them into
their case, the whole with one hand.

"I know one ought to take them off with alternate hands," she said,
"just to keep the balance and prevent their warping, but whenever I
think of it it is too late. Yes, I expect you are right about Henry. The
fact is that though I have not and never have had anything against him
at all, I never think of him. And I must say when he was alive I didn't
think much about him either."

So rare was it for Mrs. Morland to allude to the husband whom old Mrs.
Knox had described as _excessivement nul_, that Jane was taken aback. In
common with most of Mrs. Morland's friends she had come to look upon the
young Morlands as somehow the peculiar and unaided product of their
mother. So much surprised that she took courage and said:

"Didn't you feel wicked when you didn't think about your husband, Mrs.
Morland?"

"Never," said Mrs. Morland firmly. "And if you don't always think about
Francis, my dear," she added, toying with the blue spectacle case as she
spoke and looking earnestly at the middle distance, "it isn't wicked in
the least. People _cannot_ help being what they are like, and if it is a
choice between being miserable and anxious all the time, or being fairly
happy and having such a very nice happy little boy, and not depressing
people, your attitude is very reasonable. And natural," said Mrs.
Morland putting on her spectacles. "And right. Now which pair _have_ I
got on? If I look at something about as far off as playing a game of
patience I shall know if they are the ones I can see with. I mean that I
can see that distance with."

She looked wildly round and not seeing any card game at hand became
depressed, but as quickly brightened. "For," she explained, "if I can
see your face clearly where you are sitting, then they are the ones I
can see people's faces in a railway carriage with. Yes, they are the
ones," she continued. "But don't look so unhappy, Jane."

"One might be unhappy if one thought less and less about someone one did
love very much," said Jane looking straight in front of her.

And then, luckily for Mrs. Morland who had no further help to offer from
her own experiences and hated to see Jane so distressed, Robin and Anne
came in from the pantry. Anne was carrying Mrs. Morland's last novel and
as she approached her parents' famous guest, began to show such signs of
confusion as kicking her own feet, going pink in the face and opening
and shutting her mouth without producing any sound.

Mrs. Morland, who was used to this behaviour among her younger admirers,
asked if that was a book she had.

Anne, not finding the question at all peculiar, said it was. Then
summoning her courage she said pushing the book desperately towards its
author:

"Oh, Mrs. Morland, would you _please_ mind very much writing your name
in this? I bought it with my own money because I _adore_ your books, and
think Madame Koska is the most _wonderful_ person. I called a dog I had
that died Koska."

Mrs. Morland who, in spite of a large circulation on both sides of the
Atlantic was not in the least blase about appreciation of her books, to
which we may say, she attached no great literary value herself, said of
course she would love to. A small table was handy, Robin produced a
fountain pen and Mrs. Morland made a suitable inscription. Anne, pinker
than ever with pleasure, was about to clutch the book to her bosom when
Robin interrupted.

"Hi, Anne!" he exclaimed. "You'll blot it. Wait a minute."

He took the book to a writing-table, blotted it and returned.

"Good gracious!" said Mrs. Morland. "I wrote that without either of my
spectacles! I must be going blind."

At this Robin, for all his endeavours, burst into a fit of laughter,
followed by Anne, though she did not quite understand the joke. Jane
smiled and went to talk to Lady Fielding.

"I suppose I am silly," said Mrs. Morland laughing herself. "But Robin,
and Anne, I want to have a conspiracy with you," she added, leading her
young friends out on to the stone path above which the highest tendrils
of the vine caught the sun's dying glow. "Jane seems very unhappy
because she can't worry about her husband as much as she ought to. What
can be done?"

"It's a rotten position," said Robin. "She might hear he was dead, or he
might walk in to-morrow. No, that's a bit too dramatic for this
regimented war. But she might hear he was in a Swedish ship being
repatriated and that he would be at a delousing camp in Stornaway till
further notice and no questions to be asked. I beg your pardon, Miss
Bunting," he added as that lady stepped out of the french window.

"If you mean for the use of the word delousing, I was familiar with it
in the last war," said Miss Bunting.

She did not add "before you were born," but the effect was equally
crushing.

"We were talking about Jane Gresham, Miss Bunting," said Mrs. Morland,
feeling that in this elderly spinster with the little black velvet bow
at her neck lay a far better and wiser knowledge of the world than she
would ever have. "It seems so dreadfully unhappy to have this long
uncertainty."

They were all silent for a moment, oppressed by the thought of a grief
that no one could cure.

Anne was the first to speak.

    "'Said heart of neither maid nor wife
         To heart of neither wife nor maid,'"

she remarked with a kind of sad pride in having found the mot juste.

If Miss Bunting felt a shock at her literature-besotted pupil's highly
inapt quotation, she was not the woman to show it.

"There is nothing that you can do," she said, looking round at a
promising class. "You are doing all you can. The rest she will have to
do for herself. I have seen it again and again in two wars. Come in now,
Anne, it is getting chilly."

The one warm day of that summer was over. They all went back to the
drawing-room, where Jane was describing with kind malice her visit to
Mrs. Merivale at Valimere.

"Have you seen Mr. Adams about it yet, father?" she said to the Admiral.

The Admiral said he had spoken to Adams at the club, and he was coming
out to see the lodgings.

"Oh, it was you who put Adams on to those rooms, Palliser," said Sir
Robert. "He is like a clam--loves to make secrets about things. He was
on the Silverbridge train with Dora and myself this afternoon, but he
didn't say what he was up to. Mrs. Merivale's husband was in our office.
Quite a good clerk, but would never have gone very far, even if he had
lived. The sort of man who doesn't want responsibility."

"Adams? Adams? Now where have I heard that name?" said Dr. Dale.

No one offered an opinion.

"I have it!" said Dr. Dale. "He is a member of the Barsetshire
Archological Society, though why I cannot think, for he has no tincture
of learning or any kind of letters. But he sent a handsome donation to
our President Lord Pomfret's appeal for the excavations in that field on
Lord Stoke's property where Vikings are supposed to be buried--Bloody
Meadow. I believe Tebben, the Icelandic man over at Worsted, thought
highly of some bones they found."

"Tebben," said Jane. "That's the man you said was offered a job at
Adams's works, wasn't it, Laura?"

"Not the Icelandic one," said Mrs. Morland. "That's the father. It's the
son, Richard, that Mrs. Tebben was talking about."

"Dr. Madeleine Sparling, the headmistress of the Hosiers' Girls'
Foundation School," said Miss Bunting, while a reverent hush fell on the
room, "with whom I have the pleasure of being slightly acquainted, told
me, when we met at Lady Graham's one day, that she had under her charge
a girl called Heather Adams, whose father was self-made and owned a
large engineering works. This girl, she said, though with no particular
background, had what amounted to a distinct talent for the higher form
of mathematics, and was sitting for a scholarship at Newton College."

Miss Bunting's rolling periods, while received with the respect that was
her due, rather flattened general conversation.

"I remember Miss Sparling," said Anne suddenly.

"Doctor now," said Miss Bunting. "She was given an honorary D.Litt. at
Oxbridge last year. One should remember these things, both for
politeness and for accuracy."

"Doctor, then," said Anne, taking the correction in good part, much to
her parents' admiration. "She was living with Miss Pettinger at the High
School for a bit, and the boarders said how ghastly the Pettinger was
and how Miss, I mean Dr. Sparling's secretary had to make her cups of
tea and find bits of food for her, because the Pettinger was so stingy.
The secretary was called Miss Holly. She was rather like a
plum-pudding--only very quick."

Anne was indeed coming out with a vengeance, thought her parents again.
A few months ago she would have sat silent all evening, let alone
talking in a quite interesting way.

    "'Plum-pudding Flea,
     Plum-pudding Flea,
     Wherever you be,
     O come to our Tree,
     And listen, O listen, O
                 listen to me,'"

said Robin.

"It sounds like a charm to call fools into a circle," said Sir Robert,
more versed in the works of Shakespeare than those of Mr. Lear.

Then Jane said they must be going and the Dales said they would walk
with them.

"By the way, Laura," said Jane Gresham. "If you are staying on to-morrow
would you like to come and see us doing camouflage netting? It's quite
amusing."

"And if you'd care to come and look at my little school afterwards,"
said Robin, "I'd be proud. I am also," he added, "speaking for my
father, who is sure to want to show you his study. It is a ground-floor
room with a lot of books in it and a good many photographs of school and
college teams and societies--altogether remarkably like a study."

Mrs. Morland said if it suited the Fieldings she would love to. The
Fieldings said then do stay to lunch and go by the good afternoon train.
Mrs. Morland thanked them and her bag fell on the floor. Before the
chivalry of Hallbury could rally she had stooped and picked it up
herself. She then uttered a plaintive cry.

"Have you ricked yourself?" asked Jane, sympathetically.

"No, thank you," said Mrs. Morland. "It's only this. It's _always_
happening."

She held up her unlucky face--main, the glass bent at an angle to the
handle, so that it looked rather like the Quangle-Wangle when he sat
with his head in his slipper.

"It is useless like this," said its owner, tragically. "And if I try to
straighten it, it usually snaps or else the spring breaks."

She pushed the hairpins further into her head in a despairing way.

A perfect babel of advice arose. Some said have a longer ribbon, some a
shorter. Others again said stick it down your front and chance it, while
yet a further opinion was that it would be much safer to have one of
those little ones that fold up and become a clip, only then it would
cost about a hundred pounds with the purchase tax.

Robin stepped lightly to Mrs. Morland, took the corpse, straightened it
carefully and returned it to her.

"Oh, _thank_ you," said Mrs. Morland. "How you do it with your false
foot I cannot think."




                              CHAPTER III


In nearly every village or little town there is one middle-aged woman
who has a passion for committees, and runs or wishes to run every local
activity. If it is the great lady of the neighbourhood, all the better,
for she is still accepted where another might be questioned. But in
Hallbury, in spite of its considerable antiquity, there had never been
the equivalent of a squire's lady. Possibly it lay too much under the
shadow of Gatherum Castle for any local magnate to rear his head, and it
is a fact that there were no large land-owners near the Omnium estate. A
few of the old-established families had shared the leadership in a
republican way. The Rectory, Hall's End, Hallbury House, the doctor, the
solicitor, had at different times provided the unofficial ruler. Mrs.
Dale had led the town very ably from the Rectory until her early death
when Robin was five or six, inheriting the office from Admiral
Palliser's autocratic old mother who had kept everything going through
the last war. Then the doctor's wife had come to the front and managed
very well till her husband died, and she went back to her old home in
Ayrshire. This was at the beginning of the present war and for the time
being no candidate offered. People wondered if Jane Gresham would step
into her grandmother's place, but though intelligent and practical, she
was better as a worker than an organizer, and knew it. The Fieldings, as
we have already said, were still slightly suspect as newcomers, besides
which Lady Fielding was far too busy on county matters in Barchester to
give proper attention to local affairs. So by degrees, no other leader
being available, Mrs. Watson, the solicitor's wife, had slipped into the
part. Not by any desire to push, but as being by nature and
circumstances the best fitted. Her little boy Tom was attending Robin
Dale's classes; she had a good elderly maid, her husband's family had
been known and respected in Hallbury for several generations and she was
herself of good sub-county stock accustomed for generations to take
responsibility and get things done. With such qualifications there was
no opposition to her sway, especially as there was an unspoken feeling
that her husband, who was extremely sensible, would be behind her and
keep things in order.

By great good luck there was at the end of the Watsons' garden a large
wooden building with a corrugated iron roof, which had been erected
during the South African War by the present owner's grandfather, to
serve as a Drill Hall and recreation room. Though the use of the hall
was freely given to Hallbury, old Mr. Watson had never let any rights
over it go out of his possession, nor had his successors. So when this
war began, Mrs. Watson with great foresight had the heating plant
overhauled and bought quantities of thick blackout material, and whether
used as one large room for meetings or working parties, or as two rooms
partitioned by folding doors, it was invaluable to the town. Two or
three years previously the Hallbury W.V.S. at a request from their
Barchester head office, had taken on the making of camouflage and to
this one end of the hall had been entirely given up; the end which had a
separate entrance from the Watsons' garden as well as the entrance from
the lane beyond. A band of workers, skilled and unskilled, W.V.S. and
non-union, regular and not very regular, had been collected by Mrs.
Watson and had on the whole done remarkably well. Jane Gresham had been
one of her first helpers and her most faithful, coming four mornings a
week, whatever the season or the weather, from nine-thirty to
twelve-thirty and two afternoons from two to five, except when she took
Frank away for the holidays; and this happened less and less as
travelling became more difficult and darkness seemed to encroach more
and more. Upon her and three or four others Mrs. Watson could rely. The
rest appeared to look upon it as an agreeable and movable feast, their
attendance at which was in the nature of a concession and need not be
taken seriously. More than once Mrs. Watson had been tempted to dismiss
her least reliable helpers with honeyed lies, but life in a small town
is difficult enough at any time and more difficult when each settlement
is as it were marooned, and to give offence is even easier than it
looks. So she contented herself with despising the slack members
inwardly and treating them with great courtesy outwardly.

It is possible that by so doing she had builded better than she knew,
for Mrs. Freeman, wife of the verger and sister-in-law to Admiral
Palliser's parlourmaid, otherwise a valuable worker, was far too apt to
ring Mrs. Watson up at lunch and say would it frightfully matter if she
didn't come that afternoon as her sister wanted her to go to the
pictures in Barchester, or to approach her at the end of a tiring
afternoon's work with what she obviously considered to be a winning
smile, and say she did hope she wouldn't be upsetting anyone if she
didn't come next morning as Jennifer would be so upset if she didn't
take her to the Bring-and-Buy Sale for Comforts for Gum-Boilers at High
Rising. To which Mrs. Watson, valuing good feeling in a small community
even above war-work (and also knowing that her faithful helpers would
always work overtime without a murmur if necessary), would reply with
the utmost appearance of unruffled approval that of _course_ Mrs.
Freeman must go and she was _sure_ they could manage without her, though
her help was always missed and anyway she deserved a holiday. But one
day a year or so previously when Mrs. Freeman had just backed out of
next day's work owing to having to take the cat to the vet and had been
assured that it didn't matter in the least, she had heard Mrs. Watson
say to Mrs. Gresham who had suddenly managed to get someone else's
cancelled appointment with her dentist: "All right, Jane, we'll manage
somehow, but you know Wednesday is always hell. You are a nuisance." To
which Mrs. Gresham had replied that if that tooth of hers hadn't
prevented her from eating and sleeping for two days she wouldn't have
taken the appointment and she would be back by four and put in an hour's
work. Upon this both ladies had parted in a perfectly friendly manner.

Now Mrs. Freeman, though rather silly, was not a fool and considering
this matter while Mr. Freeman was out with the Home Guard that evening,
she came to the conclusion that it was perhaps a sign of higher social
status to be scolded for not keeping one's engagements than to have the
slackness condoned. She was a good wife. She knew that her husband had
ambitions, reporting items of local news for the _Barchester Chronicle_,
and busying himself in Hallbury affairs; and being of good Barsetshire
stock she realized that it still pays to be in with the gentry. So
without saying anything she turned over a new leaf. She kept her word to
Jennifer about the Bring-and-Buy for a promise is a promise, but we are
glad to say that she sent that rather spoilt only child, whose first
teeth stuck out horridly, as a weekly boarder to Barchester High School
next term. Here Jennifer was very happy, believed in the honour of the
school and was a substitute in the junior lacrosse team almost at once,
besides making what her parents considered some nice friends: and the
school doctor so frightened her mother about her front teeth that she
was sent to Mrs. Gresham's dentist and had them straightened. And Mrs.
Freeman, with real perseverance, stuck to her three days a week and
became a valuable helper. All of which will be of considerable
assistance to Mr. Freeman on his upward path.

                 *        *        *        *        *

On the morning after the Fieldings' dinner party, Mrs. Morland, as had
been arranged on the previous evening, walked from Hall's End to the
Watsons' house a little further down the hill, through the side gate up
the long garden which looked very depressing after the year's winds and
drought, to the Drill Hall. Here, being a diffident creature and quite
unable to realize that she had a certain value as a writer quite apart
from her own personality of which, living at close quarters with it as
she did, she had the lowest opinion, she began to wonder if Jane really
wanted her to come, if Mrs. Watson would want someone who wasn't going
to work coming bothering in, if it was really rather secret and she
oughtn't to know about it, and if it wouldn't be better to go away
again. She then with great courage gave a half-hearted knock on the door
and waited. There was no answer. By this time she had so muddled herself
that she did not dare to go in (thus possibly profaning some mystery and
being cast out again with scorn), or go back (with the chance of being
seen going down the garden and being thought mad or rude). So awful was
this dilemma that she might have stayed there till lunch-time, had not
Jane, who had seen her come up the garden, guessed that her knock had
been too gentle to be heard among the talk and movement, and opened the
door.

Mrs. Morland followed her guide into the hall, where she was introduced
to Mrs. Watson, a jolly rather fat person with a loud voice, who
expressed her great pleasure that Mrs. Morland was favouring them with
her company.

"I hope you won't think it rude," she said, "if I tell you what a help
your books have been to me. Often when I have been so tired and worried
that I couldn't rest I have taken one of your books to bed with me and
forgotten _everything_. You will find a lot of your admirers here."

"I can't tell you how pleased I am," said Mrs. Morland, anxiously
tucking a bit of hair away under her hat as she caught sight of herself
in a small mirror on the wall. "I can't tell you how nice it is to meet
_real_ people who have liked a book, because though if it weren't for
the libraries I wouldn't be able to afford to live in my house and give
presents to all my boys and my grandchildren, it is quite different to
meet a real _person_."

"Well, I do buy your books," said Mrs. Watson. "At least I make my
husband give me the new one every year. Now I expect you would like to
see what we are doing. We are very proud of our work, because
headquarters say we are the best team in the country."

Mrs. Morland looked round. Two great forms, rather like giant beds set
up on edge, stood across the hall, decorated apparently with green and
brown rags. At a table several women were cutting lengths of brown and
green, others were drawing. Everyone seemed very busy and Mrs. Morland
felt a drone among bees, and was just going to ask if she hadn't better
go away and leave them to go on with their work when Mrs. Watson said:

"Now, we all know that Mrs. Morland is a very busy person with many
calls on her time, so we must not waste it," which so took that lady
aback that she felt inclined to say lawk-a-mercy on me, this is none of
I.

Mrs. Watson then showed her the patterns they had to work by, the way
the frames were strung, the material cut in long strips, the strips
woven into the netting and every detail of the work, with a quick, clear
way of explaining which Mrs. Morland much admired.

"Jane and Mrs. Freeman--this is Mrs. Freeman; Mrs. Freeman, I want to
introduce you to Mrs. Morland whose books we all enjoy so much--are our
best workers on the frames," said Mrs. Watson and stood back, proudly
watching the effect.

"I think it is _wonderful_," said Mrs. Morland, more nervous than ever
at the sight of so much competency and anxious to give satisfaction
without having in the least grasped what they were doing. "Don't you get
very tired?"

"Well, we do," said Mrs. Freeman, "but it is all in the good cause, Mrs.
Morland, and when we think of Our Boys out there, we can't do enough for
them."

"Oh, have you boys in the forces?" said Mrs. Morland, catching at a
familiar straw. "All mine are fighting somewhere though of course with
the naval ones one never quite knows where. But my youngest boy, who is
in the Artillery with the Barsetshire Yeomanry, writes a great deal when
he is out of action, and wonderfully clearly considering the Germans.
Are yours in Holland?"

Mrs. Freeman said she had only the one girl, but one couldn't help
thinking of Our Boys, and she hoped it wasn't anything serious with Mrs.
Morland's son being out of action like that, though his mother must be
quite pleased he wasn't in that dreadful fighting.

Pulling her wits together, Mrs. Morland said Oh no, Tony wasn't out of
action like that: it was only that he wrote when he wasn't _in_ action,
and it was so kind of Mrs. Freeman, but Tony would be quite furious if
he weren't fighting.

"And so should I," she said, ferociously. But anyone who knew her would
have known that she meant it, and Tony, while deprecating his mamma's
way of making herself a motley to the view with all fresh acquaintances,
would have strongly supported her attitude.

"Stringing the frames is hard on the hands," said Jane. "We've tried
gloves and we've tried wrapping rags round our fingers like French
soldiers' feet, but nothing except human skin stands up to the work."

    "Gilding fades fast
     But pigskin will last,"

said Mrs. Morland, sympathetically. "Not that it's true, because if you
have ever had a pigskin bag you will know how crumbly all the corners of
it go until they come to pieces; but an old frame with gilding on it and
images in churches seem to last for hundreds of years."

Realizing that her distinguished visitor might go on like this for ever,
Mrs. Watson led her to the other workers, who were all admirers of her
books. Mrs. Morland in her turn humbly and sincerely admired their
industry and neat fingers and everyone was on the very best of terms.
Mrs. Freeman asked her to write her name on a piece of paper for
Jennifer, which she willingly did. Warmed by this piece of fame, she
recovered her poise, expressed the greatest interest in all she had
seen, complimented them on being the only team in the county who were
allowed to design their own patterns, and left exactly at the right
moment.

"By the way, Mrs. Morland," said Mrs. Watson as she opened the outer
door for her guest, "do you know anything about Mr. Adams, the man who
owns the engineering works at Hogglestock? He is taking some rooms in
the New Town these holidays for his daughter and her governess, from a
widow, a Mrs. Merivale. My husband does her little bits of business for
her and he wants to know if they will be nice tenants for Mrs. Merivale,
who is far too kind and simply asks people to impose upon her. I don't
mean on the money side, but just personally. We wouldn't like her to
have the wrong sort of paying guest."

"Adams," said Mrs. Morland. "No, I have never come across them. But I
believe Mrs. Belton knows them. Yes, I'm sure I've heard her talk about
them. One of her sons saved the girl from being drowned in the lake last
winter, I think. She is at the Hosiers' Girls' School."

"Oh, well, if Mrs. Belton knows them, that ought to be all right," said
Mrs. Watson, and went back to her work.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Mrs. Morland then continued her almost royal progress to the Rectory
where Dr. Dale showed her all her books in a neat row on his study
shelves, and she was able to ask him whether two Latin words which she
proposed to incorporate into her next book were really spelt like that.
She then visited Robin's class where she made a great success with the
little boys by telling them about the dreadful day when her youngest boy
Tony and a school friend put all the peas they had shelled down the
bathroom basin so that it was stopped up, and then dropped the spanner
with which they had unscrewed the U-joint out of the window into the
water butt; also how he and that same friend had climbed out of a
skylight on to the vicarage roof and there played the mouth organ while
the vicar raged below.

Having told this story, she was assailed with doubts as to whether a
school housed in clerical stabling was quite the right place for it. The
joyful shrieks of the little boys reassured her to a certain extent, but
she did not feel quite at her ease till she had privately consulted
Robin, who gave it as his opinion that if she had said a rectory, he
might have felt obliged to raise a protest, but as it was a mere
vicarage where Tony played the mouth organ, the Church of England could
stand it.

Master Watson then approached her.

"I've got three rabbits at home," he remarked.

Mrs. Morland said how lovely, and half of her thought with a pang how
very nice little boys were with rather dirty hands and a bandage on one
knee and wished her own four sons were still in that state of innocence;
though she knew well with the other half that she could never go through
it all again even if so doing would stop the war.

Master Watson looked at her and said nothing.

"What have you done to your knee?" she inquired.

"Fell off my bike," said Master Watson. "I'll show you the place if you
like."

Before Mrs. Morland could pull herself together Master Watson had undone
the not over-clean bandage and showed her the knee, which was at the
least attractive stage of healing.

"It's ravelgash," said he proudly.

"He means gravelrash," said Frank Gresham. "I had much worse gravelrash
when I fell off the toolshed. Tom's only just eight. I'm going to be
nine in December. Would you like to see Tom's rabbits? Come on, Tom."

He put his hand into Mrs. Morland's and began to pull, which proof of
confidence so affected her as nearly to make her cry; but her better
self again coming to the rescue and informing her that Jane Gresham's
little boy was being both presumptuous and patronizing, she regarded him
for the moment with almost as cold a dislike as her own adored sons had
frequently roused in her, and said she was very sorry she couldn't see
the rabbits, but she must get back to lunch at the Fieldings. Although
she said this with a courageous aspect she was secretly embarrassed by
Master Gresham's vice-like grip and wondered if she would have to go
about with him attached to her for the rest of her life, when luckily
Robin intervened, told the little boys to go home, and said he would
walk down to Hall's End with her if he might.

"I'd love it," she said, "if you are sure you can."

"We don't have lunch till a quarter past," said Robin.

"But oughtn't you to rest," said Mrs. Morland, giving herself a kind of
general shake with the intention of tidying her clothes, hat and hair,
though with very poor results, "I mean put it up, or something."

Robin suddenly realized what her misplaced compassion was driving at.
She looked so anxious--almost damp with worry Robin thought irreverently
to himself--that he hastened to reassure her.

"If you mean my stupid foot," he said, concealing very well the
annoyance, unreasonable perhaps but inevitable, that such well-meant
thoughtlessness always caused him "it's perfectly all right. I really
hardly think about it at all now. We'll go out by the stable door, shall
we, and get round into the High Street by Little Gidding--nothing
religious, only the name of a lane, pre-Domesday as far as my father
knows."

They went out by a wooden door in a dark red brick wall ivy-grown, and
came into the little cobbled lane which curled round and came into the
High Street at Mr. Pattern's corner.

"People do do _wonders_," said Mrs. Morland.

Robin said he was sure they did; in almost everything, he added, hoping
to cover by this his complete ignorance of what his gifted companion was
talking about.

"There's that man who played polo," said Mrs. Morland. "And I believe
there's one who rows. And someone who used to climb mountains, though
whether he really could afterwards, I am not quite sure. And I had an
old friend whose leg stuck straight out in front of him when he sat
down, and he had to hit it, and then it doubled up and no one would have
noticed. And he had perfectly ordinary trousers."

Whether to take off his foot and kill the celebrated authoress with it,
to shake the breath out of her body, to burst out laughing in her face,
Robin was undecided. But being a level-headed young man in most things,
pluming himself on an eighteenth-century delight in characters and
oddities, and having, not without many bitter moments, decided that an
artificial foot was something to be taken metaphorically in one's
stride, and that what people said really didn't matter, he choked down
his rising irritation.

"All those fellows were splendid," he said generously, "but they had a
great advantage over me. To lose a leg is on the grand scale. A mere
foot is just rather ridiculous."

Mrs. Morland said she was very sorry indeed. And by the way she said it
Robin guessed that she was also sorry for her well-meant and quite
idiotic way of expressing sympathy, and was furious with himself for
having so far betrayed his feelings. So to make amends he asked after
Tony Morland with whom, as we know, he had been at Southbridge School,
though senior to him.

Tony, Mrs. Morland said, was quite well when last heard from, and wanted
the most extraordinary things that no one in England had been able to
get for ages, like fountain-pens, and wrist-watches, and razor blades
and pretence gold safety-pins, to fasten his collar flaps down. Also he
wanted a lot of extra underclothes, and as he was fighting he couldn't
get any coupons, so she had to spend all hers on his requirements, but
she didn't mind, as she had quite a good stock of clothes herself and if
spending coupons would annoy the income tax people she was all for it.

Robin said he hadn't much hope of their minding anything, and then they
talked about old Southbridge friends and Robin told Mrs. Morland that
Philip Winter, his predecessor as classics master, had just managed to
marry Leslie Waring, the niece of the people at Beliers Priory, by the
skin of his teeth on twenty-four hours' leave, and was now somewhere in
Holland.

"Then I expect he will see Tony," said Mrs. Morland, who evidently
considered this the chief object of anyone under General Dempsey's
command.

And then she told him that the Carters had another baby, called Noel,
after Noel Merton who had married Mrs. Carter's sister Lydia; and he
told her that the headmaster's elder daughter, the lovely Rose Birkett
who had thrown Philip over for Lieutenant, now Captain Fairweather,
R.N., an old Southbridgian, had also had another baby, her third he
thought, and was in Portugal with all her children and her husband, who
was on a mission there, and had made great havoc among the Portuguese
with her exquisite English fairness.

"Well, good-bye, and thank you very much for letting me see the school,"
said Mrs. Morland, when they reached Hall's End.

"Oh, I thought I might as well look in for a moment," said Robin,
opening the front door which was never locked in the daytime.

"Hullo, my boy," said Sir Robert, emerging from his library in a very
holiday frame of mind. "Come and have some sherry. We didn't finish it
last night. Will you join us, Laura?"

"Oh, thanks most awfully, sir," said Robin, suddenly and surprisingly
gauche.

"We needn't share it," said Sir Robert. "Dora can't touch it, and Anne
and Miss Bunting have gone to lunch with the Pallisers--with the Admiral
and Jane I should say, though it's difficult not to think of her as Jane
Palliser with her husband missing so long, poor girl."

"Oh, thanks most awfully, sir," said Robin, "but I expect father will be
wanting me. I didn't know it was so late."

He ran off with very little perceptible limp towards the Rectory. The
bell of St. Hall Friars sounded one.

"I thought the Rectory had lunch at a quarter past," said Sir Robert,
thoughtfully. "Well, all the more for us, Laura. Come into the library."

After lunch Lady Fielding had to go to High Rising for a W.V.S. meeting,
so she and Mrs. Morland went off together, and were able to have a
delightful talk about Mrs. Morland's new novel, of which a number of
intellectual pink young gentlemen who were mysteriously free from the
galling chains of the fighting or industrial forces, had written in
weeklies that Mrs. Morland represented the effete snobbery of a
capitalist society, comparing her unfavourably with the great
mid-European woman writer, Gudold Legpul, whose last book (said to have
been smuggled at the risk of patriots' lives to England via Barcelona,
but really composed in the comparative seclusion of her home in
Willesden), I Bare my Breasts, had so courageously attacked the Fascist
Government of our so-called Empire; while other and older men, who had
long ago given up worrying about politics on account of having to read
twelve novels every week and write intelligently about them on Sundays,
said Mrs. Morland had again given us of her best, and retold the plot of
her story slightly wrong. But as Mrs. Morland knew nothing about
reviews, having like the gentlemen just mentioned quite enough to do to
earn her living honestly, unless friends were kind enough to tell her
about the nasty ones, the world went on much as before.

As was perhaps natural, their talk gradually shifted to their children.
Here Mrs. Morland showed great magnanimity in not deploying her four
sons against Lady Fielding's one daughter.

"Of course it would have been very nice, Dora," she said to Lady
Fielding, "if we could have married some of our children, but it doesn't
look like it."

"If you mean Robin Dale," said Lady Fielding, who had the good
professional chairwoman's habit of going as straight to the point as
possible, "I think you are wrong. If he is attracted by anyone, it's
poor Jane Gresham--no harm in it, but they have known each other all
their lives, and it's easy to feel sorry for a girl in her
position--she's only four years older than he is."

"I daresay you are right," said Mrs. Morland, reserving her own opinion.

"Anyway, Anne is too young for us to worry yet," said Lady Fielding.

"Of course," said Mrs. Morland, going off on one of her usual
snipe-flights, "my elder boys can't marry anyone, because they are
married."

"There are still Dick and Tony," said Lady Fielding not very seriously.

"Dick is probably engaged by now," said Mrs. Morland placidly. "He wants
me to send him some of the old photographs of himself as a horrid little
boy to Australia, which is where his ship is now, and there's only one
person in the world that could want to look at that sort of thing. As
for Tony," said Mrs. Morland letting down the window, for they were
coming into High Rising, and it was the sort of railway carriage which
can't be opened from the inside, thus causing sufferers from
claustrophobia and pyrophobia to go mad, "it would be delightful and
nothing I'd like more, but I'm afraid Anne isn't common enough for him."

The train stopped, Mrs. Morland opened the door and they got out.

"I do admire your way of looking straight at things more than I can say,
Laura," said Lady Fielding. "I don't know another woman who could say
that. Come again soon."

Perplexed but gratified, Mrs. Morland got out of the train and was at
once pounced upon by her old friend and ex-secretary, Mrs. George Knox,
the W.V.S. secretary, who had a little petrol when on official work and
had come to meet Lady Fielding and was able to take Mrs. Morland part of
the way home.

As Anne's parents were taking a well-earned week's holiday, except when
one or other of them had to go into Barchester, which happened far too
often, Miss Bunting had graciously waived the question of lessons for
the time being. Some governesses would have been under these conditions
a confounded nuisance to put it mildly, but Miss Bunting had not for
nothing spent many years of her life avoiding being a nuisance to His
Grace, or the Marquess, or his mere Lordship. Indeed among her most
cherished recollections was the skill with which she, with the ladies
Iris and Phyllis, then under her charge, kept out of the way of the
Marquess of Bolton during the week when the Budget came out; though even
this was perhaps eclipsed by the tact with which she had effaced
herself, Lord Henry Palliser and the ladies Griselda and Glencora
Palliser after the Derby when the Duke of Omnium's Planty Pal was
unplaced. Frequently had she told her various pupils that time should
never hang heavy on their hands, as there was always plenty of work to
be done, and conversely, that there was time enough to do everything if
only you used method. This was no idle phrase-making, for her whole life
had been founded on and still consisted in never being idle and never
being hurried. She did permit herself a short and ladylike nap after
lunch, it is true, but she had earned it by some fifty years of patient
conscientious devotion to pupils, most of whose children and in many
cases grandchildren were now caught up in the whirlwind of war.

Anne spent the morning with her father, watching him trim a hedge and
plant some more pea-sticks and do a bit of digging and talking to him in
a very agreeable and intelligent way. Miss Bunting got out her much-worn
writing-case and wrote a number of letters to old friends and pupils in
her clear flowing hand, read the Times quietly from beginning to end,
made up a bit of velvet ribbon into a new evening bow, heated her
curling irons on the gas-ring upstairs and recurled her spare fringe,
and finally gave Gradka an hour's lesson in English humour. That
industrious young woman had prepared a lunch, part of which was cooking
itself in the oven while the rest was sitting in the refrigerator, and
as she possessed the invaluable faculty of being able to concentrate on
one thing at a time, they got through a lot of work. Byron's satiric
poems and the Ingoldsby Legends she had now mastered for all examination
purposes and it merely remained to correlate the art of Sir William
Schwenk Gilbert with that of Samuel Butler before writing her essay.

Miss Bunting's opinion of public examinations of any kind was so small
as to be practically invisible, but she was quite aware that in the
world as it is most of us have to conform, and will have increasingly to
conform, so she determined to do her very best for Gradka, whose
pertinacity she admired though she found the student herself and her
complete self-satisfaction something of a trial. The Bab Ballads are not
perhaps the book we would choose to try to explain to a foreign refugee
with little knowledge of their historical and literary background, but
Miss Bunting did not know the word impossible. Having explained to
Gradka that the likeness between Gilbert and Butler must be sought in
their great facility and ingenuity in finding rhymes rather than in
their philosophical outlook (which gave Gradka a low opinion of Gilbert
at once), she proceeded to take these poems which, in her almost
infallible judgment, would be chosen as typical by the examiners, and
gave Gradka a short lecture upon their meaning with explanations of
various topical allusions. All of which Gradka took down in notes and
appeared to understand, having the cleverness of book-educated
foreigners at grasping the form of a joke combined with their total
inability to laugh at it.

"So; I thank you very much indeed," said Gradka at the end of Miss
Bunting's explanation. "There is one more poem which I shall ask you
about, 'Captain Reece.' It is a satire, is it not?"

Miss Bunting said not exactly. It was, she said, more in the nature of a
fantasy.

"A fantastic poem I shall say then in my essay, yes?" said Gradka.

Miss Bunting said not quite. She would herself call it on the whole a
humorous poem: light humour, she added.

"I now pretty well understand oll the English humour," said Gradka, "but
this poem, no. I read it as a satire upon your navy, which is pampered.
It is ollso a satire upon democracy when the Captain marries the
washerlady, yes? The humour is because she is a widow. Widow is very
humorous in English, like mother-in-law or dronk man. But one thing is
very admire-able that is the duty-theme. In Mixo-Lydia we are all
against duty, but here the duty-spirit is awfully popular."

Miss Bunting said doubtless Gradka meant that devotion to duty was an
essential trait of the English character; popular, she added, did not
have quite that meaning. To say that an actor, for instance, was popular
meant that the people liked his acting: not that his acting was
expressive of the people.

"Aha!" said Gradka, an exclamation into which she was able to put a
wealth of whatever meaning she chose--usually a sinister one. "In
Mixo-Lydia oll our actors are expressive of the people: they are ollso
popular as you say it. I ollso note in 'Captain Reece' the
repetition-theme which drives the symbohlic nail to its home by the act
of repeating. 'It is their duty and they will,' followed by 'It was
their duty and they did.' It is the Nelson totch. It is very striking. I
find it very English."

Miss Bunting was over seventy, but her well-trained brain, except in the
hour after lunch, worked as well and swiftly as ever. For an instant she
thought of trying to explain to Gradka that Gilbert was not really
thinking of Nelson or duty or democracy, or indeed anything except
amusing himself and his readers in light witty verse. Even as quickly
she decided that this would be governess's labour's lost, and that the
examiner would probably be much more in sympathy with Gradka's attitude
than with her own, which was incidentally that of the few widely
educated people left. And here she was perfectly right, for it was
Gradka's ponderous exposition of these very points that turned the scale
between a Beta plus and an Alpha minus, which was the mark she was
finally awarded.

So Miss Bunting folded her pince-nez and put them in their case, and
Gradka collected her books.

"One moment, there is something I shall ask you, Prodshkina Bunting,"
said Gradka. "You know a gentleman called Adams perhaps? An ironmonger,
very, very rich, at Hogglestock."

"We do not use the word ironmonger for a person who employs labour on a
large scale," said Miss Bunting. "We say ironmaster. Mr. Govern who
keeps the shop in the High Street is an ironmonger."

"I thank you," said Gradka, whose eager willingness to absorb
information on any subject under the sun was one of her many less
endearing qualities. "So; now I know Mr. Govern is the ironmonger and I
know he is the tinker for he tinks kettles. Do you know of the
ironmaster Adams?"

Miss Bunting said she had heard of him through common friends.

"Mr. Adams is perhaps common too?" said Gradka, with no wish to be like
that gentleman, but always ready to learn.

"A common friend in good English, means a friend of two or more people,"
said Miss Bunting, wishing Gradka would go away but impelled by her
life's training to give information where it was desired. "For instance,
Dr. Dale is a friend of Sir Robert's and a friend of Admiral Palliser's.
One could therefore say that he is their common friend."

"Aha," said Gradka thoughtfully. "Which you ollso say mutual friend. It
is a synonym, yes?"

"No, Gradka," said Miss Bunting roused like an old soldier by the
distant trumpet. "We do _not_ say mutual friend when we mean common
friend. That our great author Charles Dickens uses the word in this way
is a fact you may note, but not copy. He was a law to himself. A common
feeling is a feeling about some person or subject, shared by two or more
people. A mutual feeling is an identical feeling in each of two people
about the other. There could be a mutual friendship between two people.
A mutual friend is nonsense."

"So; I thank you again very much," said Gradka. "It is now quite clear
to me grammatically, ollso for speaking or literature, the difference
between common and mutual. I shall perhaps put this in my essay, for I
think the examiner will not know it and he will be so ashamed he will
have to give me good marks. So this will be to our mutual advantage. To
say our common advantage would be wrong here, yes?"

Miss Bunting praised Gradka's grasp of what she had just told her. She
also reflected that not one of her English pupils would have even tried
to understand what she had just said, and would have thought it broadly
speaking rot, and wondered why heaven had implanted in so many
unattractive Central Europeans such a passion for barren accuracy. It
had all been tiring and she wanted to get ready to take Anne to lunch at
the Pallisers.

"I shall tell you," said Gradka, "why I wish to know about the
ironmaster Adams. I have a friend Prodska Brownscu from Mixo-Lydia like
me, and she has told me how Mr. Adams has tricked a dirty Slavo-Lydian
who has tried to get some money for the Slavo-Lydian Red Cross last
year. And I wish to see the man who has done this. And Prodska Brownscu
has told me he has taken a lodging in the New Town, so I think I shall
see him there, yes?"

Miss Bunting told Gradka she had better go back to her lunch now, or
everything would be late. Gradka made a little bob and went downstairs.
Miss Bunting sat back for five minutes, her eyes shut, her hands folded;
a custom which she had found of great value in helping her to prepare
for a fresh lesson or engagement. The name Adams; everyone seemed to
know him or know about him. Not at all the kind of person one would wish
to know, she thought, but the world was changing too quickly for her and
she was old and tired, and if the world was to belong to the Adamses,
one must accept them, always keeping one's private integrity. At the end
of her five minutes she got up, washed her hands, put her hat and gloves
on and went to find Anne.

That young lady had already come in from the garden and was ready for
Miss Bunting in the hall. Her great week of pleasure was indeed well
under way. She had met her parents at the station, had a new dress,
assisted at an exciting dinner party, had her book signed by Mrs.
Morland, spent a lovely morning with daddy, and now had in prospect the
further treats of lunching at Hallbury House and then going down to the
station again to meet Lady Fielding on her return from High Rising; for
such was the afternoon's programme. Small enough beer one might say; but
to a girl without brothers or sisters, growing up during the war and
having led until lately a rather invalid existence, such pleasures,
scorned by her more sophisticated contemporaries, were very real. Sir
Robert and Lady Fielding, people themselves of a simple and in some ways
almost austere manner of life, were sensible enough not to expect their
only daughter to grow up in their likeness, but very glad to find that
she was not a slave to the spirit of this restless age.

Miss Bunting had a few errands at the post office, so she and Anne left
the house before one o'clock, passing the end of Little Gidding a few
minutes before Mrs. Morland and Robin Dale came down it. The business
transacted, they went on to Admiral Palliser's where the old parlourmaid
Freeman told them the Admiral was round the back of the house; a
misleading terminology, but clear to the meanest intellect. They found
their host and his grandson, who was just back from school, engaged in
the delightful task of cleaning out the scullery waste-pipe with a bit
of stout wire. The Admiral had his coat off and his shirt sleeves rolled
up. Frank had faithfully copied his grandfather, and both being of much
the same build, square and strong, they made a pleasant couple. As Miss
Bunting and Anne came round the corner the Admiral was probing for the
obstruction, while Frank gazed with rapt attention.

The Admiral having grappled his prize, sheered off, hauling as he went,
and with a sickening greasy plop, out came a horrid shapeless mass
covered in grey soapy slime. Frank joggled up and down to express his
pleasure.

"There," said the Admiral, straightening himself. "Why the maids have to
put rubbish like that down the sink, I don't know. Good day, ladies. If
you will excuse me I'll go and wash. I can't shake hands in my present
condition. Frank; take Miss Bunting and Anne into the drawing-room, wash
your hands and tell Freeman we're ready for lunch."

"Can I bury the slosh, grandpapa?" said Frank, eyeing longingly the
stinking mass.

It is just possible that the Admiral, though he prided himself on being
a martinet, would have given in to this request, for he hesitated. But
even as Frank spoke Miss Bunting had looked at him. There was nothing
particular in her look, she did not presume to criticize a distinguished
Engineer-Admiral's method of bringing up his small grandson, but such
was the command of the eye that had quelled the heir to many a peerage
or landed estate, that Frank said: "All right, grandpapa," and stood on
one leg.

"How _do_ they make that mess?" said the Admiral.

"I should say," said Miss Bunting, putting on her pince-nez and
regarding the mess with cold scientific interest, "that they never used
the sink basket and never put boiling water and soda down the pipe, and
probably had very old dishcloths."

"Well, well, I'll speak about it," said the Admiral. "Jane ought to be
back from her camouflage work now," and he went indoors by the kitchen
passage, while Frank conducted the ladies through the side door into the
drawing-room. Here he was about to put Miss Bunting through a searching
interrogatory about the slosh or muck of which she appeared to have so
profound a knowledge, but Miss Bunting remarked that his grandfather had
told him to wash, and such was her authority that he quite forgot to
make an excuse till he was in the bathroom and wiping his imperfectly
washed hands on the clean towel. Being a conscientious little boy, as
little boys go, he then industriously tried to wash the marks of his
dirty hands off the towel, which led to an interesting experiment as to
how far one could stuff a towel down the waste-pipe of the basin. It
would not go very far, even when prodded with a toothbrush, because the
corner, so neatly rolled to a point, rapidly developed into the main
body of the towel, large and unmanageable. The gong sounded, his
mother's voice was heard calling his name up the staircase. Frank
hastily withdrew the towel, not at all improved by being forced down a
soapy pipe, draped it in a negligent way over the towel-rail with the
dirtiest part to the wall and ran downstairs.

A nice bit of fat boiled bacon off the ration (which for the benefit of
any readers from another planet we will explain to mean not that the bit
of bacon in question comes off your ration, but that it isn't and never
was on it) with young potatoes and peas from the garden is not to be
despised. Frank did not despise it, by which happy chance his elders
were able to talk in peace for a time.

The talk, as in many a previous summer, was about going away for the
holidays, though as no one was going, the discussion was purely
academic. The Admiral spoke wistfully of the pleasant sequence of
grouse, partridge and pheasant. Jane wistfully mentioned motor tours
through France or the Tyrol with friends, or sailing a very small
uncomfortable yacht with her husband. Anne's eyes lighted as she said
how she had been to Devonshire with mummy and daddy, and bathed every
day when it was warm enough. Miss Bunting who, we regret to say, was not
enjoying her fat bacon as much as she used to before she acquired a
complete set of upper and unders, took advantage of a lull in the
conversation to say that one of her few disappointments when at Gatherum
Castle was that the schoolroom party never went to the Scotch place as
Her Grace preferred them to go to Littlehampton; which ducal memory
slightly damped the other members of the party. But, said Miss Bunting,
she was luckier than many other people this year, for Lady Graham had
kindly asked her for a week in August.

"You are the only one who is going away from Hallbury this summer," said
Jane Gresham, though not complaining. "I'm doing August and September at
the camouflage to let the people with more than one child get away.
Frank is going to his other grandfather at Greshambury for three or four
weeks before school begins again. It makes a change."

"I'll ride Roger's pony," said Frank, suddenly swallowing his last
mouthful in a way that should have choked him, only it didn't. "Roger's
afraid to jump. I jumped over a ditch."

"Go on with your lunch, Frank, you are all behindhand as it is," said
Jane, putting his pudding in front of him.

"Mary's afraid to jump too," said Frank. "I like ponies that rear. I'd
like to ride a buckjumper. Mother, could Mr. Dale ride a buckjumper with
only one foot? If I had only one foot, I'd always ride. Oh, mother, Tom
said if people's feet were shot off before they were too old, they could
grow again. Could they, mother?"

His mother said no; and to put his knife and fork together as Freeman
was waiting.

"Oh, Freeman, look here," said the Admiral. "Tell cook the scullery pipe
is all right now. She's been putting kitchen stuff and old clothes down
it."

Freeman, although it was meat and drink to her to know that cook was at
fault, was bound by the fine, if exasperating staff loyalty which
prevents any servant giving another one away while she is in the
employer's service. When the cook has been given notice and gone to a
fresh place with the excellent character that her employer is too
frightened to withhold; then is the moment when her fellow-servants
proffer the ominous words: "I think, madam, you ought to know----"
followed by a catalogue of crimes before which Moses would have
blenched. But while she is still in residence kitchenware may be broken
and hidden, fat sold, spirituous liquors from Hooper's Stores put on the
family account which will not be sent in till the following month, even
a pair or so of silk stockings abstracted from the wash, and the rest of
the staff will look the other way. So Freeman, who had more than once
had words with cook about the silly way she acted, not putting her
glasses on while she was doing the wash-up when it stood to reason you
couldn't get the mustard off the plates not if you didn't see it, at
once assumed entire solidarity with the kitchen front, and said she was
never one to meddle; throwing in as an afterthought a "Sir" whose tone
should have warned the Admiral.

Oh, if only father wouldn't quarter-deck the maids in public, thought
Jane, half-amused, half-annoyed; for to her would fall the task of
somehow smoothing things down.

"Lady Pomfret told me," said Miss Bunting to Jane, with the air of one
changing the conversation altogether, "that she simply could not get
good dishcloths at the Towers. She said," continued Miss Bunting with
deliberate untruthfulness, "that it was disgraceful that the Government
couldn't give us better dishcloths."

"Oh, dear!" said Jane, doing her best to take up the cue that she felt
Miss Bunting had offered her. "What can one do?"

"I knitted some for her with some nice coupon-free thick grey cotton,"
said Miss Bunting, "and there was no more trouble."

"Oh, Miss Bunting," said Anne, who had hardly spoken till now. "Couldn't
I knit some for the Admiral? I'm sure Hooper's have got grey knitting
cotton in the window this week, without coupons. Do you think cook would
like them?" she added, turning her head towards Freeman, for she was
young enough to be on good terms with the kitchen and not yet afraid of
them.

"I dessay cook wouldn't mind, miss," said Freeman in the gracious
language of her caste, and indeed of most people's castes now. And
putting the pudding on the table she went away.

Jane looked gratefully at Miss Bunting, who was again slightly
preoccupied with raspberry pips in her dentures and did not see, for she
had simply done her duty and for the ten-thousandth time helped an
employer out of a difficulty.

Lunch being over, Jane very kindly took Miss Bunting to the
drawing-room, established her in a comfortable chair, and gave her old
Lady Norton's book on gardens, _Herbs of Grace_, by which means Miss
Bunting had a peaceful sleep, while Anne and Frank dug a hole and had a
funeral for the slosh before Frank went back to school. Anne helped Jane
to bottle raspberries while cook was upstairs, and then Jane suggested
early tea before Miss Bunting and Anne went down to the station to meet
Lady Fielding. It was assumed that Miss Bunting had been reading Lady
Norton's book all afternoon, to which assumption Miss Bunting gave tacit
consent by comparing it unfavourably with similar books by other
gardening ladies of higher rank.

"Well, come again soon, both of you," said the Admiral who had escorted
his guests to the front gate. "A good idea of yours, Miss Bunting, about
the dishcloths and I'll see that cook puts boiling water and soda down
that pipe."

"For goodness sake don't, father," said Jane. "You know how horrid it
was after you told her about the scullery not being properly blacked
out. I'll try and find a good time to mention it."

"All right, my dear, all right," said the Admiral, rather impatiently,
for an old sailor does not lose the habit of command easily. "I'll tell
you what the trouble is, Miss Bunting, one can't get the right wire to
go through these pipes. You want something thicker than I can get, but
very flexible. I dare say there's a good reason that we shouldn't have
it. Mr. Churchill knows best. But I _would_ like a good long piece of
stout wire with a hooked end," said the Admiral wistfully, thinking of
the days when he had the engineers' stores under his thumb wherever he
went and could indent for any delightful bit of metal he wanted.

"Nice girl, Anne Fielding," he said to his daughter as they watched Miss
Bunting and her pupil walk down the High Street. "Who _are_ all the
girls going to marry, poor children? There's not a man about the place
except poor Robin."

"Perhaps they will be just as happy if they aren't married," said Jane,
which made her father blame herself for reminding her of Francis
Gresham. Poor Jane. There was little Frank, it is true, but it looked as
if Frank would be an only son, an only child. And even if Francis came
back at last, how would he and Jane settle down; what would be the end?
Then he told himself not to be an old fool and went to his library where
he found occupation enough in getting the accounts of the local
Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association into shape for the annual
audit, for he was treasurer for Barsetshire and took his duties very
seriously.

Would they be just as happy if they didn't marry, Jane wondered, as she
went upstairs. By the landing window she paused and looked over the
garden and paddock at the lovely Barsetshire landscape before her, with
the woods of Gatherum Castle in the distance. If she were not married;
if there had never been a Francis Gresham, and she were still Jane
Palliser, would it be better? No one here for her to marry either,
except Robin, she thought, laughing without much mirth at the idea; even
if she were free. Did she want to be free, she tried to ask herself.
Would she be glad or sorry if Francis came back; if she had certain news
that he was dead, poor Francis.

A spot of raspberry juice on her frock suddenly roused hot anger in her.

"Oh, what is the _good_ of it all?" she said aloud, and went to the
bathroom, telling herself, as her father had just done, not to be a
fool.

The bathroom was, not to put too fine a point upon it, in a mess. Water
was slopped on the floor, the soap was sitting in a puddle of water on
the ledge of the basin. She turned the hot tap on, hoping it might run
really hot if cook had remembered to make up the fire before retiring to
her room for the afternoon, and while it ran she picked up the towel
from the rail. The rail was cool, which presaged ill for the water: the
towel was wet and the side of it that had been nearest the wall filthily
dirty. Her odious son again, of course. How often she had told Frank to
rinse the dirty soap off his hands before he dried them she could not
guess: ever since Nannie went on to the Greshambury nursery two years
ago, certainly. Well, thank goodness the laundry still called, though at
irregular and ill-ascertained intervals. She was about to throw the
towel into the basket where the week's dirty towels were put, when she
reflected that being wet it would make everything else wet and
possibly--if the laundry left as long a gap as it did last time--grow
green-mould. With controlled rage she folded it and hung it on the rail
again, hoping that in cook's good time the water would be hot.

"And that's about all I'm fit for," she said scornfully, to her own
reflection in the mirror over the basin. The face that looked back at
her gave her no help at all. Indeed, it looked so disagreeable that she
couldn't help laughing at it and then she thought of Frank and how very
much nicer he was than all the other little boys she knew, how tight his
hug, how affecting the nape of his neck and the way he sprawled over the
bed in his sleep. Her face softened as she came to the reasonable
conclusion that she was being of some use in helping to bring up a happy
intelligent little boy who appeared to find her quite satisfactory. And
then Frank came dashing in to his tea bringing Tom Watson with him, and
she stopped thinking about herself.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When Miss Bunting and Anne got to the station, the train from High
Rising was not yet signalled and they were able to enjoy such familiar
but always interesting sights as a lot of mysterious wooden boxes being
put into a van in the little siding, several hens going mad in a crate,
the village hunchback who sold newspapers, chocolates and cigarettes in
a little booth creeping out of it by a flap under the counter rather
like Alice when she had at last made herself the right size to open the
tiny door, the stationmaster coming down to the station from his house
in a bowler hat, going into his office and emerging in his gold-braided
cap, the porter having a heavy Barsetshire flirtation with a Land Girl,
two dogs tied up in the parcels office getting their leads entangled and
a tabby cat walking about on the line, with that indefinably down at
heels and slatternly air that cats have when out of their proper
surroundings. So what with one thing and another the time passed very
pleasantly till the train came in and Lady Fielding got out of it. The
only other passengers for Hallbury were a short, vigorous rather
roly-poly brisk woman and a large ungraceful girl.

"Mummy!" said Anne. "Do look. That's Miss Holly."

"Do I know about her?" said Lady Fielding in whom the name struck no
chord.

"Yes, mummy, I _told_ you," said Anne eagerly. "Miss Sparling's
secretary, that was with Miss Pettinger and they hadn't enough to eat.
Oh, mummy, you _do_ remember."

Lady Fielding dimly remembered something Anne had said about the
headmistress of the Hosiers' Girls' Foundation School, and her secretary
being the guests for a time of the headmistress of Barchester High
School who was famed for her chill hospitality, but the whole affair had
very little interest for her, she did not want to stare at complete
strangers, and moved towards the exit with Anne hanging on her arm.

"Excuse me," said a voice to Miss Bunting, who was a little behind the
Fieldings, "but aren't you Miss Bunting? Dr. Sparling, my chief, met you
at Lady Graham's and she told me you were staying at Hallbury. Holly is
my name, Dr. Sparling's secretary."

Miss Bunting graciously acknowledged her identity. Each lady was
secretly comparing the other with her description as given by a third
person. Miss Bunting, remembering Anne's definition of Miss Holly as
rather like a plum pudding, only very quick, admitted its correctness.
Miss Holly, to whom Dr. Sparling had mentioned meeting an old governess
who was exactly what a good ex-governess ought to look like, felt that
she would have recognized the original anywhere, and that if the place
of their chance meeting had been Timbuctoo, Miss Bunting would have been
just the same, her skirt unfashionably long, her hat unfashionably high
on her head, her withered throat encircled by a black ribbon, yet
unmistakably a lady of birth, breeding and intellect.

"This is Heather Adams," said Miss Holly. "Her father has engaged me to
give her some coaching before she goes to Newton College for which she
won a very good scholarship. He has taken rooms here for the holidays
and wanted us to have a look at them."

The large girl shook hands with Miss Bunting, who congratulated her. By
this time they were all at the gate and at such close quarters that it
would not have been civil to ignore the newcomers, especially as Anne
had claimed Miss Holly as an old acquaintance, so Miss Bunting
introduced Miss Holly to Lady Fielding and then Heather Adams's name was
mentioned.

"I think Heather's father knows Sir Robert slightly," said Miss Holly.
"Mr. Adams who owns the Hogglestock works, you know. He did mention that
he had had some correspondence about the Friends of Barchester Cathedral
Fund."

Lady Fielding made a suitable and polite reply, feeling slightly annoyed
with Miss Bunting and incidentally with her daughter Anne, for letting
her in for acquaintance whom she did not think her husband particularly
wanted.

While they were speaking, the New Town taxi was seen coming up the ramp.
It drew up and disgorged Mrs. Merivale.

"What _will_ you think of me being so late?" she said. "Miss Holly,
isn't it? And Heather Adams--how do you do, dear? I had ordered Packer's
taxi as soon as I got Mr. Adams's phone call saying you were coming to
look at the rooms, and I told him to come round by Valimere and the time
was going on and no sign of him and I felt quite upset, so I phoned up
the garage and they had forgotten the order, just fancy! But most
luckily Mr. Packer was there himself and he was quite upset and said it
was a mistake in the office because the young lady was out this
afternoon, but he would come himself. So now, do get in and Mr. Packer
will drive us out to my house and wait to take you back to catch the
Barchester train. Mr. Adams liked my rooms and I thoroughly enjoyed our
little talk and if you see anything you would like altering you must be
sure to tell me."

In a flutter of kindly excitement she herded her guests into the taxi
and they drove away.

"Isn't Miss Holly nice, mummy?" said Anne, when they had crossed the
footbridge and were mounting the High Street.

Lady Fielding was rather tired by a troublesome meeting at High Rising
where even Mrs. George Knox's tact had not been able to prevent Lady
Bond putting several people's backs up, for her ladyship though Staple
Park was let to a school and she and Lord Bond were living in a small
house on their estate, had not abated one jot of her viceregal
domineering. Also she saw with resigned despair that this chance
encounter had the seed of an annoying amount of social intercourse in it
and would more than likely lead to a nearer acquaintance with both Mr.
Adams and his not very prepossessing daughter. So she did not respond
with her usual enthusiasm to her daughter's artless remark, and then
blamed herself and felt a beast.

Miss Bunting, whose life as a highly valued governess had made her very
sensible to fine shades, had a pretty good guess at what Lady Fielding
was thinking, and was sorry for her. Her own conscience was clear; the
most ordinary good manners had forced her to speak to Miss Holly and
Heather Adams; and even to introduce Miss Holly to Lady Fielding. She
could do no less. Miss Holly was a pleasant and capable woman, secretary
to a woman of unusual distinction as teacher and organizer in the
scholastic world, who was holder of an honorary degree at Oxbridge, and
the only woman upon whom the freedom of the Hosiers' Company had ever
been bestowed. So far so good. But the introduction of Heather Adams was
not so good. Miss Bunting knew what Sir Robert felt about her wealthy
and rather pushing father without being told; just as she had known that
the Marquess of Bolton would never allow the Marchioness to ask that
dreadful Mr. Holt to come and see the garden; just as she had known how
the Duke and Duchess of Omnium, kind and easy-going people on the whole,
would see to it that Sir Ogilvy Hibberd never got his foot within their
doors, even before his shocking attempt to buy Pooker's Piece for
building land, and his discomfiture at the hands of old Lord Pomfret.

However, it had been impossible to avoid the unexpected meeting, and as
she was in no way to blame, she with her usual clear common sense did
not blame herself. Lady Fielding's spurt of ill-humour subsided before
Anne had realized it was there, and it was a very happy party that sat
down to dinner at Hall's End.

"Daddy, isn't it lovely, we've still got to-night, and Friday, Saturday,
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday," said Anne. "Everything has been lovely and
_long_ since yesterday. I do hope it will go on being long."

"So do I," said Sir Robert, smiling. "But not all Tuesday. We have to go
back to Barchester on Tuesday."

"Oh, _daddy_!" said Anne reproachfully. "You came on Wednesday and you
said a week."

A complicated discussion then took place as to what a week really was.
Lady Fielding said seven days might mean seven whole days with a day at
each end for coming and going which would make it nine. Miss Bunting
said if people invited one to come on Tuesday for a week, it was
difficult to know whether they expected one to go on the following
Tuesday, or on the Monday just preceding it. She herself, she said,
always took care when she received similar invitations to have the days
of the week in writing from her hostess. Sir Robert said he had always
wondered why the French, who were supposed to be logical, called a week
a semaine and a fortnight a quinzaine, as no amount of logic could make
twice seven be fifteen. It was, he said, just what you would expect from
the French, and for his part he thought we ought to have Calais, which
really belonged to us, and then there wouldn't be so much nonsense. Lady
Fielding then pleaded for Aquitaine and Normandy, and everyone fell into
the delightful game of remaking the map of Europe on purely personal
prejudices, without the faintest regard for history, geography, or
(quite rightly) race, for as Gradka said, who came in at the end of
dinner, put everything on to the trolley and wheeled it away with
slightly scornful competence,

"If it is of races you speak, Mixo-Lydia will never tolerate
Slavo-Lydia. You have an English proverb which says 'Blood is thicker
than water,' but I shall tell you that Slavo-Lydians have pigs' blood,
_un point c'est tout_. Pouah!"

"They must be dreadful people," said Lady Fielding, far too
sympathetically. "Good night, Gradka."

"I shall tell you," said Gradka to Miss Bunting, pausing in the open
door with the loaded trolley, "of sommthing very humorous."

"Very well, Gradka, but shut the door," said Miss Bunting. "These summer
nights are so cold."

"You know, everybody," said Gradka, standing with one hip thrown out and
an arm akimbo in a rather truculent way, "that I have stoddied English
humour, as exemplified in Butler and Byron and the Ingoldsby Legends and
W. S. Gilbert. But there is one very fonny thing which I shall tell the
examiners. It is a piece of inconscious humour."

"_Un_conscious," said Miss Bunting.

"So; thank you very much," said Gradka. "You know the names of Sir W. S.
Gilbert, what they are. They are William Schwenk. And what is Schwenk?"

"Probably a family name," said Sir Robert, who was bored.

"Family! That would indeed be humorous. As well you might say Christian,
for no English are truly Christian," said Gradka crossing herself
fervently in the Mixo-Lydian form, which Mrs. Morland had once described
as very upside-down and un-Christian. "No. I shall tell you Schwenk. It
is what we call the Slavo-Lydians. It means a vermin which is died and
becomm eaten by maggots. Ha-ha! That is what we call those pig
Slavo-Lydians and it makes us laugh till we burst."

"That is enough, dear," said Miss Bunting. "Good night, Gradka."

Gradka recognized the voice of authority and withdrew to the kitchen
where she washed up and then resumed her studies.

"Foreigners," said Sir Robert in a kind of mild despair. "And to think
that we have to study their feelings. Much study any of them give to
ours."




                               CHAPTER IV


The rest of Sir Robert and Lady Fielding's holiday was not so long as
the first two days. This is a mathematical phenomenon so well known that
no comment need be made, just as during a weekend Saturday teatime to
Saturday bedtime is a pleasant eternity, and the whole of Sunday an
express train. But a great many nice things happened, like Hallbury
House coming to tea with Hall's End, Hall's End going to tea with Mrs.
Watson and there meeting Hallbury House, Mr. and Mrs. Watson and Master
Watson going to tea and tennis at the Rectory and there meeting Hallbury
House and Hall's End. Tennis was not very serious, for though the
Watsons and Jane Gresham played really well, there was no good fourth.
Robin was still not quite sure enough of his foot and Anne was too
coltish and not up to Mrs. Watson's slashing balls. But she was a
promising player; and while they were having tea Jane Gresham, a county
player for two seasons before the war, offered to give her some
coaching, if they could get a court, for the Admiral's court had been
made over since the second year of the war to geese and rabbits, the
theory being that they would keep the grass down and then prove a
succulent addition to the larder. In practice their lawn-eating was of a
sporadic nature, so that bare muddy patches alternated with thick tufts
of Jacob's ladder and clover, nor did they fatten much unless their diet
was supplemented. But no one minded, for the Admiral had never been a
player, his sons were married and away, and Jane too busy to get up
parties; besides which, as we know, really good tennis players there
were few within the wartime radius of Hallbury. As for the old gardener,
he looked upon all tennis courts and indeed flower-beds, grass walks and
pleasure lawns as a flying in the face of Nature, who intended them for
vegetables.

The Watsons, always ready to promote the pleasure of their young
friends, at once offered to lend their court, and it only remained to
settle the days. What with Anne's daily routine and Jane's camouflage
work and other activities, not to speak of the times when the Watsons
wanted the court themselves, it was not easy to arrange a time, but
finally Tuesday after tea and Saturday morning were provisionally fixed.

"You'd better come, Robin," said Jane to the Rector's son. "It'll be
good practice for you."

Robin, chafing under his disability, for he had tried one set and not
done well, was inclined to refuse. But Jane quite truthfully said that
she was sure she could help him and Anne said three would be much more
fun than one.

"There, my child, you show your ignorance," said Robin. "Three-handed
tennis is a poor game. If only we could get someone else, just about as
rotten as I am, we might make a do of it."

Jane agreed that they ought to find a fourth, though certainly not a
rotten one, and Robin was not to talk in that silly way.

"Mummy," said Anne to her mother who was talking to Dr. Dale, and in any
case took little interest in tennis. "Oh, mummy, Miss Holly used to play
tennis when she was at Miss Pettinger's. She beat Cynthia Dandridge that
was the captain of tennis in singles once."

"Did she, darling?" said her mother. "You do look hot. Where is your
cardigan? Put it on."

Anne loosened her cardigan which had been on her shoulders with the arms
tied round her neck and put it on properly.

"Couldn't we ask her to come and play tennis, mummy?" she said.

Lady Fielding, who now remembered who Miss Holly was, and did not, as we
know, much want to be implicated with that lady, or rather--for she had
nothing against her personally--with her pupil Heather Adams and even
more her pupil's father, said something noncommittal. Anne, who was
never good at asserting herself, looked a little disappointed and took
refuge in a fruit cake sent by an old pupil of Dr. Dale's from
Australia. Lady Fielding turned to Dr. Dale, relieved to have got rid of
the subject so easily, when Mrs. Watson's rather brisk voice was heard
asking if that was Cicely Holly.

"I don't know," said Anne. "She used to teach a kind of very high-up
arithmetic at the Hosiers' Girls' School, and she is Dr. Sparling's
secretary."

"Stout woman, runs along the hockey field like winking?" said Mrs.
Watson.

Anne said some of the girls called her Roly-poly, but she did run very
fast.

"That's old Cicely," said Mrs. Watson, who was one of those jolly women
that never forget old school friends and enjoy nothing more than the
Annual Reunion of Old St. Ethelburgians. "Well, wonders will never
cease. I wonder if she remembers Molly Glover. Where is she now?"

As Anne was suddenly taken shy, Lady Fielding, hoping to scotch the
unwelcome subject, left her talk with Dr. Dale and said to Mrs. Watson
that Miss Holly was still with the Hosiers' Girls' Foundation School,
now at Harefield Park.

"Harefield? Oh, bad luck!" said Mrs. Watson, sympathizing with herself.
"Only eight miles, but what I say is without petrol it might as well be
eighty. We'll have to think again."

Lady Fielding drew a silent breath of relief. If, without telling a lie,
or even really implying one, she could leave Mrs. Watson under the
impression that Miss Holly was at Harefield Park, all would be well, and
thank goodness Anne was in her shy mood.

But Lady Fielding had not allowed for the persistence of a girl, however
retiring, who has a moth-like devotion for a schoolmistress.

"Mummy," said Anne, reproachfully. "You know Miss Holly is going to be
in the New Town in the holidays."

As Lady Fielding could not publicly kill her daughter, she smiled and
said nothing.

Mrs. Watson, all agog for news of her old fellow-student, pounced upon
Anne and elicited from her the information that Miss Holly was taking a
holiday job to coach the daughter of that Mr. Adams that gave all that
money to the Friends of Barchester Cathedral Fund.

Mr. Watson said rather ponderously that, feeling a certain
responsibility for his client Mrs. Merivale whose rooms Mr. Adams was
engaging, he had made a few inquiries in Barchester about him.

"They say he's a hard nut," said Mr. Watson, "but you get fair treatment
if you stand up to him. I saw the daughter once--just like her father,
reddish hair, heavy build, didn't seem quite all there."

"Now then, Charlie," said his wife, "don't be horrid," and there was
some good-natured, heavy banter between them about Molly being jealous
of pretty girls, which had the effect of making Lady Fielding feel glad
that they didn't always live in Hallbury and then be ashamed of herself
for the feeling.

"And to think of Cicely Holly being in the New Town," said Mrs. Watson.
"I'll phone her up and get her to come to tea one day and bring the girl
with her. What's her name? She'll be nice company for Anne, make a
change."

Anne volunteered that it was Heather.

Poor Lady Fielding, who had always quite liked Mrs. Watson, though so
seldom at Hallbury that there was no intimacy, felt her mild liking turn
to gall. A woman who could say "phone up" would be capable of anything
and was indeed deliberately encouraging Anne to thwart her father's and
mother's wishes. Then she blamed herself for being unfair. Anne was a
darling, good, confiding girl and could not suspect the depths of social
currents. In fact, Anne was being nice and polite to Mrs. Watson and
she, Dora Fielding, was divagating far from her own standards of
behaviour.

"What a good thing Mrs. Merivale's rooms were empty," said Mrs. Watson.
"She's a good little soul and had quite a fight for it after her husband
died, I believe. But her people were very good churchgoers, and what I
say is, the background always tells."

"They nearly weren't empty," said Jane. "At least, she had a lodger who
went to see about them."

"Not that dreadful Captain Hooper, the Hush-Hush man," said Mrs. Watson.
"Nearly everyone in the county has had him and got rid of him. He
started with the Villarses at Northbridge Rectory and tried to get into
Beliers Priory but General Waring wouldn't have him. Intelligence does
throw up the most peculiar objects. What I say is, it's a wonder we're
winning the war at all when you see the kind of lodgers people get."

"I don't know who it was," said Jane, "but she said it was nice to have
him."

Dr. Dale, who owing to a life's work on Haggai and his age, which was
just going to be considered by the Oxbridge Press when war broke out,
thus giving them an opportunity to shelve various scholarly works which
would obviously never sell, was apt to have his mind elsewhere, suddenly
came back to A.D. and asked what was wrong with Intelligence. He
understood, he said, from the Archbishop's last speech in the Lords that
Our Leaders were proving their quality in the furnace of war.

There was a moment's silence.

"Isn't the Rector an old darling," said Mrs. Watson, beaming upon the
company. "But what I always say is that all those books do make a
frightful difference and give people a wonderful outlook."

This remark, though profoundly true in its essence, again turned
everyone to marble.

"I expect," said Anne, and then stopped, suddenly overcome with
embarrassment at finding herself addressing so large a company on so
large a theme.

"Well, Miss Anne," said Mr. Watson, who affected this mode of address
for young unmarried ladies, which his wife said was a scream, "what do
you expect?"

"Oh, I only thought," said Anne, "that Mr. Churchill would know if the
Intelligence was really funny. I don't mean funny exactly, but what Mrs.
Watson said. I expect it is really to deceive German spies, like that
play, mummy, where the silly young man is really the clever detective."

She stopped, crimson with nervousness and feeling that she had made a
fool of herself and her family. But her audience, who were all fond of
her, thought none the worse of her and Robin smiled in a way that Anne
found strengthening.

"Well, what I say is," said Mrs. Watson, summing up the situation in a
masterly way, "that if Mr. Churchill put Captain Hooper into Hush-Hush
to put the Germans off the scent, he never did a better day's work. And
now," she continued, having disposed of Captain Hooper, "let's have a
good talk about Haggai, Dr. Dale. Did you see he was in the Times the
other day?"

"Haggai? I did not notice it," said Dr. Dale. "I usually read my Times
very carefully. I cannot understand this. We have got our old Timeses,
Robin, I hope."

Robin said that he put them on the study shelf himself and only let them
go for kitchen use or salvage after four weeks.

"If it was by the Bishop, I can understand its not attracting my
attention," said Dr. Dale, who in common with the whole body of
Barsetshire clergy regarded his Bishop as specially sent to try him and
to encourage the Disestablishment of the Church. "But if it was Crawley,
I should have spotted his style at once." For Dr. Crawley, the present
Dean of Barchester, was an excellent clergyman of the Moderate school,
and something of an authority on the prophetic writings. "The only
matter in which I may be to blame," he continued, while everyone
listened respectfully or made a respectful appearance of listening, "is
that little article which appears at regular intervals, I believe, near
the Court Circular, I do not know what there is about it, but I cannot
bring myself to read it. If the article on Haggai was there, it is a
lesson to me to prove all things."

"By the time one has done the Court Circular and the marriages and the
funerals and the engagements," said Lady Fielding, sympathetically,
"which is really the only way one has of keeping in touch with old
friends now, one simply doesn't feel equal to any more on that page."

"Don't worry, father," said Robin, "I'll look through the Timeses
to-night. The article wasn't very long ago, you say," he added,
addressing Mrs. Watson.

"I never said an article, my dear boy," said Mrs. Watson laughing
heartily, "It was the crossword," at which the rest of the party
couldn't help laughing too.

"Crossword? I never do them, I don't understand them," said Dr. Dale.
"When Buckle was editor there weren't any crosswords."

"You ought to," said Mrs. Watson. "They are quite educational. I learn
ever so many words I didn't know."

If Dr. Dale, the most courteous of pastors, could have brought himself
to cast a venomous and contemptuous look at a respected female
parishioner, this would have been the moment.

"Now, what was the clue?" said Mrs. Watson.

"As far as my memory serves me," said Sir Robert, also a confirmed
addict, "it ran something like this: 'The old woman was lively in
French.'"

"Old woman?" asked Dr. Dale, indignantly. "Haggai was _not_ an old
woman. The term might, though I would deprecate such a use, be applied
to one or two of the minor prophets; but most emphatically not to
Haggai."

"It's only a kind of play on words, Dr. Dale," said Lady Fielding. "The
Hag part of Haggai sounds like an old woman; like a hag."

"A fool, Lady Fielding," said the Rector with Johnsonian echo, "would
not consider such an etymology. The most ignorant tyro would tell you
that."

Lady Fielding meekly said that she did not mean that exactly.

The Rector then fell into paroxysms of apology for having treated Lady
Fielding as he would have treated a fellow scholar; as he would have
treated the Master of Lazarus, whose little book, The Economic Outlook
of Israel under Zerubbabel, he had had the pleasure of reviewing with
the contempt it deserved in the Church Times. He then felt that he had
not improved his case and looked unhappy.

"I do quite understand, Dr. Dale," said Lady Fielding earnestly; and
seeing that he still looked distressed she added: "And if you would lend
me the review, I am sure I would understand even better."

Dr. Dale, much gratified by such a request, and anxious to make amends
for any unintentional discourtesy to a guest whom he liked, rose, went
to a bookcase, took down a small pamphlet and looked at it lovingly.

"This is an off-print of my review," he said, half to himself, half to
the company at large. "I had fifty made at my own expense and still have
a few left. If I may have your permission to write your name in it, Lady
Fielding, I shall feel you have forgiven my want of courtesy."

Sir Robert, rather maliciously, said that to appreciate fully Dr. Dale's
review, his wife ought also to read the Master of Lazarus's book, but
luckily the Rector did not hear this remark, being fully occupied
writing Lady Fielding's name in his beautiful and still firm writing on
the flyleaf of the pamphlet.

"Well," said Mrs. Watson, "what I always say is the Bible's a wonderful
book. You never know _what_ you will find in it."

Luckily this piece of Biblical criticism did not reach the Rector's ears
either, for he might have been seriously distressed by it, and then Lady
Fielding began to say goodbye. Jane said she must collect Frank, who was
somewhere in the garden with Master Watson. Robin said he would come
with her and the rest of the party went to their homes.

There was no particular hurry. Double Summer Time was dragging its slow
length along in a land where it was always chill, grey, unfriendly
afternoon. As they sauntered down the gravel walk against the old brick
wall where apricots, that almost lost fruit, still grew and ripened,
Robin said one of the worst things the war had done was to make that
awful after-lunch feeling go on till supper-time, or even later, and if
he were the Peace Conference, he'd make Germany have triple summer time
for ever and ever. Jane said the Japs too.

"Quite right," said Robin. "And if there were a quadruple summer time
they'd deserve it. I say, Jane," he added in a kind of desperation, "I
never know if I ought to mention the Japs or not, because it's so
_rotten_ for you about Francis. So if you don't think me a beast I want
to do the right thing. I mean, does it make it worse if people talk
about them? Don't think I'm trying to be sympathetic or anything, but we
do all feel most awfully sorry about Francis."

Jane walked even more slowly and finally stopped.

"I don't suppose I mind anything very much," she said, examining a
beetle-eaten rose-leaf with great attention. "I expect I mind just about
as much as you mind about your foot. I mean one knows the horribleness
is there, but quite often one forgets it. I suppose you do."

"Oh, Lord! yes," said Robin, vaguely feeling that the higher he set his
own standard of courage the more valiantly Jane would reach towards it.
"Sometimes I forget for ages, especially in school hours. And the boys
do so enjoy my sham foot. One does wake up at three in the morning
sometimes, of course."

"Quite," said Jane. "But there's one thing, Robin; you can't get your
foot back. I might get Francis."

She paused and there was a silence again while Robin considered his
statement.

"What a beast I am," he said suddenly. "I never thought. If there were a
chance that I could grow a new foot, or at least have the old one back
again, I'd be twice as sick as I am. Knowing's better than not knowing."

"Or you might think," said Jane in a sombre voice, gently ripping the
beetle-gnawed leaf to pieces, "that it would be better to know that your
foot was all blown to bits than to imagine that it was wanting to get
back to you and couldn't, and that you mightn't know what to do with it
if it did come."

The silence grew. If Jane did feel that to put one's head on someone's
shoulder, almost anyone's shoulder, would be an anodyne: if Robin felt
that one might cheer a person up by putting an arm round their shoulders
and giving them an encouraging and impersonal hug; whatever their
feelings might have been, neither really liked being demonstrative, so
they walked on again in the direction of a noise which had gradually
been forcing itself upon their attention.

"I don't think a tank _could_ get into the stable yard," said Robin,
"but if one has, your child is at the bottom of it."

"Or Molly Watson's," said Jane impartially, though she knew and Robin
knew that Frank was the ringleader in all his and Master Watson's
doings.

As they entered the stable yard the noise resolved itself into the old
garden watering-cart, for we do not know how otherwise to describe the
kind of iron boiler on two wheels with a third dwarf wheel to steady it
when not being pushed and a kind of perambulator handle to propel it.
This interesting machine used to be pushed by the gardener's boy in a
happier age and from it the undergardener would fill his watering-can
and water the flower-beds. For a good many years a hose had made it
almost unnecessary, though the old gardener still used it for his more
delicate plants, leaving it in the sun so that the chill was taken off
the water. At the moment it was obviously some engine of destruction.
Both little boys were pushing it across the cobbles with loud shrieks
and bellows, and appeared by their red and perspiring faces to find it
heavy work. On its side some letters or figures had been chalked by a
youthful hand.

"Hullo, mother; hullo, sir," shrieked Frank, his shrill voice
overtopping the clank of the water-cart, "this is V13, the tram the
Yanks filled with dynamite and sent it at the Germans. Look, mother!
That's the Germans! Come on, Tom!"

With more loud encouraging yells the little boys pushed their clanking
machine towards the slight depression in the stable yard where the water
used in washing down carriages used to drain away. Here they had set up
an old and battered wooden stump, black beyond recognition. With a final
whoop they gave the machine a push down the slope. It crashed into the
figure, both fell over, and a quantity of garden rubbish such as broken
flower-pots, pieces of tile edging, rusty bits of wire and a large round
stone ball, was shot in all directions.

"Look, mother!", "Look, Mrs. Gresham," shouted the little boys in
chorus.

"Good lord!" said Robin, "it's our old Aunt Sally that we used to have
at mothers' meetings and school teas. Hi, Frank, where did you find
her?"

Frank said in the loose box where all the trunks were.

"She must have been there for about twenty years," said Robin
thoughtfully, "because I can just remember her with pipes in her nose
and eyes and ears, and I don't think father had any school teas after my
mother died. Give her a lick of paint and she'd be as good as ever. But
I don't suppose those wretched children know what an Aunt Sally is, and
I don't suppose there's a clay pipe in the world now."

The little boys, not quite understanding, but somehow scenting sadness
in the air, stood watching the grown-ups.

"I didn't think you needed it, sir," said Frank. "We found it behind a
box of croquet things. Oh, mother, we had a splendid game of being
blacksmiths. Look, mother! Come on, Tom!"

Before the horrified eyes of the grown-ups, Messrs. Gresham and Watson
rushed to the ci-devant loose box, now a kind of repository for unwanted
house and garden furniture, returned with a mallet apiece, and
improvising a kind of forging song, swiped in turn at the stone
mounting-block.

"Frank! Frank! stop!" cried his agonized mother, while his schoolmaster
with a hearty oath strode over and wrenched the mallets from the amateur
blacksmiths' grasp. One was chipped, the head of the other was loose.

"I _am_ so sorry," said Jane.

"It's not your fault," said Robin. "It's those young devils. The Women's
Institute have the loan of our old croquet set occasionally; otherwise
it wouldn't really matter."

"Sir," said Frank in dulcet tones, picking up the mallets which Robin
had laid on the horse-block, "could we play at crutching then? Here you
are, Tom."

Putting a mallet under one armpit, each little boy began to limp about
the yard, the end of the mallet handles banging heavily on the cobbles.

"No, you couldn't," said Jane with sudden violence. "Give me those
mallets at once; _at once_ I said, and don't ever touch them again. Oh,
Robin, I could kill them with pleasure."

"Well, I wouldn't if I were you. You couldn't get two more the same in a
hurry," said Robin reasonably as he took the mallets from her.

The little boys, rather sobered by the sight of an angry mother, an
unusual experience for either, began to tidy away their rubbish. Robin,
with sudden suspicion, asked where the stone ball came from. Master
Watson said it was on the top of the rockery and somehow it got rather
loose.

"It's only one of the old stone balls off the pillars of the coach-house
gate," said Robin, with the resignation of despair. "One was cracked and
my father has rather a fondness for the one that wasn't, so he got the
gardener to make a kind of rockery with the ball on top. I'll tell him
to put it back to-morrow."

"Goodbye, Robin," said Jane. "I don't suppose you'll want to see us
again for quite a long time. Come along, Tom. I'm going to take you home
before you and Frank can do anything worse. I can't tell you how sorry I
am, Robin."

Robin accompanied them to the gate and saw them on their way down Little
Gidding, telling Jane not to be silly and worry, because it didn't
matter a bit. Then he came back to finish the tidying. Just as he was
lifting Aunt Sally to restore her to her home in the loose box, his
father came into the yard and asked him what he was doing.

"I may as well tell you it's those boys of Jane's and Molly Watson's,
father," said Robin, holding Aunt Sally upright while he spoke. "They
were playing at Germans and got the stone ball off the rockery, but it's
all right, and old Chimes can put it back to-morrow. It's funny to think
that lots of children have never seen an Aunt Sally and never will.
Lord, Lord, how much valuable knowledge is going to be lost by the time
the war's over."

He began to hoist Aunt Sally up, to carry her away.

"Wait a minute, Robin," said Dr. Dale, gazing earnestly at that lady's
black face and almost obliterated features, with a streak of dirty white
or red here and there to show that she was human, a scrap of dirty
muslin, once a bonnet, clinging to a nail in her head, and an old broken
pipe stem sticking out of one ear.

"It makes me think of your mother, Robin," said Dr. Dale at length, with
a sigh. "All right; put it away." And he continued his walk round the
garden remembering school teas and mothers' meetings and Robin's young
mother presiding.

Robin laid Aunt Sally in her box, thinking with amused wistfulness that
she appeared to be his only link with a mother he could hardly remember.
Then he collected the mallets, but decided that the loose head had
better be secured and if possible a band put round the chipped end
before they were used again. So he took them up to the house, regretting
that he was too tall to swing along between them as he would have done
some twenty years ago. Then he thought of Jane's sudden anger when the
little boys wanted to play at what they called crutching. Not like Jane
to have such an outburst. And suddenly he went hot with shame as the
thought struck him that she had been angry on his account, that she had
thought the little boys' crutching might remind him of his foot, that he
might resent it, feel hurt, or unhappy. Women all over. You try to
explain to them till you are black in the face that you don't really
mind having an artificial foot, and then they work themselves up into
thinking that you do. Good old Jane: but too many women about
everywhere. Perhaps he would do better to accept Mr. Birkett's
suggestion and go to Southbridge. But even there he believed they had a
science mistress and a junior classical mistress. Probably even
monasteries had some unattractive female monks now to keep up their
numbers. Even the army couldn't escape them. Only the lucky, lucky ones
in the real fighting line. Robin had done his best to school himself
against his fighter's longing to be in the forefront of the battle, but
bitterness would still break in.

He put the mallets in the hall and set himself to work at his classics
till supper-time.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The rest of the exciting week ran quickly away. Sir Robert and Lady
Fielding went back to Barchester and Anne was left to Miss Bunting and
the routine of lessons. Lady Fielding before she went had a short
conversation with Miss Bunting on the subject of Mrs. Merivale's lodger.

"I don't want to be _too_ snobbish," she said. "At least, to be truthful
I really do, and though I am sure Mr. Adams is a much more useful member
of society than I am--or at least I don't honestly think that, but I
suppose I ought to think it--I don't frightfully want to be implicated.
It all sounds so horrid, but with Anne I expect you see what I mean."

Miss Bunting, who was freer from illusions than most people, took no
notice at all of her employer's foolish and well-meant efforts towards
democracy.

"Certainly Heather Adams," said Miss Bunting, snapping her pince-nez
shut and letting their cord run up into the fascinating little spool
which she wore pinned to her attire (for the vagueness of this word
seems suitable to her dignity), "certainly Heather Adams is probably not
a suitable companion for Anne. The Hosiers' Girls, though the school has
an excellent record of scholarships, are not quite what one would wish."

Lady Fielding might have thought that her daughter's governess had
stopped short before the end of her sentence, as indeed occasionally
happened owing to difficulty with her uppers, but she didn't;
appreciating the fine shade conveyed by the lacuna.

"So many people aren't," said Lady Fielding, piteously. "And I know one
oughtn't to be stuffy about it, but Anne is so easily impressed by
people and her father doesn't really want to meet Mr. Adams much apart
from business. And now Mrs. Watson is going to ask the girl and her
schoolmistress to tea and wants Anne to go. One can't very well refuse
in a small place like this. Oh dear, it's very awkward."

"We must move with the times," said Miss Bunting, to Lady Fielding's
great surprise. "When I first went out as a governess, no girl was
allowed to walk out alone, not even round Belgrave Square. But the whole
world has changed. I find Anne has a very kind nature and, I think, good
principles. It would take more than a Hosiers' girl to harm her."

She did not add: "And stop being silly and leave it to me," but Lady
Fielding could almost hear the words, and took heart and told herself
that Miss Bunting was right, and it was only because Anne had been an
invalid that she worried so much. And, to be logical, why should a
delicate girl be more easily influenced for bad than a robustious type?
And then she got into such a muddle of confused maternal hopes and fears
that she decided to leave everything to Miss Bunting and Anne; which was
probably the wisest thing she could have done.

Mrs. Watson was as good as her word, as indeed she always was, which was
one of the reasons for her success as a local organizer, and rang up
Miss Holly at Valimere. Miss Holly remembered Molly Glover quite well
and was glad to hear of a friend in the neighbourhood. Her tennis was
rather rusty now, she said, and Heather Adams was not very good, but
they would love to come up to tea. Saturday week was fixed with tea at
half-past four and tennis afterwards, so that Mr. Watson could join
them.

Miss Holly then reported the invitation to Heather Adams while they were
having coffee after supper in what Mrs. Merivale called the lounge, and
Miss Holly, with equal determination and possibly more reason, the
sitting-room. During the few days that she and her charge had been at
Valimere, a friendly feeling had sprung up in them both towards their
kind, pretty, cheerful, worn hostess. They had begged her to drink her
coffee with them after the evening meal, an invitation which Mrs.
Merivale, after twisting her hands in agony, had accepted with pleasure,
making the stipulation that this was only to be when Mr. Adams was not
there. Heather, rather a lonely only child who had never made friends at
school till her last year, was much interested by the lives and careers
of the Misses Merivale, and though too apt to appraise every other young
woman by her scholastic achievements, was genuinely impressed by the
excellent positions Mrs. Merivale's daughters, with nothing but the
Barchester High School behind them, had achieved.

"That call," said Miss Holly coming back from the telephone, which was
clearly audible in every corner of the jerry-built house, "was from a
Mrs. Watson in Hallbury. We were at school together. Do you know her,
Mrs. Merivale?"

"Well, I really haven't had much time to know anybody," said Mrs.
Merivale, "what with Mr. Merivale dying and the girls to educate and the
lodgers to cater for; especially in the Old Town. It's really much
further than you'd think at the end of a day's work and you have to push
your bike all the way up the hill. But I had a very nice friend of Mrs.
Watson's here for a month once, and then Mrs. Watson came down to see
her and had a really lovely fox fur. The girls always say they'll give
me a fox fur, but I say: 'Put the money on your legs, girls, not round
my neck,' for you know how all these young people go through their
stockings and it's bad enough with no coupons without having to pay for
them as well."

Miss Holly saw, from the look in her pupil's eye, that she might be
about to give Mrs. Merivale a short lecture on economics and the total
want of connection between coupons and cash payments, so she hastily
said that Mrs. Watson had asked them to tea on Saturday week and tennis
afterwards. Mrs. Merivale was much gratified, for Mrs. Watson was a
well-known local character and what was called "respected" in Mrs.
Merivale's circle, and she liked her lodgers to go to the right houses
because it did them, and her, credit, though she was not in the least
ambitious socially for herself, reserving her real interest for the
various friends her daughters brought home for holidays or on leave.

Heather, without any great enthusiasm, but with a mild willingness to
oblige which had only come upon her in the past year, said then daddy
had better bring down her tennis things when he came at the weekend, and
he could bring Miss Holly's too; and so it was arranged.

Those who knew Heather Adams in the early days of her career at the
Hosiers' Girls' Foundation School, were amazed and pleased by the way
she had improved. When she first came to the school she had been as
nearly unpopular as a girl who is not actively unpleasant or malicious
can be. Her ungainly shape, her scanty reddish hair, her total want of
interest in games or the honour of the school, her real affection for
all forms of mathematical study (a thing obviously against nature), her
incapability of making friends, nay, her evident desire not to make any,
her general lumpishness and her scorn of everybody and everything, were
so boring to the other girls that they all gave up trying to make
friends and left her to her own life; which was exactly what she wanted.
Miss Sparling (for she had not then got her D.Litt.), the admirable
headmistress, had devoted a good deal of anxious thought to her uncouth
pupil, only child of a very wealthy self-made manufacturer, motherless,
without any background at all as far as Miss Sparling could see. Then at
the beginning of the first winter after the school had moved to
Harefield Park, Heather's sluggish nature had had two very salutary
shocks. The first was that she fell in love with Lieutenant Charles
Belton, R.A., during church on Sunday, and remained violently in love
with him till five-thirty p.m. on the same afternoon, at which hour he,
by deliberately backing out when she was offered to him as a partner at
a small informal gramophone dance at the school, turned her love to
gall, wormwood, hatred and the fury of a woman scorned. The second shock
was that even as her love for Lieutenant Belton died, a greater, deeper
and purer love for his elder brother, Commander Belton, R.N., who had
gallantly taken pity and danced with her, was born. This secret passion,
with its outward concomitants of contempt for her fellow pupils and the
sulks in general, was nourished on nothing for a term and a half, and
then as suddenly, it passed away. But not in hatred; far otherwise. It
died because Commander Belton fished her out of the lake where she had
deliberately skated over the place marked DANGER, made her run as fast
as she could to his parents' house in Harefield where she was dried and
put to bed, and then, having discovered to his annoyance that he was her
ideal, had with considerable courage and unselfishness told her that his
true love, a Wren, had been killed in an air-raid. Upon which Heather,
overcome by the pitiful romance, proud of sharing a secret only known to
himself and his mother, at once stopped being in love and became a much
nicer girl.

This change was apparent to everyone. Her mistresses attributed it each
to the particular activity in which Heather came under her charge. Her
father told several friends at the County Club (to which it had become
quite impossible not to elect him), in the iron and steel world, and on
the Bench, that there was nothing like a good school, whatever the
expense, for a motherless girl like his little Heth, and would have
defrayed a large part of the cost of the school's new site (on the
Beltons' land, along the Southbridge Road) had not the Hosiers' Company
stopped him. Mrs. Belton, partly because she was sorry for so
unattractive a girl with so much money, partly because anyone who had
been cared for in her house had a claim on her kindness, partly because
she suspected Heather's calf-love for her elder son and knew its
hopelessness, had gone on taking an interest in her and letting her come
to Arcot House on half-holidays instead of nature walks or a visit in a
motor-bus to the Barchester Museum; and at Arcot House Heather observed
a gracious manner of life still surviving among wreckage, and what is
more, observed that there was something in it.

We do not wish to imply by this retrospect that Heather Adams suddenly
became handsome, slim, attractive, unselfish, an ornament to Society and
the Home all in a breath. Far from it, even in a great many breaths. But
that she tried very hard to be nicer there is no doubt at all; and this
effort happening to synchronize with a turn for the good in her
circulation, complexion and health in general (for which Dr. Perry was
largely responsible, and to which his female assistant Dr. Morgan made
absolutely no contribution at all), she also found herself very much
happier and almost liked by the larger part of the school. Finally she
had won the best open mathematical scholarship for Newton College,
beating all other candidates in Duodenal Sections and Impacted Roots by
several marks, and this success, as often happens in the case of a being
convinced by circumstances of its own deep inferiority, gave her an
assurance hitherto lacking and a pleasant feeling that though Love was
not for her, Fame and the Common-room of Newton were. So that when Mr.
Adams, incited thereto by Dr. Sparling though he never knew it,
nervously suggested the holiday coaching, Dr. Sparling's efficient
secretary and trusted friend, Miss Holly, had no objection to taking on
the job of duenna-coach for the holidays.

"I hope you won't find it too dull," Dr. Sparling had said while the
question of terms was still under consideration; the consideration being
chiefly how to beat down Mr. Adams, who was prepared to pay Miss Holly
about twenty pounds a week and was distinctly dejected when less than
half that sum was proposed as a maximum.

"Not a bit," said Miss Holly. "I like Heather and it's a pleasure to
teach a girl with a clear head. And it's pretty country. I might say
that I hope you won't find it dull at Bognor," for Dr. Sparling was
going to spend a month of the summer holiday with the mother of her
great friend, Mr. Carton. Old Mrs. Carton had seen and approved the lady
her son so greatly admired, and this visit was a token that whenever Dr.
Sparling felt her duties to the Hosiers' Company would allow her to
retire to the decent obscurity of being Mrs. Sidney Carton, the door of
"Enitharmon," Blake Close, Bognor Regis, would be as open to her as the
door of Assaye House, Harefield, which was where Mr. Carton lived when
not in his rooms at Paul's.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Practically the whole of the New Town did its going about on bicycles.
As nearly all the bicyclists were women, who do not believe that any
machine needs cleaning, oiling, or any attention whatsoever; or children
who had never been taught to do anything for themselves and took their
bicycles to the garage to have a tyre mended or pumped up, there was
outside the shops, the church (very high), the nasty little cinema, the
Council Chambers, the W.V.S. room and all other places of congregation
as fine an assortment of what looked like Lord Nuffield's backyard at
Morris Cowley Station as one would wish to see.

To this higher carelessness Mrs. Merivale and her family were no
exception and when she kindly offered Miss Holly the use of any of the
girls' bicycles during their stay, Heather was appalled by the state
they were in. She wasted no time in regrets or expostulation, but
quietly and determinedly overhauled each bicycle, cleaning, oiling,
noting what spare parts were urgently needed. Mrs. Merivale luckily did
not take this high-handed action as a reproach, but did say she was very
upset that Heather should clean the girls' bikes as well as paying for
her board and lodging. Heather, who had a passion for machinery, not
altogether approved by her father, who though proud of her interest in
his works did not want her to be in and out of the fitters' shops all
the time, took no notice at all and continued her salvage work, being a
very good amateur mechanic.

"There," said Heather, wiping her hands professionally on a bit of old
bath towel that Mrs. Merivale had given her. "And if you oil them a bit
and don't bang them about so much, and remember to pump up the tyres and
put them tidily in the shed, they'll do very nicely for a long time."

"Thank you very, very much," said Mrs. Merivale, who was
constitutionally incapable of putting anything back in its place, except
things like her boarders' toilet articles or laundry, over which she
showed meticulous care. "You really oughtn't to do all that work. I
don't know what your father would say."

"He'd do it much better than I do," said Heather enviously. "He was
always in the works ever since he was a boy, and I only get in at odd
times because I'm a girl. It's too bad."

But Mrs. Merivale felt the obligation with all the strength of her
upright, generous, obstinate little mind and even the phlegmatic Heather
wondered if the subject would ever be dropped, till she had the good
idea of asking if she and Miss Holly could borrow two bicycles that very
Saturday for Mrs. Watson's tennis party. At the thought of doing a
kindness Mrs. Merivale brightened at once, only regretting, at really
very boring length, that the enamel on all the bicycles was so
scratched.

"It's because you don't have a proper stand for them," said Heather, to
which Mrs. Merivale answered, possibly with truth that they'd take up
more room in a stand than they would in a heap.

"So what I'll do," said Heather to Miss Holly later, "is to ask daddy to
get them to make a frame at the works, and he can bring it out on
Saturday."

"A very good idea," said Miss Holly, "but you know what will happen."

"She won't use it," said Heather, with a perception that the pre-Belton
Heather did not possess.




                               CHAPTER V


Saturday dawned bright and fair, but observing that it was still Double
Summer Time, took offence and relapsed into chill greyness. As no
inhabitant of the British Isles has ever got used to the odious and
so-called summer weather which has always been their portion, and far
less to the vagaries of D.S.T., there was a good deal of grumbling
everywhere, which grumbling was gradually diverted to the less eternal
grievances of the fish, the daily woman, that girl at the Food Office,
the Government, that noise all night like a mouse just at the head of my
bed, and I _must_ set a trap as pussy doesn't seem much good at it, the
way the laundry has ironed that nice tablecloth, and other daily food of
human nature. At Valimere the ladies behaved with great restraint. Mrs.
Merivale, who never bore a grudge, said no wonder the weather was like
that with all the noise there was everywhere; Miss Holly was too busy
with some Hosiers' business to notice the outside world; while Heather
was absorbed in a delightful little book called Indifferential
Relations, with a table of Kindred Affinities and graphs of Nepotic
Constants.

However, it did not rain, the wind was not a gale, and Miss Holly and
Heather set off for their tennis party, speeded from the front gate by
Mrs. Merivale, who hoped they would thoroughly enjoy themselves and not
to worry about supper as it could all be kept hot and if Mr. Adams came
in before they were back she would give him a nice cup of tea. A few
minutes' ride brought them to the level crossing and so to the foot of
the High Street. Here Miss Holly dismounted, saying with truth that she
was not so young as she used to be, but Heather whose legs though
ungraceful were extremely powerful, rode scornfully on, tacking from
side to side, to the great alarm of an army lorry, two jeeps and a motor
despatch-rider, none of whom were accustomed to keep the rule of the
road and therefore deprecated such action in others. Miss Holly was not
unduly anxious for her charge. She knew Heather had an excellent head
and no nerves to speak of, and further she had on taking the job
contracted out of all responsibility for her physical safety, knowing
from experience that she had no fear of heights and a passion for
climbing to the top of any high building and walking round it,
preferably on the parapet. To this Mr. Adams had agreed, adding with
ill-concealed pride that his little Heth had a will of her own, same as
her Dad.

So Miss Holly pursued her way peacefully up the hill and when she got to
the Watsons' house found Heather on the front doorstep, her face bright
red, her sandy hair damp and clinging to her head. Miss Holly was no
snob, and as we know she liked her pupil in her own businesslike way,
but she did for a moment wish that she were not meeting Molly Glover
with quite such an unattractive not to say temporarily repellent
creature in tow.

"Well!" said Mrs. Watson, throwing open the door and beaming at her
guests. "This _is_ nice to meet you again, Cicely, after all these
years. And this is Heather Adams? You do look hot, dear. Don't leave the
bicycles outside or they'll be pinched. Charlie!" she shouted towards
the back of the house.

Mr. Watson came into the hall from his study.

"This is my husband," said Mrs. Watson, presenting Mr. Watson to the
visitors. "This is Cicely Holly, Charlie, that was at Fairlawns with me,
only she was a great swot and I was a dunce. It was always tennis with
me, wasn't it, Cecily, only in those days it was basket-ball. What a
foul game only they call it netball now. And this is Heather Adams whose
father you know. Take the bicycles round to the back, Charlie, there's a
good boy. He's got a kind of workshop with all sorts of things in it,"
said Mrs. Watson with all-embracing indiscriminating pride, "and the
bikes will be quite safe there. And don't get any oil or anything on
your flannels, Charlie," she added, as Mr. Watson took a bicycle
handle-bar in each hand.

Heather's rather vacant eyes had lighted up at these words.

"Have you got a lathe?" she inquired.

Mr. Watson said he had.

"Electric or foot-drive?" said Heather.

Mr. Watson said electric.

"I'll take one of the bikes," said Heather, and wrested her bicycle from
his grasp. Mr. Watson, amused but not disconcerted, for not even the
Lord Chancellor's death could do that, led the way round the house. Mrs.
Watson shut the front door and took Miss Holly to the drawing-room.

"Sit down and we'll have tea as soon as the others come," said Mrs.
Watson. "Well, I'd have known you anywhere! And what I always say is,
once you've been at school with anyone there's a little bit of the past
in common that makes all the difference. Those were the days at
Fairlawns. Do you remember Gwenda Hopkins? She married a very nice man
in the Indian Civil and has three daughters all in the Forces. And Ivy
Paxton? You know she died; a dreadful shock to her mother. And Hilda
Cowman; she used to be rather a pal of mine but she got some sort of job
in a factory and looks down on me because I'm married. And now do tell
me all about yourself."

During these remarks and while Mrs. Watson took a breath for a monologue
which would obviously go on until she had said all she thought of
saying, Miss Holly sat plump and upright in her chair, regarding her old
school friend with scientific interest. That Molly Glover had recognized
her was not surprising, for as Miss Holly freely confessed to herself
she had been a plain stout girl and was a plain stout woman, and except
that she now wore suits from a good tailor and not a gym tunic or a
one-piece frock, her round face with a good deal of colour, her beady
black eyes, her smooth black hair neatly brushed back and coiled, her
round compact form, were almost exactly the same as in the upper forms
at Fairlawns. She could not say the same of Mrs. Watson, the large,
handsome, rather crumby woman before her, with her hair set in curls and
rolls. Under what layers of change her old schoolfellow was buried: how
unlikely it was that if they had met by chance she would have
disentangled the tall almost gawky Molly Glover with her fair pigtail
from the woman who had enveloped her. Not till Mrs. Watson patted a
shining curl into its proper place did Miss Holly feel sure that it was
the old Molly Glover with her trick of pushing a wisp of straggling hair
behind her ear.

"I've never seen you at the Old Fairlavinian Reunion," said Mrs. Watson.
"You ought to come some time. One of the old girls, you'd remember her,
Pixie Macalister, she's games mistress at a mental home now, and does
wonders with the poor things, teaching them all sorts of games with a
soft ball and letting them have a free fight in the padded cell on their
good days--it gets them uninhibited she says--and, where was I, oh yes,
well Pixie belongs to a very nice club in the Buckingham Palace Road
called the Ludo Club, from 'ludo,' I play, you know--do you remember
Miss Stroke's Latin class, and how cross she used to get with gerunds
and things--and she can get a room there for our meetings quite cheap.
Last time I went to town specially for a reunion I spent the night at
the Westmoreland, a splendid hotel with bed and bath and really _good_
breakfast all included, and we had doodle-bugs all night, only I didn't
hear them. What I always say is, the one that's going to get you has
your number on it, so why worry? But Charlie says, 'It's not the one
with your number on it that worries me, Mollie. It's the one that says,
To Whom It May Concern.' So I've not been to town again since, because I
hate him to be worried."

At this point Miss Bunting and Anne arrived, and Mrs. Watson, having
blown off steam, relapsed into her normal self as a kind hostess. Miss
Bunting and Miss Holly had not met, but they had a kind of liaison
through Dr. Sparling, and each conceived a respect for the other as an
expert in her own line, while Anne talked quite happily to Mrs. Watson,
who always got on very well with young people.

"What has happened to Charlie and Heather?" said Mrs. Watson, suddenly
noticing that her husband and her guest were missing.

"If your husband is showing her an electric lathe, she won't come till
she is fetched," said Miss Holly, but at that moment they came in,
Heather with a black smear across her white tennis skirt. Had Miss Holly
been an ordinary governess she might have felt impelled to remark on
this; but being a remarkable woman in her own way, she simply absorbed
the fact and made no comment.

Heather, who was by now not so red in the face, had passed a most
agreeable quarter of an hour with Mr. Watson in his workshop, examining
the lathe and entering into a highly technical conversation with him
about bushes and chucks. Mr. Watson was both amused and interested by
her artless talk. No woman, in his experience, knew anything about
machinery or would ever want to; for being able to drive a car was
simply a trick one learnt. Regarded with friendly tolerance by his wife
as an enthusiast who spent on machinery and things time that would be
far better employed on the tennis court or the golf course, he had in
Hallbury no one to share his simple joys. To find a young woman--for
Heather's imposing figure and large face somehow took her out of the
category of girls--who could argue with him as man to man about
turret-lathes, poppers, precision work, repetition work and such homely
subjects, was a perfect godsend. Had he not been almost as fond of
tennis as of his tools they might have stayed there all afternoon, but
it was tea-time so he took his reluctant guest to the drawing-room.

It has not, we hope, escaped our readers' notice that Heather Adams,
though much improved in person since she fell in love and into the
Harefield lake, had very little social experience. Her father, self-made
and slightly suspicious of what he called "society," had plenty of
friends, or what passed for such, in his business world, but even in his
wife's lifetime he had never brought them home. She had died some seven
or eight years previously, and Heather had led a solitary life,
attending the Barchester High School where she made no friends, her sole
companionship at home being the housekeeper of the moment. None of these
had been very good, none was bad, and she was well enough fed and
clothed; but for recreation and talk she had drifted towards her
father's works where the hands were friendly to her on the whole,
especially the older men in the fitters' shops who had found her as
useful as any boy and far more intelligent and less cheeky. When at last
her father realized that his daughter was growing up, he had packed her
off to the Hosiers' Girls' Foundation School, then evacuated to
Harefield Park. Here Mrs. Belton had seen her and been kind to her and
Heather had picked up a good deal, as had her father, who had pursued a
curious unequal friendship with Mrs. Belton, whom he looked upon (rather
unfairly for it was her elder son, not she, who had picked Heather out
of the lake) as a kind of tutelary genius. Mrs. Belton had accepted this
new responsibility as she usually accepted what came her way, and though
she made no conscious effort to change or improve Mr. Adams, her
influence with him had been considerable. His taste in clothes had
become a little quieter, he had dimly realized that there were people to
whom it didn't matter if you were rich or poor so long as you behaved
like a gentleman, a word to which he now attached some favourable
connotation.

But miracles are not expected and mostly do not happen. Mr. Adams did
not turn into a Belton, nor did his daughter. The aboriginal Hogglestock
was deep in them; they conceived a slightly suspicious attitude to
unknown people, ready to heave half-bricks; but they had also seen and
admired another world, and could feel fairly at ease in it when sure
that its intentions were good.

So Heather, who a year or two earlier would not have been invited to a
tennis party in the rather close society of a small country town, or if
she had, would have glowered at her hostess, been sulky with the older
people and rude to the younger, was now almost at her ease, quite ready
to continue though not to initiate a conversation, and pleased with her
host and his hobby. Her visits to the Beltons had made her fairly
conversant with the county and Barchester types to which Mrs. Watson's
party belonged, but Miss Bunting was something she had not yet come
across. That Miss Bunting was old-fashioned in dress, insignificant in
appearance, rather precise in manner, was patent enough and from that
point of view hardly worth study. But her newly awakened perceptions
told her that this small elderly lady, whom any of her father's
housekeepers would have scorned to resemble, was something that
mattered. One does not have a scientific brain for nothing. Heather saw
before her a fascinating problem which she meant to solve; and here she
was well ahead of her father, who would have seen Miss Bunting's outer
insignificance, but probably missed the significance behind it. What
Miss Bunting thought about Heather no one can say: for Miss Bunting had
been keeping her thoughts to herself for some half-century, and only to
those whom she knew to be really interested would she open her store of
slow-garnered wisdom.

Mrs. Watson, saying that they would not wait for the others, now
marshalled her party to the dining-room, where there was a good sit-down
tea. Heather and Anne were placed together and told to make friends,
such being Mrs. Watson's simple and direct method, while the grown-ups
talked about the topics of the day, notably the sudden rebirth of
glycerine, which everyone thought had left the world for ever.

The two girls looked at each other. Anne's chief feeling about Heather
was that she was alarmingly strong, yet curiously undefended, though she
could not have put this into words. Heather saw a peaky girl, all eyes
and nose, who looked as if one could knock her over by blowing, but
somehow gave her an impression of living in a very safe world of her
own. Each thought, though without formulating the impression, that the
other needed some protection or help. Anne, being more used to Hallbury
tea-parties than Heather, opened the conversation by asking Heather if
she liked tennis. Heather responded and though nothing very brilliant
was said, both young ladies were getting on nicely, when Jane Gresham
came in, apologizing for being late because Frank had been poking about
in the scullery waste-pipe again with a bit of old sponge on the end of
a stick and the sponge had stuck and no one could get it out and of
course it was Saturday and they'd have to wait till Monday to get it
cleared. She then sat down by Miss Bunting, opposite Heather, and smiled
at her.

The smile was merely general friendliness to include a strange girl who
must be that Heather Adams they had talked about, but to Heather it
appeared that the sun had risen, a very good firework display was taking
place, peacocks with the voices of nightingales were swinging in
cedar-trees, their jewelled tails drooping over flower-edged,
gold-sanded streams, and a full moon was filling the world with
throbbing rapture. This is, of course, putting it rather mildly.

"You're Heather Adams, aren't you?" said Jane. "Isabella Ferdinand told
me about you. I know her aunt."

As Heather did not reply, she smiled again and turned to Miss Holly. And
then Robin arrived to whom Mrs. Watson said: "Better late than never."

"It nearly was never," said Robin, making a bow to the company and
sitting down by his hostess. "I cleaned my tennis shoes and left them on
the bathroom windowsill to dry, and one of them fell out into that
horrible elder tree outside the pantry window and got stuck. I couldn't
get at it with a stick and I daren't climb, so there it was. Luckily the
cook's grandson was there, so in the end he got it."

"Is that Alfie?" asked Mrs. Watson, who was very strong on people's
connections.

"No, Wallie," said Robin. "Adenoids, mentally defective, quite an
intelligent child though if you show him twopence; even more intelligent
if you show him sixpence. Do you suppose one could cure real full-blown
tonsils by bribes? Can I have some of that cake?"

The cake was in front of Heather.

"Will you cut it, Heather?" said Mrs. Watson. "This is Robin Dale.
Heather Adams, who is staying at Mrs. Merivale's with Miss Holly;
Robin's father is our Rector so you'll see him on Sunday."

Now, we cannot account for these things, but while Heather, for no
reason at all, had at once taken to Anne with a kindly protective
feeling, and had seen in Jane's entrance the veritable goddess appear,
her almost immediate reaction to Robin was scorn and dislike. Perhaps
his easy manner reminded her of Lieutenant Charles Belton, who had so
brutally and unconsciously won and broken her heart on that fatal
Sunday; perhaps she felt that a young man must be a softy if he couldn't
climb a tree; perhaps she thought his attitude to mental deficients
stupid and irritating, that he ought to be in the army. In any case the
demon of gaucherie and ill-breeding who had been so long exorcised came
rushing back with outspread wings and fiery claws and caused her to say,
quite against her own better judgment and with a voice she hardly knew:
"I'm Chapel, so's dad." After which she wished she was dead.

Luckily no one heard her. Except Anne, who felt so frightened that she
almost wished she was dead too. But being a courageous creature for all
her shyness, she decided that more than ever must she stand by her new
friend, and asked her if she liked Shakespeare. Heather, burning with
shame and anxious to make amends, said she liked him very much and told
Anne all about the school performance of part of As You Like It, in
which she had acted Audrey; and Anne's eyes grew larger and darker with
interest and admiration. So tea came to an end, and stuffed with cake
the party went into the garden.

                 *        *        *        *        *

As Anne had already, according to arrangement, had some coaching with
Jane that morning, Miss Bunting had asked Mrs. Watson not to let her
play too much. Mrs. Watson therefore arranged a four of Jane, Miss
Holly, herself, and her husband. Miss Holly, the unknown quantity,
proved unexpectedly good, bounding about the court like a hard rubber
ball, sending a forehand drive with terrifying speed and pouncing on one
or two backhanders like a cat on a mouse. So much did the four enjoy
itself that by the time the score was thirteen-fourteen, the onlookers
lost interest and the two girls went to pick raspberries, while Miss
Bunting and Robin sitting on the veranda, from which they could see the
court but were out of earshot, talked about the subject near to both
their hearts, little boys; approaching it from very different ages and
points of view, but always with the welfare of those exhausting and
pleasing beings in mind.

"What is so sad," said Miss Bunting, "is that so many little boys will
go to school improperly prepared for communal life, because they will be
only children. Mrs. Gresham's boy, for instance."

Robin admitted that it was hard on the children. Hard on the mothers
too, he said. There was Jane who always meant to have a proper family,
but with Francis away so long, what could she do?

"You know her nurse gave notice because there wasn't another new baby,"
said Robin, crossing his legs and nursing his unreal foot. "It's a bit
stiff. And I must say it's a bit stiff for Francis too. He can't have
any more children and he can't see the one he's got."

Miss Bunting's face grew very stern, for too many of her ex-little boys
had no boys of their own, or would never see them again; or, like
Francis Gresham, were perhaps alive, perhaps dead, and no one could
know.

"I suppose," said Robin, thoughtfully, "I ought to get married and give
a hand with the good work, but I'll have to get a proper job first. Six
little boys in a stable isn't going to be good enough to marry on and my
father, though eighty-two, is quite capable of living till ninety. Not
that I grudge him the pleasure, if pleasure it is, dear old chap," he
added.

"You will forgive me," said Miss Bunting after a silence, "if I look at
things from a practical point of view. I always have: also a commonsense
one. Many excellent preparatory schools have been greatly assisted by a
headmaster's wife with kindness, energy and money."

"But I can't be a fortune-hunter, Miss Bunting," said Robin, alarmed.
"And anyway, who wants a man with a wooden leg?"

The bitterness in his voice went to the old governess's heart, but it
was never her policy to let her pupils suspect any weakness in her, so
she merely said:

"Mr. Dale, you are talking in an exceedingly foolish way. You must pull
yourself together."

Having said this she recrossed her hands with great composure and looked
at Robin. He flushed angrily, made as if to speak, but apparently
thought better of it. Presently he said:

"I'm sorry, Miss Bunting. And I wish you'd call me Robin. Mr. Dale isn't
so friendly."

"Thank you, Robin," said Miss Bunting. "I will. All my old pupils," she
added, "call me Bunny."

Robin flushed again, but this time with overpowering gratitude for her
condescension. Not too awkwardly he took her chilly, withered hand,
kissed it with an air and laid it respectfully on her lap. At the same
moment the set finished and the Watsons, frankly rejoicing in having
beaten their guests, brought the tennis players back to the veranda.
Heather and Anne were recalled from the raspberry nets and with Jane and
Robin went onto the court. Neither of the girls was very good; Robin,
though once expert at the game, was hampered by his foot, and the set
proceeded with more laughter than skill.

It is possible that Heather, who had worked pretty hard at tennis during
her last spring and summer term, would have played better had she not
been overcome by the dazzle and glory of playing against Jane Gresham.
Anne may have thought Miss Holly very nice, but there her admiration
stopped. For Heather, the whole world was shaken by a new star, a
Gresham Sidus, blazing in the empyrean. Not only was this shattering
enough in itself, but she was also suffering from split personality, one
half of her wishing to play so well that Mrs. Gresham would utter some
such epoch-making words as: "Oh, well taken, Heather"; the other wishing
to lose every stroke and then die at Mrs. Gresham's feet. The result of
this dual control was that she hit more and more wildly, became as red
and damp as when she had bicycled up the hill, and cannoned into Robin
several times, nearly throwing him off his balance and making him swear
under his breath. Anne, acutely sensitive to mental currents though she
did not know it, was less and less happy. That she had made several good
strokes and remembered what Jane had told her about foot-faulting that
morning, counted for little with her in comparison with seeing poor
Robin being buffeted and Heather looking so cross and almost horrid.
However, the set must be played.

Meanwhile, the Watsons and Miss Holly joined Miss Bunting on the
veranda. All were intelligent and Mrs. Watson was almost educated, so
their talk roved in a gentlemanly way through a variety of subjects.

"Was that the bell?" said Mrs. Watson, interrupting her husband in his
description of the Bishop entertaining some coloured bishops at the
palace with ostentatious want of profusion.

"You'd have heard it if it was," said Mr. Watson; which appears
deplorably illogical but is plain to any householder.

"No, I wouldn't," returned his wife. "You remember that time it was Lady
Pomfret and I was in the scullery."

The argument, if so it can be called, was proceeding along these rather
devious and irrelevant lines when a scrunching was heard on the gravel
at the side of the house.

"It _was_ the bell," said Mrs. Watson, whose chain of reasoning will at
once be apparent, and even as she spoke a powerfully built man in almost
well-cut grey tweeds came round the corner.

"Pardon me," said the newcomer, addressing himself to Miss Holly, "but
am I right?"

Miss Holly, recognizing her charge's father and correctly interpreting
his words, said to her hostess:

"Oh, Mrs. Watson, this is Heather's father. Didn't Mrs. Merivale give
you my message, Mr. Adams?"

"She did," said Mr. Adams. "As soon as I arrived back she said you and
Heth had gone to play a tennis match with Mrs. Watson up the hill and
you had said to give me a cup of tea. But it's a bit late for tea so I
said I'd push on a bit and see my little Heth playing. Mrs. Watson,
isn't it? I'm glad to meet you, Mrs. Watson, and to thank you for your
kindness to my little girl."

Mrs. Watson said she was so glad to have Heather, who was on the court
at the moment, and introduced her husband.

"Mr. Watson and I are old acquaintances," said Mr. Adams, sketching a
kind of salute to his host. "Clubmen, as you might say. There's not many
a Thursday I don't see Mr. Watson at lunch at the County Club."

"So that's how Charlie spends Thursday," said Mrs. Watson who, as she
afterwards penitently told her husband, could not help talking to people
as she thought they would like to be talked to, to which her husband
replied that she would do it once too often if she weren't careful. She
then, to cover her lapse, quickly introduced Mr. Adams to Miss Bunting,
who greeted him civilly and was quite obviously suspending judgment.

Mr. Watson quietly went into the house.

"Did you walk up, Mr. Adams," said Mrs. Watson, "or bicycle like Miss
Holly and Heather? It's a good pull up the hill."

"I don't bicycle," said Mr. Adams, "not unless I must, though I've
bicycled as far as most people in my young days before I could afford a
car," which piece of autobiography rather depressed his hearers as
showing clearly that he regarded them as, on the whole, effete
plutocrats. All but Miss Bunting who simply sat, accumulating evidence,
waiting the right time to weigh it, unbiased, clear of mind.

"And I don't mind telling you, Mrs. Watson, that I wouldn't ride up that
hill of yours for five pounds. No; my sekertary phoned up a taxi to meet
me at the station. Now, it's a rule of mine, when you take a taxi, don't
dismiss it till you're sure you've done with it. I've seen more than one
good deal slip through my fingers before I learnt that. So when we got
to Mrs. Merivale's house I said to the driver, 'Wait a minute, I may be
going on.' And in I went and got Miss Holly's message and so I said to
myself, Sam Adams, that's my name, Sam; you take the taxi to Mrs.
Watson's and you'll kill two birds with one stone. You'll see Heth
playing tennis and you'll see her friends. So I came up. Packer's
waiting for me outside."

"Packer!" said Mr. Watson, who had come out with such drinks as the
times could afford on a tray while Mr. Adams was finishing this
soliloquy. "He won't come out for anyone on a Saturday afternoon, let
alone wait for them. He always goes to the bowling club."

"He mayn't do it for anyone--thanks, lime and soda if it's all the same
to you," said Mr. Adams, "but it isn't anyone or everyone who's got
Packer's son in his nuts and bolts shop; and a very good apprentice he's
making. Well, here's fun."

He took a deep draught of his innocuous beverage and looked round. The
impression he made on most of his audience was overpowering size. Mr.
and Mrs. Watson were tall and on a generous scale; Miss Holly, though
short, had a good cubic content, but Mr. Adams reduced them all three to
mediocrity. Only Miss Bunting, small, spare, almost insignificant to the
eye, kept her value unchanged, as indeed she did whatever the
circumstances.

A confused sound of talking now heralded the arrival of the tennis
party. Largely owing to Heather's love-smitten condition, Jane and Anne
had won the two sets and Anne, with quite a pink face, pleased and
excited, looked a different creature. At the unexpected sight of her
father Heather's face cleared and she flew into his arms with a
rapturous shout of "Daddy!"

"And, daddy," she continued, "this is Mrs. Gresham. She lives here with
her father--your Admiral Palliser."

"A fine old gentleman, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams. "We think a lot of
him on my board. You can't pull the wool over his ears, get up when you
may."

Jane smiled at this tribute and Heather thought so did the angels smile.

"And this is Anne Fielding, daddy," she went on. "She's awfully keen on
Shakespeare. Daddy, couldn't we go to Stratford and see Shakespeare?
Anne's never seen him, only read it. You know her father, daddy."

"So you are Sir Robert's young lady," said Mr. Adams, taking Anne's hand
and looking down kindly on her. "Well, him and I have had more than one
tussle, but no bones broken, and he's a man I have a regard for."

After paying which tribute he looked so huge and important that Jane
thought of the Frog and the Ox, and said so to Robin, who grinned.

"And Mr. Dale," said Mrs. Watson completing the introductions. "He has a
school here and my younger boy and Mrs. Gresham's go there."

"Dale?" said Mr. Adams. "Seems familiar, but I can't exactly place it.
Glad to meet you. I never got much schooling myself and dare say if I
had I wouldn't be where I am now. Still, it's a good thing for them that
can stand it. You aren't any relation of the Reverend Dale of the
Barsetshire Archaeological by chance?"

"That's my papa," said Robin. "Eighty-two and going strong. I've heard
him mention your name. You are coming to the Archaeological's meeting
here, I hope."

Conversation now became general and the party soon broke up. Mrs.
Watson, whose youngest son was spending the afternoon at Hallbury House
with Master Gresham, asked Jane to send him home at once, as it was high
time he had his bath and went to bed, so that she and Charlie could have
their supper in peace.

"Daddy!" said Heather in an urgent undertone to her father, as he was
talking to Mr. Watson, "couldn't you take Mrs. Gresham back? She hasn't
got a car."

"That's an idea," said Mr. Adams, "and have a chat with the old Admiral.
And what about you, girlie? I'll tell Packer to tie your bike onto the
car if Miss Holly doesn't mind."

Miss Holly being consulted was agreeable to anything her employer
proposed, and said she would walk her bicycle as far as Hall's End with
Anne and Miss Bunting, and then ride back to Valimere. Robin, finding
that no one wanted him, went back to the Rectory, thinking what a
hideous lump that Adams girl was and pitying Jane who was saddled with
her and her father for at least half an hour longer.

So Mr. Adams said goodbye to the Watsons, took his ladies in tow and
found Packer sitting in the driver's seat reading the Barchester Evening
Sentinel, to whom he gave instructions to convey the party to Hallbury
House, return to Mr. Watson's house, fasten Heather's bicycle to the car
and pick him up again at the Admiral's. Mr. Packer, without removing the
cigarette from his mouth, said "O.K.," and what did Mr. Adams think of
United Steel Products; up half a point they were. Mr. Adams said he
didn't think, he knew, and all his spare cash was going into Government
Loans. Mr. Packer looked dejected.

"Gambling," said Mr. Adams to Jane and Heather as soon as Mr. Packer's
overdriven gears let talk be audible. "If I've told my hands once I've
told them twenty times, small men must play for safety. And mind you,
it's the British Empire we're backing, and if that isn't safe, no one
knows what is."

"Except shares in an undertaker's business," said Jane.

Mr. Adams looked almost bewildered, then began to laugh with sudden
uncontrolled amusement and Jane realized, and was slightly ashamed of
it, that her remark had established her in his mind as a wit.

"Daddy's _frightfully_ patriotic," said Heather admiringly, and Jane
again felt ashamed that the word 'patriotic,' which heaven knew was what
we all were, or ought to be, or wished to be, should make her feel
uncomfortable and hoped her new friends would not notice it. But she
might have spared herself the trouble, for Heather said she supposed
we'd all be buried on a Beveridge plan now; and during the few moments
that their journey lasted she and her father indulged in a joke of their
own, almost unintelligible to Jane, about the actuarial calculations for
such a scheme. It was a world she did not know and she suddenly felt
lost, and thought of Francis with a pang of longing such as she had
schooled herself not to encourage. But these things come upon us
indirectly, sideways, and our defences are vain.

The taxi stopped at Hallbury House and they all got out. Jane led the
way to the garden, where she knew her father would be working. The
Admiral was in his shirt-sleeves among the beans and rather surprised to
see his visitors, especially Heather whom he had never met and by whom
he was much struck and that not very favourably, as he had always liked
his womenfolk good-looking or smart, preferably both. But they were
guests in his garden, so he showed them all his vegetables, his joy and
pride, and discussed United Steel Products with Mr. Adams, while Jane
showed Heather the fowls and the rabbits and the runner ducks and let
her collect the eggs, and Heather walked in a roseate mist and hoped the
visit would never end.

Her father's voice calling her to say goodbye then shattered her crystal
globe, and they all walked round the other side of the house, where they
found Frank Gresham and Tom Watson sitting on the back doorstep eating
raspberries and cold rice pudding.

"I'm giving Tom his supper now, mother, in case he doesn't get enough
when he goes home," said Frank, who was obviously being Harry Sandford
to Tommy Merton.

"You must go now, Tom," said Jane, unsympathetically. "Your mother wants
you."

"But, mother," said Frank, casting a noble and protecting glance towards
his friend, who was hastily running his spoon round the rice-pudding
dish to get the last bits of skin, "he _needs_ his supper. Mother, if
you'd been trying to unstop the scullery pipe, _you'd_ need some
supper."

"His supper is waiting for him at home," said Jane, rather annoyed to
find herself arguing with her son over Master Watson's uninterested
head. "Go along now, Tom, and you'll see Frank after church to-morrow.
You can come to lunch if your mother says yes. Only go at once, or I
won't ask you."

Master Watson got up with a satisfied expression, shook hands and said
good night to everyone present, known to him or unknown, and
disappeared. The Admiral, who had been looking at the scullery drain,
now turned upon his grandson and asked if he had heard him say that pipe
was not to be touched and what the dickens had he been doing. The eyes
of all were then turned upon the mouth of the pipe, from which protruded
a piece of decayed rubber.

"It's only one of the tyres off that old pram in the Watsons' garage,"
said Frank in an aggrieved voice. "Tom and I got it off on purpose to
help, and we poked it up the pipe and it got stuck, because bits of it
kept breaking."

"Did I or did I not say that pipe was NOT TO BE TOUCHED?" said the
Admiral.

"Oh, dear," said Jane, "Frank, you are very disobedient and we can't get
a man till Monday. Go and get washed."

"Pardon me," said Mr. Adams, "but have you tried the U-joint?"

The Admiral indignantly said of course he had, but the obstruction was
lower.

"Well, Admiral, what you want is a length of our pliable
one-and-seven-sixteenths annealed spang-rods," said Mr. Adams, kindly,
as a keeper might reason with an elephant.

"Good God! you needn't tell me that, Adams," said the Admiral. "And
where am I to get a spang-rod? Might as well try to get a razor blade."

"Good God! Good God!" said Frank, performing a small dance as he looked
admiringly at his grandfather.

"Go and get WASHED!" said Jane, desperately.

"If Packer hasn't got one in the garage I'll have one sent out to-morrow
from the works," said Mr. Adams. "Packer can run over and fetch it.
Don't you worry, Admiral. We'll have that pipe cleared by lunch-time
to-morrow. Well, it's been a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Gresham. That's
a fine youngster of yours. What's your name, sonny?"

Frank, who had taken advantage of Mr. Adams's diversion not to go in and
get washed, said he was Francis Gresham and he was going to be a sailor
like his father.

"I didn't know your husband was a sailor, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams
to Jane, "but of course he would be with your father an Admiral. He must
be proud of this young man."

Jane, ever determined above all things not to allow her anxiety to cloud
any friend's mind, said with a brilliant smile that he was very proud.

"But he can't see me," said Frank, "because the beastly Japs won't let
him come home."

Jane could have killed her son; though, being a mother, one felt
grateful and in an unreasonable way almost proud that Frank could speak
without a shadow of his mythical father. Most luckily her father, whose
sympathy, loving though it was, she shunned above all, was angrily
wrenching at the pram tyre and had not heard.

"Mrs. Gresham!" said Mr. Adams, shocked. "You'll excuse me. I hadn't an
idea. I wouldn't for worlds----"

"You couldn't know," said Jane, summoning her smile and speaking fast
and low. "I've heard nothing for four years. No good speaking of it."
And she looked towards Frank.

Sam Adams, as he would have said of himself, could take a hint with any
man, once he knew where he was.

"I take you, Mrs. Gresham," he said, "Heather, come along, we mustn't
keep Mrs. Merivale's supper waiting."

They went to the front gate.

"Goodbye, Heather," said Jane. "We must have some tennis again soon.
I'll get Robin and Anne."

"Mr. Dale isn't very keen, is he?" said Heather. "He wouldn't even go up
a tree to get his tennis shoe."

"Poor Robin," said Jane, not much noticing the dislike in Heather's
voice. "His foot is still a trouble."

"Did he hurt it?" asked Heather, disturbed.

"Oh, it was blown to bits at Anzio," said Jane. "He manages very well
with his artificial one. Goodbye, Mr. Adams."

She stood at the gate till the taxi had gone. Then, shutting her mind
more firmly than ever against remembrance or hope, she went to see that
her son gave himself more than a surface wash.

The taxi journey to Valimere did not take ten minutes, but into that
time the Adams family packed a great deal of useless regret for spilt
milk.

"Oh, daddy!" said Heather. "It's too awful. I was beastly about Mr. Dale
because I thought he was lazy and stupid, and all the time it was an
artificial foot. And Mrs. Gresham will hate me for being so beastly."

"She'd be more in her rights to hate your old dad for making such a fool
of himself about her husband," said Mr. Adams ruefully. "I suppose I had
ought to have known, but the old Admiral never said anything, and it
stands to reason you don't know these family affairs by instink. Well,
well. Don't you worry, girlie. She's a fine woman and what you say isn't
going to worry her one way or the other."

"Nor what you say neither, dad," said Heather gratefully. "Do you like
her, dad?"

Mr. Adams said he'd like anyone who was good to his little Heth, if it
was Hitler himself, though in saying that he thought he was pretty safe.
And then Mr. Packer drew up at Valimere and received certain
instructions about a spang-rod, with a tip which staggered even his
views, nourished by subalterns on leave and Barchester magnates in a
hurry, on that subject.




                               CHAPTER VI


On Sunday morning Heather, who had not slept for thinking of Jane
Gresham; or rather, had thought of her quite often when she was not
asleep, which is not exactly the same thing, would fain have persuaded
her father to take her to the parish church in the Old Town. But this he
would not consider for a moment and indeed spoke to his dearly loved
child very strongly on the subject of not getting above herself and
thinking what was good enough for her dad and his mother before him, for
the old man was never a one for going to any kind of service, not
holding with being preached at not by Mr. Gladstone himself, wasn't good
enough for her. If Heather had burst into tears and said: "But dad, I
want to see Mrs. Gresham," it is possible, though not probable, that he
would have yielded, for he also felt that it would not be unpleasant to
see that lady again. But he had his own plans for Sunday.

Mrs. Merivale, like many New Town dwellers, would have liked to go to
the parish church, but after a week of housework and cooking and queues,
and mostly lodgers and children as well, they felt they simply could not
go more than a mile uphill either on foot or a bicycle, especially in
one's Sunday clothes. So some of them said they would go next Sunday if
it didn't rain, or at any rate on Christmas Day; some went to the New
Town place of worship, which was so High that whenever it saw the words
"Anglo-Catholic" it crossed out the "Anglo," and owing to lack of funds
was a Petra-like temple, all front and practically no back, where they
sat in gloomy disrelish of the clergyman's long cassock and peculiar
ways, so gaining merit: and some again stayed in bed or mowed the lawn
or pottered about in the little glasshouse or took the motor-bike down.

If Mrs. Merivale was alone, her habit was to make herself a cup of tea
and go back to bed, unless she had a daughter on leave who wanted a
proper breakfast, though we must say for the girls that they were very
good about putting the alarm clock forward an hour and taking a tray up
to her for a surprise. But when she had lodgers she behaved just as if
it were a weekday, so she gave Mr. Adams and Heather and Miss Holly a
large filling breakfast, after which Miss Holly mounted her bicycle and
rode away to Harefield to spend the day with a friend in the village,
and have a talk with the caretaker at the school, while her employer and
his daughter partook of the ministrations of the Reverend (by courtesy)
Enoch Arden in a small red brick edifice with Anglo-Saxon dog-tooth
moulding in yellow brick round the top of its front door, called
Ebenezer.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In the Old Town, which had been there in some kind of form when the New
Town was a wolf-infested swamp, there was not this variety of religious
experience. You went to church or you didn't. Mostly you did, for the
Old Town as a whole was fond of its Rector. There were many points in
his favour. He was old, he had been there for thirty years and become
part of the landscape; his young wife, so much younger than he, had died
and he had with much propriety remained a widower, though as a matter of
fact, if he had seen anyone he liked enough he would not have felt bound
by his late wife's memory, deeply as he had loved her. And perhaps more
than all these claims on his parishioners' love and respect, he had
stuck to the old forms, so that everyone knew where they were. The
Dearly Beloved Brethren was rehearsed at length; the marriage service
said what it has always said, without mealy-mouthed circumlocutions; the
proper psalms for the day were sung; and Hymns Ancient and Modern were
used, from a reasonable-sized book, without the additions that have more
than all the demerits of the older hymns and none of their warm
familiarity. He also had the organist, who was the Hallbury stationer
and lived with a half-witted brother, well under his thumb. There had
been a terrible week, before the memory of the younger generation of
Hallburians, when the organist, flown with three days at one of the
Three Choir Festivals and the lordly talk of cathedral organists,
knights too, some of them, had begun to intromit, as the Rector very
alarmingly put it, with the simple chants to which the congregation were
accustomed. He had furthermore essayed to give an extra touch of
holiness to some of the sung responses by dragging their slow length
along as unconscionably as Charles II's death, so that the
congregation's breath ran out. The Rector, sorely displeased, had yet
bided his time, till on the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity the
organist had surpassed himself in slowness on the response _And take not
Thy Holy Spirit from us_. Several of the congregation looked about them
with troubled faces, saw no help, and stopped singing in despair; while
the Admiral, who was senior churchwarden and had a powerful voice, sang
it at the pace at which he considered it should be sung, and then looked
round with contempt on those timeservers who were bursting themselves
over semibreves.

After the service the Rector had spoken his mind to the organist,
smiting him with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the
labours of his hands, after the manner of his favourite prophet, winding
up by accusing the unfortunate stationer, in Haggai's own words, of
earning wages to put them into a bag with holes. It was easy enough for
the organist to demolish the Rector's arguments over his supper, telling
his half-wit brother that a bag with holes in wasn't no argument at all,
and all his savings went into the post-office savings bank, but in face
of his Rector he was dumb. Next Sunday the Rector preached a very
powerful sermon about the wrath of Moses when he came down from Mount
Sinai and found the Israelites worshipping the golden calf; and though
the exact application of the sermon was not evident, it was felt that
the Rector had scored a point. The responses were played after the old
manner, the Rector invited his organist to come in and have a glass of
excellent sherry, and when two days later the half-wit brother tried to
throw himself out of the window, it was the Rector who sat with him till
doctors and police could come and take him away to the County Asylum.
Since that day there had been no further rebellions or innovations at
St. Hall Friars.

On this Sunday morning Dr. Dale awoke with the calm and happy
anticipation that Sunday never failed to bring him. From seven o'clock
on this summer morning to after seven o'clock in the evening, he would
be constantly in his beloved church, saying alone or in communion with
his flock the words he loved, in charity with all men. All through the
early service he moved and spoke in this golden mood, rejoicing in such
of his flock as came, full of compassion rather than reprobation for
those who did not. Among these was his son Robin who, more tired than he
liked to admit by the tennis party, had passed a restless night till the
early morning, when he had fallen into a deep sleep which his father had
not disturbed. Waking at eight o'clock he had come down full of remorse,
to find his father breakfasting alone.

"I'm very sorry, father," said Robin. "I just didn't wake up."

"I am very glad you didn't," said Dr. Dale. "It would have been a good
thing if you had slept all morning."

He then groaned.

"It's all right, father," said Robin, though in a very general way, as
he had not the faintest idea what his father was groaning about.

The Rector said he was an old man.

Robin, still in darkness and feeling his way carefully, said no one was
old now.

"Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth," said Dr. Dale. "But if it were His
will to chasten us in ways we could understand, it would make life very
much easier. I cannot, with all reverent submission, feel I have
deserved this."

Robin, who was by now well into the excellent breakfast which the
Rectory cook, ably seconded by the Rectory hens, had supplied, said with
some indignation that his father didn't deserve anything; not
_anything_, he said; and anyway what was it.

"I know," said the Rector, "that my lines are laid in pleasant places,
but at times one is apt to forget. I had forgotten, I am ashamed to say,
till Freeman reminded me this morning."

Robin, who knew that the verger was a walking church calendar, asked
what Freeman had reminded him of.

"It was his duty," said the Rector. "Marmalade, please, Robin."

"And he did," said Robin, pushing the marmalade towards his revered and
rather wearing sire. "Have you forgotten to marry someone, sir?"

"I hope not," said the Rector, anxiously. "I don't think Freeman would
allow that. No. It is the Mothers' Union service this afternoon."

"Shall I write a sermon for you, father," said Robin, who had partly for
fun and most sincerely with a wish to help his father, dabbled from time
to time in occasional sermons, not unsuccessfully.

"Thank you, Robin," said his father. "Thank you, my boy. It is very kind
of you. The address is all right. I was correcting it only last night.
It is that banner, Robin. I cannot away with it. In my church. In St.
Hall Friars. An abomination of desolation. A greenery-yallery
abomination. When I was a young man," he continued, talking half to
himself as he often did, "I thought of an old church with regimental
colours in the nave. Old colours with tattered ends and honourable
scars. The gods are just and of our pleasant vices Make whips to scourge
us. The old church was granted to me; and the banner. A just reward for
presumption doubtless. I am glad your mother never saw it."

Robin, who though he sometimes wished he had a mother and then again
after seeing Mrs. Tebben at Worsted or Mrs. Rivers at Pomfret Towers, to
which the Earl and Countess found it impossible not to invite her, was
quite glad he had not, was not sentimental about it, said it was a jolly
good thing mother never saw it and he was sure she would have loathed
it. Anyway, he said, to make a person a saint because they'd let the
pigs starve in Lent, didn't seem fair.

"Roast pork and crackling," said the Rector, gazing into space.
"Yorkshire hams. Trotters. Pig's face and young greens. Gammon rashers.
Everything."

Father and son were silent for a moment in contemplation of these
raptures.

"And pork pies with lots of jelly," said Robin in a low voice. "No,
father, be a man. Think of Spam."

"Anathema maranatha," said the Rector without heat. "You are quite
right, Robin. We must face facts. And I must not be selfish. The
Mothers' Union almost worship that banner. When I say worship," he
added, hastily, "I do not mean it in any derogatory sense. They are all
good church-women. Perhaps 'venerate' is the word I should have used."

"I wouldn't, father," said Robin. "I don't think the Venerable Bede
would like it. They just think it is a lovely banner and such artistic
colouring," at which the Rector looked perplexed and Robin felt a little
ashamed and told himself for the hundredth time that he must remember
his father was of an older generation and might with luck and an earlier
marriage have been his grandfather. So he got up, patted his father's
shoulder reassuringly and went off to his own affairs. Dr. Dale then
opened the Sunday paper which had just come and fell forthwith into such
a transport of fury over the week's religious article which, hoping to
reach the general public who never read that particular organ, made a so
very unconvincing comparison between the Kingdom of Heaven and Big
Business, with a hierarchy of managers, secretaries and accountants,
some faithful in great things, some in small, as quite drove St. lla's
banner out of his mind.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Morning service passed off peacefully. The Rector, fortified partly by
prayer, partly by a very good Sunday lunch and a glass of port from one
of a half-dozen given to him at Christmas by his old friend Lord Stoke,
President of the Barsetshire Archaeological Association, addressed the
Mothers' Union with kindness and sympathy, even going so far as to
sketch a kind of blessing over St. lla's banner, which though carefully
wrapped in blackout material was beginning to tarnish, thus adding a
sickly browny green to the general effect. The Mothers' Union all said
the Rector was a lovely man and went back to a tea-party at Mrs.
Freeman's cottage, each one bringing her own milk and sugar, the hostess
supplying the tea and cakes. All of which Mr. Freeman duly reported to
the Barchester Chronicle, where it appeared next Friday. By a careless
mistake of the compositor, aged seventeen and a half, and with an eye on
a reserved occupation, the names of the host and hostess appeared as
Trueman. This led to unpleasantness, Mr. Freeman saying he wrote it
plain enough for anyone as had learned his alphabet, the compositor
maintaining that if people didn't give their "F's" a proper tail nor
take the trouble to write clear, it was a pity there wasn't evening
classes for adults at Hallbury, and didn't he know there was a war on.
To which Mr. Freeman replied he'd thank the compositor not to talk like
that to a man who was in the Mons Retreat long before his (the
compositor's) father had to marry his mother, and he'd find there was a
war on soon enough himself when the next call-up came round.

                 *        *        *        *        *

To turn to more peaceful scenes, Dr. Dale and his son then went to tea
with Admiral Palliser. As Master Gresham was spending the afternoon with
Master Watson and his rabbits, there was no interruption to a pleasant
interlude. The weather was, as usual, too chilly to sit about outside,
but after tea they strolled comfortably in the garden, the Rector and
the Admiral discussing local matters, while Jane and Robin picked
gooseberries in a desultory way.

"I went up to town last week to see old Thing," said Robin, apropos of
nothing; thus irreverently alluding to the brilliant young orthopdic
surgeon, Mr. Omicron Pie, whose grandfather Sir Omicron Pie had been a
well-known consultant, often called in by Barchester doctors.

"Had he anything to say?" asked Jane.

"Not much," said Robin. "Blast those red gooseberries, they go off like
a bomb at you."

"Tom Watson told Frank that people's feet grew again if they weren't too
old," said Jane who, hard with herself, was sometimes deliberately hard
to others. Not from unkindness. Perhaps from a feeling that it might
brace them, as it sometimes braced her.

"He would," said Robin, not noticeably flinching. "Old Thing didn't say
that. He said I was a very creditable case and not to overdo it."

"I suppose that's why you played tennis yesterday," said Jane.

"I suppose it is," said Robin. "But if it's any pleasure to you, I had a
rotten night."

"I don't know that it's a pleasure," said Jane. "But it may teach you
sense."

Robin said he didn't think so. Nothing, he added, taught one sense, not
the kind of sense that meant not overdoing things, except getting so old
that one jolly well couldn't. He then blasted another gooseberry and
Jane said if he put more in the basket and ate less, that wouldn't
happen. She then went on picking up the row while Robin picked down it,
and not till they had got to the end and started on the next row did
they meet again.

"Getting on?" said Jane.

Robin showed his basket.

"Not so bad," said Jane. "There was a fresh lot of people from the Far
East last week."

"Repatriated?" said Robin.

"Repatriated--rescued--escaped," said Jane, as one who might say it's
all one and doesn't interest me.

"Anyone know anything?" Robin asked, with no outward appearance of
interest.

"Not a soul," said Jane. "Why should they?"

"People do hear of people who are missing quite ages afterwards," said
Robin, doing his best to be as impersonal as Jane, but not succeeding so
well.

"Yes; and they don't too," said Jane. "You can't count a man who had
seen someone two years ago who thought he had heard of Francis a year
before that. How I _hate_ these gooseberries," she added with cold fury,
holding up a finger gashed and bleeding from a long thorn.

"Suck it," said Robin.

"I am," said Jane rather mumblingly. "Beastly things, gooseberries.
Spikes and bristles and pips."

"You look rotten," said Robin, stating a fact without emotion.

"I _hate_ those bits of news that aren't news," said Jane. "One thinks
about them at night. Come on, we'll give the gooseberries to Cook and
you'll want to wash before evening service. Give me your basket and I'll
go in the back way. No, empty it into mine."

She held her basket above the prickly gooseberry bush and Robin poured
his gooseberries into it. Their eyes met. Each saw in the other an image
of desolation, well chained and subdued. Jane laughed and went away
towards the kitchen.

Robin could not laugh. Her lot was harder than his, for he knew the very
worst. She had never known the truth, might never know it. He had his
school, the offer of a job at Southbridge with a life of useful work.
She could never make a certain plan again in her life, unless Francis
Gresham returned or was proved to be dead. All useless. Everything was
useless. He took his empty basket to the house, put it in the little
garden room, washed his hands and joined his father and Admiral
Palliser, who had come to anchor at a wooden seat on the flagged path
which ran under the drawing-room windows, and were enjoying some
temporary sunshine. The elder men continued their talk about parish
matters. Three-quarters chimed from St. Hall Friars tower. Evening
service at half-past six. Supper. Books. Bed. School next day. So it all
went on. So it went on for poor Jane.

The noise of a car drawing up outside was heard. The door in the wall
was opened and in came Mr. Adams and his daughter. No one can say that
the Admiral was enthusiastically pleased to see his Chairman of
Directors on that day and at that hour, but he put a good face on it and
asked them to sit down.

"If it's all the same to you I'll stand," said Mr. Adams, who was
holding a long thin parcel. "I've been sitting most of the day one way
and another, what with the chapel and lunch and an afternoon with the
papers. I'm putting on weight, and Sam Adams can't afford that. I have
to get about a bit in my business. But that's not what I came to say,
Admiral Palliser. What I came to say is this. You remember what I said
about that scullery waste-pipe of yours was giving trouble."

Admiral Palliser said he did, and his grandson had managed to get it
stopped up again.

"He'd get a good tanning if he was mine," said Mr. Adams, not
vindictively, but as a matter of business. "But that's his mother's
affair. Shall we have the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Gresham, Admiral? My
little Heth here thinks the world of her."

Robin, near whom Heather was standing, saw her unattractive face go a
dusky red and wondered what was up. She had been so deliberately
disagreeable to him at the tennis party that he was rather frightened of
her; for a well-bred young man has no weapon against the rudeness of a
young woman. So he made no comment.

Admiral Palliser said his daughter was somewhere about, and would
certainly be with them soon, as evening service was at half-past six.

Mr. Adams, undoing his parcel, said Sam Adams could take a hint with any
man and he had something to say on that subject, but one thing at a time
was always his motto. He then extracted from its wrapping a metal rod
which he pushed towards his host, who eyed it intently.

"It's a spang-rod," said Admiral, reverently.

"Same as what I said," said Mr. Adams. "Don't you touch it. It's a bit
oily and I'm used to oil. Same as what I said; our pliable
one-and-seven-sixteenths super-annealed spang-rods. I sent Packer over
to the works same as I said. I'm sorry I couldn't get it before lunch,
the way I said, but he had the car out for taking people to church this
morning. But I said to myself Better late than never, so me and Heth
thought we'd come up and see about that pipe. And here is Mrs. Gresham.
As I was just saying to the Admiral, Mrs. Gresham, I've brought the
spang-rod, not that that's a subject ladies know much about, unless you
call my little Heth a lady who was in and out of the works before she
could speak, as the saying is."

"It reminds me of the old Ironsides," said the Admiral. "She was the
supply ship for the Flatiron and all that Iron class. I've never had a
ship with such first-class stores. The chief engineer was a
North-country man called Outhwaite, with a broken nose. I've never had a
man under me who knew his job so well."

Mr. Adams, who had hardly been able to wait for the end of the sentence,
said the way things turned out was something you wouldn't hardly credit,
and did the Admiral know that Outhwaite was now the owner of the works
at Newcastle where they got all those special castings done last year.
Upon which the Admiral forgot time and place, plunging into
technicalities with Mr. Adams. Six o'clock chimed. The Rector began to
look uneasy.

"I fear I must leave you, Palliser," he said. "It is already six
o'clock."

"Good God!" said the Admiral. "Sorry, Adams, but we are going to church
at half-past, so I can't see the spang-rod work. We must have another
talk."

"Well," said Mr. Adams, looking round at the company who were now all at
the disadvantage of being seated, "that is what I was coming to, but one
thing at a time is my motto, and that's what I say in season and out of
season as they say."

If his hearers felt that his remarks were not in season, they bore them
well; all except the Rector, who with an apology to Jane Gresham got up
and went away to meet his verger at St. Hall Friars.

"Fine old gentleman," said Mr. Adams, following the Rector's progress to
the garden gate. "But what I had to say concerned him as much as it
concerns me. You see," he continued, "we went to chapel this morning, my
little Heth and me, and it wasn't altogether what we meant. The reverend
may have meant well, but all this politics in religion I don't hold
with, and as good as communism which, believe me or not, does no good in
my line of business, and so I told him afterwards. 'Look here, Mr.
What-did-you-say-the-name-was,' I said, 'Adams is my name, Sam Adams.
You may have heard of me,' I said, 'most people round Barchester have,
and I don't grudge the pound I put in the plate,' I said, 'because a
pound isn't worth more than seven and sixpence now, if that. _But_,' I
said, 'if you think Jack's as good as his master, and believe me or not
I know what I'm talking about, he's _not_,' I said. 'I've gone to chapel
all my life,' I said, 'but it's a long lane that has no turning and this
is where it comes and it's taking me to the Old Town this evening to the
church.' So being a business man I said to Heth: 'We'll kill two birds
with one stone and take the Admiral his spang-rod and go to evening
service at the church.' Well, that's that."

This general confession left his hearers quite overpowered, and there
was an exhausted silence till Jane, seeing her father turned to stone
with the oily spang-rod in his hand, jumped up and said it was after the
quarter, and they would be late and drove her father in to get the oil
off his hands. Any awkwardness there might have been was then overridden
and intensified by Mr. Adams, who cordially invited Jane to come with
him and his daughter in the car. Before Jane could say yes or no, she
found herself in Packer's car and within three minutes at the church
gate, so there was nothing for it but to take her new friends in and
settle them in the Palliser pew, which, as we know, was well provided
with prayer books, if a trifle out of date; and here they were shortly
joined by the Admiral who had walked up with Robin. It is not surprising
that Jane had felt misgivings about letting the Adams family loose upon
the church, but with her usual good sense she accepted them as guests of
Hallbury House for the time being.

During the events we have just related, Heather Adams had not said a
word beyond the usual greetings. To anyone who had known her a year or
so ago, this would have seemed so normal as not to attract any
attention, but since the Belton family had come into her life, Heather
had acquired enough social polish to pass muster. But the sudden
irruption of Jane Gresham upon a heart at the moment unoccupied had been
cataclysmic, throwing her back into a schoolgirl stage of dumb adoration
exhausting to all concerned, and very apt to be confused with the sulks.
This Jane could not know, and merely thought that for so large a girl,
brilliant at mathematics, well educated at the Hosiers' Girls'
Foundation School, she was uncommonly gauche and heavy in hand. Jane was
not sentimental, but a kind of practical compassion had made her
befriend Heather at the tennis party and made her feel under an
obligation to befriend her now, and as long as she and her father were
Hallbury House guests. By which kind resolve she did, had she but known
it, rivet the unlucky Heather's chains yet more strongly.

Heather, who was conversant with the order of the Church of England
service owing to her attendance at Harefield Church with the Hosiers'
girls, was next to her father and guided him efficiently through the
prayer book, so that Jane, much occupied with her own thoughts, did not
notice the occasional hesitations or mistakes of her father's chairman.
At times she lost herself in the familiar words of the liturgy and the
worm ceased to gnaw at her heart. Then with warlike phrases in the
psalms, with the prayer for prisoners and captives, she was brought back
to the old round of hopes and despairs, not knowing what she wanted or
what she prayed for, longing to lay down a burden of doubt and
self-torture that only she could bear.

Dr. Dale had a kind habit, encouraged by his doctor and his
congregation, of giving the shortest of sermons at the evening service,
so that before half-past seven, his hearers were at liberty to disperse.
The attendance had not been large that evening, after the morning
services and the Mothers' Union, so that the unusual sight of strangers
in the Hallbury House pew was very generally noted. The Watsons, who had
brought Frank Gresham with them to return him to his mother afterwards,
recognized Heather and her father. Sir Robert Fielding recognized Mr.
Adams from their business meetings and hoped he would not have to
introduce him to his wife. Not that he was more of a snob than most of
us are, but he foresaw possible social complications for his extremely
busy wife which were, to his mind, quite unnecessary. And they had heard
enough from their daughter Anne about Adams's girl, for whom she seemed
deplorably to have taken a liking at the Watsons'. Probably that girl in
the Pallisers' pew was she. Lady Fielding, one of the rare people who
when worshipping do not at once become more than usually perceptive of
their neighbours, simply registered the fact of strangers and thought no
more of them. Anne Fielding, sitting away from her parents beyond Miss
Bunting, recognized her new friend with pleasure and the protective
feeling for which she could not account and wondered, with the slowly
developing social sense that had lately begun to flower in her, if mummy
and daddy would mind if she asked Heather Adams to tea one day. As for
Miss Bunting, very little escaped that lady, but she had accustomed
herself to observe, to classify, and suspend judgment until she knew,
through some inward monitor, that she was right.

As the little congregation moved into the porch and onto the stone path
that led to the churchyard gate, it was impossible not to greet friends.

"Mummy!" said Anne Fielding, pulling at her mother to attract her
attention, "it's Heather Adams. I told you we played tennis at Mrs.
Watson's. You remember her at the station, with Miss Holly. Hullo,
Heather!"

Heather was pleased to see Anne, who looked so fragile yet gave her such
a sense of security; of poise, Heather might have said, had the word
been familiar to her vocabulary; and in her turn she pulled at her
father's sleeve.

"Daddy," she said, "it's Anne Fielding that I played tennis with at Mrs.
Watson's. You remember her."

After this there was nothing for it but that Mr. Adams should renew his
acquaintance with Sir Robert and be introduced to Lady Fielding, who
with real kindness said how nice it was for Anne to have a friend of her
own age, and asked if he and Miss Bunting had met.

"We have," said Miss Bunting, showing no disposition to shake hands yet
acknowledging Mr. Adams's existence with a gracious bow of the head. Mr.
Adams was conscious of embarrassment mingled with awe, feelings almost
unknown to him, and was for a moment tongue-tied and afraid that he
might be found wanting. The Watsons with the two little boys joined the
party, and there was a general mixing after which it was obvious that
Mr. Adams would for ever be part of Hallbury Society, at any rate for so
long as he and his daughter were in the neighbourhood.

"Hullo, sir," said the voice of Frank Gresham at the level of Mr.
Adams's lower waistcoat buttons.

"I hear you've blocked the scullery drain again, sonny," said Mr. Adams,
shaking the rather dirty hand that was offered to him.

"It was all the fault of the sponge," said Frank in an aggrieved voice.
"It all got stuck in the pipe. People don't seem to understand about
things getting stuck. Tom saw it, didn't you, Tom?" he added, pulling
Master Watson forward. "This is Tom Watson, sir. He is only beginning
Latin. Do you know Latin, sir?"

"I don't," said Mr. Adams.

"Frank!" said his mother in an agonized undertone.

"But I'll tell you what I do know," said Mr. Adams, who had not heard
Jane's interjection. "I know how to get the scullery pipe clear. I've
brought a spang-rod for your grandfather."

"What's that, sir?" asked Frank.

"Something _you_ don't know, sonny," said Mr. Adams, good-humouredly.
"Look here, Admiral," he continued as his host joined the group,
"suppose I drive you and Mrs. Gresham back and we'll clean that scullery
pipe here and now. It'll be a lesson to this young man. It's not
half-past seven yet and I'll have the pipe clear by a quarter to eight,
and then Heth and me must be off, or Mrs. Merivale will be wondering
where we've got to."

Frank danced violently to express his approval.

"Come on, Tom," he said.

"No, Tom, you are not going back with Frank," said Mrs. Watson, who had
overheard. "What I always say is, get two boys together and there's
bound to be mischief. Come along."

"Now, I've a suggestion to make," said Mr. Adams. "Say I take your young
man along to the Admiral's and as soon as that pipe is cleared I'll run
him back in the car."

"Let him go," said Mr. Watson, who had been talking to Heather. "Heather
can come back with us and look at a new chuck and Adams can pick her up
when he brings Tom back."

Mrs. Watson gave in, saying that Charlie always had an eye for the
girls.

"Well, goodbye, Lady Fielding," said Mr. Adams. "Pleased to have met
you, I'm sure. I'm glad the girls have made friends. They'll have a lot
in common, being only children. Send Miss Anne along to Valimere any
time you like and I hope Miss Bunting will come too. Her and Miss Holly
will have a lot to talk about, education and all that, and it'll do my
Heth good. I'll give you a ring when I'm down, Sir Robert, and we'll
thrash out that matter of the memorial window. Come on, young men."

Enveloping the Admiral, Jane and the two little boys, he carried them
off to Packer's car. His late audience looked at one another, but could
not well discuss him in front of his daughter, so the Fieldings went
back to Gradka's excellent supper and the Watsons took Heather off to
talk machinery with Mr. Watson.

It struck both Admiral Palliser and his daughter, when talking in the
evening, that Packer, who was difficult to get, what Mrs. Merivale
called "choosy," making a favour of accepting high payment for his
rattle-trap old car, changing people's appointments mercilessly,
refusing (broadly speaking) to go out before ten or after six, on
Saturday afternoons or Sunday mornings, was perfectly content to sit
idle for hours while Mr. Adams changed his mind and his plans. Not
because they were what Packer would call capittleists, for Mr. Adams was
a capitalist on a very large scale; not because they made or ever had
made unreasonable demands, for never would they have dreamed of treating
him or dared to treat him as Mr. Adams did. And regretfully they came to
the conclusion that Parker preferred Mr. Adams because he was not a
gentleman and ordered him about. It did not pay, the Admiral said, to
ask people politely if you wanted anything done. The Adamses gave their
orders and took it for granted that they would be obeyed; just as he,
the Admiral, had done in his flagship. Why had the leadership passed
from the Admiral and his like? There was no satisfactory answer; but the
Admiral considered Mr. Adams in a battleship, and felt that there at
least he would find his level pretty quickly, which comforted the old
seaman.

"You know, father," his daughter had said, "it isn't really so bad. Mr.
Adams may be a J.P. and even an M.P. in time, but I don't think the
county would stand him as Lord Lieutenant. All the same there's
something rather nice about him. A kind of person who gets things done."

At which the Admiral had glared at his daughter over his spectacles, and
said Adams wasn't the only one who got things done, and it was probably
people saying things like that about Hitler that had got him where he
was.

                 *        *        *        *        *

But leaving these social changes, let us return to Hallbury House,
outside which Packer was sitting in his car, reading the Sunday paper
folded very small, thus betraying his standard of intelligence to anyone
who cared to take notes. Though why to read the Times with the sheets
flapping about like animated bedclothes should be the mark of caste, as
against reading other organs which it would be invidious to mention very
neatly packed into what almost becomes a cube, we cannot say. Are we to
judge our fellow creatures by their capacity to read rapidly, with the
eye rather than the mind, as against reading line upon line with
practically no mind at all? The answer would appear to be that a good
many of us do.

While Packer was mastering the details of L.-Cpl. Hackett, L., 43537201,
coming back from Burma after three years to find his wife with twins of
two and an idiot baby all of whom were taught to call the sergeant at
the local Hush-Hush camp "Daddy," and shooting the whole lot of them,
and then giving himself up to the police with the words, "All right,
mates, I done it," Mr. Adams, a small boy grasping each hand, led the
way to the back of Hallbury House, followed by Jane and the Admiral, who
was lovingly carrying the oily spang-rod. It did occur to Jane and
perhaps to her father that it was as a rule the host who took his guest
to any given part of a house or garden, not the guest who took the host,
but Mr. Adams being obviously an elemental force, they resigned
themselves to fate.

"Now," said Mr. Adams, shaking himself free of the little boys and
taking off his coat, "we'll see who's master. Got the spang-rod,
Admiral? Thanks. What you want is some cotton waste," he added, as the
Admiral rubbed his rather oily hands on the grass edge.

"Cotton waste!" said the Admiral, angrily. "Good God! man, do you
suppose I can get any? And when I think I could have it in the bale when
I was at sea. Well, well."

"Here you are," said Mr. Adams, pulling a lump out of the pocket of his
discarded coat. "Never without it. I'll tell my sekertary to see they
send you some from the works. Now, you boys, here's something you
haven't seen."

From another pocket he extracted a kind of small rubber dome, set on a
wooden handle.

"See this, young men?" said Mr. Adams. "This is first-aid for scullery
pipes. Press it down over the hole in the sink, then pull it up. You'll
have to pull, because----"

"I know, sir," said Frank, eagerly, and (to his mother's ear)
pretentiously. "It's a vacuum. Vacuum is Latin for empty. Did you know
that, sir? Tom hasn't got as far as that yet. He's only doing first
declension, aren't you, Tom? _Vacuus, vacua, vacuum, vac_----"

"That's all very nice, sonny, but it won't unblock your granddad's
pipe," said Mr. Adams, who appeared to be becoming a close relation to
the whole family. "Now you listen to me. Next time the pipe gets
blocked, I don't say by the cook, I don't say by one of you young men,
try the squeegee first. And if that doesn't work, try the spang-rod.
Here, what's your name, Frank, you go into the scullery and when I say
'Go,' turn the tap full on."

"Oh, Mr. Adams," said Jane, "I don't want to interfere, but cook," at
which name she involuntarily dropped her voice and looked round
nervously, "is very difficult and----"

"That's all right, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams. "That's why I sent
that lad of yours in. Cook won't mind him, and what's more he won't mind
cook. Besides I'll lay an even sixpence that she's out. They always are
on Sunday evening, with cold tea for the family. If I had my way I'd
have a good big hot meal every Sunday evening. That'd teach them."

With which highly undemocratic words Mr. Adams began to push the
spang-rod up the pipe. It went up like Aaron's rod, twisting obediently
to its master's hand. In a moment he appeared to be satisfied, withdrew
the rod and called out "Go!"

At once the roaring of water coming off the main was heard, and down the
pipe came an avalanche of mixed filth with a core of sponge.

"Stop her," Mr. Adams called to Frank.

The roaring ceased.

"Is there a kettle boiling?" said Mr. Adams.

"Yes, sir," shouted Frank.

"If you'll pardon me, Mrs. Gresham, I'll just finish the job," said Mr.
Adams, turning to the scullery door, when he felt something pulling him
and looking down saw Master Watson.

"Well, sonny," said Mr. Adams.

"Oh, sir, can I see the evacuee?" said Tom.

Mr. Adams looked perplexed, then laughed and told Tom to come inside. In
a moment or two boiling water with heaps of soda in it came rushing down
the pipe. Mr. Adams and the two little boys, now in a state of simmering
hero-worship, emerged, and Mr. Adams put his coat on and said he must be
off. The Admiral and Jane escorted him to the gate, the general progress
rather impeded by the affection of the two little boys for their new
patron, an affection expressed by hanging heavily on any parts of him
they could reach, and getting among his legs; but Mr. Adams took it all
in good part.

"Get in, Tommy," he said to Master Watson, not so much as an
affectionate diminutive as a comprehensive name for small boys. "Well,
goodbye, Admiral; goodbye, Mrs. Gresham; goodbye, young man."

And he already had one foot in the car when Dr. Dale came up, for it was
that gentleman's habit to partake of a cold supper with Hallbury House
every other Sunday or so, to give his staff a free evening, while Robin
went to one or another friend, or to the Omnium Arms, where they still
had a fairly good dinner. Much as the Admiral and his daughter loved
their Rector, they could have wished that he had arrived even one minute
later, for being now rather exhausted by the way Mr. Adams had taken
over the house and the little boys, they were thoroughly glad, though in
a grateful way, to be seeing the last of him. Mr. Adams withdrew the
foot he had placed in the car.

"I fear I am late," said Dr. Dale. "Freeman detained me about the
Barsetshire Archaeological next week. We are having some of them at the
Rectory, you know."

Mr. Adams, taking the role of both host and hostess upon him, greeted
the Rector warmly and said that was the kind of sermon he _did_ like.
Not a lot of communistic claptrap like the reverend down in the New
Town, he said, but what he _called_ a sermon; short, sweet, and to the
point, at which the Rector, who had simply filled up seven minutes in an
adequate way, was surprised and flattered.

"Chapel I was born and Chapel I was bred, you know," said Mr. Adams, to
the despair of his audience who neither knew nor cared, "but me and
Heth--that's my daughter, you know, Rector--heard such a bellyful of
nonsense if yo'll excuse the expression down at the chapel this morning
that we said we'd try C. of E. and very pleased we were."

The Rector, who was not used to such manifestations, said he was but a
humble instrument in the hands of One who moved in His own mysterious
ways.

"His wonders to perform," said Mr. Adams. "Quite right, and if you asked
them at Hogglestock they'd tell you it _was_ a wonder to find Sam
Adams--that's my name, Sam--in a church. Well, goodbye all. Goodbye,
Mrs. Gresham. My little Heth is quite taken with you. Mr. Watson's."

These last words were spoken to Packer, who had after long and intensive
study, got to the place where L.-Cpl. Hackett had been remanded in
custody. He folded the paper even smaller and put it in his pocket.
During this short delay Dr. Dale was greeting his Hallbury House friends
for the third time that day, and said he had brought the church accounts
with him as they were even more confusing than usual, and he hoped the
Admiral, his senior churchwarden, could get them unentangled.

Telling Packer to wait half a jiffy, Mr. Adams, to the ill-concealed
horror of the speakers, put his large head and powerful shoulders out of
the car, looking rather like Mr. Punch when in vacant or in pensive
mood.

"Excuse me, I'm sure," said Mr. Adams, "but hearing the word 'accounts,'
I couldn't help hearing what you gentlemen said. You gentlemen need
someone to do the accounts for you. It's my motto, never do anything
yourself unless you can do it better than the man on the job, and that's
why I've never so much as looked at a column of figures, not to add them
up, since I got into a big way. Give me a company report and I know my
way about as well as any man, as anyone in Barchester will tell you. But
I don't keep a dog and bark myself. I pay my accountants to do their
work and do it well; and it pays them to do it well. You didn't ought to
be doing those accounts, Rector, not at your age. You gave me and my
daughter a most gratifying experience in your church to-night. Sam Adams
never owed any man anything and he's not going to begin. I'll send one
of my men down to run through those accounts of yours any day you like
to name, and he'll have everything so that the Pope himself couldn't
find fault, balanced to the last penny. Well, that's a bargain. Goodbye
everyone. Right, Packer; Mr. Watson's."

The car moved away. A deep religious hush fell upon the survivors.

"Good God!" said the Admiral.

"I'd say so myself if I wasn't a clergyman," said Dr. Dale.

"Good God! Good God!" said Frank Gresham, dancing on one leg, and quite
unable to understand why the three elders, including Dr. Dale who had
never been known to say a harsh word except about the Bishop of
Barchester, should all pounce on him with such fury that he was for once
quite subdued and ate his supper in complete silence.




                              CHAPTER VII


It must not be thought that Miss Holly and Heather Adams were idle
during these weeks. We have only numbered the serene, or fairly serene
hours, but Miss Holly and her pupil worked very hard, and such was
Heather's application and her native intelligence that Miss Holly
foresaw that she might take a very good place in the mathematical
tripos, and was sometimes only just able to keep ahead of her. For
though mathematics were Miss Holly's subject, she had of late years
rather deserted them in favour of general secretarial work for Dr.
Sparling at the Hosiers' Girls' Foundation School.

Anne Fielding had of course got permission to ask Heather and Miss Holly
to tea, during which Miss Bunting, who saw no sense nor usefulness in
pure mathematics, had introduced Heather to The Loves of the Triangles.
Heather, whose sense of humour was rudimentary, owing its bare existence
mostly to Mrs. Belton, read this work with stupor, with dawning
apprehension and finally aloud to Miss Holly, though almost inaudible
because she laughed so much.

At Hallbury House there had been a serious consultation about Mr.
Adams's offer, or rather threat, of an accountant. It seemed ungracious
to refuse, yet very difficult not to accept after the tacit consent that
Mr. Adams had taken for granted. The Admiral and the Rector so havered
and hairsplit over the matter that at length Jane Gresham, rather
impatient with men, offered to see Mr. Adams about it herself, an offer
which the men in a cowardly way accepted. No time must be lost. Mr.
Adams was a man of deeds as well as a man of an exhausting number of
words, and the accountant might descend, unheralded, upon St. Hall
Friars at any moment. The following Saturday was the Barsetshire
Archaeological meeting and everything would be in turmoil for two or
three days beforehand, so Jane rang up Miss Holly and put the matter to
her. Miss Holly, who combined perfect loyalty to her employer with an
aloof and amused sense of his peculiarities, quite understood the
position and said he would be at Valimere on Wednesday for the night,
and if Mrs. Gresham would like to come to tea, he would arrive soon
afterwards and would she like to bring Frank. Jane said that though she
loved Frank very much, she did not particularly want to take him
anywhere, as he was going through a stage of boasting that made her feel
ashamed of him, but if Miss Holly didn't mind----Miss Holly said she had
not been the elder sister of five brothers for nothing, and by all means
bring him along.

So on Wednesday when Frank got out of school he went back with Master
Watson and picked up his mother at the camouflage netting.

"Mother, can Tom come with us to tea with Heather?" said Frank, "he
wants to come, don't you, Tom?"

"Certainly not; he hasn't been asked," said both mothers with one
breath.

"I only thought it would be a treat for him," said Frank in an aggrieved
voice. "He gets lonely without me, Mrs. Watson."

"Not a bit," said Mrs. Watson cheerfully. "And you've got to clean your
rabbits, Tom."

"Oh, mother; oh, Mrs. Watson, can I stop and help Tom to clean his
rabbits?" said Frank. "You need someone to help you, don't you, Tom?"

Both mothers squashed the suggestion.

"I've got a bulgineer," said Master Watson confidentially to Mrs.
Gresham whom he looked upon as a sensible sort of fellow, more or less
his own age.

"What _is_ he talking about?" said Jane to Mrs. Watson. "Does he mean an
engineer, and if so why?"

"I don't think so," said Mrs. Watson doubtfully, "though he does mix
words up dreadfully. What is it you've got, Tom?"

"Bulgineer," said Master Watson in a fatigued voice. "Bulgineerbuk;
_you_ know, Frank."

"Mother!" said Frank reproachfully. "Belgionair--a buck--_you_ know."

"Your Belgian hare you mean," said Mrs. Watson, which remark appeared so
stupid to her son, who had been saying the same thing with all his
might, that he scowled softly at his mother and went off to clean his
rabbits' cages.

                 *        *        *        *        *

That day was a lost day to Miss Holly and Heather Adams so far as work
was concerned, for the idea of Mrs. Gresham, the Admiral's daughter,
which sounded like Happy Families, coming to tea was such an event to
Mrs. Merivale that she had to discuss the arrangements for their
reception from breakfast-time onwards. Miss Holly and Heather would
willingly have had their breakfast in the bright kitchen with their
hostess when Mr. Adams was not there, but she was adamant on what was
due to paying guests and gave them excellent breakfasts in the
dining-room where the Elle-woman's head always had fresh flowers. Once
or twice it had been warm enough to have it on the little veranda, but
more as a gesture than anything else and they gladly went back to the
dining-room and Mrs. Merivale said a lodger was very nice; a
generalization which they were glad to hear.

"Miss Holly," said Mrs. Merivale, putting a tray with coffee jug and
milk jug on the table that morning, "which teacloth do you think Mrs.
Gresham would like?"

Miss Holly, suppressing a desire to say that it wouldn't matter in the
least as Mrs. Gresham probably wouldn't notice, said which one was Mrs.
Merivale thinking of.

"Well, there's the one with the violets embroidered on it," said Mrs.
Merivale, pleating the edge of the breakfast cloth as she spoke, "only
they're a bit washed out. The one with the eckroo lace is nice, if it
weren't for the darn in the middle; that was where one of my guests put
a cigarette. She was a _dreadful_ woman. I used to lie awake at night
and wish she were dead, which was very ungrateful as she paid punctually
every week, but she used that nasty scented soap and the bathroom simply
_reeked_."

Miss Holly said the darn wouldn't show a bit with a vase of flowers on
it.

"But I'd be upset all the time," said Mrs. Merivale, trying not very
successfully to flatten the pleats, "thinking she would notice the
darn."

Miss Holly said she expected Mrs. Gresham's linen was all darned by now.
Everyone's was.

"Or the little one with the water-lily border," said Mrs. Merivale,
"that Annie embroidered for me when she was twelve. She was always so
clever with her hands. And there's the openwork one, drawn thread you
know, but it's gone nearly everywhere. I used to have everything so
nice, Miss Holly, when Mr. Merivale was alive, and it upsets me to see
everything falling to pieces. Which do you think Mrs. Gresham would
like? I'm sure she's used to having everything dainty about her at
home."

Miss Holly, with admirable patience, said she thought the water-lily
bordered cloth would be very nice, and she was sure Mrs. Gresham would
be interested to know that Mrs. Merivale's daughter had embroidered it,
and Mrs. Merivale went away temporarily satisfied. But not for long. At
intervals during the morning a light tap at the door would be followed
by an agitated appeal for guidance on some essential point such as did
Miss Holly think Mrs. Gresham would like China or Indian; would Mrs.
Gresham like cucumber sandwich or jam or both; did Miss Holly think Mrs.
Gresham would like the little doylies with the picot edge or the green
linen ones with the hemstitch only they were a bit faded. Miss Holly
gave calm and she hoped soothing answers while Mrs. Merivale twisted her
hands and her overall and her feet more desperately.

"Oh, just one more thing, Miss Holly," said Mrs. Merivale, coming in
without knocking, her hair curling more than ever in her tribulation.
"About guest towels."

Miss Holly had just been trying to explain to Heather, who was getting
sulkier and sulkier, Widdowson's Law of Inverse Relations, about which
she was not quite sure herself, not having paid much attention to it
when she took her degree. She looked up with a rather strained patience
and said, "What about them?"

"Oh, I _big_ your pardon," said Mrs. Merivale, with the alarming
refinement that occasionally overtook her. "You are busy, Miss Holly."

"Not really," said Miss Holly, who was fond of their kind, silly hostess
in her own practical way and did not at all wish to seem brusque, or in
Mrs. Merivale's phrase to upset her: "Tell me what's the matter."

"It's the guest towels, Miss Holly," said Mrs. Merivale, twisting a
duster that she was carrying into a kind of rope. "I _would_ like to
have everything nice in the bathroom if Mrs. Gresham wants to wash her
hands, and I was wondering if she'd like the real Irish linen towel,
only it's getting so thin, or the little fancy towel with the ducklings
in couch stitch. She has got lovely ones at Hallbury House I expect, and
I'd like to give her the best."

"The Irish linen one," said Heather, who had not hitherto taken any part
in these discussions.

"Oh, _thank_ you," said Mrs. Merivale, and went away.

"And she wouldn't care which one really," said Heather, barely waiting
for the door to close behind their hostess. "People like that don't have
guest towels. Mrs. Belton didn't. Lady Fielding doesn't. It's like
fussing about doylies and things. Proper people just don't. Mrs. Gresham
wouldn't notice anything. All she thinks of is being kind to people."

And the unhappy Heather flushed deeply.

Miss Holly continued her exposition of Widdowson, up to his famous
"Friction of Constants," which Heather at once seized and mastered. On
what had just occurred Miss Holly made no comment, for it had for some
time been plain to her practised schoolmistress's eye that Heather was
in for a bad attack of heroine-worship. They all had to have it, and it
had to run its course. But Miss Holly did devoutly wish that Heather
Adams had contracted this form of mental measles while still at school,
where it would not have given much trouble, instead of saving it up till
the vacation before she began college life. Still, a good attack now
might inoculate her against much further trouble, and Mrs. Gresham was a
far more suitable object for adoration than a female don of any age, in
Miss Holly's opinion. She felt sorry for Mrs. Gresham if this heavy
devotion was to be hung about her neck, but that was really no business
of hers, so they did some exercises on the "Friction of Constants" and
the "Laws of Relations" and then it was time for lunch. And after lunch
they had a few sets of tennis on the New Town courts and came back to
get tidy for tea.

Miss Holly, with calm and fatal prescience that her charge was going to
give trouble, had taken the precaution of asking Mrs. Merivale if she
would join them at tea, saying, most untruthfully, that she knew Mrs.
Gresham would like it. Mrs. Merivale, after objecting that her hair
needed washing, that she was sure they didn't really want her, that she
did want to keep an eye on the cakes, that she wouldn't know what to say
to Mrs. Gresham and would be so upset if Mrs. Gresham noticed anything,
though what kind of thing she did not particularize, ended by accepting
and thereupon falling into a frenzy of cake and scone-making, for which
she was famous even with rationing, and so was upstairs putting on her
best afternoon frock when Jane rang the front-door bell and was admitted
by Heather. The result of this was that after the three ladies and Frank
had sat in the drawing-room, or lounge as Mrs. Merivale preferred to
say, for a few moments, she herself opened the door, showed a pale and
streaky face and saying, "Your tea's all ready, Miss Holly," vanished.

"Oh, dear," said Mrs. Gresham, who guessed that something was wrong.

"I think it's because Heather opened the front door to you," said Miss
Holly. "Mrs. Merivale may think it was meant as a slight, because we
didn't think she was good enough to open the door, or a reproach because
she wasn't down then. You never know."

Jane very sensibly said the best thing would be to go into the
dining-room and hope for the best. So they went to the dining-room where
tea was to be laid, trying to pretend that all was well, but as far as
Jane and Miss Holly were concerned, slightly nervous. For to those who
do not live in a world where to take offence is almost a social duty,
the atmosphere can be very frightening.

However by great luck Mrs. Merivale came out of the kitchen with a very
special silver jam spoon she had forgotten, and before she could retreat
Jane Gresham had greeted her warmly and shaken her hand and said how
glad she was that Mrs. Merivale was in, otherwise she wouldn't have seen
her. An idiotic, nay a fatuous remark; but it served its turn, for Mrs.
Merivale, who had a very high sense of duty towards lodgers, couldn't
possibly leave them without the special jam spoon. So, without quite
knowing how, she found herself seated at the table and Miss Holly, with
a kind of apology for being hostess in Mrs. Merivale's own dining-room,
was asking her how she took her tea.

"Oh, after Mrs. Gresham, _please_," said Mrs. Merivale, unfolding the
green linen doyley with the hemstitch, and at once making a cocked hat
of it.

So Jane with great composure accepted the first cup, while Heather sat
and gently glowered; which was her way of expressing her admiration of
her idol's social gifts. Frank behaved with exquisite politeness,
passing cake and sandwiches to everyone with ceaseless courtesy of a
fatiguing nature. In front of Mrs. Merivale and Frank and Heather, the
great subject of Mr. Adams's offer of an accountant could not be
approached, so Jane and Miss Holly worked very hard at finding topics of
conversation, a task which was not made easier by Mrs. Merivale's
abnegation, not to say self-abasement, before every subject that was
introduced. If it was a concert she said she wasn't really musical like
Mrs. Gresham; if it was a novel she said she couldn't read highbrow
books like Miss Holly; if the Royal Family (an almost sure card in most
cases), she said she hadn't been to Court like Mrs. Gresham, which drove
Jane, who had not been presented, and though full of loyalty had never
particularly wanted to be, into a kind of inverted snobbism; if a film,
she said she could never seem to have the time to go to the pictures
now, as she was glad to get to bed as soon as she had washed up the
supper things, thus making Jane and Miss Holly feel like Legree. And all
this with such writhings and twistings of her fingers and hugging of her
elbows and, as Miss Holly well knew, twistings of her legs under the
table as made her friends almost as sorry for her as they were for
themselves.

Frank, having by special invitation eaten the last of everything as Mrs.
Merivale said it upset her to see anything left in case it was nasty,
now turned his powerful mind upon his hostess.

"Do you live here alone, Mrs. Merivale?" he asked. "It's a very nice
house."

Mrs. Merivale coloured most becomingly.

"I've got four little girls," she said, suddenly becoming quite human.
"Annie and Elsie----"

"And Tilly and Lacey," said Frank, giggling at his own wit.

His mother sat aghast, praying that Mrs. Merivale would not take it as
an insult.

"No, Evie and Peggie," said Mrs. Merivale, adding, "but they don't live
in a treacle well."

The answer was so unexpected, so out of keeping with Valimere, that Miss
Holly and Jane were left speechless and ashamed of themselves for having
snobbishly underestimated their hostess. On comparing notes afterwards
they found they had both expected her choice in fairy stories to be the
nauseous and popular series of Hobo-Gobo and the fairy Joybell. And all
the time Mrs. Merivale had been a highly educated woman.

"Do they wash up?" said Frank.

Mrs. Merivale said they did when they were at home, but they were all
away now in the A.T.S. and W.A.A.F. and W.R.N.S., or in America.

"Shall I help you to wash up?" said Frank. "I help Cook and Freeman, and
Cook says I polish the glasses like a real butler."

Mrs. Merivale seemed delighted by this proposal, and after a purely
formal protest against visitors giving a hand, she lost interest in the
grown-ups and dismissed them to the sitting-room, while she and Frank
piled the tea-things onto a trolley and wheeled them away. Heather then
said she was going to walk up to the station and come back with her
father, so Jane and Miss Holly were left alone, when, casting delicacy
to the winds, Jane asked Miss Holly if she could give her any help. Mr.
Adams, she said, had been so extraordinarily kind, and it was going to
be very difficult, she feared, to refuse his kindness without hurting
his feelings. What did Miss Holly think?

Miss Holly, who thought Jane Gresham a very sensible young woman,
expounded her views of her employer's character, formed during the last
year or two.

"Like most of us," said Miss Holly, "he has changed a good deal as the
war went on. If that silly Heather hadn't fallen into the pond and been
pulled out by Commander Belton, we would never have heard of him except
as a parent. He was quite content in his own station. I say this without
feeling," said Miss Holly, "for I haven't any particular station myself
except what I can make. But he formed a kind of reverent attachment for
the Belton family--I really don't know how to put it otherwise--and has
paid great attention to Mrs. Belton. He isn't a fool socially and if he
wants to get on that way he will learn. So will Heather up to a point.
But whether they'll be happier or unhappier for having immortal longings
in them, I couldn't say. He admires you, because you are Mrs. Belton's
sort. So does Heather. And what you say will probably carry weight. But
if he did take it the wrong way he can be nasty. I don't think he will,
though."

"Oh, dear," said Jane. "But I must save dear Dr. Dale from an
accountant. He might have a stroke, or go mad if anyone came and
interfered, poor darling. Someone has got to do it."

"Well, my money's on you," said Miss Holly, in an unexpectedly dashing
way. "I do quite a lot of betting through the Harefield butcher," she
explained calmly, seeing the surprise that her guest could not quite
conceal. "Only in half-crowns. But it's my vice, and a great comfort to
me."

Jane was much interested in this sidelight on a distinguished
mathematical scholar and would have liked to pursue the subject but for
delicacy; and also from a slight fear that she might find that Dr.
Sparling was implicated in the Black Market and Mrs. Belton a secret
drinker. So she thanked Miss Holly for her advice and they went into the
once pretty, now overgrown garden and pulled up some weeds, though
nothing short of a motor-plough would have made any real impression, and
talked of other things, and Jane tried not to feel frightened of the
impending interview. Then Heather came back with her father, clinging
affectionately and heavily to his arm, as Frank was accustomed to cling
to his mother's; but the arm was a very massive one and its owner did
not appear to feel his daughter's weight an encumbrance.

Having brought her two idols together, Heather Adams was quite prepared
to stay and watch them, but Miss Holly on some adequate pretext drew her
into the house and Jane felt slightly sick. A rickety garden seat stood
in the sun against a little glasshouse and here it seemed warm enough to
sit down, which Jane gladly did. For though the daughter of a long naval
line, she could have wished that her knees felt less like cotton-wool.

With all the tact she could muster she spoke of Heather and how proud
her father must be of her, a tribute which Mr. Adams accepted with great
complacency not untinged with pride. She then spoke of Mrs. Merivale and
how glad she was that Mr. Adams had such a pleasant hostess for his
daughter and how nice it was for Mrs. Merivale to have such pleasant
guests: all of which Mr. Adams again accepted as his due.

"Though mind you, Mrs. Gresham," he said, "it's all your doing that we
came here and that's a thing I can't thank you for enough."

Jane disclaimed any responsibility beyond having been to Mr. Pattern and
sent details of the house to Mr. Adams by her father.

"That's what I say," said Mr. Adams. "You put yourself out, Mrs.
Gresham, for people you didn't know. And it's just the sort of thing you
would do," he added with a kind of friendly ferocity which Jane did not
quite know how to take. So she reverted to Mrs. Merivale, her charms and
her domestic virtues.

Mr. Adams agreed. But he was just as glad that Miss Holly was with his
little Heth, he said, as she was a very sensible woman and wouldn't let
Heth go too far. Not but what Mrs. Merivale was very nice, said Mr.
Adams, and a wonderful cook, and the house so clean it was a treat, but
after all it was only for a couple of months and it was just as well all
Mrs. Merivale's girls were away.

"You mean they might distract Heather from her work," said Jane.

"Well, I do and I don't," said Mr. Adams. "My Heth knows she's got to
work hard, and do well at her college, and it takes a lot to turn my
Heth when her mind's made up; like her dad. But what I was thinking of
was Heth's future. She's going to go much farther than her dad. It was
all very well for me, Mrs. Gresham, starting at five shillings a week as
I did, to hobnob with every Tom, Dick and Harry. But Heth is starting
from where I've got to and I shall see that she doesn't forget it."

Jane produced a few commonplaces from her social armoury and heard Mr.
Adams's voice going on, but what he was saying she really did not know,
so stunned was she by the implication of his last words. It appeared,
not to put too fine a point upon it, that to Mr. Adams's mind Mrs.
Merivale and her daughters were not quite good enough for his daughter.
The terrifying and to her almost unexplored hierarchy of the great mass
of English people rose before her with all its gins and snares.
Belonging as she did to a level upon which the Duke of Omnium at one end
and, say, Robin Dale, the crippled schoolmaster, at the other, were in
essentials equal, being, though a duke was always a duke, gentlemen, she
had never really troubled to conceive the gradations, far greater than
those between peer and private gentleman, which seamed and rent the
sub-middle classes. Evidently Mr. Adams, while not wishing to conceal
his humble beginnings, considered himself and even more his daughter, a
good deal above Mrs. Merivale and her daughters. What Mrs. Merivale and
her girls, all with good high-school education and all doing good war
jobs, would think of the wealthy manufacturer and his girl with little
background and few graces, she couldn't guess. That is to say, she had a
pretty shrewd idea of what Mrs. Merivale would feel; though as for the
younger generation, probably its easy, perhaps too easy tolerance, its
war experience of all sorts and conditions of women, would make Elsie
and the rest of them accept Heather good-humouredly as one of
themselves. But the Merivale girls would far more likely marry well than
Heather Adams, for all her brains and her father's money, and that Mrs.
Merivale would, if unconsciously, realize. Mr. Adams, she felt, could
not realize it, and she would be sorry for the person who tried to
explain it to him. And this brought her back with an unpleasant jerk to
the fact that she had somehow to explain to Mr. Adams that his kind
offer of an accountant for Dr. Dale could not be accepted, and she
heartily wished that she had shown less temerity and her father and the
Rector more courage. But a daughter of the Royal Navy has courage in her
blood and Jane gave herself a mental shake and began to listen to her
companion.

"That's a fine youngster of yours, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams.
"What's he going to do?"

Jane said he was going into the Navy, rather surprised that anyone
should ask the question.

"My father was chief engineer in Admiral Hornby's ship," said Mr. Adams.
"The father that was of Captain Hornby that married Miss Belton. Quite a
coincidence."

Jane said, with idiotic fervour, that _indeed_ it was, though not till
later did the thought strike her that Mr. Adams had evidently considered
this as a kind of blood-bond between them.

"Both my brothers are sailors," said Jane, maundering nervously on, "and
so are their wives; I mean naval families. My people have always been
Navy. They used to live in what is now the Rectory, where Dr. Dale
lives."

Having got so far as the name of Dr. Dale, her throat became constricted
and her mouth unpleasantly dry.

"Fine old gentleman he is," said Mr. Adams, while Jane prayed that he
might continue the subject. But as he appeared to have said his say, she
plucked up her courage which was at the moment running out of the heels
of her boots, and asked Mr. Adams if he had been in earnest when he
suggested helping Dr. Dale with the Church accounts.

Mr. Adams said Sam Adams's word was as good as his bond, a statement
which custom did not stale for him.

"My best man's up in the North at the moment," he continued, "but I've
got a man in the costing department who is up to all the tricks.
Hundreds of pounds he's saved me one way and another. I'll make it worth
his while to come over on Saturday afternoon every quarter or so and get
things straight. Then the old gentleman can sit back and take things
easy."

This was getting worse and worse.

"He rather _likes_ muddling about with his accounts," said Jane weakly.

"He's a fine old gentleman," said Mr. Adams, as if this were an entirely
new idea, "but muddling the accounts doesn't make them balance, Mrs.
Gresham. I wouldn't be worth--well I won't say what, but what I am
now--if there'd been any muddling with my accounts. Two and two makes
four, and you can't get away from it; not nohow."

Jane nearly said "Contrariwise," but pulling herself together she said
she thought the Rector really enjoyed trying to get the accounts right,
and her father was always glad to help him.

"Well, that's very friendly of the Admiral, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr.
Adams, "and he's a fine old gentleman. But, take it from Sam Adams, it
may be ten thousand pounds, it may be tenpence, it needs a man that's
been brought up to it. If there's any hurry, Mrs. Gresham, say the word
and I'll have my man back from Sheffield to-morrow. You want the best
for the old Rector. Well, you're right. Always aim at the best and you
won't get the worst."

Even worse.

"It is so _very_ kind of you," said Jane in desperation, "but I think
Dr. Dale would be so worried by a real accountant that he would be quite
ill. I know he would. You see he is very old and has always done it in
his own way. I can't bear to seem ungrateful, but if you won't take it
unkindly, it would be most kind of you to leave things as they are."

Mr. Adams's massive face became an unpleasant dusky hue, and the large
hairy hand which lay on his knee assumed a form uncommonly like a fist.

"All right, Mrs. Gresham," he said after a pause of a few seconds which
felt to Jane like an eternity in Purgatory, "Sam Adams can take a hint
with any man. I'm not wanted. Right. I shan't be there. I don't know
that Mrs. Belton would have treated me like that. Me and Heth won't be
here long and she's got plenty to do studying her figures. I'll speak to
Miss Holly."

The worst. What Jane had feared all along and hoped, though not too
hopefully, would not occur. She was quite certain that if she stood up
her knees would bend the wrong way and darkness shot with coloured
flashes come before her eyes. But the Navy does not surrender.

"We didn't in the least wish to be ungrateful," she said. "But the
Rector is so old, and he doesn't explain things very well, and we
thought----"

"Who's we?" said Mr. Adams, his fist unrolling itself on his knee.

"Father and Dr. Dale," said Jane. "They didn't want to seem
ungrateful----"

"So they put you onto the job," said Mr. Adams, not unkindly. "See here,
Mrs. Gresham, if you'll say the word we'll call the whole thing off and
forget it. I dare say if anyone tried to run my works his way I'd feel
the same."

"We would be"--Jane began trying to express her gratitude.

"Never mind about we," said Mr. Adams. "What I said was, you say the
word and we'll forget it all."

At this moment Jane would willingly have thrown her glove in his face,
except that she had left it with its fellow in Mrs. Merivale's lounge.
But being level-headed enough she reflected that a change of wording
would be a very small sacrifice to make to redeem the happiness of her
father and the Rector, and then suddenly thought of Monna Vanna and
began to laugh. Mr. Adams looked at her with a kind of suspicious
unwilling admiration.

"Well, then," said Jane, standing up and suddenly feeling quite
unfrightened, "you will do me a great kindness if you don't send your
accountant, and I'm most grateful. Thank you very much indeed. And now I
really must collect Frank or he will have talked Mrs. Merivale to
death."

Mr. Adams also got up and began to make the gesture of shaking hands,
but Jane was already a pace ahead, so he merely dropped into pace beside
her, and Jane asked if he was coming to the Archaeological Meeting on
Saturday, and he said he was. And by this time they had reached the
house where they found Mrs. Merivale and Frank sitting in the veranda
shelling peas into a colander.

"Mother," said Frank, "I'm eating all the peas that go through the
holes. Look, mother!"

He jiggled the colander in the air. Five or six very small peas fell out
onto the veranda floor. Frank picked them up and crunched them, dust and
all.

"Come along, Frank," said Jane, observing her hostess's agitation as a
good deal of grit and a strand of coconut matting went into her young
guest's mouth. "I hope he hasn't been a bother, Mrs. Merivale."

Mrs. Merivale said she had enjoyed having a butler very much and the
worst of lodgers was they got dirty so quickly: a remark about whose
meaning Jane did not bother to inquire. Her son, though not exactly a
lodger, was certainly as dirty as a small boy needs to be, and the
sooner he was home and in his bath the better. And then Heather and Miss
Holly came out and they all said good-bye, with promises of meeting
again on Saturday at the Archaeological, and Jane and Frank walked back
to the Old Town.

"Daddy," said Heather when the guests had gone. "Why didn't you get
Packer's car and take Mrs. Gresham home?"

"Well, why didn't I?" said Mr. Adams thoughtfully. "Suppose I'm not as
quick as you, Heth, at thinking up those things. Why didn't you tell
me?"

"Oh, well, never mind, daddy," said Heather. "Miss Holly and I are going
to play in some mixed doubles down on the courts. Come and watch us. Mr.
Pilward is playing and his son that's on leave."

"Righto, girlie," said Mr. Adams. "I wouldn't wonder if Pilward is Mayor
of Barchester next year. In fact, I don't wonder at all." For Pilward &
Sons Entire with the horse-drawn drays that it still managed to keep
going was a powerful name in Barchester business circles. "He did about
eight thousand pounds' worth of business with us last year one way and
another. It's all good for trade, eh, Heth?"

"Daddy," said Heather. "We are going to the Archaeological meeting on
Saturday, aren't we? Mrs. Gresham asked Miss Holly and me to have tea
with her. Oh, and Anne asked us to tea at Hall's End too, daddy. Which
shall I say?"

"Well, girlie," said her father, thoughtfully, "I'd go to both if I was
you. Miss Anne's a nice girl and I've got a few words I'd like to say to
Sir Robert. And you listen to what Miss Bunting says, because though she
mayn't be much to look at, there's very little she doesn't see. And
we'll go and see Mrs. Gresham too. I may have something to say to her
myself. Some of my pals are well in with the Red Cross and I might hear
of something about her husband. I've got my feelers out. And I'd like to
show her all's friendly," said Mr. Adams, half to himself. "Well, run
along and get ready for your tennis. Your old dad'll come down. It's as
good a place as any other for having a word with Ted Pilward about those
chromium taps. Have a look at young Ted, too."

Heather turned to go upstairs, whither Miss Holly had preceded her. In
the doorway she stopped and stood in ungraceful irresolution, one hip
well thrown out and fiddling with the door-handle.

"Daddy," she said.

"Eh?" said her father, looking up from the evening paper. "Old Uncle
Joe's going strong in East Prussia. What is it, girlie?"

"Daddy," said Heather. "Do you know who I think Mrs. Gresham is like?"

"She must be a good-looker whoever she is," said Mr. Adams. "And all her
wits about her too. _And_ plenty of pluck."

"I think she's like Queen Guinevere," said Heather, with the pleasing
agony we all feel when avowing our feelings for the adored object. "Anne
lent it me."

"Lent you what, Heth?" said her father.

"Tennyson, daddy. He's wonderful," said Heather, her face transfigured,
or shall we rather say, shining at the romantic thoughts suggested to
her. "I wish I was Sir Lancelot."

"Always wishing you were somebody, aren't you, Heth?" said her father
good-humouredly. "Run along now. I don't want to miss old Ted Pilward."

So Heather went upstairs, hugging the thought of riding with Mrs.
Gresham through a green forest on May Day morning and subsequently
rescuing her by lance and sword from enemies, finally to renounce her in
favour of Captain Gresham, R.N., miraculously back from the Far East,
and becoming a hermit.

Mr. Adams sat in thought. He then went to the telephone, rang up his
secretary at her private address, and told her to get a copy of
Tennyson's Poems for him.

"Good metal," he said aloud to himself. "As good a job as I could turn
out at the works and then something. Best stainless steel."

Over which loverlike words he fell into a muse till Miss Holly and
Heather came down in tennis things, and they all went over to the New
Town tennis courts.




                              CHAPTER VIII


The Barsetshire Archaeological Society is a body of very respectable
age, having been founded in 1759, thus adding, as nearly all its
presidents have said at the annual dinner, something more to this
wonderful year. Its originator was Horatio Palmer, Gent., an ancestor of
Mr. Palmer at Worsted. He was a gentleman of considerable property in
the Woolram Valley and believed that anything he dug up was a Roman
remain. He was succeeded in the presidency by Sir Walpole Pridham, whose
descendant Sir Edmund Pridham is still a hard-working servant of the
county. Sir Walpole believed with fervour equal to Mr. Horatio Palmer's
that whatever he dug up was British, and since then the presidentship
had been divided pretty evenly between the Roman and the British
enthusiasts, and had gradually become the blue ribbon of Barsetshire,
having been held by the Duke of Omnium, an Earl de Courcy, an Earl of
Pomfret, Dean Arabin, Mr. Frank Gresham (little Frank's
great-grandfather who married a fortune), and in fact by all the
county's most noted peers, landed proprietors and spiritual leaders. The
office, which is held for life, was at present represented by Lord
Stoke, a very energetic old peer, almost stone deaf, who had slightly
varied the nature of the post he held by his conviction that everything
he found was Viking. Over the remains excavated a few years previously
in Bloody Meadow, on his estate, feeling had run very high, but Lord
Stoke, having on his side the Icelandic antiquary Mr. Tebben from
Worsted, had borne all before him. It was well known in the county that
Lord Bond at Staple Park coveted this honourable post, but he was of the
first creation and though he was liked, his wife, Lord Stoke's
half-sister, was of an overbearing nature and his chances were not
favourably considered. Also Lord Stoke, though over eighty, was very
well-preserved, and showed every sign of living for ever.

The treat or bait offered by this year's summer meeting was, as we
already know, to examine the disused well in the grounds of the old
Rectory, and decide whether any of the brickwork was Roman; much to the
annoyance of Lord Stoke, who had to admit that the probability of
anything Norse, or even Danish, was extremely remote. Feeling was
running very high. Each side hoped to smash the other in the Journal of
Archaeological Studies in Barsetshire. But the person who perhaps looked
forward to the day's meeting more than anyone was Mr. Freeman, the
verger, who was going to get a whole column about it into the Barchester
Chronicle or die in the attempt.

In happier days the little town of Hallbury could hardly have held the
cars that would have rallied from all over the county. But times were
changed. Not only was petrol severely rationed, but many people were shy
of appearing in a car at all and did not like to stretch their Red
Cross, or County Council, or any form of compassionate allowance for
what was so obviously a pleasant outing and of no particular use towards
winning the war. Those who proposed to attend were mostly coming by
train from Barchester. Some would come in the morning and lunch with
friends; some would come after lunch and stay to tea with friends. Lord
Stoke proposed to ride over from Rising Castle on a useful cob which was
still up to its twenty-five or thirty miles a day, and had sent his
brougham to fetch his champion, Mr. Tebben from Worsted, thus causing
Mr. Tebben a good deal of irritation, as it was now impossible for him
not to bring his wife. The Dean of Barchester was coming by train. Mrs.
Morland was coming with her old friend and ex-secretary, Mrs. George
Knox, wife of the famous biographer, for Mrs. Knox had W.V.S. petrol,
and had, rather cunningly, arranged to take a large parcel of harsh,
stringy knitting wool and a bale of very nasty sham flannel to the
Hallbury W.V.S. who were making clothes for liberated Central Europeans,
and serve them right. Lord Bond and Lady Bond and their tenants the
Middletons from Skeynes were going by train to Barchester, lunching with
the Bishop and coming on after lunch. The Pomfrets hoped to come with
the estate agent, Roddy Wicklow, who was on leave from Belgium and could
have petrol for three hundred miles, and so the rather wearisome list of
ways and means went on. But the whole company about to be present was
united in despising such people as Sir Ogilvy Hibberd, who just because
he was a trade expert though no one quite knew of what, or why, had free
quarters at a very expensive London hotel and all the petrol he wanted.
There is a snobbery of doing without luxuries--or what one used to call
ordinary necessities--which binds a great many good people together
against those who profit by the condition the world has got into.

Hallbury House, Hall's End, the Rectory, the Watsons' and other houses
were having simple lunch parties, and there would be open house
everywhere for such teas as could be given, and everyone was looking
forward to seeing friends and acquaintance and getting, even for so
short a time, outside the very small circle in which we now all perforce
live. No one was looking forward to the day more than Anne Fielding,
whose opportunities of seeing people during the past year had been very
limited. To her mother's great delight she was, though pleased, not
over-excited about the day. A year ago she would have had a temperature,
or had to go to bed feeling sick from sheer over-excitement. But now,
thanks to Dr. Ford's directions and perhaps even more to Miss Bunting's
vigilant care, she was so well that the daily rests were almost a thing
of the past. In fact, at the last consultation, Dr. Ford had said he saw
no reason why she should not go back to Barchester in the autumn and
take up a normal life with classes, so releasing Miss Bunting. This
lady, though she had enjoyed her task of helping Anne to widen her mind
and strengthen her body, was not sorry at the prospect of leaving
Hallbury, where she saw very few people, and returning to the Marlings
after her visit to Lady Graham. For at Marling Hall there was still a
certain amount of coming and going, and though she would have died
sooner than admit it to anyone, the Marlings were the kind of family to
whom she was accustomed, while the Fieldings, kind, delightful and
intelligent people though they were, could not be called county: not
possibly.

An amicable division of the more important guests had been made among
the houses in question. Dr. Dale, as of right, had Dr. Crawley and his
wife. Admiral Palliser was entertaining the Pomfrets and their agent.
The Watsons had invited the George Knoxes. The Fieldings had offered to
entertain Ford Stoke, whose groom and horse could go to the Omnium Arms,
Mr. Birkett, the headmaster of Southbridge School with his wife, and
Mrs. Morland. To these they had kindly added Lord Stoke's friends Mr.
and Mrs. Tebben. And when we say friends, Mrs. Tebben's rule in life was
that wheresoever her husband went, there (if humanly possible) went she
also; which meant that she had to be asked, because if not asked, she
came.

A lunch party of ten, six of whom are guests, is more than most
housekeepers would care to face, but to Gradka it was but an occasion to
show her skill and her art. Also the news from Mixo-Lydia had of late
been very good. Powerful Russian forces had entered it from the
north-east, driving the Germans before them with great slaughter, had
beaten off all counter-attacks and freed nearly all the country, and
were now rapidly penetrating Slavo-Lydia before the Germans could
re-form. The Mixo-Lydian flag, which being composed of bands of blue,
white and red was very difficult to distinguish from a lot of other
flags, had been hoisted on the cathedral of SS. Holocaust and Hypocaust,
and there had already been several highly enjoyable clashes on the
Mixo-Lydia frontier and some cattle-maiming on both sides. All this
Gradka had read in the newspapers and heard on the wireless; also at
Mixo-Lydian House, the headquarters of her nation, near Southbridge,
where Monsieur and Madame Brownscu had had a frightful quarrel about
Mixo-Lydia's post-war policy. Though as this policy was the simple one
of exterminating all Slavo-Lydians there would not seem to outsiders to
have been very much to quarrel about.

At half-past twelve the pleasant and unwonted sound of a horse's hoofs
at a spirited trot were heard in Hallbury High Street as Lord Stoke came
smartly up the hill on his cob, followed by an elderly groom in livery.
Old Mrs. Freeman, the verger's mother, who was ninety and annoyingly
active in the body though weak in mind, came onto the pavement and
called out, "God bless your Grace," under the impression that it was the
great Duke of Omnium who died in the '60's. A number of women who were
still doing bits of shopping said what a sweet horse it was, and all the
children within earshot rushed along with desultory cheers, hoping it
was going to be a circus. Lord Stoke, owing to his deafness, could not
hear them, but was pleased by their attention, and reining in his cob,
let him proceed at a foot-pace to Hallbury House. Here his groom
dismounted and held the cob's head while Lord Stoke, who at eighty was
beginning to feel an occasional touch of stiffness, climbed down. The
groom then walked the horses slowly to the Omnium Arms while Lord Stoke,
finding that the front door in proper county fashion was not locked,
went in and was lost to view.

Now one of Lord Stoke's amiable eccentricities was an inordinate
interest and curiosity about all his friends' domestic concerns.
Whenever possible he entered their houses by the back entrance. When he
did not know the house an infallible instinct directed him to the
kitchen quarters, and so it was that Gradka, giving her finishing
touches to the cold lunch she had arranged, was startled to see an old
gentleman in a shooting-jacket, riding-breeches and gaiters, wearing a
flat-topped brown billycock, standing in the kitchen doorway.

"Morning, morning," said Lord Stoke, seeing what was obviously that
foreign girl someone had told him the Fieldings had.

Gradka, at once recognizing a proper nobleman when she saw one, made a
kind of curtsey.

"That's right, my dear," said his lordship. "And how are the Poles?"

Now if there is one thing a Mixo-Lydian cannot bear, it is to be
confused with a Pole, for every Mixo-Lydian child knows that Mixo-Lydia
utterly defeated the Poles in twelve hundred and fourteen in a great
battle, where no less than five Mixo-Lydians were left dead upon the
field, and seven Poles and a boy. So Gradka stared contemptuously.

"That's right, that's right," said Lord Stoke, evidently under the
impression that she had answered him. "What are you giving us for lunch,
eh? All sorts of good things? Well, that's very nice. And where is Lady
Fielding? No, don't you trouble. I'll go and find her."

His lordship went off, followed by a glance of intense scorn from Gradka
which he did not see and would not have noticed if he had. And then by
good luck Anne came downstairs and with an aplomb that the Anne of a
year ago would have hopelessly envied, bellowed her own name to him
(having been previously instructed to that end), stood over him while he
put his hat, gloves and whip in the hall, and took him into the
drawing-room where her parents welcomed him and he was soon engrossed in
Barchester gossip with Sir Robert, whom he heard very well: as indeed he
could always hear if he really wanted to.

A curious sound as of shrill cheering drifted into the drawing-room.

"What a funny noise, mummy," said Anne. "Can I go and look?"

She sped to the front door and looked out. To the infinite joy of the
Hallbury children, Lord Stoke's carriage had just made its appearance,
walking at a funeral pace up the hill to save the horse who was rather
old. A gentleman on a horse had been a fine beginning to the day's
festivities, but this spectacle was entirely eclipsed by a brougham, an
object which none of the children had ever seen. In a less degenerate
age all the small boys would have turned cart-wheels beside it in the
hopes of a halfpenny, but children are entirely uneducated now. The old
weather-beaten coachman, who was used to making a sensation wherever he
appeared, smiled grimly as he drove slowly and carefully up to Hall's
End, while the children shrieked and yelled, some saying it was the
woyreless man, others that it was the funeral, and when auntie doyed she
had a lovely royde in a cowch. For English remains undefiled in much of
Barsetshire, and any child who said wahless, or dahyed, or keeoch would
have been mocked and flouted by its fellows. (Phonetics are incapable of
expressing what we wish to express, but the intelligent reader of a
certain age will know what we mean, without things like [inverted e]
and [o with diagonal stroke through it] which do but darken counsel.)

Anne, brimful as always with her latest readings in English literature,
thought it was very like the election at Eatanswill. And when Mr. Tebben
with his scholar's stoop and his grey hair got out of the carriage amid
friendly hoots, she said to herself, "He's kissed one of 'em." And when
Mrs. Tebben in her usual state of peasant-arts and hand-woven disarray
followed him, such was the ecstasy of the young populace that Anne said
half-aloud, "He's kissing 'em all." The coachman then touched his hat,
gave a friendly flick to the horse, and drove off towards the Omnium
Arms, amid shouts, relics of an older and better civilization, of "Whip
behoynd, mister," of which he took no notice at all.

With the kindness that was natural to her and the elegance that Miss
Bunting had unostentatiously inculcated, Anne received the Tebbens and
assisted Mrs. Tebben to get out of a very draggled tussore dust-coat
like a relic of Edwardian coaching days, and to unwind herself and her
hat from a dingy art-green scarf. She also offered to put Mrs. Tebben's
mauve raffia basket with a bunch of faded raffia flowers on it, and its
handles tied up with string, into the cloak room with the other outdoor
things but Mrs. Tebben refused, saying there was something in it.

So they all went into the drawing-room where Lord Stoke received them as
if he were at home at Rising Castle, cast Mrs. Tebben at Lady Fielding
and pushed Mr. Tebben into a corner to talk Viking shop with him.

Lady Fielding had never met Mrs. Tebben before, and was much impressed
by that lady's earnest manner, her flowered dress with a good dip on one
side and her straw hat covered with a very faded wreath of artificial
cornflowers.

"Do let Anne take your basket, Mrs. Tebben," she said.

"I did try to, mummy," said Anne.

"It is kind of you," said Mrs. Tebben, sitting down with the basket
firmly held on her knees, "but I have some things in it."

This seemed probable, as being what baskets are for, and Lady Fielding,
feeling that Mrs. Tebben was quite capable of having brought a cap in a
bandbox said something polite about would she care to go upstairs and
change.

"No, no; not a change of attire," said Mrs. Tebben, in what was
evidently a literary allusion. "It's only something for lunch. I think
it is quite dreadful to accept anyone's invitation to a meal nowadays,
for really one becomes a plague of locusts."

"How kind of you," said Lady Fielding, "but you really mustn't. I do
assure you we are quite well off here, and my Mixo-Lydian help, or
whatever one calls her, is a wonderful manager."

"I always say how Brave the women of England are," said Mrs. Tebben,
which made Lady Fielding want to say that she was not brave, nor a
woman, nor English. "But we housekeepers know. And we must all bear our
part. I have just brought," she continued, pulling several small parcels
untidily wrapped in newspaper from her bag, "a little piece of
goats-milk cheese--I have kept a goat since our donkey Modestine died,
not that he gave any milk of course, but I do like a four-footed animal
about the place and it doesn't matter how bad goat's milk goes, because
you can always let it go a bit worse and make cheese with it. And two
tinned salmon fish-cakes that Gilbert wouldn't eat for his breakfast.
And here is a morsel of marge. And oh dear, it has been upside down all
the time but never mind, it wasn't really very wet--a little bowl with
the remains of last night's shape, only I fear Gilbert ate all the jam
that should have been on it. I'll just keep this bit of newspaper; it
will do nicely for salvage."

So speaking she thrust the unpleasant packages into Lady Fielding's
hands, her face gleaming with patriotism.

"Anne, darling," said Lady Fielding, "please take these to the kitchen
at once. And for goodness' sake don't let Gradka see them," she added in
an undertone which was covered by the rustling of Mrs. Tebben putting a
greasy piece of the Sunday Times back into her bag.

Anne with great presence of mind hid the odious parcels, by now in a
state of considerable deliquescence, in a far corner of the downstairs
cloak room behind her father's golf clubs, and was just in time to open
the front door to Mrs. Morland and the Birketts.

"Dear Anne," said Mrs. Morland, kissing her affectionately, "Anne Knox
drove me over and we passed the Birketts on the way up the hill, so we
picked them up, though I believe it is strictly forbidden. This is Anne
Fielding, Amy," she said presenting Anne to Mr. and Mrs. Birkett, who
had heard of her through Robin Dale and were well disposed.

With the arrival of the Birketts the party was complete. Anne went to
tell Miss Bunting, who preferred to remain in her own room till the fuss
of receiving guests was over. For Miss Bunting, whether it was the long
cold windy summer after the dry windy spring, or a slight homesickness
for county surroundings, or her years, had been feeling very tired of
late and thought with regret of a more ordered life when well-trained
servants announced the right people and the wheels of life ran easily.
Anne found her sitting in a chair, taking her infallible refresher of
closing the eyes and letting the hands lie in the lap for five minutes
and suddenly felt sorry for the omniscient, the all-perfect Miss
Bunting. But lunch must not be delayed, and in a very short time both
ladies were downstairs. Gradka, faithful to her principle of not
appearing before guests till a meal was over, sounded the gong, and the
company passed into the dining-room.

Say what you will, a cold lunch however good is not so good as a hot
one; at least not for those who no longer find cold meat and pickles or
hard-boiled eggs and salad what they would wish. Not that cold meat
could have been offered, for not only had the weekly joint been very
small of late, but even tougher and more shapeless than usual,
consisting of a large bone with splintered ends, a layer of gristle and
some rather clammy greyish flesh. But in Gradka's capable hands the meal
was as excellent as it could be, and far nicer than any other lunch in
Hallbury.

The arrival of the Birketts had been a great comfort to Lady Fielding,
who had found two such characters, in the fullest English sense of the
word, as Lord Stokes and Mrs. Tebben, not to speak of her dear friend
Laura Morland, a little too much for her and was afraid her husband
might be bored, or even worse, show it. Sir Robert was a Governor of
Southbridge School and had always liked and esteemed the headmaster and
his wife, more than once standing up for them against the Bishop who was
apt to promulgate a kind of Rescript or Episcopal Recess without waiting
to consult the other governors.

"One of the reasons I came over to-day," said Mr. Birkett, "Roman
brickwork not being exactly in my line, was to see young Dale. We want
him back at Southbridge. Have you any idea what his views are, Lady
Fielding?"

Lady Fielding said she didn't know, but Anne might be able to tell him.

Anne rather nervously said that she thought Robin liked his little
school very much, but she didn't know what would happen when his present
little boys went to their prep. schools, as there didn't seem to be any
more just now.

"H'm," said Mr. Birkett, much to the interest of Anne, who had often
seen the word in books but never heard anyone say it. "That's the worst
of this war."

"What he means," said Mrs. Birkett, "is that there won't be enough
school-fodder soon, and then what will happen to the schools?"

"All be State schools then," said Lord Stoke, to whom Anne had
obligingly bellowed the gist of the Birketts' remarks. "Bad thing for
the country. There isn't a boy at a State school that knows a Friesian
from a Holstein."

As none of the company present knew what either of these animals were
like, there was a respectful pause.

"My old governor sent me to Eton," said Lord Stoke. "He was there and so
was his governor and all his uncles."

This remark so paralysed the conversation that Lady Fielding felt no one
would ever speak again, when Mrs. Morland, who was famed for a kind of
desperate courage, suddenly shouted across the table that Lord Stoke
ought to put that in his life.

"Oh, are you writing your life, Lord Stoke?" said Anne, to whom anyone
who wrote anything was a phoenix.

"Just jotting a few things down," said Lord Stoke with apparent
detachment, but secretly pleased and flattered. "Haven't got to Eton
yet. There's a lot of stuff about my old governor--he married twice, you
know, and Lucasta Bond is only my half-sister; Bond's breaking up now,
sadly changed--and the old days at Rising Castle. When my old governor
was a boy the footmen all slept two in a bed, in those little rooms
beyond the servants' hall--you know the old basement, Mrs. Morland--well
away from the maids," he added in a kind of stifled bellow which his
hearers understood to be a tribute to the Young Person. "Ever read
Pomfret's book?" he inquired of his host, alluding to the late Earl's
memoirs, A Landowner in Five Reigns, whose success surprised its author
as much as it surprised his publishers.

Sir Robert said he had.

"Too much about going abroad and all that," said Lord Stoke. "What
people want is books about the land. People are interested in the land.
Don't go abroad and all that now," said his lordship rather unfairly, as
Lord Pomfret's book had been written several years before war was
thought of. "Heaps of farming fellows writing books now, but they
haven't been at it as long as I have. When my old governor was a boy his
father's labourers got seven shillings a week and a cottage. We'll never
see that again, not in my time."

Such was the power of Lord Stoke's personality, and we may add, his
voice, that everyone present heaved a kind of sigh in memory of the
happy days when labourers had fifteen children and very small wages and
looked forward to the workhouse when too rheumatic to work. All, that
is, except Miss Bunting, who considered that labourers' wages were, like
everything else, in the hands of Providence, and that it was not for her
to judge.

"Of course," said Mrs. Tebben, who had done economics at Oxford and had
a passion for boring and useless accuracy, "we must take the value of
their cottages into consideration, and what they grew in the garden. By
the way, Sir Robert, I must tell you about a delightfully economical
vegetable dish I have found. When the peas are getting a bit over, I put
them in a casserole with a little water and some meat extract cubes and
let them simmer all day, and by the evening you hardly know they are
tough at all. I sometimes, rather daringly, steal a bay leaf from the
Manor House--my daughter married the Palmers' nephew you know, so we are
almost related and a bay leaf will never be missed--and add it to the
savoury mess. You have no idea."

Sir Robert courteously said he hadn't, and how were her children.

"Ah, you remember that I am a grandmother, Sir Robert," she said, which
Sir Robert had not remembered in the least because he didn't know it,
and vaguely thought that her children, whom he had only mentioned to get
away from savoury messes, were in their late 'teens. "My Margaret and
her little brood are very well and happy. Her husband is on a home job
at present, so that is very nice. And Richard," said Mrs. Tebben, her
voice softening as it always did at the mention of her only son who
would really have been quite fond of his mother if she had not insisted
on understanding him, "is out of the army too, with a stiff knee. He was
in Margaret's father-in-law's engineering business, Mr. Dean, you know,
but he doesn't want to go back to the Argentine and I believe he is
getting a job with a Mr. Adams at Hogglestock. Have you ever heard of
him?"

Sir Robert said he had and that Anne had rather made friends with his
daughter in the holidays and they would probably be at the
Archaeological.

"Good news! good news!" said Mrs. Tebben. "Gilbert! Mr. Adams will be at
the Archaeological and I shall find or make an opportunity to mention
Richard to him. Every word helps."

Mr. Tebben made no comment, but his eye met Sir Robert's with such
deliberate long-suffering blankness that Sir Robert heartily wished he
had never embarked upon the subject of Mrs. Tebben's family at all, and
at the same time he felt sorry for Mr. Tebben without knowing why. With
as much haste as was compatible with the courtesy due from a host to a
guest who has been invited through no wish of his own, he turned to Mrs.
Morland and told that worthy creature all the story of the row in the
Close about the Precentor's extra petrol, which she much enjoyed.

After they had eaten several kinds of excellent pastry, cakes and tarts,
miraculously extracted by Gradka from the fat ration, and were drinking
their coffee, Anne said to her mother that they must ask Gradka to come
in as she would expect to be thanked.

"I am so sorry," said Lady Fielding to the company, "but do you mind if
our Mixo-Lydian help comes in? It seems to be a custom of her country
that the cook should be thanked by everyone. It won't be long. And I
feel we ought to thank her, because she has let us have lunch at a
quarter to one on account of the Archaeological."

Everyone said How nice, especially Mrs. Tebben, who had a weakness for
Central Europeans and often thought she would like to dress like one
herself.

"I haven't any wine to-day, Dora," said Sir Robert nervously. But Anne
said that was all right and Mixo-Lydians didn't drink wine at midday.

As before, Gradka came in, accepted without interest the thanks of the
guests, despised their praise, and evidently had the poorest opinion of
them all. Lady Fielding thought she would then go away, but Gradka,
leaning carelessly against the sideboard, said, "I shall now tell you
some news."

All the ladies present were certain she was choosing this moment to give
notice, and wished they were somewhere else.

"To-day," said Gradka, rather loudly, having been warned by Anne that
the English lord was deaf, "owing to your lunch being at a quarter to
one I listened to the radio in the kitchen."

As there was no reason why she should not have the wireless on, whatever
the hour of lunch, this statement was most unfair, carrying as it did an
implicit slur on Lady Fielding's consideration for those in her employ.

"Listening to the one o'clock news, eh?" said Lord Stoke. "And how are
the Czechs getting on? Nice place Carlsbad used to be, but they
pronounce it all wrong now."

"Czechs?" said Gradka. "Gob! Czy prvka, prvka, prvka."

"Eh?" said Lord Stoke.

"Oh, Lord Stoke," said Anne, speaking right into his ear for fear of
hurting Gradka's feelings. "She isn't a Czech. She is a Mixo-Lydian. She
said, 'God! No, never, never, never. I know a bit of Mixo-Lydian that
she taught me."

"Well, Gob isn't any worse than Bog," said Mrs. Morland. "I have nothing
particular against the Russians apart from not liking them, but I do
think to call God Bog is just silly."

A hum of agreement confirmed her views.

"You are perfectly right," said Gradka. "To say Bog is silly. Oll that
the Russians say is silly. So is oll the Poles say, and the Czechs and
all that bondle of rubbish. But I shall now tell you about the one
o'clock radio. The government of Mixo-Lydia is overthrewn----"

"Overthrown, Gradka," said Miss Bunting.

"So; I thank you," said Gradka. "It is overthrown and we have no longer
a President which was a man entirely of no value, but we have a Krasnik.
Oll Mixo-Lydia will be in a fermented state to-night."

This epoch-making news was received with a poor show of enthusiasm. Few
of the company knew who had been a President, and none cared.

"Dear, dear," said Sir Robert, feeling vaguely responsible. "And what is
a Krasnik?"

"What you coll a president," said Gradka. "Aha, I olready see you will
object: Then why coll him a Krasnik? You would not understand."

"Was there anything else in the news?" said Mr. Tebben.

"Olso, there is a revolution in Slavo-Lydia," said Gradka. "And now
Mixo-Lydia is free from the Germans we will march into Slavo-Lydia and
kill oll the men and seduce oll the women. And oll the children shall
work for us and live on the food of pigs and cows. So oll shall rejoice
that Peace is at last come, and be grateful to the Russians which bring
us that heaven's gift and then we shall say to them, 'Oll right, Mister
Russians, you can now make yourselves scarce.' And oll those that linger
on the road, our Mixo-Lydian plastroz, which is what you call militia or
guerrilleros, will slit their necks. God wills it so."

At this remarkable picture of the millennium no one quite knew what to
say. Gradka, looking like Charlotte Corday and the Vengeance rolled into
one, stood with a hand on her hip, surveying in her mind's eye a distant
and delightful scene of unrepressed carnage, till Lord Stoke, whose ear
had been caught by a word familiar and dear to him, thought he
recognized a kindred spirit and asked her what kind of cows they had in
her parts.

Lady Fielding felt she could bear no more and thanking Gradka warmly for
the excellent lunch and the good news, withdrew her company, while Anne
helped Gradka to clear away. Sir Robert was then able to talk to Mr.
Tebben, who looked as if he needed cheering up, about the excavations
near Brandon Abbey, while Mr. Birkett cornered Mrs. Morland to talk
about Southbridge School and various old boys; which, as he lived,
breathed, slept and ate school, not to speak of organizing and still
doing a good deal of teaching in the upper forms, was a very pleasant
relaxation for him.

"And how is Tony?" he asked, for Mrs. Morland's youngest son had been
right through Southbridge from the day when he arrived at the
preparatory branch, with a bowler rather too large for him and an
apprehensive expression, to the day when he had left in a cloud of
evanescent glory as a prefect, the Captain of Boating and holder of a
formaship, pronounced formayship (as being supposedly sued for _in forma
pauperis_) or scholarship to Paul's College, Oxford.

"I cannot say," said Mrs. Morland, angrily pushing her hair and her hat
off her face simultaneously in a very unbecoming way, "how _furious_ we
both are. There he was, perfectly happy, though of course they never
tell me if they are happy or not, and perhaps happy is not quite the
word, but at any rate he was killing Germans with great satisfaction;
though I must say," said Mrs. Morland, making an obvious effort to be
broad-minded, "that to mow Germans down with very large guns in tanks is
not quite the same as _killing_ them; and then what must the War Office
do but send for him in an aeroplane, by which means he had to leave
nearly all his kit behind and arrived quite unexpectedly at High Rising
to say he was going to India at once, with two bottles of champagne
which were bought, not stolen, and a bundle of perfectly filthy clothes
to be washed and mended."

"I presume," said Mr. Birkett, "that it was a kind of compliment to send
him to India. They don't pick one subaltern out like that for fun."

"Compliment or no compliment," said Mrs. Morland, pointing her remarks
with her face--main which she had suddenly remembered that she was
wearing, "to India he went, in a bomber, in thirty flying hours: though
whether flying hours are longer or shorter than other hours I do not
know, any more than which weighs most, a pound of lead or a pound of
feathers."

Mr. Birkett said he thought it was the number of hours during which you
were actually in the air; not refuelling, or coming down somewhere to
have lunch with a friend.

"And that," said Mrs. Morland, ignoring his explanation, "is what I
cannot abide. Why send him to India in thirty hours when it will
probably take him weeks and weeks to get back? Unreasonable, I call it,
and if I were the Peace Conference I'd stop people flying at once. It
only makes people nervous, just like the wireless."

"I quite agree with you," said Mr. Birkett. "The reason we all had such
good nerves during the Napoleonic wars and Miss Austen was able totally
to ignore current events was that communications were slow. A corvette
with dispatches from Spain, which had probably had to beat out as far as
the West Indies and then run up the Channel and round the coast like the
Armada and make her landfall at Grimsby, left people, except those
personally affected, singularly unmoved. It's a devil's age, Laura, and
it is, I can assure you, no pleasure to me to have to send my boys out
into it. But I wish Tony the best of luck."

"I hear from him quite often," said Mrs. Morland. "In fact he writes as
much as he did from D-Day and France and Belgium and Holland and
Germany, and about exactly the same things."

"His guns and his men, I suppose," said Mr. Birkett.

"Oh, _no_," said Mrs. Morland. "Asking me to find something that is at
the bottom of one of his drawers or trunks, he doesn't know which and
send it to him: or to buy him something that simply doesn't exist, like
a wrist watch or a fountain pen. But it seems to make him feel a bit
nearer," she added with a touch of melancholy which she would never have
shown but to so old a friend.

And then she asked about friends at the school, and Matron, and the
Edward Carters and their brood, and the Birketts' daughters Rose and
Geraldine, and Kate Carter's sister, Lydia Merton and her small Lavinia:
and so they ran pleasantly through the gamut of common friends till Lady
Fielding said they ought to be starting, as the proceedings were to
begin at two-thirty.

Miss Bunting then bade a formal farewell to the guests, showing no
favour, and went upstairs for her rest, and there was a great collecting
of impedimenta by Mrs. Tebben and in a lesser degree by Mrs. Morland and
the whole party set out for the meeting, though in no violent hurry, for
as they had Lord Stoke the President with them, nothing could happen
till he came.

The well which was to be the scene of the proceedings was, as may be
remembered, in the cellar of the Old Rectory destroyed by fire some two
hundred years ago. By degrees its stones had been taken for building;
the farmer nearby had converted some of its outhouses into waggon sheds
and stabling, but the foundations of part of the house still remained,
just outside the churchyard. They were by now in most places level with
the ground, or so covered with earth and weeds as to be unrecognizable,
being a kind of No-Man's Land over which various people interested, such
as the Duke of Omnium, the Cathedral Chapter, and the Court of Haphazard
litigated at intervals in a meaningless way. This last was a very old
ecclesiastical tribunal over whose derivation antiquaries had long and
fruitlessly squabbled, some saying that it was old Norman-French, though
what it meant they could not precisely explain; others that it was a
corruption of Ampersand (itself a corruption, so that, as the Dean had
wittily said, it was a case of _corruptio corruptionis pessima_),
meaning perhaps that the church was per se the possessor of anything it
could get hold of; and yet others that it had been called that in
Gramfer's time and what was good enough for him was good enough for
anyone else as he'd a been a hundred and forty-two if he'd a lived till
the war and that was more than old Hitler could say.

The well had of course been bricked up for safety long ago, but owing to
some very necessary repairs to Hallbury's water supply it had been
temporarily reopened and the Barsetshire Archaeological Society had
taken advantage of this to apply for permission to hold their summer
meeting at Hallbury and investigate the brickwork before the well was
filled in and lost. A strong fence within which ten or twelve persons
could move about had been erected round the mouth of the well, and by
courtesy of the contractors and the prospect of some heavy tipping to
come, a workman had been down the well on the end of a rope most of the
previous day, cutting out specimens of brickwork at different levels.
And as there was a chance of some difficulty with a deep spring in the
event of filling in the well the contractors, a local firm who at bottom
believed more firmly in unseen forces than in any amount of boring and
surveying, had obtained the services of Ed Pollett. This character, a
half-wit or a natural genius, as you may choose to look upon him, was
the illegitimate son of a virago of a mother and one of Lord Pomfret's
keepers and had begun his career as under-porter at Worsted Station.
From this he had gone, having as some may remember a genius for
mechanics without knowing what they were, as temporary chauffeur to Lord
and Lady Bond one summer. When motors were put down for the war he had
been transferred to Marling Hall where he managed the tractor and did
odd jobs, and a year or two previously had married Millie Poulter, niece
to Mrs. Cox at Marling who let rooms. As Millie was nearly as
half-witted as Ed, though without any of his genius, they led a very
happy, skittish life and had already had a couple of nice healthy
children, decidedly wanting. Now one of Ed Pollett's many gifts was a
water-sense. With or without a hazel-twig Ed could always feel water and
after the epidemic of measles at Grumper's End the summer old Miss
Brandon died, he had successfully diagnosed a forgotten cesspool in the
Thatchers' backyard that no one had ever suspected.

As the party from Hall's End arrived on the scene of the excavations, Ed
was standing on the edge of the well talking to the labourer at the end
of the rope and, we are glad to say, both being local men resistant in
the highest degree to so-called education, their talk, consisting of
short remarks exchanged at long intervals and about nothing in
particular, would probably have been quite comprehensible to Gurth or
even Hereward the Wake.

At the sight of Ed Pollett Lord Stoke, with no apology, broke from his
party and went over to the well. For ever since Sir Edmund Pridham had
saved Ed from the conscription which would certainly have driven him
really mad within a month, besides the chance of his running amuck and
using his idiot's great strength against his fellows, and had told the
story to Lord Stoke, that nobleman had taken Ed so to speak under his
baronial wing, and enjoyed nothing more than a chat with him.

"Afternoon, Ed," said Lord Stoke.

Ed turned slowly, saw his patron, grinned and pulled his forelock, a
piece of atavism which Lord Stoke said was well worth fifty guineas.

"Well, Ed, looking at the well, eh?" said Lord Stoke.

Ed smiled again seraphically.

"Who's down there?" said his lordship, whose curiosity in all local
matters was unbounded. "One of the Duke's men?"

Ed looked doubtful.

"It's Purse," he said at length.

"Percy who?" said Lord Stoke. "One of Dudden's boys?"

Ed said he didn't rightly know. Purse it was, and Purse was going to
stand him one at the Omnium Arms afterwards.

"Never mind," said Lord Stoke. "Children all right, Ed?"

Ed smiled broadly.

"Millie's expecting again," he said. "March."

As it was now mid-August this artless remark might have shocked a peer
less wide-minded than Lord Stoke. But his lordship, who conserved a good
eighteenth-century flavour, poked Ed with his stick to the intense
pleasure of the onlookers, and said he'd be a grandfather before he
could turn round.

He then approached the well, squatted on the edge, called down it and
asked who was there. A voice from the depths said it was Percy Bodger my
lord.

"Is that old Bodger's grandson; old Bodger over at Harefield?" said Lord
Stoke.

The voice said it was, my lord.

"Fine old fellow your grandfather," said Lord Stoke. "Got rid of all my
rats for me the year the river came up in the Castle cellar. Tell him I
asked after him."

The voice said it thanked his lordship and grandfather would be main
pleased.

"Getting some bricks for us, eh?" said Lord Stoke.

The voice said yes, my lord.

"Much water down there?" asked his lordship.

The voice said maybe two feet and a stinking dead cat if his lordship
didn't mind, and went on with his chipping.

By this time a crowd of twenty or thirty people had collected and were
looking at the well with the faith of the people who looked through Mr.
Nupkins's back gate, hoping perhaps to have sight of Percy Bodger rising
from its curb, or see Lord Stoke fall down it. As neither of these
delightful occurrences took place, it began gently to melt again and
look for its friends.

At the Rectory Dr. Dale and his guest the Dean had had a very pleasant
conversation, chiefly on ecclesiastical affairs, while Robin spoke when
he was spoken to and wondered what old Birkett wanted to say to him, for
the headmaster had taken the precaution of ringing up and saying he
hoped to see him during the afternoon. They touched lightly on the
affair of the Precentor's extra petrol, the Dean giving it as his
opinion that though the Precentor was quite in the wrong, if not
actually breaking the laws, yet the mere fact of the Bishop's
reprobation made him, as it were, guiltless in the eye of heaven; with
which Dr. Dale heartily agreed. The Rector then inquired after Dr.
Crawley's very large family of children and grandchildren and was glad
to hear that they all were well and Octavia's husband now had an
excellent artificial arm and the baby was a fine little fellow. Dr.
Crawley then asked the Rector how Haggai was getting on and was
delighted to hear that he was well into the second chapter. Dr. Dale
said he was getting old and the grasshopper was becoming a burden.

"Never mind, Dale," said the Dean, who was fond of the old man and did
not like to see him cast down. "It is a great thing that you have Robin
with you."

"It is," said Dr. Dale, looking affectionately at his son. "Don't wait
for me, Robin, if you want to go down to the Old Rectory."

Robin thanked his father and said that as all his young scholars were
going, with the firm determination of falling down the well, he thought
he would be more usefully employed in helping to keep them away from
this innocent occupation.

The Dean said they would meet again at Philippi and dismissed Robin with
a kind of decanal salute, and Robin went off, quite understanding why
the Dean's family sometimes felt that their father was going it more
than they could bear. After a silence his host said,

"I know I am lucky to have Robin with me, Crawley, but in the good
Scotch phrase, I am apt to sin my mercies. When you are as old as I am
you will know what it is to want to be quiet. I can be alone in my study
with my books for days quite happily, and my housekeeper brings me meals
on a tray. Robin is a good son and a brave and hardworking boy, but
there are so many years between us. My wife, as you know, was thirty
years my junior. Robin can hardly remember his mother. He should have
been my grandson. I get very tired, Crawley, very tired, and it's dull
for him."

Although the Dean was not very sensitive to fine shades, he quite
sympathized with the Rector's point of view. Much as he loved his many
daughters and his two sons, now all married, all with children, he
sometimes, and especially at Christmas and during school holidays when
his wife's exuberant grandmotherhood filled the Deanery with children
and nurses and odd parents, echoed from his heart the cry, "Oh, for an
hour of Herod." While the grandchildren were all young it had been bad
enough, but at least the evenings were free. Now, with half of them
sitting up to the evening meal and the eldest using his study as if it
were a sitting-room, he often thought enviously of anchorites and people
who--in a better climate--lived on the top of a pillar. So he quite
sympathized with Dr. Dale in his secret wish to be alone with his books
and his memories, and was about to say so when he saw that his host had
fallen asleep, upright in his chair, sleeping lightly as old men do, but
rapt away from the world. So he got up quietly, told the housekeeper he
was going down to the Old Rectory and left the Rector to his dreams.

                 *        *        *        *        *

As he approached the scene of the meeting he ran into the Fieldings and
the Birketts, all old friends, and they had the story of the Precentor's
extra petrol all over again, with such additions as their fancy
suggested. Mrs. Birkett asked after the Rector, for she remembered every
parent that had ever been through her hands and Dr. Dale was a not
undistinguished parent. The Dean said he had fallen asleep after lunch
so he had left him and come down to the Old Rectory.

"And how is Robin?" said Mr. Birkett. "I wish we could get him for
Southbridge, but I suppose he will feel he ought to stay with his
father."

"To tell you the truth, Birkett," said the Dean, falling behind a little
with the headmaster, "I don't think his father much wants him."

Mr. Birkett looked interested.

"I don't mean that they aren't fond of each other," said the Dean, "for
anyone can see they are. But from what Dale said to me I think he would
be happier alone. He is getting on and lives mostly in the past and his
books and, as he said, Robin is really the age of a grandson to him. He
has a very good housekeeper and if Robin were away I don't think he
would notice it much. To tell you the truth, Birkett, I believe the old
man lives with the memory of his wife and as Robin can hardly remember
her he is rather a third person."

"H'm," said Mr. Birkett, though this time Anne was not there to admire.
"Thank you, Crawley, I shan't rush it, but I'll keep what you said in
mind. He must be a good age."

"If it comes to that, we are getting to a pretty good age ourselves,"
said the Dean. "I wonder that the people who try to write the Bible in
modern language don't alter the threescore years and ten."

Mr. Birkett said that judging from the bits of Basic English he had
seen, there would certainly be no word for threescore and probably not
for ten. "One and one and one would be the best they could do."

"Come, Birkett, be fair," said the Dean. "Even the Romans knew no better
than to say ten-fifty when they meant forty. Or if they didn't say it,
they wrote it and carved it, which looks as if they meant it."

"And those dreadful French say four-twenty-thirteen for ninety-three,"
said Mr. Birkett.

"And look at the Germans, saying half-eight when they mean half-past
seven," responded the Dean.

"Or those foul Italians thinking that quattrocento means the fifteenth
century," said Mr. Birkett in antistrophe. "I wonder what Lord Stoke is
saying to Ed Pollett. Let's go and look."

                 *        *        *        *        *

The lunch at Hallbury House went off quietly. Lord and Lady Pomfret were
pleasant guests, but Lord Pomfret never had very good health and his
Countess, taking more than her share of all county activities, was
always a little anxious about him. Their agent, Roddy Wicklow, the
Countess's brother, was also an excellent fellow, but not much given to
speech, so when Jane had asked after Lord Mellings and Lady Emily and
the Honourable Giles and Mr. Wicklow's wife and two children, there
wouldn't be much more to say.

"Mellings is going to a day school in Nutfield now," said Lady Pomfret.
"I wish Southbridge had a pre-preparatory house. He is going to the
prep. school when he is eight."

"Lady Pomfret," said Frank, "I'm going to Southbridge. If your little
boy comes I'll take care of him. I'm very good at taking care of people.
Tom Watson wants to go to Southbridge when I do, mother. I told Mrs.
Watson I'd take care of him. Do you think he'll go, mother?"

Jane said she didn't know and to hurry up with his dinner.

"Where do you go to school?" said Lord Pomfret to Frank, which was very
kind of him, for he was frightened of children and would often have been
frightened of his own only his wife wouldn't let him.

"With Mr. Dale, sir," said Frank.

"Any relation of the Allington Dales?" said Lord Pomfret.

"That old Miss Lily Dale was his great-aunt or something of the sort,"
said Admiral Palliser; but Lord Pomfret had never heard of her.

"She was engaged to some man, then broke it off," said the Admiral, "and
I gather she lived on the romance till she was well over eighty. A real
Victorian heroine."

"I have heard Gillie's aunt speak of her," said Lady Pomfret, who had
become very good friends with her predecessor before old Lady Pomfret
died. "The man married someone--one of the Gazebees, wasn't it, and died
abroad."

No one contradicted her; and so are history and memoirs written.

"Is it a nice school?" she continued, doubtless with Viscount Mellings's
pre-prep. education in mind.

"Very nice," said Jane. "The only trouble is that there are so few
people here. When Frank and his lot have gone to boarding-school I
really don't know what Robin will do. There's a kind of gap and the next
lot won't be ripe for two or three years."

As Lady Pomfret naturally did not take much further interest in what was
apparently a moribund school, the conversation, such as it was,
languished politely through dessert from the garden and coffee. Frank
then brought his mother to shame by boasting of his horsemanship to
Roddy Wicklow, who was quite well known in a quiet way as a gentleman
rider before the war. Lady Pomfret, both seeing and feeling her
hostess's infanticidal feelings, broke across Frank's talk by asking her
brother what the name of that man was who was going to stand for the
County Council.

"Adams," said Roddy. "He has a works over at Hogglestock. One of the new
men."

"You wouldn't have heard of him, Admiral," said Lady Pomfret. "I did see
him once, at the Hosiers' Girls' School prize-giving. Not very
attractive."

The Admiral said he was on Mr. Adams's Board of Directors.

"Sally always took her fences without looking," said Roddy. "What do you
think of him, sir?"

The Admiral said he didn't know. Business, he said, was one thing and
Adams was a remarkably good business man, and pleasure was another.

"But probably," he added, "Jane could tell you more. She seems to have a
way with her where he is concerned. He wanted, in all kindness, of
course, to send down one of his accountants to help our Rector, Dr.
Dale--the father of the young man we were talking about--and it would
have worried the old man into a fit. It was all very awkward, but Jane
managed to make him see sense."

"Oh, he is all right," said Jane, suddenly attacked by that form of
self-consciousness that makes us belittle someone we rather like;
possibly just for the pleasure of talking about them. "Not quite what
Hallbury is used to though. And he has a large, very plain girl called
Heather who is going to Cambridge. But it's only for the holidays, till
whenever Cambridge begins. He will call her 'my little Heth' and she
weighs about twelve stone."

Lord Pomfret, who though as nice and hard-working as he could be had not
much sense of humour, laughed politely at Jane's rather unkind words and
said seriously that what really mattered was how the fellow was going to
vote. If he was the right sort they could do with a man like him on the
County Council; someone who understood the growing class of industrial
workers in and around Barchester, as well as old fogies like himself and
Pridham, who thought more of the agricultural interest.

"I think," said Jane, "he will be at the meeting this afternoon with his
daughter. If I see him would you like to meet him?"

Lord Pomfret said he would and then it was time to start for the Old
Rectory. The Admiral escorted Lady Pomfret, and Frank, slipping his hand
into Roddy Wicklow's, told him all about the pony at Greshamsbury and
how his cousin Roger was afraid to ride it. To which Roddy made answer
that he'd met a lot of horses he was afraid to ride himself, and Frank
though usually impervious to fine shades felt a little subdued. So Jane
fell to Lord Pomfret, and as he had not much small talk and they knew
each other well enough not to bother, she reflected upon the way Mr.
Adams seemed to crop up everywhere, and had an uncomfortable feeling
that she had not been quite ladylike in making mock of him and his
daughter before people who didn't know them. But the scene which met
their eyes as the Old Rectory banished all thoughts, except those of
keeping the children of both sexes, both gentry and non-gentry, from
falling down the well. Robin, who in his schoolmaster capacity felt
rather responsible, had arranged with the verger for a relay of
well-watchers to keep children out of the enclosure, while he
volunteered to take not more than two children at a time, one in each
hand, to see what was happening. Lord Stoke's groom, the Rectory
gardener and the elderly old man from the Omnium Arms were co-opted, Ed
was warned, and everyone waited for the proceedings to begin.




                               CHAPTER IX


It now became apparent that the Society's President was lost. The
Fieldings had not seen him as they were talking to the George Knoxes. Ed
said he couldn't rightly say nothing. His lordship was argying with
Purse, he said, and then his lordship got up and went away and Ed hadn't
seen him anywheres, no he hadn't. Lord Pomfret said he might have fallen
down the well, but this explanation, in view of the fact that Percy
Bodger was down there all the time and must have noticed something, was
poorly received, though the Admiral maintained that any Bodger was
capable of ignoring entirely such an incident as an old gentleman
falling down the well on to his head, having a rooted and feudal belief
that the gentry were privileged and that it was not for the likes of
them to ask.

At this moment Lord and Lady Bond and the Middletons, who had been
lunching at the Palace and come on by train, appeared in the field. To
Lady Bond, as his half-sister, appeal was made. She had not yet seen him
anywhere, but was not at all anxious.

"It's so like Stoke," said Lady Bond, who had a dashing way of
mentioning her half-brother and her husband by their baronial names
without any prefix, a habit which many of her friends envied but were
too modest to copy. "Of course it's a cow. Who farms here?"

"Old Masters," said the Admiral. "He rents my field and has his
milking-shed over there."

He pointed to the converted outbuildings of the Old Rectory some fifty
yards away.

"That's where you'll find him," said Lady Bond. "Here, Ed!"

Ed Pollett came shambling up and took his cap off.

"Go and see if his lordship is in the cowshed and bring him here," said
Lady Bond.

Ed looked frightened.

"There's that old Daisy in there. She dropped a fine little bull calf
last night, she did, and they say it's unlucky to go in more than one,"
said Ed. "Millie wouldn't rightly like me to go, my lady."

"Don't be a fool, Ed," said Lady Bond. "You needn't go in. Just go to
the door and tell his lordship to come at once."

Ed went off at his own slow countryman's pace.

"The ancient Norsemen," said Mr. Tebben, who had been listening to the
conversation with some interest, "had a very similar belief. I was
reading the other day in Grettir Halfbone's interesting twelfth-century
gloss on the Laxdaela Saga that when the female salmon----"

But what Mr. Tebben in his gentle scholarly way was going to say we
shall never know (nor in any case would we have cared), for at that
moment the Watsons with Mr. and Mrs. George Knox came up and overheard
the last words.

"The Laxdaela Saga, my dear Tebben," said George Knox, burst into the
conversation like a shell. "The Laxdaela Saga," he repeated, to give
himself time to bludgeon all present into being an audience. "How I long
to re-read it, no one knows. Even you do not know, Tebben. When I was a
boy," said George Knox, raising his voice as he saw the Middletons
approaching, "my days were not long enough for reading. Well," said
George Knox, fixing the unfortunate Mr. Tebben with his eyes till that
Icelandic authority felt like the Wedding Guest, "well, I say, do I
remember long summer days, lying on my stomach as little boys do,"
continued George Knox with a smile which his loving and unimpressed wife
knew to be meant for a whimsical one, "in the long grass of an orchard,
absorbing every word, every word, I say, of the great Sagas of the
North: the Skyrikari, the Reaping of Magnus Trollbogi, Haelfdan
Hogsister, the great lament for the burning of Gunnar Pedderdotterssen's
barley rick. You, Tebben," said George Knox, as one who condescendingly
pats a well-meaning dog on the head, "will better know than I the true,
the heroic pronunciation of these names, but let that pass," he said,
though Mr. Tebben had shown no symptom of taking up the challenge. "Even
at that age the little boy among the orchard grass knew what was
essential. Little did the names matter to him. It was the story he
loved; ay, Tebben, and loves still. You scholars may burn the midnight
oil, but we romantics know."

"When Richard, my son, was quite a little boy," said Mrs. Tebben,
breaking into George Knox's speech with a mother's pride, "he had the
same difficulty with proper names that you have, Mr. Knox. He had a book
he was very fond of which he always called From Cursy to Agronaut. You
will never guess what it really was," said Mrs. Tebben looking proudly
round her for support. Not getting any she added gaily, "It was From
Crecy to Agincourt. It amused us so much and we have never forgotten
it."

Several mothers present, headed by Mrs. Morland, gave examples of
similar mistakes, bearing the marks of genius, made by their own
children, while George Knox stood champing and pawing the ground,
occasionally taking a deep breath as if to continue his extempore
lecture and then having to let it out again in a most mortifying way,
owing to the total want of interest from his fickle audience. Just as he
saw an opening Mr. and Mrs. Middleton joined the group.

"Ha! Knox," said Mr. Middleton, with a kind of crusading fervour for
which there was no reason at all.

Mrs. Middleton greeted the company in general, and particularly Mrs.
George Knox, for there was a firm though undemonstrative friendship
between these two ladies. Neither was young, neither had children, and
both had a deep untiring affection for their rather overpowering
husbands and not the faintest illusions about them.

"George has been talking, I suppose," said Mrs. Middleton.

"He has," said Mrs. Knox. "And what's more he will again, at any
moment."

"About anything particular?" asked Mrs. Middleton.

"Sagas," said Mrs. Knox. "And why I really don't know, as it all began
with a bit of folklore from Ed Pollett about not going into a cowshed
more than one at a time. I mean one person at a time, not one cowshed.
Sometimes I wonder why language was ever invented when I think of the
extraordinary things it makes one say."

"I know," said Mrs. Middleton sympathetically. Or so an acquaintance
would have said; but the few whom she allowed to know her well, Anne
Knox among them, sometimes felt that while her voice expressed deep
interest, her eyes were always looking a little way from the point of
discussion towards some distant object unknown to her friends, barely
suspected by herself. Then Mr. Middleton, having greeted the rest of the
ladies with a touch of Versailles and the Grand Monarque, in his turn
inquired what they had been discussing. Lady Fielding said that Mr. Knox
had been telling them about the old Norse sagas, upon which George Knox
once more took a breath and began,

"You, my dear Middleton, will bear me out----"

"I will bear with you, Knox, but cannot promise to bear you out----"
said Mr. Middleton.

His wife said Jack was being Shakespearian.

"----until I know what line you were taking up."

"You flatter me, Middleton," said George Knox rather irritably. "There
is no question of a line, my dear fellow. I was merely sharing, or shall
I more humbly say, trying to share with our friends the emotions roused
in me as a boy by reading the great Norse stories, the Skyrikari, the
Reaping of----"

"Not again, George darling," said his wife.

"AH," said Mr. Middleton, leaping into the conversation like a salmon up
a waterfall in his anxiety to get in ahead of George Knox, "the sagas.
Wonderful tales of heroes and of men. How often, Anne," he continued,
addressing his wife as a focus from which the whole company might be
brought within his circle, "how often have I told you of my great walk
over the country of Njal and Gunnar of Lithend, all through the long
days of a sub-Arctic summer."

"I don't know, Jack," said his wife impartially. "A great many times."

"Tramping alone and on foot," said Mr. Middleton, to the intense
annoyance of Mr. Knox, who had never been to Iceland, "for these things,
Bond," he said, suddenly addressing his landlord, who jumped and tried
to look as if he were listening, "must be experienced alone; alone, I
say; over the Snorrefell, down Hormundsdale, across Grimmswater--I give
the English rendering of these names. I tell you, Bond, no one who has
not seen that country in its majesty, imbued with the spirit of the
Heroic Age, can begin to understand the saga."

He paused.

"'Only those who brave its dangers,'

'Comprehend its mystery'," said Anne Fielding in a small but distinct
voice.

"You remember Anne," said Lady Fielding to Mr. Middleton, glad of this
excuse to break what threatened to be an interminable monologue. "The
Marlings' old governess, Miss Bunting, has been reading with her all
this year. I think I see Lord Stoke coming back."

"Not Longfellow," said Mr. Middleton, "an thou lovest me."

His wife said dispassionately that he must really stop thinking he was
Shakespeare.

"A poet, if you choose to call him such," said Mr. Middleton, "who
brought into the sagas an atmosphere of middle-class New England. Away
with such a fellow from the earth."

"No, George, you are _not_ the Pilgrim's Progress," said Mrs. Morland,
who had been occupied in tucking some bits of hair under her hat and
suddenly came to life.

"I don't agree with you, Middleton," said Mr. Tebben in the mild voice
of the scholar who will go to the stake for his self-formed convictions,
the fruit of study and thought and not taken from the Press or a voice
prancing with supercilious earnestness out of a box. "To my mind
Longfellow gives the feeling of Norse literature as well as anyone,
besides making it accessible to those who cannot read the language."

"Oh, Mr. Tebben," said Anne gratefully, "I do _love_ Longfellow. Next to
Tennyson he's my favourite poet."

Mr. Tebben said she might do far worse, which gratified Lady Fielding
very much. For though she was not much of a reader herself, she quite
realized Mr. Tebben's worth as a critic and was pleased that her
daughter had been encouraged.

"I am silent; I am silent, Tebben," said Mr. Middleton rather crossly.

"No, you aren't, Jack," said his wife, "and even if you are, you won't
be. Lord Stoke, how are you?"

"I wouldn't have missed the meeting to-day for worlds," said Lord Stoke
shaking hands with Mrs. Middleton and then, to the reverent joy of all
his old friends, taking a large red bandana with white spots out of his
coat pocket, removing his brown flat-topped billycock and mopping his
head. "Finest little bull calf I've seen since Bond's Staple Jupiter.
What happened to him, Bond?"

Lord Bond said he had gone to the Argentine with Staple Hercules.

"Bad thing all those Dagoes getting our bulls," said Lord Stoke. "Come
and have a look at this fellow. Pity Palmer isn't here. He'd have liked
to see him. Do you remember, Bond, when your man was taking a bull over
to Palmer and it got away? I always said your man wasn't fit to be
trusted with a good animal. Poor Palmer; he's ageing sadly."

Mr. Knox and Mr. Middleton, neither of whom knew anything about bulls,
then plunged into the conversation and everyone wondered if the meeting
would ever begin.

"I wish a bull would bellow," said Anne Fielding to Mr. Tebben, in whom
she felt she had found a friend. "Then those Skroelings would stop
talking and run away."

"What do you know about Skroelings?" said Mr. Tebben, amused at this
girl's interest in Icelandic matters.

"Out of Kipling," said Anne. "It's called 'The Finest Story in the
World.' It's marvellous, Mr. Tebben. You would love it. It's all about
reincarnation."

Mr. Tebben was disappointed by this second-hand approach to Icelandic
literature, but he thought Anne Fielding a nice child, reminding him a
little of his own gentle Margaret of whom since the war he had seen very
little, occupied as she was with children and war duties. Anne, thanks
to Miss Bunting, was overflowing with subjects she wanted to talk about
or ask about, from the books she had read during the last year, and they
fell into a very friendly conversation.

"It's nearly three o'clock," said Lady Bond to her half-brother, who
oblivious of his duties as President of the Barsetshire Archaeological
Society was about to take his ignorant and unwilling audience to see the
bull calf.

"God bless my soul, Lucasta, so it is," said his lordship. "Where is the
well?"

"If your Lordship will be so good as to come this way," said the voice
of Dr. Dale's verger.

"Certainly, certainly," said Lord Stoke, good-naturedly. "Who are you,
eh?" he added as Freeman led him towards the enclosure.

"The Rector's verger, my lord," said Freeman.

"Yes, yes, yes. But what's your name?" said Lord Stoke.

The verger named himself.

"Freeman. Now why the deuce--yes; I've got it," said Lord Stoke, who had
a knowledge of that part of the country only equalled by Sir Edmund
Pridham and surpassed by none. "Your father was under-keeper at Pomfret
Towers. I remember him about the time of King Edward the Seventh's
Coronation. Foxy-faced man with a wart on his nose. Married--now, wait a
minute; yes. I've got it. He married the sister of that Wheeler that
used to clean the chimneys at the Towers. Any children?"

"Yes, my lord," said Freeman. "A girl."

"That all?" said his lordship.

"Yes, my lord," said Freeman.

"Pity to let good stock die out," said Lord Stoke.

"Yes, my lord," said Freeman. "This way if your lordship doesn't mind."

He led his patron into the enclosure, whither they were followed by most
of the party we have just met, and some other people of county or local
importance with whom we are not concerned. Mr. Tebben and Anne Fielding,
now deep in the Bronts, sat down outside on a bit of foundation and
went on with their talk.

The secretary, a youngish clerk in a Barchester lawyer's office, unfit
for service owing to his defective eyesight, but full of zeal for
Barchester antiquities, then came up and spoke to his President, having
been too frightened to do so before.

"This is the well, Lord Stoke," he said. "We've had a man down it all
morning and he has brought up pieces of brickwork from various depths.
Perhaps you would like to look down the well yourself first and then say
a few words to the Society."

"Oh, sir, can I look down too?" said a voice beside Lord Stoke and not
on his level.

Lord Stoke looked down and saw a small boy, holding another small boy by
the hand.

"Can't hear you, my boy," said Lord Stoke. "What's your name?"

"Frank Gresham, sir," said the boy at the top of his voice. "And this is
Tom Watson. He's not so old as I am, but he would like to look down the
well if I hold his hand. Oh, sir, can we?"

By good luck Frank's voice was of a pitch that happened to suit Lord
Stoke's deafness.

"All right, my boy," he said. "But you've got to hold my hand."

"Oh, sir! thank you," said the little boys. Pushing Master Watson's
right hand into Lord Stoke's left hand, Frank went round to his
lordship's other side and took his right hand. They moved to the edge of
the well and looked down. There was nothing to see, for the well was so
deep that the water at the bottom lay in darkness.

"Oh sir, can I throw something in?" said Frank and dropping Lord Stoke's
hand he picked up a small piece of brick from the rim and threw it down
the well. After what felt like five minutes there was a dull plop.

"I told you to hold my hand, boy," said Lord Stoke. "Off you go now."

The little boys, with regretful looks at the well, went back to their
mothers, who were just as glad to have them away from their rather risky
pastime, especially Mrs. Watson who had overheard Freeman telling a
friend it was no use any of the Society falling in, for nobody'd fetch
'em out, as Percy Bodger had said he wouldn't go down there again, not
with that stinking cat about and anyway the rope was too short by six
feet.

The secretary then approached Lord Stoke with a tray on which were a
number of fragments of red brick or tile, all neatly labelled.

"These are the pieces, Lord Stoke," said the secretary.

"Eh?" said Lord Stoke.

"These are the fragments of brick, Lord Stoke," said the secretary, more
loudly.

"All right, young man. What's your name? Henry, eh? Is that your
Christian name or your surname?"

"My surname, Lord Stoke," shouted the secretary.

"All right, all right, no need to shout like that," said Lord Stoke.
"And you needn't Lord Stoke me all the time. 'Sir' will do quite well.
And what do I do with these, eh?"

The secretary, who secretly felt that Sir was not a sufficiently polite
mode of address for a baron whose title went back to the Wars of the
Roses, said they were to make a speech about. He would have said they
were for his lordship to make a speech about, but being obedient to
authority he did not like to use the word lord again, and in default of
such a word as sir-ship had to fall back upon a circumlocution.

"Where's the Rector?" said Lord Stoke. "He knows more about this than I
do."

No one had thought of the Rector and everyone felt slightly ashamed.
When we say no one, the verger had thought of his spiritual overlord,
but as he said afterwards to Mrs. Freeman it seemed a shame for the old
gentleman not to have his after-dinner sleep; with which Mrs. Freeman
quite agreed. When we say no one however, this must not include the
Rector's son who thought of his father mostly as a kind of very nice
grandfather that needed looking after. He had noticed that the old man
was tired by dinner-time if he did not rest after lunch, but very cross
by dinner-time if he dozed too long, and whenever he could he arranged
to wake his father after an hour or so. And to-day, shortly before Lord
Stoke and his party came to the enclosure, he had asked one of the
village men to take his watch while he went home, roused his father and
brought him down to the Old Rectory.

Dr. Dale's arrival was the signal for an almost regal reception,
everyone coming forward to express respectful pleasure at seeing him and
quite forgetting the well. Dr. Dale was gratified, but being of an
honourable nature he dealt quickly with his friends and went up to Lord
Stoke with apologies for being late. Lord Stoke showed him the fragments
of brick which Dr. Dale touched with his elegant old hands.

"Most interesting," he said. "Most interesting. And what do we do now?"

Several people, like a stage crowd, asked each other the same question,
which gave the secretary his chance to call upon various speakers who
had been chosen beforehand. The day was fairly fine, but the eternal
wind of that bad summer was blowing, there was nowhere to sit, inside
the enclosure one was squashed, outside it one could not hear, so the
audience gradually melted, leaving the President, the secretary and the
Rector to deal with the enthusiasts, who finding no public were enabled
to quarrel among themselves with much greater freedom.

A silly afternoon thought Jane Gresham to herself. All very aimless and
waste of time, but one had to get through the time somehow. It didn't
much matter if the brickwork was Roman, British, Saxon, Danish, Norman:
the well was condemned, a dead cat was at the bottom of it, Frank thank
goodness had not fallen down it. Presently there would be tea in the
Watsons' big room, more talk with friends and then people would go and
there would be supper and bed and Sunday morning. And so on for ever and
ever. And somewhere, if he was alive, life was going on for Francis
Gresham and there was no power on earth that would tell either of them
anything about the other. She thought, as she had often thought, that
she could bear being in ignorance of Francis' fate if she was sure he
had not been deceived about her. She imagined fake news coming to him,
wherever he was, of London burnt and bombed to ruins, of all trade and
traffic at a standstill, of death, slavery or deportation for everyone
in England. Could he help believing these things? Would he not be in
anguish for his wife and son? And even if he were dead, which might be
the best fate for him, how could one truly believe that he was happy if
he knew how unhappy she was. If going to heaven meant not minding if
people we loved were happy or not, she did not look forward to heaven
and knew Francis would be most indignant at finding himself there. And
new inventions made everything far worse. What was the use of people
being able to fly to the Far East within forty-eight hours when to get
back might take forty-eight days, months, years, eternity. This wouldn't
do. She shook herself angrily and went to see if Frank was in mischief.
Both he and Master Watson were innocently occupied in building a railway
station from bits of the ruins and quite good.

From across the field she heard archaeological voices. Presently there
was a clapping of hands and she realized that the meeting was over and
the fate of the well decided. Robin Dale came over to where she was
sitting near the boys.

"Well, what is the verdict?" she said.

"I haven't the faintest idea," said Robin. "Father spoke very charmingly
about anything but brickwork, with a passing reference to the Prophet
Haggai. All the experts spoke rather uncharmingly about their own
hobbies. Lord Stoke was annoyed because Mr. Tebben who was to have
convinced everybody about something was sitting on a stone capping
verses with Anne and couldn't be found till too late. The secretary was
all put out because a special piece of brickwork was missing. The only
person who really enjoyed himself was Freeman, because he is reporting
the names of the guests for the Barchester Chronicle. And what have you
been doing?"

"Robin," said Jane, not directly answering his question, "have you ever
wondered if your foot, the bits of it that were shot off, misses _you_?"

"Well, yes, I have occasionally," said Robin, half wondering where this
would lead, half sure that it would lead to something that would need
quick thought and a convincing tongue. "But I don't now. After all it's
buried quite comfortably at Anzio. At least I suppose they buried it. I
really don't know. Anyway it can't talk, so that's all right."

He then fell silent, conscious that he had been talking too much, and
foolishly, to cover his own unease.

"Still, I suppose a foot is different from a person," said Jane, in whom
Robin recognized a savage wish to hurt herself. "It wouldn't care for
one when one was alive, so why should it miss one when one's dead?
Robin, if you couldn't ever see or get news of a person you were very
fond of, would you feel miserable?"

"Like hell I would," said Robin bracingly. "Poor old Jane." And he put
an encouraging arm across her shoulder.

"It's not poor Jane," said the lady, taking no notice of the arm and
speaking with her face averted. "It's poor Francis. I don't mind missing
him so much--I don't know _what_ I feel about him. But it does kill me
to think he may be missing me."

"Supposing he is dead," said Robin, knowing that Jane had always faced
this possibility.

"Well if you, or Dr. Dale, or the Bishop--not that he's any good--can
make me think that just being dead would make Francis not miss me----"
said Jane, speaking with such arrogant confidence that her sentence did
not need finishing.

"Mother," said Frank, appearing suddenly at his mother's elbow, and as
if this were a very reasonable request, "have you any chalk?"

"I have," said Robin, withdrawing his arm from Jane's shoulder and
feeling in his coat pocket. "Here you are."

"Oh thank you, sir," said Frank and returned to Master Watson.

Jane looked at her watch.

"Come along, boys," she said.

"Oh but _mother_," said Frank, "Tom hasn't finished his ticket office;
have you Tom? Oh mother, can't he stop and finish it?"

Jane asked how long it would take.

"Not long, mother. Oh, mother, do let Tom finish it. One of his back
teeth came out this morning. Tom, show mother."

Master Watson obligingly opened his mouth and pointed with a dirty
finger at a gap in his upper jaw.

"Mrs. Watson made him rinse his mouth, mother, and the water was all
bloody," said Frank. "I wish I'd seen it, mother."

"With pydrogen hoxide," said Master Watson.

"He means hydrogen poxide," said Frank scornfully. "Did it fizzle, Tom?"

Tom nodded his head violently as Jane said they must really come now. So
Frank wrote STATIO CLAUSA on a piece of flat stone with the chalk and
set it up against the building.

"Third conjugation," he said loftily, "but Tom doesn't know it yet.
Never mind, Tom. I'll help you with your prep. when we go to
Southbridge."

"Odious, condescending child," said Jane to Robin as they walked towards
the Watsons. "He does need a father."

"Speaking as a schoolmaster, my limited experience of fathers is that
they are, if possible, even less use than mothers," said Robin, who knew
that Jane was again her usual self and wished to join her in forgetting
her short loss of self-control.

The Archaeological Society's tea was to be held, by kind permission of
Mr. and Mrs. Watson, in the hall where the camouflage netting was done.
The big frames had been pushed against the wall: the tables were spread
with food instead of patterns and strips of green and brown material. An
urn had been lent by the Women's Institute, and Mrs. Freeman with a few
friends from the Mothers' Union had volunteered to serve the teas. At
one end of the room was a special table where the President with some
chosen guests of honour was supposed to sit, but anyone who knew Lord
Stoke would have known that his insatiable curiosity about people in
general would never allow him to remain seated. Dr. Dale however was
glad to sit there quietly, and the Pomfrets joined him with Admiral
Palliser and the Birketts. Dr. Dale beckoned Jane to make one of them
but she said she ought to move about a little and see that everyone was
being looked after and brought Mrs. Knox up to take her place.

Before she could give her mind to the guests there was one pressing
duty; that of catching Masters Gresham and Watson and disposing of them
in such a way that they would not be a nuisance to the grown-ups, and
their mothers could at the same time keep an eye on them. With Mrs.
Watson's whole-hearted co-operation a round table with an iron top was
rescued from an old summer-house, placed in a corner of the hall and
heaped with food, Frank and his friend were then ordered to get a chair
each and try not to be a bother and their mothers returned to the
guests.

The success of most learned societies is measured by their teas. The
Barchester Archaeological had been accustomed to do its members very
well in this matter, but each successive summer of the war had reduced
the quality of the food and increased the amount of substitute milk.
This summer the food fell well below even the previous years' averages,
being mostly dry-looking cakes with no colour and no smell, or
sandwiches of greyish bread with various proprietary "spreads" in them.
As for the milk, it was just powdered milk beaten up with water and very
nasty too, though released as a great favour by the grocer who was Mr.
Freeman's cousin. But nothing has yet stopped people eating nasty cakes
or drinking greedily cups of tea of an unknown and powdery brand
flavoured with artificial milk and everyone was in very good humour,
saying perhaps next summer the war would be over.

"Over next summer?" said Mr. Knox to Jane. "Speaking as a historian
which I am not, for biographies of historical persons do, do _not_, I
say constitute history as I, alas, am the first to confess; speaking, I
say, as a historian however unworthy, I say to myself: what is the
lesson history has taught us?"

He glared at Jane, defying her to guess the riddle.

"Nothing, I should think," said Jane. "If it had people would have a bit
more sense."

"The lesson of history?" said Mr. Middleton coming up on the other side
of her, much to Mr. Knox's annoyance. "Had you, Mrs. Gresham, walked as
I have over the fields of Waterloo, and Quatre Bras and Ligny too----"

"And died at Trafalgar," said Jane, and then wished she hadn't, for it
was but too evident that Mr. Middleton did not recognize the allusion
and she feared he would want it explained. Luckily, however, as she
afterwards told Robin Dale, he tanked right over her without so much as
noticing her she said.

"----you would realize," Mr. Middleton continued, holding his cup in one
hand and pouring all the tea that had slopped over his saucer into an
empty cup that the secretary had just put down, "that history has no
lesson at all."

"Nay, Middleton," said Mr. Knox, attracting by this striking and unusual
opening the attention of all those near him, "nay," he repeated, pleased
with his success, "there I join issue with you. Wait though. May I," he
said thrusting his cup across the table to Mrs. Freeman, "crave another
cup of this excellent tea?"

With a smile of pitying toleration for the peculiarities of the gentry,
Mrs. Freeman served him, carrying on the while an animated conversation
with the Mothers' Union secretary about 2-ply navy wool without coupons
at the Barchester Co-op.

Mrs. Middleton approached, saw her husband re-plunge into the fray,
smiled abstractedly and moved towards the door seeking fresh air, for
the room was hot with humanity. Jane, who had always liked and admired
Mrs. Middleton but did not know her very well, followed her, said a few
words about the day's entertainment, and hoped she was not tired.

"Oh no," said Mrs. Middleton. "I don't get tired, or hardly ever. One
can't afford to when my husband is about. He needs all the tiredness for
himself."

Jane could not decide whether this was simplicity or sarcasm and hardly
liked to ask. Mrs. Middleton remained silent, looking over the garden,
apparently quite content and not at all embarrassed by the silence;
which Jane found somehow reassuring, as if there were suddenly a strong
arm to lean on.

"Good-day Mrs. Middleton," said Lord Stoke, whose perambulation of the
room had brought him to this point. "We don't often meet nowadays. Do
you remember that famous meeting at your house about Pooker's Piece,
when that bounder Hibberd was trying to buy it and enclose it?"

Mrs. Middleton smiled, always with her look of seeing a little farther
than the place where she was, and said she did remember it, and how old
Lord Pomfret had bought the land and given it to the county.

"Poisonous fellow," said Lord Stoke. "Well, he's a Liberal M.P. now and
poor Pomfret's dead. And what's happened to that young man that played
the piano. Lanky young fellow with a face like nutcrackers."

"Oh, Denis Stonor, Jack's nephew," said Mrs. Middleton, "at least Jack's
sister's first husband's son: no relation of ours at all. He is in
America I think."

"Ballet dancer or something, wasn't he?" said Lord Stoke.

"Not exactly a dancer, Lord Stoke," said Mrs. Middleton. "He wrote music
for ballets and Lord Bond very kindly lent him some money to finance a
new company and it was a success and then he went to America and was
caught by the war. I believe his music is played a good deal."

"America in wartime, eh?" said Lord Stoke, with less than his usual
good-humoured tolerance. "Thought they rounded all the fellows up."

"Not SHIRKING," said Mrs. Middleton raising her voice. "He had a weak
HEART and was always rather an INVALID and the army wouldn't LOOK AT
HIM."

"Poor young man," said Lord Stoke. "Is he married?"

Jane idly thought that Mrs. Middleton's distant gaze was directed upon
something unattainable which for a moment had come nearer to her. Mrs.
Middleton shook her head, possibly exhausted by the effort of shouting.

"Ah well, perhaps it's a good thing," said Lord Stoke. "Doesn't do to
have a family if you're an invalid. Bad for the stock." He then inquired
after Mr. Middleton's three cows and went off in search of more gossip.

It had never before struck Jane that Mrs. Middleton was particularly
good-looking, but whether it was the sun falling through the leaves of a
large walnut tree, or some thought or quiet vision that transfigured
her, Jane suddenly saw her as an enchanting woman.

"Mr. Stonor must want to get back to England sometimes," she said, just
to say something.

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Middleton abstractedly. "But sometimes it is better
if people don't come back."

This she appeared to say for herself alone, but her words struck an
unreasonable chill to Jane's heart as she thought how she had sometimes
wished for the certainty that Francis would never return rather than the
relentless uncertainty and anxiety that underlay her daily life. As Mrs.
Middleton continued to gaze upon this unknown point beyond the horizon,
Jane pulled herself together and finding the secretary disengaged
introduced herself and congratulated him on the delightful afternoon.

At this the young clerk was delighted, for the Archaeological Society
was his method of escape, not only from being in a solicitor's office
when he would rather have been a Death's Head Hussar, but from his
mother who knew him through and through (or so she said) and never
stopped trying to know more.

"Do tell me," she said with an interest that would only have deceived a
mother-ridden young man, "what the result of the meeting really was. I
had to keep an eye on my little boy and a friend of his and couldn't
hear all the speeches."

"Well, Mrs. Gresham, that is difficult to say," said the secretary. "Our
speakers differed considerably, but if you ask me, some of these old
gentlemen haven't really _studied_ the subject; not what you'd _call_
studied," he added.

Jane said she didn't suppose any of them were exactly experts, but they
did know a lot about the county. Lord Stoke, for instance, had lived at
High Rising all his life, as his forebears had since about 1400, and
knew everyone and every inch of the country.

"Ad-mitted, Mrs. Gresham," said the secretary. "But to know a bit of
Roman brickwork takes more than that. I may seem a bit dogmatic to you,
Mrs. Gresham, but it happens to be quite a hobby of mine. We lawyers
must have our little hobbies you know, or we get quite dissected as you
might say."

Jane felt she might more probably say desiccated, but smiled and said
"Yes, of course."

"But there was one unfortunate occurrence," said the secretary, getting
nearer Jane and lowering his voice, "which I wouldn't mention, except to
you Mrs. Gresham, because we lawyers have to be careful what we say."

Jane said perhaps he had better not tell her then.

"A lady like you," said the secretary gallantly, "is as safe as well I
won't say houses for tempora have mutantur, but as safe as," he
continued, obviously searching his mind for something stable in this
world of flux, "well, as safe as _anything_."

"Rather double-edged," said Jane and then wished she hadn't, for the
secretary mistaking her meaning, said he was sure he hadn't meant it in
that spirit and was obviously prepared to take offence.

"And what was it?" said Jane with frenzied eagerness.

"Well," said the secretary relenting, "it was this, Mrs. Gresham. I had
looked at all the samples of brickwork myself and labelled them as the
man brought them up from the well, and there was one that, in my poor
opinion for what it's worth, absolutely clenched the matter. Now I
labelled that bit myself and put it on the side of the well just as Lord
Stoke came up. I was going to put it on the tray with other specimens,
but Lord Stoke had some little boys with him----"

"One of them was mine," said Jane, that the secretary might be forearmed
against indiscretion.

"----oh really, a fine little fellow," said the secretary with no
enthusiasm at all, "--and when he turned round to speak and I looked on
the parapet of the well, the sample had gone."

"Oh dear," said Jane.

"Mind you, I do not say those boys done it," said the secretary, his
grammar rather affected by his enthusiasm. "They weren't that sort. But
I have my strong suspicions, Mrs. Gresham, that one of our members, I
won't say who, deliberately took that specimen, Mrs. Gresham, while my
eye was off it. Preferring not to make unpleasantness, I said nothing,
and I name no names, but I am morally convicted that a certain person
not a hundred miles from here deliberately pocketed that sample."

Jane asked why.

"Ah, well you may say why, Mrs. Gresham," said the secretary, edging
Jane up against the table till she thought she would fall over backwards
into the teacups. "That person, whose name I would prefer not to
mention, may have wished to withhold valuable evidence, or he may,
you'll observe I only say he _may_, propose to put it as an exhibit in
his local museum and say he dug it up."

Jane said it was a really shocking story, repeated how grateful they
were to the secretary for arranging such a delightful afternoon, and
continued her progress.

Pausing before the little table where Frank and his friend were still
hard at work, she asked if they were having a nice time.

"Yes, please," said Master Watson with his mouth full.

"I liked the well best, mother," said Frank, pushing a large mouthful
into one cheek with his tongue. "Mother, did you know I threw a stone
down and it took about ten minutes to plop in the water. Ed says there's
a stinking cat down there. I expect the cat stinked like anything when
my stone fell on it."

"It wasn't a stone," said Master Watson, in the brief pause necessary
between finishing the cake he had in his mouth and taking a fresh one.
"It was a brick. I saw it with a bit of paper on it."

"Well, get on with your tea," said Jane, only thankful that the
secretary of the Archaeological Society had not overheard the
conversation.

Now at intervals during the afternoon, when not entertaining guests or
keeping an eye on the little boys, Jane had vaguely wondered if the
Adams family were coming. It hardly seemed a treat that would interest
them, but she remembered Miss Holly saying something about it and felt
that she would miss no opportunity of improving her young charge's
general information. In the turmoil of tea and talk all this had
entirely gone out of her mind and it was with almost a start that she
suddenly found herself face to face with Mr. Adams.

"I dare say," said Mr. Adams, holding out a hand to be shaken, "you were
wondering why Heth and I weren't here. Well, the answer is I was kept."

Jane, stifling an intense desire to say "Pleased to meet you," shook the
proffered hand, and said she was sorry he and Heather had missed the
discussion.

"About some brickwork, wasn't it?" said Mr. Adams. "Not much in my line
nor Heth's. If it had been about chromium steel now, or high
mathematics, me and Heth would have had a word to say. But we can't all
be interested in the same things, and that's a fact."

Jane said it was and rather wished Mr. Adams would go away, for her duty
was to the company in general and she had a sensation of being forcibly
monopolized. But it was very easy to offend the Adamses of this world
and Jane hated unpleasantness, so she asked after Miss Holly.

"Remarkably fine woman, Miss Holly," said Mr. Adams, "with no nonsense
about her," at which Jane looked quickly at him. But the borrowing was
obviously unconscious, and he went on, "Heth and she came to the meeting
and went back to Mrs. Merivale for tea. But I dare say you are wondering
why I was kept."

There was no way of expressing how little she wondered or indeed cared,
so Jane said not bad news she hoped.

"I wouldn't like to say," said Mr. Adams. "No, not bad news exactly.
More what you would call uncertain news. It might be bad, it might be
good."

So peculiar was his rather ill-assured way of speaking, so unlike his
usual confident self, that Jane wondered for a moment if he had been
drinking. As far as she knew he was remarkably abstemious and there were
certainly no signs of drink about him. So she felt slightly uneasy.

"Now, I don't want to upset you, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams, "But
I've got a pal who is pretty high up in the Red Cross and goes to meet
all those repatriation ships."

"Jane dear," said Mrs. Morland at her side. "I am dreadfully sorry but I
must say goodbye. The Tebbens are going in Lord Stoke's brougham and
will drop me at the station. Here they are."

"Do you know Mr. Adams?" said Jane, introducing him to Mrs. Morland and
the Tebbens.

"Is it the Mrs. Morland that writes the books?" said Mr. Adams much to
Jane's surprise.

"How very nice of you to ask," said Mrs. Morland, dropping a glove which
Mr. Adams gallantly rescued for her. "Do you like them?"

"Well, Mrs. Morland, I'm not a reading man," said Mr. Adams, "but I like
a good book now and then. There was one by you my little girl brought
back from the libery this summer--Heather, that's her name; Heth I call
her--about a lady dressmaker that gets trapped in a foundry by the
German spy. Now, I've some works at Hogglestock, and I do some pretty
big castings myself, and I must say the scene where the villain is going
to throw her in the furnace and the hero comes along in the overhead
crane with the big magnet and picks her up by the steel chain the
villain has wrapped round her--well, it was hardly credible it could
really happen, but I thought, 'Whoever thought that up wasn't a fool.'"

Mrs. Morland, always the most modest of creatures about her own works,
pushed a hairpin into herself and knocked her hat rather on one side
before expressing her great pleasure that Mr. Adams had enjoyed the
book.

"Enjoyed I wouldn't hardly say," said Mr. Adams, "for that's not the way
I look at books. But there's not one in a thousand, I said to myself,
would think up a thing like that, and a thing that is, making allowances
for everything, quite feasible. If ever you want to know anything about
the shops or the foundry for a book, Mrs. Morland, just you ring my
sekertary and I'll tell her to see you get all the information you want.
Now, don't forget; for Sam Adams won't forget."

Before Mrs. Morland could thank him properly, Mrs. Tebben had burst to
the front and shaking Mr. Adams by the hand said that as a mother she
must thank him for having been so wonderful to Richard.

"Well, madam," said Mr. Adams, puzzled but master of himself, "I don't
know who it is you are reluding to, but I always do my best to give
everyone a fair do."

Mrs. Tebben was about to explain that her son Richard was a difficult
character but wonderful when you came to know him, when her husband said
Lord Stoke's horse would catch cold if it waited and Mrs. Morland would
miss her train, upon which Mrs. Tebben, with a long hand-shake and
earnest gaze, intended to exhibit to Mr. Adams the depth of a mother's
love and the brilliance of her son Richard's qualities all in one
breath, hurried her party away.

"More people know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows," said Mr. Adams
philosophically. "But now, Mrs. Gresham, you will be wondering what it
was my pal had to say."

Then the Birketts came to bid goodbye to Jane and had to be introduced
to Mr. Adams, and other friends came up one after the other as the party
dispersed. And all the time they were talking Jane half wondered what
Mr. Adams's pal had to say and half wished he would go away and not
bother her. And all the time she was impressed, against her will, by the
calm and almost masterful way in which Mr. Adams took the County and the
Close; how he did not try to appear their equal, but was obviously well
seated in the position he had made for himself. She also noticed how
almost everyone, from Mrs. Morland (who was neither Close nor real
County) to the Dean and Lord Stoke, who represented both, had points of
contact, usually of a useful and civic kind, with Mr. Adams, and that he
appeared quite often to be in a position to do some small favour, to
help them over some small difficulty. What all the wives thought she did
not know, but her impression was that Mr. Adams was what is called a
man's man.

There was no reason why she should stay in his neighbourhood, except
indeed that when people began to say goodbye and leave the hall they
would naturally come to speak to her. And if where she was standing
happened to be in the neighbourhood of Mr. Adams, it could not be
helped.

Gradually the guests melted away. The Mothers' Union, who had cleared
and washed up the tea-things some time ago, now pushed the big tables
back into their places and began to remove the camouflage frames from
their temporary place against the walls. Frank and Master Watson, who
had helped with the washing up and broken the lid of the biggest
tea-pot, were suddenly apparent.

"Come along, Frank," said his mother, who sometimes felt that these
words would be found on her heart when she died; which was at least
better than the word "Don't," which would certainly have been found
somewhere inside her if she had died a little earlier. "We'll take Tom
back to Mrs. Watson. She said he could stay here as long as we did."

"I'll run you all down," said Mr. Adams, "I've got Packer outside."

Jane thanked him and said it was only a question of walking down the
garden to the Watsons' house.

"So it is," said Mr. Adams, who had not realized that the hall, which he
had approached in Packer's car from the back lane, was in the Watsons'
grounds. "I'll walk down with you, Mrs. Gresham, and then I can run you
and your little boy home."

Jane, who wanted a little fresh air after standing so long in the stuffy
tea-room, thanked him and said she and Frank would really rather walk,
to which he replied that he would walk with them, and Packer could pick
him up at Hallbury House. It was all rather a bore, but the
Archaeological always was a boring day, thought Jane, and one might as
well be civil. So they all went down the garden and delivered Master
Watson at his back door and then, without entering the house, went round
into the street. Here Frank Gresham became absorbed in the game,
mysteriously compelling at almost any age, of walking on the pavement in
such a manner that he never trod on the joining of two flags, which made
his progress a matter of concentration.

"Well, to return to the subject in hand," said Mr. Adams, "I'd like to
tell you what my pal said. He meets those ships and sees the repatriated
men before anyone else can get hold of them and gets a lot of useful
information about people who are missing."

Jane looked quickly at him.

"Now, don't you commence to worry, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams. "I
told you it was uncertain news. It's not good; it might be worse. There
was a petty officer my pal was questioning and he mentioned a Commander
Gresham. Now, there wouldn't be another Commander Gresham, would there?"

"I never heard of one," said Jane. "Commander Francis Gresham."

"That was the name," said Mr. Adams, glancing at her and seeing no signs
of discomposure. "Well, this petty officer said he had seen him
somewhere in the jungle on an island out there----"

Jane looked swiftly at him again.

"----about two years ago," pursued Mr. Adams. "He heard of him again
from another man, about a year ago. He was down with fever then and
pretty bad. Now, if I've done wrong, Mrs. Gresham, I'll apologize. It's
not much news, but it may be better than none."

"Thank you very much," said Jane.

"Well, I'll be going on now," said Mr. Adams, for the short walk to
Hallbury House was over and Packer was sitting in his car outside the
gate. Jane stopped and put out her hand.

"Please don't tell anyone," she said. "They'd only want to talk about
it."

"I get you, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams. "And I've got that pal of
mine on the job good and proper. Any news that we do get you will hear.
And if Sam Adams can do anything for you, you've only got to say the
word. My little Heth, she thinks the world of you, Mrs. Gresham, and her
and I see eye to eye in most things."

He then got into the car. Mr. Packer put into his pocket the newspaper
he had been reading and the car went away. Jane collected Frank,
superintended his bath, ate her supper with her father and her son,
answered a number of Frank's questions, bore with more patience than her
father the way Frank boasted about having looked down the well, sat with
her father till about ten o'clock and then went to bed.

"Delayed shock," she said aloud to her reflection, which looked at her
from the mirror in much its usual way. "You'll begin to think presently
and then you'll be sorry."

With which vindictive words she got into bed, read for a little, and was
soon asleep.

Between two and three in the morning the long heavy pulsation of
aeroplanes passing over the country with drumming persistence gradually
penetrated her sleep. As she woke, every nerve and every dark thought
sprang to life, taut and strained. The hope she had forbidden herself to
feel had come to life again; and with it all the terrors and agonies
that she thought she had buried beyond reach of plummet. Francis; alive
two years ago, ill with fever one year ago, still free. Had he died? Had
he been taken prisoner? Did he still live on that island, hidden in the
jungle? Could he escape? Was he as anxious and wretched for her as she
was for him? So her thoughts battered her all through the dark and the
dawning hours. She might have spoken of them to Robin, but Robin was not
here, and it was not of him she thought, it was of Mr. Adams. Hateful,
hateful of him to disturb the peace she had made for herself, to crack
the thin ice that lay over the deep lake of forgotten things. People who
meant well, who tried to help, always made it worse. She would have
liked to stand before him and rail like a fishwife, blaming his busybody
interference and if possible hurting him a good deal.

Now would begin again the waking every morning with a sense of a crime
committed, a crime unknown, which passed but too quickly into
remembrance of her loss, of her uncertainty, of her misery lest Francis
should also be fearing for her in a bombed and burning England. Then she
would pull herself together, go about her duties, play with Frank,
forget. But she could not put the enemy off the scent. The pangs, the
contradictory passions that ravaged her would not be stifled. And so it
would go on and on. And now, to add to her self-tormenting, she thought
she had not been polite enough, grateful enough to Mr. Adams, who after
all had tried, in his own way, to do what he could for her.

The growing daylight brought her back to common sense, to a resolve to
accept his well-meant kindness as he meant it. And after all, in these
horrid days when every man's hand had to keep his head more or less, and
most of one's friends were too deep in their own anxieties to do very
much for one, it was in a way comforting to think of a man who, even if
not one's own sort, was ready to help and in a position to know and do a
good deal. There was something about Mr. Adams that made it impossible
to dislike him, and he was a person upon whom, she felt certain, she
could rely for anything that he promised.




                               CHAPTER X


Sunday spread its slightly depressing wings over all Barsetshire and the
world outside. Most people went to church, ate too much wartime lunch,
slept, played tennis, walked, wrote letters, and the day was over. By
Monday the camouflage makers were at work again as if the Archaeological
tea had never happened and Jane had herself well in hand again. Or if
she had not, no one would have known it.

The great event of this week was Anne Fielding's seventeenth birthday,
which was to be on Thursday. Her parents could not come down for the day
itself and had told her to ask her own party to tea and they would have
a birthday dinner together at the week-end.

"It is rather difficult," said Anne to Miss Bunting, as they partook of
a modest lunch together on Monday, "about asking who one likes, because
one doesn't exactly know. I mean I'd like just to ask Mrs. Gresham and
Robin and Dr. Dale--and Heather," she added a little dubiously.

Miss Bunting listened attentively, but made no comment.

"Only then," said Anne, "there are people one does like, only one
doesn't want to ask them, like Mrs. Watson and Mrs. Merivale."

"Unless there is any very pressing reason, I would not ask people you do
not wish to ask," said Miss Bunting.

"But they have asked me," said Anne. "And then there's Miss Holly. She
is awfully nice, but I don't want her for my birthday."

Miss Bunting gave it as her opinion that it was quite unnecessary for a
young girl in Anne's position to consider the question of returning
hospitality to everyone. Let Anne, she said, ask the people she wanted
to ask and her mother would ask the people who ought to be asked.

"But I am glad," she said, "that you think of the duties of hospitality.
When you have a house of your own, you will probably have to ask people
who do not always interest you. Meanwhile, do as your mother suggests
and ask your own friends. Mrs. Gresham and Dr. Dale and his son will be
pleasant guests and Heather Adams will enjoy the treat."

If Anne noticed this distinction, we could not say.

"Oh, and there is one more person I would like to ask," said Anne.

Miss Bunting asked who that might be.

"Can't you guess?" said Anne.

Miss Bunting, who really did not much mind whom Anne asked, as all her
little circle at Hallbury were well known to her, said she couldn't.

"You of course," said Anne. "_Do_ come, Miss Bunting."

Whether Miss Bunting had meant to come to the tea-party or not, we do
not presume to state. Probably she had not thought very much about it.
Her pupil's pressing and heartfelt invitation took her quite by surprise
and a slight colour appeared on her shrivelled cheeks as she accepted
the invitation.

The rest of Monday and whole of Tuesday and Wednesday were made rather
difficult by Gradka, who in her enthusiasm for making a birthday cake
such as her nation approved, was in and out of the garden, the
drawing-room, the dining-room, and even Miss Bunting's and Anne's
bedrooms, half a dozen times a day; sometimes to discuss the cake, and
far too often to give them the latest wireless news about liberated
Mixo-Lydia.

On the great Thursday morning, Gradka overslept herself, which had never
happened before, for Gradka as well as being an excellent cook was an
early riser. So early in fact did she rise that Sir Robert and Lady
Fielding when in residence often wished she didn't. To the middle-aged
the cheerful noise of brushing and sweeping, the crash of saucepans (for
Gradka kept the kitchen door wide open till her employers came down),
the sound of Mixo-Lydian folk-songs which appeared to have only one tune
and that a poor one, the loud and contemptuous conversation with the
daily milk, the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday bread, and the post, are
not welcome till they have drunk their tea or their coffee. And worse
than all these had been the devilish roar and whine of the electric
carpet-sweeper, which is far more like a siren than anyone who has lived
near air-raid warnings can like. Basely sheltering herself behind her
husband's name, Lady Fielding had told Gradka that Sir Robert did not
like the noise so early, and could Gradka do the carpet on the bedroom
landing a little later.

"If needful, not at oll," said Gradka. "The devil sends the dust. God
wills it so."

Lady Fielding said she didn't mean not at all in the least, but if it
could be a little later, Sir Robert would like to have his sleep out.

"In Mixo-Lydia we say six hours of sleep for a hero," said Gradka,
"seven for the Sczarhzy, what you call housemistress which is the hero's
wife, eight for the Sczarhzy-pskrb which is the housemistress
parturiating, and nine for the Krzsyl, which is the old man, the
dottard, as your Shakespeare says."

"Dotard," said Lady Fielding mechanically, passing over this reflection
on Sir Robert, who was not quite sixty and remarkably strong and
healthy.

"So; I thank you," said Gradka. "Then will I not sweep the landing. Why
sweep to-day what you must again sweep to-morrow, we say in Mixo-Lydia."

Lady Fielding said she didn't quite mean that, but if Gradka could do it
after half-past seven, or perhaps just brush the carpet by hand and not
have the electric cleaner running----

"Aha! it is the electric broom which you dislike," said Gradka. "I too.
God! which noise, which tumult! In Mixo-Lydia we take oll our carpets
into the street every day and beat them there while we gossip. So is
everything clean. But here you nail your carpet to the floor and sweep
it with this machine which shrieks like a damned-up soul in devils'
land. Ha! I would like to hear the jolly old Slavo-Lydians shriek when
they are dead; ollso when they are alive too. Openly, I find quite
detestworthy this sweeping-machine, Prodshka Fielding, and for two
lydions, which a lydion is one sixtieth part of your farthing, I would
crash it with the wood-axe. So in future from now onwards I shall sweep
with my hands and the machine may stand in the cupboard to think on his
sins."

                 *        *        *        *        *

On the great Thursday morning in question the house was quiet. Anne was
peacefully sleeping, being still young enough to wake slowly and easily
with no interior alarm clock to make her wake with a vaguely
conscience-stricken jerk. Gradually a sound penetrated her
consciousness. She woke up, listened, went to sleep again for an
eternity, woke again after a third of a second, and heard the front-door
bell, which was a real one, not electric, pealing determinedly. As it
didn't stop she dashed into a dressing-gown and slippers and ran down to
see if anything was the matter, though without any real apprehension,
for misfortune had not yet touched her with the dread of a bell, a
letter, a telegram, which most of us have, and had even before the war
made every sound a menace.

As she ran downstairs the pealing stopped, then began again with renewed
vigour. She undid the chain and bolts, which were more a token to
burglars that they were not wanted than any real protection, for no
side-door or window on the ground floor offered any real obstacle to
anyone wishing to effect an entry. On the doorstep was Greta Tory, one
of the Hallbury postwomen, niece of Admiral Palliser's cook.

"Many happy returns, miss," said Greta, who in her postman's cap askew
on dirty, over-permed hair, her jacket imperfectly restraining what our
clich-ridden neighbours the Gauls would have called her budding charms,
her legs in rather large trousers from below which her bare feet in
toeless sandals peeped in and out, presented a very unattractive sight;
but a nice, good girl, who gave all the wages she didn't spend on
herself to her mother.

"Oh, thank you, Greta," said Anne. "How did you know?"

Greta said Auntie told her last night when she went round to supper with
her at the old Admiral's, because Mrs. Gresham had said something to
Auntie about having tea at Hall's End for Miss Anne's birthday.

"Nice lot of letters for you," said Greta, handing a fat bundle to Anne.
"Where's that Gradka? Those foreigners ought to be made to work a bit,
same as we. If she had to be round at the post office at half-past five
to sort the letters same as I have, she'd be all the better for it."

"I don't know," said Anne. "I was asleep and woke up when I heard you
ring and no one answered it, so I came down. I say, Greta, would you
like a cup of tea?"

Greta said she wouldn't mind if she did, so Anne shut the front door
quietly, because of Miss Bunting, and the two girls went to the kitchen.
As usual, Gradka had left everything in perfect order. The kitchen
looked as if it had just been scrubbed, the little furnace for the hot
water, well banked up, was quite hot and two kettles were sitting on it.
Anne put one of them on the gas ring, got milk, sugar and crockery, and
tea was soon made. Just as they were sitting down, there was a bang on
the back door.

"That'll be Ernie Freeman," said Greta. "I passed him with the bread van
in Little Gidding. He's early to-day. 'Xpect he wants to get off for the
pictures. They're showing Inglorious Hampdens at the Barchester Odeon.
Glamora Tudor's in it."

"What is it about?" said Anne, poised for flight to the back door.

"Ow, I dunno," said Greta. "Something about the war, I s'pose. They say
it's ever so good and Glamora Tudor has a lovely song called 'What has
my past to do with love?' You must have heard it, miss."

But Anne had fled to the scullery, and unbolting the back door opened it
to Ernie Freeman.

"'Llo, Grad," said Ernie, who was looking into his basket of loaves. "On
the warpath as per usual? Oh, I beg your pardon, miss, I thought it was
that Grad. She ill or anything?"

"I think she must have overslept," said Anne. "I don't know what bread,
but the same as usual, please."

"You'd better leave an extra sandwich loaf, Ernie," said the voice of
Greta Tory from the kitchen. "It's the young lady's birthday."

"I'm sorry I'm sure, miss," said Ernie Freeman. "If I'd known it was
your birthday, I wouldn't've knocked that loud, but I'm in a bit of a
hurry on the round this morning."

"Oh, thank you," said Anne, as he put the bread on the scullery table.
"You wouldn't like a cup of tea, would you? Greta's having one."

"Well, if you don't mind, miss, I will," said Ernie, putting his basket
on the floor. "It won't hurt no one to wait."

Some very lively badinage then took place between Greta and Ernie, to
which Anne listened, fascinated, till the milk came banging on the back
door. Greta insisted on opening it and after a brief colloquy returned
with the milk herself, who was a stout Land Girl from Northbridge. They
all sat on or at the kitchen table, tea was drunk, Anne's birthday
toasted and the new film discussed.

"What's it about?" said Anne to the milk girl, who had been there on her
half-day off.

"I didn't really follow," said the milk girl. "Something about we're all
heroes at home same as the boys at the front. Silly, that is. But
Glamora Tudor's reelly, well I can't seem to put it into words. And the
dresses she has. It's all in Glorious Technicolour, miss, and there's a
close-up of her when she's working in a factory in a mauve bath suit and
ticks off the foreman that tried to make the girls go slow because he's
a German spy. We all hissed him like anything. And then the hero, that's
the R.A.F. sergeant only he's a gentleman, comes back and thinks Glamora
Tudor's been false to him with--well I can't exactly explain," said the
milk girl hurriedly, seeing in Greta Tory's eye that Anne's want of
sophistication was to be respected, "but anyway she sings, 'What has my
past to do with love?' and all the girls join in and all the machinery
seems to work by itself like and join in the chorus and the foreman
comes in with a bag in disguise and they think it's a bomb, but he's
really the English Secret Agent that was pretending to be a German spy
so no one'd know he was a Secret Service man and he has a big Union Jack
in the bag and Glamora and the R.A.F. sergeant sit on it and all the
girls get out of their overalls and they're reely wearing red brassieres
and white knickers and blue shoes and they lift the Union Jack in the
air with Glamora and her young man sitting on it and then it all fades
out into a photo of the King and Queen. I can't explain, but it seems to
get you somehow."

"Why's it called In Glorious Hampton?" said Ernie.

"I d'no," said Greta. "Isn't there an aeroplane called Hampton or
something?"

Before Anne could express her admiration of the film, there was a knock
at the back door.

"Oh, it must be the newspapers," said Anne.

"Don't you go, miss," said Greta Tory, "it's that Leslie, the
stationmaster's nephew. I saw him go past the window. The army's where
he ought to be. Here Ernie, you run and get them, there's a duck."

Ernie opened the back door, shut it again and was back in an instant
with the newspapers. A very nice sense of what was due to the gentry
prevented Anne's guests from opening them, but as all but one had their
headlines across the front page, their self-control was not severely
tested. The headlines, as usual, were almost too large to read and far
from truthful. The Times, which but rarely has any item of news on its
front page, had been so far moved by the epoch-making events of a world
war as to announce to its subscribers at the top right-hand corner in
large type: "Peace Ballot in Guatemala."

"I think it's a shame," said Greta, who had been studying one of the
lesser sheets without the law, "old Winnie having to go about like that.
He's ever so much older than the others. Old Roosevelt's got a bad leg
or something so they say, but Joe Stalin's got all his arms and legs,
lazy old blighter."

Ernie at once took up what he knew to be a deliberate attack on our Red
Comrades, but before more than a few words had passed, a slight noise
was heard; and looking round the whole party froze to respectful silence
at the sight of Miss Bunting in a quilted silk dressing-gown, her head
covered by a neat little lace bonnet. So powerful was the effect of Miss
Bunting's presence that the whole party got up and stood to attention.

"Oh, Miss Bunting," said Anne. "The bell kept on ringing and no one was
up, so I came down. This is Greta Tory who brought the post and this is
Ernie Freeman that does the bread round and this is Effie Bunce that
works for Masters's dairy farm. She used to be with Miss Pemberton at
Northbridge."

Miss Bunting took her pince-nez from a pocket, put them on, and looked
searchingly at the intruders. Most willingly would they have bowed,
scraped, curtsied, made a leg, bobbed, tugged a forelock; but
civilization in its backward progress has eliminated all these forms of
respect to age or position as uneducated, undemocratic and shameful. So
they all went red in the face and looked up, down, around; anywhere but
at the newcomer.

"You all seem to be having tea," said Miss Bunting. "Can you give me a
cup, Anne? You may all sit down."

The guests sat down vehemently, so much overawed by Miss Bunting's calm
and regal manner that they did not even try to giggle.

"Very many happy returns of the day, Anne dear," said Miss Bunting. "And
now," she continued, to the rest of her audience, "you will want to be
going."

Glad to be dismissed from an awkward position, Greta, Ernie and Effie
pushed their chairs back. The kitchen door opened again and Gradka
appeared.

"You will wish to know why I am late," she exclaimed, "I am very sorry,
Miss Bunting. I have been listening at midnight to the European news and
there I hear a voice from Mixo-Lydia. Oh! how I rejoice to hear again
that holy language. And such good news as makes me leap with joy. I
shall tell you oll that Mixo-Lydia has burned the Town Hall of
Slavo-Lydia's chief town with fifty people inside it. It was a great
meeting for Anti-Mixo-Lydia and oll the head inhabitants were there. But
could they treek Mixo-Lydia? This hero-land sends her brave sons. They
steal petrol from a garage which is in Slavo-Lydia, they put the petrol
in the Town Hall, they seize the Town Fool the idiot which is ollways in
every town in Mixo and Slavo-Lydia, they say to him 'Here are five
lydions. If you set fire to this petrol we will give you the five
lydions.' Ha! Well, oll goes as God wills it. Oll the chief men of
Slavo-Lydia which is fifty men go into the Town Hall, very closely
pressed together for it is not large. The fool lights the petrol. The
Town Hall is of wood and pouf! oll are burned. If any try to escape the
brave Mixo-Lydians shoot them. And the fool is ollso burned, so they do
not have to give the five lydions. And to express my pride when it says
on the radio that my oncles and oll my cousins and oll my sisters'
husbands and brothers-in-law were of those heroes! Bog! Which pleasure,
which joy! Then I foll asleep so happily and do not wake till late.
Excuse me, Prodshkina Bunting."

"Sit down and have a cup of tea, Gradka," said Miss Bunting, at the same
time giving the other guests a nod of dismissal. "Anne dear, come
upstairs and get dressed. Breakfast in half an hour, Gradka."

"Oh, Gradka," said Anne. "Here are the letters. Please will you put mine
on the breakfast table, because it makes it more exciting; I haven't
looked at them yet."

"Willingly, Prodshkina Anne," said Gradka.

                 *        *        *        *        *

At the expiration of the half-hour Miss Bunting and Anne met at
breakfast. Miss Bunting made no allusion to the events of the early
morning. This, in some governesses, might have been alarming, as
indicating a saving-up of wrath to come. But Anne knew Miss Bunting
pretty well by now and understood that on a birthday all was condoned,
her kitchen tea-party passed over with a smile, even Gradka's atavistic
outburst forgotten as thing of no account. The post was most
satisfactory for a war-time birthday, containing no less than four
cheques from relations, a pair of near silk stockings and a scarf which
must have cost at least two coupons. Also very loving letters from her
father and mother to say they would bring their presents on Saturday
when they came down. By her plate there lay also a small parcel,
addressed in Miss Bunting's elegant hand. Anne opened it and found a
volume of Keats's poems in a handsome though faded binding.

"Oh! Miss Bunting!" she cried, getting up and giving the old governess a
respectful kiss, "how heavenly! It is just what I wanted. Now I can read
all Keats. I've only read the ones that come in poetry books. Thank you
so very, very much."

"It belonged to the late Lady Pomfret," said Miss Bunting, looking away
into the past. "She gave it to me one Christmas when I was staying at
the Towers with my pupil David Leslie, her nephew. She told me it had
been given to her by an Italian cousin--you know the Counts of Strelsa
are connected with the Pomfrets--who had known Joseph Severn, Keats's
friend, who was English consul in Rome."

"Might Keats have _seen_ it, Miss Bunting?" said Anne, awestruck. "Oh,
but can you really give it to me? I mean, it is really yours. But I do
_love_ it."

"It is yours now, my dear," said Miss Bunting. "I don't suppose I shall
be wanting poetry, or indeed any books, for very long now, and I like my
favourite pupils to have some remembrance of me. Now dear, we must let
Gradka get on with her work."

As she spoke, Gradka came in to clear away.

"There is yet more good news," she said complacently.

"Then I do not wish to hear it," said Miss Bunting. "Whatever it is, it
will be in the Times, where it will not necessarily be correct, but will
at least be gentlemanly."

"It is not of massacring those dirty Slavo-Lydians," said Gradka. "No,
no, it is quite otherwise. I have a letter from the Royal Society for
the Promotion of English to say I have passed my examination with
honours. I wish to thank you, Prodshkina Bunting, for oll your help and
your assistance to form my style. I kiss your hand," which she did very
prettily.

    "'I kissed Maud's hand,
      She took the kiss sedately',"

quoted Anne, much impressed.

"You have worked very hard, Gradka, and I am gratified by your success,"
said Miss Bunting. "And what will you do now?"

"As soon as possible I go back to Mixo-Lydia, to teach English," said
Gradka. "Then will oll my pupils get the better of the Slavo-Lydians in
oll examinations. But now I will take your breakfast away and begin my
preparation for Prodshkina Anne's tea party. Prodshkina Anne, I offer
you my best wishes, ollso this little gift."

Anne eagerly opened the little parcel, which contained a clasp of
roughly worked silver with a very hideous face on it.

"He is Gradko, our national hero of which there are many epopic lays,"
said Gradka. "He will remind you of me sometimes, when I am gone."

So Anne thanked Gradka warmly, did her share of the household duties,
wrote all her thank letters, and then fell headlong into Keats, emerging
reluctantly for lunch.

"Did you know my name was Maud?" said Miss Bunting as they sat at lunch.

"Oh no," said Anne respectfully, for it had never occurred to her that
the old governess had a Christian name at all.

"You made use of a quotation from Tennyson this morning," said Miss
Bunting. "When Gradka kissed my hand."

"Oh, Miss Bunting, I am dreadfully sorry," said Anne, all contrition.
"It was only because it made me think of Tennyson. It must be _heavenly_
to have one's hand kissed," she added wistfully.

Miss Bunting said there were unfortunately very few men who could kiss a
lady's hand gracefully now. Her old pupil David Leslie could, she said,
do it to perfection, though she feared it was more to show off than from
any serious feelings of respect or affection.

"Perhaps he wasn't ever really in love with anyone," said Anne.

"I never knew him when he was not in love," said Miss Bunting. "That is
why he did it so well. But it never meant anything. He is fundamentally
selfish."

So exquisite and romantic a picture of a heartless gallant, probably
with ruffles and a velvet coat, did this description present to Anne,
that she could not contain her feelings and said she wondered if she
would ever see him.

"If he is not killed flying," said Miss Bunting, "you very likely may.
Your parents know his people."

"Miss Bunting, how old does one have to be before people fall in love
with one?" said Anne, hoping secretly to hear that seventeen was exactly
the right age. But her governess rather dashed her spirits by saying it
might be any age between seven and seventy, and that the young people of
to-day had very little understanding of the graces of life.

Then Miss Bunting went upstairs for her rest and Anne returned to Keats,
managing to get through Endymion, Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes and a
number of sonnets before Jane Gresham came into the drawing-room by the
open french window.

"Many happy returns of the day, Anne," said Jane kissing her. "Here is a
tiny present with my love."

The present was a small red leather jewel-case with a lock and key and
A.F. stamped upon it in gold. Anne was overcome by its beauty and its
key and the extremely grown-up feeling of having a jewel-case, even if
she had nothing worthy to put in it.

"Oh! Mrs. Gresham," she said, finding no better word. "I shall put my
little turquoise ring that mummy doesn't like me to wear yet in it. Oh,
and Gradka gave me a silver clasp this morning; I'll put that in too.
And my pearl brooch that granny left me. _Oh!_ Mrs. Gresham."

"I'm so glad you like it," said Jane. "And now that you are seventeen, I
think you had better call me Jane. Not all in a hurry if you don't feel
like it; but any time you do feel like it, fire away."

To this Anne, almost oppressed by the amount of grown-upness that was
coming on her to-day, could only say "_Oh!_" once more; just checking
herself from saying Mrs. Gresham, but far too shy to say Jane. This Jane
quite understood and said no more on the subject.

"I do hope you won't mind if Frank comes," she said. "His visit to
Greshamsbury is off because the children very selfishly have measles. So
he made a special present for you and wants to bring it himself."

Anne quite truthfully said she would love it.

"Dr. Dale is coming," she said, "and Robin. And Heather, because I
thought she would like a party."

Jane said it all sounded very nice, and understood at once that it was
Anne's thoughtful kindness, though she was entirely unconscious of this
charming gift, which made her add the outsider to her party of old and
intimate friends. She wondered if Mr. Adams would come and fetch his
daughter. Probably not, as he did not usually come down to Hallbury till
Saturday. Why she felt a slight depression she deliberately did not
inquire of herself.

Then Miss Bunting came down, the jewel case was admired, politenesses
and county news exchanged. Steps were heard outside. Dr. Dale appeared
at the window and was warmly greeted.

"My dear child," said the Rector, taking Anne's hand. "I wish you many
happy returns of this happy day with all my heart. Here is a little
token for you. It belonged to my dear wife and had belonged to her
grandmother. I would like you to have it."

A man less given to searching his own mind might have said, "And, I
know, so would she." These words had occurred to Dr. Dale in the instant
before speaking, and in that instant he had also thought, with that
terrifying speed that outstrips time, that he could not truthfully say
what his wife, so long dead, would have thought, or what she might be
thinking now; for his faith did not seek to probe these mysteries. But
of one thing he was certain, that she would have approved his decision,
because whatever he did had always been right in her eyes.

Almost trembling with excitement Anne opened a little tissue-paper
parcel, took out a little faded green case, opened it and saw a ring set
with six different stones in a row. As before with Miss Bunting's
present and Jane's offer of a Christian name, she could say nothing but
"_Oh!_"

"The stones," said the Rector, quite understanding her embarrassment and
gratitude, "spell the word 'Regard.' Ruby, emerald, garnet, amethyst,
ruby, diamond."

"Diamonds and rubies!" said Anne, half-incredulous.

"Let me try it on your finger, my dear," said the Rector.

Anne held out her hand. The ring slipped easily over her third finger.
The Rector raised her hand and kissed it.

"You should not have given me your left hand, my dear," he said. "That
is for your engagement ring. But it looks very pretty and I think you
had better consider yourself as engaged to me for the present. When you
are really engaged, you can put my little ring on the other hand."

Anne could not say a single word. The ring, the romantic thought of
Robin's young mother whom she had never seen, the fact of having had her
hand kissed for the first time, with a good substratum of Keats, made
her feel almost faint for a moment. The Rector looked delighted. There
was a little babel of friendly laughter and both Jane and Miss Bunting
felt it would be very easy to cry. But they quickly pulled themselves
together again and Miss Bunting, looking at her pupil who was
embarrassed yet pleased, a pretty flush upon her cheeks, thanking the
Rector with filial deference and a touch of the woman in it which the
old governess much approved, felt with justifiable complacency that the
year she had devoted to Anne Fielding had been very well spent. It had
often been tiring; she had missed her own friends; she was old and felt
old; but her work was as good as ever and she knew that in Anne she had
made her final and not unworthy contribution to the society she had
taught and moulded in the person of its young for so many years. Anne
would be able to stand on her own feet now. How very pleasant it would
be to go and stay with Lady Graham when the holidays were over, to talk
to Lady Emily about old days, to read to Agnes's children, perhaps to
see her most loved and most undeserving pupil David Leslie. And then to
go back to Marling Hall.

A noise was heard on the terrace outside. Robin stepped through the
window.

"I say, Anne," he said, "oh, how do you do, Miss Bunting, hullo Jane, I
didn't know Frank was coming. He and young Watson attached themselves to
my coat-tails just as I came out of Little Gidding. They've got some
secret together about your birthday. Shall I drown them both in your
lily pond?"

"Sir!" said Frank pityingly, "I can swim. Tom can't swim yet because
he's too little, but when we go to Southbridge I'll help him. They've
got a swimming-pool on the river at Southbridge. I can swim twice up and
down the Barchester swimming-bath. You won't need to be frightened, Tom;
I'll hold your face up. Mother, Tom will be so disappointed if we don't
stay to tea, because he wants to give his present to Anne. Oh mother,
can he?"

Jane said it was Anne's party, not hers, and Anne said she would love
them to stay.

"Come on then, Tom," said Frank, pulling a folded paper out of his
pocket.

Tom Watson, who had been lurking behind Frank, came forward with an
untidy parcel wrapped in an old bit of newspaper, which he presented to
Anne. Undeterred by the wrapping, which appeared by the marks of blood
and scales on it to have been used by the butcher and the fishmonger,
she undid the parcel. Inside it was a tight bunch of rosebuds, red,
yellow, white, pink; their heads drooping from very short stalks, the
whole bound tightly together with coarse string.

"How lovely," said Anne. "Thank you both very much. I'll put them in
some warm water and I expect they'll come out."

"Mrs. Watson told Tom not to pick roses," said Frank, casting a pitying
eye upon his friend, "so I told him to pick the smallest ones, then it
wouldn't matter. Now I'll read you _my_ present."

He unfolded the piece of paper and read aloud,

    "A happy birthday, Anne,
     As happy as you can,
     I hope you'll have a fan,
     And not be a man,
     And eat something out of a pan,
     And drink water that ran
     From where it once began,
     And ride in a van,
     With love from Fran----

--k," he added.

Anne thanked him very much and asked if she might keep the poetry. Frank
handed it to her.

"You didn't get 'tan'," said Robin.

Frank said it didn't rhyme properly enough, because it wasn't a birthday
present.

"I did ask Tom to let me call him 'Tan' in the poem," he added, looking
vindictively at Master Watson, "and then he could have come into the
poem, but he didn't want to."

Everyone was getting a little bored and it was a relief to hear the
tea-bell.

"Oh, but Heather isn't here," said Anne. "I'd forgotten."

Miss Bunting said she could join them when she came, and swept the whole
party into the dining-room where Gradka had arranged a delightful
birthday feast with a large birthday cake iced and decorated, and some
delicious small cakes, all of her own confection, and fresh fruit from
the garden. Anne fetched a bowl of warm water and put Master Watson's
unhappy rosebuds into it, though it was obvious that they would never
smile again. The little boys were put together and ate with great
steadiness and application; the grown-ups, for as such Anne felt she was
now truly ranked, talked and laughed.

"By Jove," said Robin, "I had forgotten my present."

He handed to Anne a small tight shapeless parcel which looked as if it
might burst.

"Take care," he said. "It's a kind of Jack-in-the-box."

And indeed it was, for the contents were a bath sponge of considerable
size, which, though small compared with pre-war standards was mentally
priced by all the ladies present at a guinea at the very least, and
would obviously be at least three times as large when in its natural
element. Admiration almost obscured by envy appeared on every adult
face. Anne offered heartfelt thanks to Robin and said the only sad thing
was that she couldn't put it in her jewel box. Everything was very
friendly and happy. Then the resounding front-door bell was heard and
Heather came in, hot and not very attractive.

"Sorry," she said to the company in general. "I missed the train from
Barchester after lunch. I'd been to get you a present, Anne. This is it
with many happy returns from daddy and me."

She put on the table some parcels which Anne at once undid. The contents
were a large bottle of scent, a large box of powder, a powder puff with
a huge satin bow on it and a box of bath salts. Jane and Miss Bunting
and Robin knew that not only was the whole gift fantastically expensive,
but most of its ingredients could only be obtained by luck, or by
curious methods unknown to them. Anne did not know all this, but her
instinct told her that it was not the present that anyone of her own age
and roughly her own sort would have given or received, which made her
thank Heather with all the more effusion.

Jane, guessing that Anne was a little shy of this guilty splendour, made
room between herself and Robin for Heather, to whom everyone was
particularly nice.

"How on earth did you get hold of all that?" asked Robin, to the secret
interest of all present.

"It was dad," said Heather. "He's got a friend in Barchester who has a
kind of shop that isn't a shop, and he can often get you things. But he
doesn't send them so I went in by train and fetched them, and that's
what made me late. What a marvellous cake."

Anne said that Gradka had made it and they went on talking, but things
were not quite so comfortable as they had been and Jane, feeling an
unnecessary amount of pity for Heather, rather laid herself out to be
nice, little knowing that she was heaping fuel upon the consuming flame
of passion.

"When is your birthday, Heather?" she asked, trying to find subjects for
conversation.

Heather said June the fifth.

"Bad luck it's over for this year," said Jane. "We must all send you a
telegram next year. Perhaps we shall be having Greetings telegrams again
by then."

"When's yours, Mrs. Gresham," said Heather, rapidly wondering what day,
short of Christmas and all the Bank Holidays rolled into one, could be
good enough for the idol.

Jane said Guy Fawkes Day, a flippancy which Heather thought hardly
worthy of her.

"I wish I could be in Hallbury then," said Heather, "but I shall be at
Cambridge."

Jane said she expected it would be great fun and lots of new friends.

"Just like the Hosiers I expect," said Heather gloomily, "only it'll be
Honour of the College instead of Honour of the School. But when I've
finished I'm going to help daddy at the works."

Jane said how nice and felt bored, though she didn't show it.

Then Miss Bunting rose, compelling all to rise with her, and said it
wasn't windy on the terrace. So to the terrace they went and sat in the
sun in comparative warmth, and the little boys went to help Gradka to
clear away and wash up while Frank tried to teach her the first Latin
declension.

Though poor Heather was civil and willing, it could not be denied that
her presence spoilt everything. She was just too much over life size to
suit her company; all their talk had to be faintly watered down for her
comprehension; in fact she was a bore to everyone. So all the more did
they continue to exert themselves to make her one of them. All except
Miss Bunting, who withdrew into herself and watched and said nothing.

Dr. Dale was the first to take his leave, thanking Anne very much for a
delightful afternoon.

"Good-bye, dear child," he said to Anne. "Come and see me some day soon.
Come to tea."

Anne said, truthfully, that she would love to, and kissed the old Rector
affectionately, thanking him once more for her present.

"'From this day will I bless you,'" said the Rector, using the words of
his favourite prophet and making all his friends love and admire him
more than ever, although not quite at their ease. But he at once became
his usual self again and saying a kind word to everyone went away by the
garden door, refusing Robin's escort.

"My dear papa," said Robin, looking after his father's departing figure,
"is sometimes too like an elderly clergyman to be true," at which Anne
became very indignant.

The doorbell pealed. The sound of Gradka's heavy tread in the hall was
heard, then a man's voice. Heather said it was daddy come to fetch her.

"I thought your father didn't come down till Saturday," said Jane.

Heather said he usually didn't, but when she told him it was Anne's
birthday and Mrs. Gresham was coming, he said he must try to get there,
which annoyed Jane more than she liked to confess, though at the same
time her heart, most inconsistently, beat a little faster.

Mr. Adams came in, unheralded by Gradka who for some reason into which
her employers thought it safer not to inquire always drew the line at
announcing their guests, and made his excuses very civilly to Miss
Bunting, who merely remarked with a very good imitation of the late
Dowager Duchess of Omnium that it was Anne's party, in her parents'
house, which caused Anne to be more forthcoming to the new arrival than
she might otherwise have been.

"Did Heth bring you a little something?" said Mr. Adams.

Anne said she had given her a lovely present of scent, powder and bath
salts.

"That's right," said Mr. Adams. "I told Heth not spare expense and I
hope she hasn't," at which Heather scowled in a very unfilial way. "But
don't think that's all. Sam Adams isn't the man to do things by halves,
and if my little Heth gave you something, you'll be expecting something
from me."

In vain did Anne, crimson with embarrassment, try to expostulate and
explain that Heather's present was marvellous and please, _please_ would
Mr. Adams not give her anything else. Her benefactor went into the hall
and brought back to the drawing-room a large flower-pot containing the
most flashy and revolting sickly green and purple spotted orchid plant
ever seen in Hallbury. Miss Bunting, who was familiar with many
hothouses, from the Duke of Omnium's three acres of glass to the
Marlings' modest lean-to against the garden wall, was nearly shaken out
of her stoic calm by the sight of the leering and obscene plant, whose
price she knew must be fantastic to her and the rest of the company's
modest notions. Anne, extremely uncomfortable and thinking it quite
hideous, thanked Mr. Adams very much and said she would keep it in her
bedroom, which appeared to gratify the donor.

The arrival of this monster broke up the party. Robin said he would take
Master Watson back to his parents, and went to collect the little boys
from the kitchen. Jane went out onto the terrace and was followed by Mr.
Adams.

"My pal in the Red Cross is well onto that job," he said. "And he's well
in with the Intelligence people that meet the ships too. There won't be
an avenue he'll not explore, Mrs. Gresham. I don't want to raise your
hopes and we all know the Government and the Red Cross are trying their
best to pick up news from the repatriated and rescued men, but sometimes
the personal touch comes in useful. Now don't you worry. Sam Adams is
here, and anyone in Barchester will tell you Sam Adams does not let a
pal down. Now, that little Anne Fielding has been a good little pal to
my Heth and she's a nice girl, and I don't grudge a penny I've spent on
that plant, though I dare say it would surprise you what it cost. But if
it was for you, Mrs. Gresham, I'd pay ten times as much and more."

Jane said something, she really hardly knew what, and suddenly nervous,
a feeling she hardly knew, began to tweak off some withered heads from
the climbing roses on the wall.

"Is there one for me?" asked Mr. Adams, with what she knew was meant to
be polite gallantry, though she was keenly conscious of its being
ridiculous and irritating. But the best thing to do seemed to be to
treat it quite simply and offer him a rose for his buttonhole in a
matter-of-fact way, which she did. As Mr. Adams did not take it from her
hand, she came to the conclusion that in his circles it was etiquette
for the lady to put the flower in the gentleman's buttonhole herself;
and probably she thought, to be kissed.

Mr. Adams did not kiss her, but as she pulled the stalk through his
buttonhole, he put his large hairy hand over hers and held it firmly.

"Anything I can do for you, Mrs. Gresham, you've only to say," he said.
"I think the world of you, just like my little Heth does, and you've
only to say the word."

Heather Adams came out of the french window and saw her father and her
idol standing very close together, their hands touching, a look in her
father's face that she had never seen. She would willingly have gone
back, but it was too late, and the rest of the party were following her.
Her heavy face grew black as night as for the first time in her life she
felt jealous of a woman. Mrs. Gresham, the most wonderful person in the
world; Mrs. Gresham who had filled her thoughts whenever mathematics
left a crevice ever since she had met her, only a few weeks ago it was
true, but it was like eternity; Mrs. Gresham for whom she would have
laid herself down in a puddle to keep the adored one's feet from being
wet, was making daddy look at her in a way Heather did not understand,
hated, and feared.

Mr. Adams said he and Heth must be going as Packer had another job to go
on to, so they went off, each buried in private thoughts which in
Heather's case had such an outward appearance of sulks at supper, that
Miss Holly gave up trying to make conversation and went to the New Town
Cinema with Mrs. Merivale, between whom and Miss Holly a cool friendship
had grown during their association. It was not, said Heather
rebelliously to herself, that she minded daddy looking at Mrs. Gresham
in that kind of way; but that Mrs. Gresham had fallen from her pedestal
was a cruel blow to the worshipper. If Mrs. Gresham was going to be
silly about daddy, she would like to kill her and she wished they had
never come to this beastly place, and she knew Cambridge would be
beastly and everything was beastly. And then she sniffed so loudly that
her father, who was busy over his E.P.T. figures and a few quite sound
but rather daring suggestions his accountant had made, told her to have
a hot bath and go to bed with an aspirin. Luckily he did not raise his
eyes from his papers, so he did not see her sullen face with tears of
rage making her eyes smaller than ever; so she was able to go to bed in
complete and satisfactory misery.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The only other event of interest in this great day occurred after
supper, just before Anne went to bed. A small procession was going
upstairs. First Miss Bunting, then Anne, then Gradka who was carrying
the orchid in its pot. At the landing window Miss Bunting paused and
looked out. A half-moon rode high in the sky. The terrace below shone
white as marble and the scent of the night-flowering stock was borne on
the rather too cool breeze.

"Good-night, Anne dear," said Miss Bunting. "Good-night, Gradka. Sleep
well and have happy dreams about your home."

"I thank you, Prodshkina Bunting," said Gradka, "but I hope I shall have
dreams of those dirty Slavo-Lydians and that the Americans bomb them,
and the Russians too. Aha! if I were an airman I would fly over
Slavo-Lydia and drop my biggest bomb on it, like this."

With which words, Gradka, carried away by patriotism, threw the orchid
in its pot out of the window. There was a crash below and then dead
silence.

"Well, what is done cannot be undone," said Miss Bunting mildly. "Anne
dear, tell the gardener to sweep it up to-morrow, before your parents
come."

With which words she retired to her bedroom.

"Prodshkina Anne, I shall say I am very sorry," said Gradka. "I think of
the Slavo-Lydian country--which country, my God! a land of pigs--and I
am transported. Forgive me, I will pick it up and tend it with care."

Anne said with complete candour that it really didn't matter a bit and
it was hideous and she hated it.

"Then you do not like this ironmaster, yes?" said Gradka.

Anne said not very much, but she was sure he was really very nice, and
so convinced Gradka of her prejudice against the unhappy orchid that
Gradka went to bed with a happy mind and we hope dreamed of
Slavo-Lydians perishing by thousands.




                               CHAPTER XI


Although Anne's real birthday was over, there was an aftermath of
excitement next day when her parents came down for the week-end bringing
a little pearl necklace as a sign of grown-upness. Anne's joy and
excitement over this gift were only clouded by the question of the jewel
case. At present it was housing the silver clasp, the pearl brooch that
had belonged to Sir Robert's mother and the turquoise ring that her
mother did not like her to wear yet. The points that exercised her mind
were first, whether the jewel case, which was obviously clamouring to be
filled, would mind if she wore the pearl necklace; second, whether the
turquoise ring which she didn't particularly care for would mind if it
lived more or less permanently in the jewel case; third, whether her
mother would let her wear the Rector's gift. After a long and most
interesting family council with Miss Bunting as _arbiter elegantiarum_,
it was decided that (_a_) the jewel case would like to house the pearl
necklace during the day but would be delighted to release it for
evenings and important occasions; (_b_) the turquoise ring, which was
used to living in a small cardboard box with some cotton-wool, would be
delighted to move to its red velvet boudoir; (_c_) that as Anne was only
seventeen and all her friends knew she wasn't engaged she could wear the
Rector's ring as much as she liked because he was such a dear, but if it
fitted her right hand equally well she might in course of time transfer
it to that position, as Lady Fielding felt sure the Rector wouldn't
mind.

The sponge, now swollen by bath water and conceit to four times its
original size, was much admired, as were the little volume of Keats and
the silver clasp; which last was praised loudly whenever Gradka was
about, to propitiate her. As for the scent, face powder, powder-puff and
bath salts, Lady Fielding said how kind of Mr. Adams and reflected that
the rather immoral smell of the last-mentioned was thank goodness in the
bathroom Anne and Miss Bunting used, not in hers and her husband's. The
orchid, which had been cleared away by the gardener who didn't hold with
pot-plants not unless he knew where they came from, was hardly
mentioned.

The unkind chilly August was succeeded by a worse September which made
even the most determinedly seasonally minded people go back into coats
and skirts and wonder if it would be worth while having their summer
frocks cleaned before they put them away as they had worn them so
little, though of course we might have an Indian summer. Or St. Martin's
summer, said Robin after some Sunday afternoon tennis when he and Jane
Gresham and Anne had stopped on to tea with the Watsons.

"Though why Saint, I do not know," he said thoughtfully. "To give a
person half a cloak shows an entire want of common sense, or any real
charity. I've often thought about it. Even if it was one of those huge
cloaks like the ones Italian cavalry officers used to wear, whichever
way you cut it in half what was left wouldn't be much use and so
triangular."

Jane said it would be as bad as those paper patterns for dresses that
show you so carefully how to fit all the bits of pattern into the stuff
that you go mad.

"I always say," said Mrs. Watson, "that a lot of saints seem to be a bit
subnormal. I dare say it's thinking of Other Things."

"Why do saints only read the Times?" said Mr. Watson.

His wife laughed loudly and said Charlie was very deep.

"I know what Charlie means," said Jane. "People only thank St. Jude for
things in the Times. At least I've never seen it anywhere else."

Mrs. Watson said thoughtfully that she supposed saints _would_ read the
Times.

"But," said Anne, her kind heart at once touched, "there must be
millions of people who don't take in the Times, Mrs. Watson, and then
they can't thank St. Jude or anyone, so he would never know how to tell
them he was pleased because they thanked him."

Mr. Watson darkened counsel considerably by saying one could always have
a box number.

"There's something in what Anne says," said Robin. "I don't know much
about saints, but one doesn't quite see them with the Daily Express. I
should have thought monthlies were more in their line than daily papers,
anyway."

Jane said why.

"I don't know," said Robin. "I have no grounds for this belief. Direct
inspiration if you ask me."

"What I always say," said Mrs. Watson, "is that there are a lot of
things we don't understand. And talking of one thing and another, I
suppose you know there is a Bring and Buy Sale in the New Town next
Tuesday and I'm supposed to be collecting things for them here. Anybody
got anything?"

Jane said the last one, the one for the Barsetshire Regiment Comforts
Fund, had pretty well cleaned her out, but she would look round. What
was it for, she said.

"I really don't know," said Mrs. Watson. "They've done the Blind and
Cancer and Tuberculosis and the Red Cross and all the Allied Nations and
Unmarried Mothers and the usual. Oh, I know, it's the Cottage Hospital."

It was unanimously agreed that to give things for one's own Cottage
Hospital was _quite_ different and Jane said she was pretty sure she
could rout out something. Robin said he didn't suppose some of his
father's old sermons would be any good, which made Mrs. Watson laugh
uproariously.

Anne began to speak, thought better of it and went pink.

"Out with it, Anne," said Robin. "Have you got half an earring, or a
nasty bit of Oriental embroidery?"

"I was only thinking," said Anne, "about those bath salts and things
that Heather gave me. I did just open them, but they smelt funny. Do you
think I could give them to the sale, or would Heather see them? It was
dreadfully kind of her, but they do smell horrid, all except the powder
puff. I do like it, because I've never had a big one."

This was a poser and as such was seriously considered by the whole
company. After a great deal of chatter, during which Anne had some
difficulty in making her friends stick to the point, Mrs. Watson hit
upon the brilliant idea of putting the bath salts into old coffee tins
of which she had few waiting for some useful occasion, and selling them
at famine prices. Mr. Watson said he would paint the tins different
colours as he had a lot of odds and ends of paint in his workroom. As
for the scent, Jane said the chemist wouldn't take back empty bottles
now, so there were heaps at Hallbury House, and offered to stick fresh
labels onto some and paint the words "Pre-War Scent" with Frank's
paintbox, and then Anne could put the scent in them.

"Oh, thank you, Jane," said Anne, so much uplifted by this solution of
her difficulties and everyone's kindness that she said "Jane" quite
naturally, which Jane noticed with amusement, though she made no
comment.

"By Jove!" said Robin suddenly. "No, I won't tell you why," he added,
"but I have had a massive and original idea. I must speak to my father
and then I'll tell you, Mrs. Watson. I believe for the Cottage Hospital
he'd do it, though he certainly wouldn't for anything else."

Then the conversation took another turn and presently Anne went home,
accompanied by Robin as far as the door.

"I did want to ask you something, Robin," said Anne, one hand on the
large brass door handle and holding out the other. "You don't mind about
my having your mother's ring, do you?"

"Even if I did I wouldn't tell you," said Robin, "because the old man
simply loved giving it to you and it looks very nice. As a matter of
fact I can't sentimentalize about my mother, because I only just
remember her. I get a kind of rush of sentiment to the heart
occasionally when I think I've been half an orphan nearly all my life,
but it doesn't mean anything. So that's that, and we will now proceed to
the next subject on the agenda. Yes; very nice indeed."

Saying which he took Anne's gloveless, ringed left hand, raised it,
deposited a light kiss on it, and went away with a backward glance of
approval.

Excitinger and excitinger, Anne felt inclined to say. Twice had her hand
been kissed since she had turned seventeen. True, no one had yet fallen
in love with her, but that would doubtless occur in due course, perhaps
when she was eighteen. And still the excitement grew, for her parents
had a quite grown-up consultation with her after supper. As Gradka
thought she could get a permit to return to Mixo-Lydia in October, said
Lady Fielding, and Miss Bunting was to go to Lady Graham about the
middle of September and then back to Marling Hall, she had decided to
shut the house for the winter as soon as the old governess had gone.
Anne would come back to Barchester and go to classes and help her mother
in various duties, and the post-girl's mother, sister-in-law to the
Admiral's cook, would as usual come in as caretaker, sleep in Gradka's
room and keep things aired for them when they came down for week-ends,
but this, at any rate during the winter, would not be very often. Anne
agreed whole-heartedly with all these plans, as indeed she mostly did
with anything her parents suggested. She was a little sorry to be
leaving Jane and Dr. Dale and Robin, but the thought of being grown-up
in Barchester was too exciting for her regrets to be serious. The scheme
of disguising the bath salts and scent was laid before her mother, who
considered it and on the whole approved, provided the plan were so
carried out that the Adamses had no suspicions; and on this matter the
arrangements appeared to be sound enough. If Lady Fielding were to be
truthful with herself, as she usually was, another reason for shutting
up the house so early was to break off, without appearing to do so, the
intercourse between Anne and Heather. It had been all right for these
holiday weeks, but there was no reason why it should go on in
Barchester. Heather would be at Cambridge before long and making fresh
friends, so it was no unkindness to remove Anne. What Lady Fielding did
not know, and would rather have liked to know, was Miss Holly's next
move. Presumably she would have to go back to the Hosiers' Girls' School
at the beginning of term and Heather would go home till the University
term began. But if Miss Holly did arrange an extension of leave to
remain at Hallbury and coach Heather after school had begun, well all
the more reason to take Anne back. Lady Fielding did not dislike Mr.
Adams and found Heather inoffensive, but the feeling of wealth, the
extravagant presents, made her uneasy; it was a design for living too
far removed from her own quiet standards for her to feel comfortable.

When Robin left Anne he went back to St. Hall Friars where the last bell
for the evening service was ringing, and settled himself in the Rectory
pew, from which place of safety he admired his father's appearance and
voice and thought of many things while his tongue said its accustomed
words. There were two important things to discuss with his father and he
could not for the life of him guess how his father would take them. The
first, in point of view of time, was the Bring and Buy Sale in the New
Town for which he proposed to ask his father to sacrifice a small
goat-carriage, a relic of Robin's childhood, which was still in
tolerable condition and never used. The second and really important
subject was whether his father thought he ought to keep on his little
school. The numbers would dwindle to three, or four at the most, by the
New Year and Southbridge School gaped for him, but if his father was
going to miss him, Southbridge should gape till it was black in the
face. One could probably get pupils to coach even if the supply of
little boys ran short. Only pupils would have to live in the house, and
how his father would hate boys at his quiet mealtimes and the inevitable
slackening of the household discipline, Robin could well foretell.
Still, one thing at a time, and the goat-carriage came first.

The service reached its appointed close. The Rector, as was his custom
at the end of each Sunday, stood inside the church porch and said a word
of farewell to all his flock. Then Robin walked home with his father,
taking the back way by the near end of Little Gidding and entering the
garden through the door in the stable-yard wall.

"It used to be very different when I first came here," said the Rector.
"I still had horses then."

This remark was dedicated to Sundays, for on other days the Rector
accepted the present times as a necessary evil which there was no need
to discuss.

"What fun it must have been," said Robin. "I'd love to have a dog-cart
with rubber tyres and a fiery horse."

"Yes; I had the dog-cart, and a brougham for evenings and wet weather,"
said the Rector. "I got my first car in nineteen-eight, I think, but I
kept the horses till they died, and my old coachman. That was all before
your time and before I met your mother."

He stopped by the mounting-block and sat down in the sun to look at the
quiet yard, with no sound of champing and jingling and hissing; no smell
of horses and leather and oats and straw.

"The only carriage I ever had was the goat-carriage," said Robin. "What
happened to the goat, father?"

"We sold him to Lady Emily Leslie," said Dr. Dale. "She wanted a goat to
go well in harness for one of her elder grandchildren, Martin Leslie, I
think, the one who will come into the place. It was touch and go while
he was in Africa, but he is at the War Office now. Dear, dear."

"Why didn't she have the goat-carriage too?" said Robin. "It seems awful
waste to have it mouldering here when we haven't got a goat."

"Is it really mouldering?" asked the Rector anxiously.

Robin said not yet, and he had got the garage, which represented what
was left of the blacksmith and wheelwright, to overhaul it not long ago
and it was in quite good shape. As his father made no comment, he
continued rather nervously.

"I suppose you wouldn't care to give it for a Bring and Buy Sale,
father? They are having one in the New Town next week."

"Certainly not," said the Rector. "You might as well ask me to give the
old croquet set away, or your mother's Aunt Sally."

He got up and straightened himself.

Robin was not surprised by this outburst. One never knew when one's dear
father, so heedless of possessions as a rule, would suddenly become
suspicious and set a high value upon an old razor, or a worthless book,
or a piece of furniture that had become not only shabby but dangerous.

"All right, father," he said good-humouredly. "They can stay where they
are. I only asked you because Mrs. Watson is collecting gifts. It's for
the New Town Cottage Hospital."

His father said, "Oh" in a far from encouraging way and expressed a
general opinion that the New Town did not need such luxuries. There
wasn't a Cottage Hospital, he said, when he first came to Hallbury. And
as for a New Town, no one had ever thought of such a thing. There used
to be some of the best rough shooting in the neighbourhood down on that
marshy land before the old Duke's agent began to meddle.

So Robin said no more and they supped peacefully, and after their meal
went to the study. Here after the labours of Sunday the Rector liked,
when not supping with Admiral Palliser, to take his ease and read the
various learned periodicals which had come during the week; for he was a
corresponding member of more than one society dealing with Bible
research (especially the later prophets) and antiquarian matters. On
such evenings he liked Robin to be at hand though he paid no attention
to him, and Robin, while secretly reserving the right to do as he
pleased, scrupulously kept these Sundays for his father, explaining to
his Hallbury friends that they had better ask him when his father was at
Hallbury House. For although his father was extraordinarily well and
keen-minded for his years he had of late often fallen into a muse upon
the past from which he emerged rather uncertain as to who or where he
was, and slightly indignant that Robin was a grown-up man and not a
schoolboy.

Not that the Rector had anything particular to say to Robin, but he had
a kind of patriarchal feeling that it was fitting for the son of his
loins (for to Robin's ill-concealed shame his father used this
scriptural phrase without any self-consciousness) should be with him in
his old age on such Sundays as he was supping at home. Every now and
then it did occur to Dr. Dale that he and Robin had little to talk about
and how nice it would be to read in solitude, but his conscience told
him, in the unnecessarily scrupulous way consciences have, that here was
his only child, with an artificial foot, and what was he going to do
about it.

On this evening, perhaps a little sorry for his fierceness about the
goat-carriage, he felt more than ever that he must show a father's
interest in Robin's affairs which, to his old mind, really seemed on the
whole unimportant things. So he put down the Journal of Prophetic
Studies and said to Robin,

"Well, Robin, how is the school to go next term? New pupils?"

Robin looked up from a letter he was writing and said that two of them
were going to boarding-school this term and two more, besides Frank
Gresham, after Christmas, so the prospects were not very good at the
moment.

"I am very sorry," said Dr. Dale. "You hadn't told me that, my boy."

Robin said, quite kindly, that there it was, and no good grumbling and
he hadn't wanted to bother his father.

Dr. Dale asked rather indignantly what a father was for.

"I really don't know, sir," said Robin. "But whatever it is, you do it
very satisfactorily. Still, it's what Rose Fairweather used to call
foully dispiriting, I must admit."

"But there will be other boys," said Dr. Dale. "I have christened a
number of small children this year. More than usual; which people tell
me is somehow connected with wartime."

Robin said people would tell one anything, but the children his father
had christened this year wouldn't be ripe until 1952 or so, and he
doubted if he could wait till then. The intermediate vintages, he added,
appeared to be very small and of poor quality.

"I believe," said Dr. Dale, looking rather troubled, "that you were
offered a post at Southbridge School."

"Oh, don't worry about that, father," said Robin, miraculously keeping
all trace of irritation from his voice. "Mr. Birkett did ask me, but I
expect he has found someone else now."

"But why should he find someone else?" said Dr. Dale indignantly. "I see
no reason for him to pass you over and seek further. If my son, with the
degree he has taken and his war experience is not good enough for the
headmaster of Southbridge School, the world is in a pretty bad way."

Robin's heart leapt to a glimpse of freedom, but he had himself well in
hand where his father was concerned. He could not think of the right
reply, so he said nothing.

"I shall ring him up and speak to him myself," said Dr. Dale, rising
majestically from his chair.

At this statement Robin nearly jumped. His father had always hated the
telephone which he had only installed to please Robin's mother, and had
never relented towards it. It was kept in the back passage where the
servants, by shutting the green baize door, could gossip with their
friends or the tradesmen without disturbing their master. This was
annoying for Robin, whose conversations were all open to the kitchen if
it cared to listen; but to do it justice it was usually talking so
loudly in its own quarters, with the wireless on and the door shut, that
he could have arranged to elope with Mrs. Watson or murder the Admiral
without anyone being the wiser.

"Shall I get the School for you, sir?" he asked, seeing that nothing
would stop his reverend papa.

"Thank you," said Dr. Dale. "Thank you, my boy."

So Robin and his father went to the back passage and there Robin asked
for the headmaster's number. The telephone was answered by his
invaluable butler, Simnet, who protected him against all his foes and
rather too many of his friends, often intercepting messages which Mr.
Birkett would have preferred to deal with personally. This Robin knew,
and rather hoped Simnet would pretend Mr. Birkett was dead or at any
rate in bed.

But Simnet, on hearing that it was Robin Dale whom he remembered as an
upper-school boy, at once fetched his employer, who was going through
the time-tables for the next term with his head housemaster Everard
Carter and was rather annoyed with Simnet--and hence with Robin--for
disturbing him.

"Good evening, Robin. What is it?" said the voice of Mr. Birkett.

"I'm sorry, sir, but my father insists on speaking to you himself," said
Robin. "I've tried to head him off, sir, but it can't be done. Here you
are, father."

He handed the receiver to Dr. Dale.

"Good evening, Birkett," said Dr. Dale in his most resonant pulpit
voice. "I wish to have a word with you. What is wrong with my son?...
Nothing, you say.... Then what, may I ask, is the reason he is not
going to your school as a classical master?... No, no; he cannot have
said that. I do _not_ wish him to stay at home.... No, I will _not_
be responsible for what he may or may not have said, Birkett.... Yes,
it is high time he got into the collar again.... What did you say?...
 No, of course you do not want him this term.... Yes, he will
come next term.... Yes, that is all.... You will write and confirm
this, of course.... Yes.... Yes.... My kindest regards to your
wife, Birkett."

He hung up the receiver and turned to his son.

That same son's feelings may better be imagined than described. The
freedom he had been pining for was suddenly within his grasp by the most
unlikely means he could have imagined. He could wind up his little
school by Christmas and in the New Year would be back among men and boys
and books. No one would pity him there. A master with a pretence foot
would simply be a master with a pretence foot to the boys. He might even
become a School Character, like old Lorimer who taught classics till he
died and kept a bottle of port in his desk. He might become a
housemaster like Everard Carter, only then he would need a wife, which
was a nuisance. Still, for the school even that might be accomplished.
He looked round to thank his father as coherently as possible, but he
had pushed the green baize door and gone away. Robin followed him to the
study and found him winding the study clock, which could only be done at
certain hours because of the way the elegant ornate wrought-metal hands
got in the way of keyholes for large chunks of the time people were
about.

"A great deal of unnecessary fuss," said the Rector severely. "A few
minutes common sense on the telephone and everything is settled. Your
father is not too old to know his way about the world."

Galling as his much-loved father's complacence was, Robin could not wish
ill to any man at the moment and stammered some words of thanks.

"I can always come back for week-ends when I'm not on duty, father," he
said.

"You need not have that on your mind," said Dr. Dale. "I have been alone
most of the time since your mother died and I get on very well as I am.
You will understand this as I mean it," said the Rector, looking keenly
at his son. "Not that I don't like to have you here, Robin, for I do;
but I can also do without you, and it will be better for you."

If instead of like his father had said "want," we believe that Robin
might have made a protest. But he realized that he had heard what
children rarely hear from their parents; how little his father really
wanted a companion; how, in fact, he was in truth more contented alone.
It was a draught with a bitter flavour, but Robin swallowed it and even
as he did so reflected that he had felt exactly the same about his
father, but lacked the courage, or the brutality, to say so. He sighed
with relief, went over to his father, rubbed his face against his
father's venerable head and said Thank you very much indeed.

There was then a short though not too uncomfortable silence, during
which each wondered if something ought to be said about the late Mrs.
Dale, who was possibly looking at them through the ceiling.

"I think your mother would say I was doing the right thing----"

"I'm sure mother would have said you were most awfully kind, father----"
said father and son simultaneously, and horrified by this display of
emotion replunged each into his own occupation. Robin, who found it very
difficult to concentrate on his letter, looked at his father from time
to time, and noticed that old man's face, which had become quite strong
and almost youthful in his excitement, was gradually falling back into
its customary air of remote gentleness.

"Do you know, Robin," said Dr. Dale presently, in his usual kind, vague
way. "I have had rather a good idea."

Robin, who by now would not have been in the least surprised if his
father had rung up the Archbishop of Canterbury and told him to take a
funeral service for him on Tuesday, asked what it was.

"They tell me," said Dr. Dale, "that there is a sale of some kind going
on to get money for some good cause. Now, it occurred to me that there
is that old goat-carriage in the stables. You wouldn't remember it,
Robin. It hasn't been used since you were a child. Now, with the
shortage of perambulators, and so many people keeping goats for their
milk, it struck me that the carriage might be sold at a very good price.
What do you think?"

Robin, hardly daring to breathe lest this should be some baseless fabric
of a vision, said he thought the plan first-rate, and he believed he had
heard that the money was to go to the Cottage Hospital.

"A very good use for it," said Dr. Dale approvingly. "And another idea
has just come to me. There is that old croquet set which we have not
used for years. Do you think they would like it?"

Robin said he thought it would be a splendid plan.

"That is the kind of thing you young people don't think of," said the
Rector, much gratified. "Can you arrange it, Robin. I should be at a
loss whom to address on the subject."

He looked so anxious that Robin hastened to reassure him and said he
would do everything necessary and his father was not to give it another
thought. They then wrote and read in silence till the Rector took off
his spectacles and said he was going to bed. Robin said he had some
letters to finish and wouldn't come up just yet.

"Well, good night, my dear boy," said the Rector. "You _are_ going to
Southbridge School, aren't you?"

Robin again reassured his father, who walked slowly to the door, looking
at the backs of his beloved books as he went. At the door he turned.

"I am in vein to-night," he said. "I have just got a third good idea,
Robin. That old Aunt Sally. We don't really need her, do we? Good night,
Robin."

"Good night, papa dear," said Robin.

                 *        *        *        *        *

For the next thirty-six hours Robin went about holding his breath lest
this bubble should break, but on Tuesday morning he received a letter
from Mr. Birkett briefly expressing pleasure that he was going to rejoin
the staff and suggesting that he should spend a few days of the
Christmas holidays with him and his wife and discuss the next term's
classical work with himself and Everard Carter. On reading this letter
Robin felt that he was at last grown-up. Everard Carter, head of the top
house, openly picked as the next headmaster, viceroy of Jove himself,
was now going to turn into a colleague of Robin Dale, ex-soldier with a
pretence foot. The fact was so overwhelming that he could not speak of
it, having a primitive and quite unnecessary fear that no one must know
or the whole affair would burst and he might find himself back in the
Lower Third at Southbridge Preparatory School. He also routed out a lot
of his old Latin and Greek text-books and began to re-read them and to
try to remember where his own chief difficulties had lain, so that he
might the better understand the chief difficulties of his pupils: which
was well meant. To the world he was simply Robin Dale who has that nice
little school where Alan, or Dick, or Michael goes; he has been very
happy there but my husband and I really feel he must go to a _proper_
school now, though Robin is a charming boy and so devoted to his father,
and I think the dear old Rector would simply pine and die if he hadn't
got his son with him. And the world noticed with approval that the
Rector was sending some of the lumber out of the coach-house down to the
Bring and Buy Sale for the Cottage Hospital.

It would have been difficult for the world not to see this if it was
about in the High Street on Tuesday morning. Robin, meeting Jane Gresham
on the previous day, had heard from her that she was thinking of
emigrating.

"Why?" said Robin. "Also where; not to speak of how?"

"I did think," said Jane, "that while Frank was at Greshamsbury I'd have
a little peace. But now those odious cousins of his have measles, so
I've got him on my hands for the rest of the holidays, and mostly Tom
Watson as well. I feel like Mrs. Alicumpane. I wish you were Mrs. Lemon,
Robin."

"So do not I," Robin remarked. But he thought of Jane's words, and next
morning caught both little boys and made them help him to get the
goat-carriage out, dust it well, and polish its metal parts.

"Would you like to pull it down to the New Town?" he said.

"Oh, sir!" shrieked both little boys.

"Sir! I'll pull it," said Frank. "Tom's littler than I am, sir. He might
get tired, mightn't you, Tom?"

Tom Watson looked rebelliously at his friend and said he wanted to pull
it too.

"I'll tell you what," said Robin. "I've got to get Aunt Sally down too.
Put her in the carriage and you can both pull."

The little boys screamed with pleasure. Aunt Sally was exhumed and
placed in the goat-carriage.

"She does look a bit off-colour," said Robin, eyeing the battered and
rakish figurehead. "I wish we could paint her up a bit."

Tom Watson said his father had a lot of paint in the workshop. Robin,
drawn in spite of himself into the spirit of the thing, said they would
go round and ask Mrs. Watson, so the cavalcade went round by Little
Gidding and into the Watsons' garden by the side door. Mrs. Watson was
stringing beans for lunch on the back veranda and said they could use
the paints with pleasure so long as they put them back tidily. So Robin
and his pupils had a delightful and not too messy time giving Aunt Sally
white eyes, nose and ears and a bright red mouth, and Mrs. Watson
contributed a piece of old window-curtain to nail on her dissolute head
as a cap. A few touches of black paint were then applied to the more
dilapidated parts of the goat-carriage, everything was put tidily away
and the party moved off down the hill. Everyone who had the slightest
claim to their acquaintance stopped to ask if that was really an Aunt
Sally, and the old groom at the Omnium Arms produced a blackened clay
pipe which was stuck into her mouth and looked very well, while Frank
and Tom tried to adopt an aloof manner, as of people who habitually
dragged Aunt Sallies about in goat-carriages.

At the station such a piece of luck befell as they might never have
again, for the station-master, hearing that the carriage was going to
the Bring and Buy Sale, said the Cottage Hospital had done wonders for
his wife when she was taken so bad, and allowed the little boys to pull
Aunt Sally down the ramp on the Up side, across the line where only
porters were allowed to go, and up the ramp on the Down side. Both boys
loudly expressed their desire that an express might come through at the
same moment, but no one paid the faintest attention to their boasting.
In another ten minutes the whole party had arrived at the Palliser Hall,
a very nasty wooden affair with a corrugated iron roof, impossible to
keep warm in winter or cool in summer, presented by the present Duke of
Omnium to the New Town for civic and other meetings. As it was used
almost ceaselessly for war work, whist drives, dances for the Forces,
amateur theatricals, the Women's Institute, Flag Days, Grand Gala
Concerts for the Allied Nations and twenty other activities, had no
ventilation to speak of and no accommodation for making and preparing
tea and other refreshments except one small lobby with a gas ring and a
cold tap, it had acquired so rich a smell that Admiral Palliser, after
presiding at a British Legion meeting, had said he now knew all about
what England smelt like in the Middle Ages that he ever wanted to know.

Robin left his pupils outside and went in to look for someone in
command. The hall was full of women arranging miscellaneous objects on
the trestle tables used for refreshments, and pricing them. There was a
shrill hurly-burly and Robin felt like Actaeon, but luckily the first
person he met was Mrs. Merivale, to whom he explained why he had come.

Mrs. Merivale said she hadn't seen a goat-carriage since she was a tiny
tot and her parents took her to Swanage to stay with auntie, and it
would be quite like old times.

"I must tell Sister," she added, as a pleasant-faced woman in nurse's
dress came up. "Sister, this is Mr. Dale, our Rector's son. Sister
Chiffinch, Mr. Dale, who has taken over the Cottage Hospital since
Sister Poulter left. Mr. Dale has brought us a goat carriage, Sister."

Sister Chiffinch greeted Robin kindly and said she had heard of him from
Mrs. Belton at Harefield.

"I nursed Miss Belton when she had the 'flu about a year ago," said
Sister Chiffinch. "Such a sweet girl, Mr. Dale. Mrs. Belton kindly asked
me to her wedding which was a quiet affair, but Miss Belton looked a
picture in white; quite one's ideal of a bride as you might say. You
know her husband is some kind of Admiral now, and I think I may say
without betraying professional secrets as you are a friend of the
family, Mr. Dale, that I am reserving a certain date for a little visit
to Mrs. Hornby apropos of a certain joyful event."

As Robin barely knew the Beltons and had found Elsa Belton, now Mrs.
Rear-Admiral Hornby, rather alarming, he could not be much interested by
the news so delicately adumbrated by Sister Chiffinch, but that lady
herself he found enthralling.

"The Event itself was to be in the Land o' Cakes where they have a large
estate," said Sister Chiffinch, "but as Admiral Hornby is at sea I do
hope Hitler isn't listening and one cannot be careful enough, it is to
be at her old home in Harefield. Such a sweet grannie Mrs. Belton will
make. Really, Mrs. Belton, I said to her when we were discussing the
Event, you look younger than any of us. But what is this I hear about a
goat-carriage?"

All excitement she and Mrs. Merivale hurried to the door, outside which
the carriage was drawn up, surrounded by a number of New Town children
who had never seen an Aunt Sally before and were a little alarmed.

"How _sweet_!" said Sister Chiffinch rapturously.

This did not appear to Robin to be the _mot juste_, but Mrs. Merivale
used the same words, so he supposed they were right. The question then
arose where to put the carriage and its contents and how much to ask for
it; or whether it would be better to have a raffle, only one couldn't
_call_ it a raffle said Mrs. Merivale who seemed to know all about these
things because of the police, but it was really exactly the same. An
arrangement was quickly made for the carriage to be on show outside the
hall with a Boy Scout selling the tickets, but Aunt Sally was less easy
to deal with, for clay pipes could not be procured. Robin said he must
leave it to the ladies as he had to get those boys back by lunch-time.

"By the way, Mrs. Merivale," he said. "We've got an old croquet set that
my father thought you might like, only I don't quite know how to get it
down. It was too heavy for the boys to pull in the goat-carriage.

"Are these your boys?" asked Sister Chiffinch, looking at Frank and his
friend.

Robin hastened to disclaim parentship and explained that they went to
his little school.

"Well now, wonders will never cease," said Sister Chiffinch. "I was
hearing about you from Mrs. Morland who writes the lovely books. She's
quite an old friend of mine. Her youngest boy Tony was quite a mite when
I first knew her--just about your age," she added to Frank.

"I know Uncle Tony," said Frank. "He's gone to Burma. Tom doesn't know
him, do you Tom?"

Sister Chiffinch said East was East and West was West as the saying was,
and it was quite funny the way people knew the same people and as she
had some petrol for the Cottage Hospital and the car was there, she
would run Mr. Dale and the kiddies home and fetch the croquet set, an
offer which was gratefully accepted.

"We nurses do notice things, Mr. Dale," said Sister Chiffinch as she
drove in a masterly way towards the station. "You have something wrong
with your foot, haven't you?"

"I haven't got it at all," said Robin, "It fell off in Italy."

"Oh dear, _I am_ sorry, perhaps I shouldn't have spoken," said Sister
Chiffinch. "I had a patient once, a most delightful man whose name you
would at once recognize, and he made quite a joke about the way he had
left bits of himself in various wars. 'There's my appendix in South
Africa, nurse,' for I was nurse in those days, he used to say, 'and my
right kidney on the North-West Frontier and one eye at Cowes,' but that
of course was a yachting accident not a war, 'and when I wake up in
heaven,' he used to say, 'I'll find I've left the rest of myself in
Kensal Green.' I assure you he was quite a scream. Is this the Rectory?
How sweet."

"Round the next corner if you don't mind," said Robin. "The croquet
set's in the stable-yard."

Sister Chiffinch swung her car round the corner with great skill,
remarked that there soon wouldn't be any horses left now, and drew up at
the wooden door. They all went into the yard, where the Rector was
looking at some croquet mallets that were leaning against the
mounting-block.

"I don't quite remember, Robin," he said anxiously. "Did I say I was
going to give these to somebody? I got them out and then I forgot what
it was all about."

"It's quite all right, father," said Robin. "You said you would give
them to the Bring and Buy Sale for the Cottage Hospital. And this is
Sister Chiffinch who has kindly come to fetch them."

He then left his father with the Sister and with the help of the little
boys put the croquet box and all its contents on the floor of her car.
By the time this was done it was nearly one o'clock and he dismissed his
pupils to their homes. In the yard he found his father and Sister
Chiffinch deep in conversation.

"Now, isn't this a case in point?" said Sister Chiffinch, addressing
Robin.

Robin said he was sure it was, but would she tell him exactly how.

"What I was saying about how funny it is the way people know the same
people. Just by the merest chance as they say I met you this morning,
Mr. Dale, for a moment later and I would have been hieing me homewards
to the Hospital, and now what do you think. Matron that I was under for
a time at the Barchester General, was nurse to Mrs. Dale in her last
moments."

"You wouldn't remember her, Robin," said the Rector. "You weren't born
then."

Robin felt uncomfortable for his father, but was quickly reassured by a
glance from Sister Chiffinch which showed him that she understood the
whole case, and knew that the Rector was not suffering from senile
dementia, merely living for a time, and in a rather addled way, in the
past.

"That nurse was a very nice, kind woman," said the Rector, "and this
lady remembers her."

Sister Chiffinch said she would tell Matron when next she saw her and
Homeward Bound must be her motto. As Robin shut the car door upon her
she said,

"The Rector is a perfect old dear, Mr. Dale. I understand from what he
said that you are going to Southbridge School after Christmas. I know
the Matron there, not fully trained of course, but quite a pal of mine.
Now, you mustn't worry about the dear old gentleman. He rambles a bit in
the past, but his brain is as good as mine. If you don't object I'll
look in from time to time when I'm up this way and keep an eye on him.
And if I think there's anything you _ought_ to know, I'll let you know.
So now a sweet farewell till this afternoon."

With which words and without waiting for a reply she put spurs to her
car and drove away. Robin walked thoughtfully into the yard and found
that his venerable parent had already gone back to the house, so he
followed him. He was much touched by Sister Chiffinch's kindness. People
would probably say she was trying to marry his father, but of this he
felt sure there was not the slightest danger on either side. And he was
quite right, for apart from some rather dashing flirtations of the "You
did," "I didn't" type, accompanied in her younger days by a certain
amount of mild scrimmaging and an occasional slap, she took little
interest in men except as cases and had arranged with her friends Wardy
and Heathy that she shared the flat with, that they would have a small
nursing home after the war for very rich patients who needed unnecessary
care.




                              CHAPTER XII


From two o'clock onwards the Bring and Buy Sale was a magnet, drawing
Old and New Town and any outsiders who had bicycles or a little petrol
to use. Sister Chiffinch, dazzling in a clean uniform, cap and apron,
presided over the goat-carriage, regarding from time to time with
covetous eyes a large goat brought by no less a person than Miss
Hampton, who had come from Southbridge on purpose with her devoted
friend Miss Bent. Robin Dale, who had often met them in his later
schooldays, went up and claimed acquaintance. Miss Hampton, in a neat
tweed coat and skirt, ribbed stockings, monk shoes, a white stock and a
very gentlemanly felt hat on her well-groomed short grey hair, smoking a
cigarette from a long ivory holder, was delighted to see him.

"I hear you are coming back to Southbridge," she said. "Bent and I had a
little party to celebrate the news. Some people say you can't get gin.
Don't believe them. Let people know you want gin and you'll get it. Must
have gin."

Robin said in that case he would certainly make it his duty to call on
them as soon as he got to the school, which made Miss Hampton laugh
loudly and tell Miss Bent that was one up for Robin.

"You know," said Miss Bent, who was dressed in much the same style as
her friend, except that her tweeds were baggy, her stockings slightly
wrinkled, her feet cased in plaited sandals, the stock replaced by a
loose greeny-blue scarf, and her hat of drooping raffia under which her
home-shingled hair hung lank, "I don't think, Hampton, I still don't
think we ought to let Pellas go."

"Well, we've got him here and _I'm_ not going to take the brute back,"
said Miss Hampton.

Robin asked how she had managed to bring a large goat a matter of ten
miles cross-country.

"Lorry," said Miss Hampton. "All the lorry-drivers know me. Learn a lot
of facts about life from them while I stand them drinks. Stand still,
Pellas."

"Hampton's new book is founded on her Experiences," said Miss Bent,
eyeing her friend with adoration.

Robin, who had read with much joy her best-seller of school life,
Temptation at St. Anthony's, inquired what the new book was to be
called.

"Chariot of Desire," said Miss Bent reverently.

At this moment Sister Chiffinch came up with some raffle tickets.

"Let me introduce you," said Robin. "Sister, this is Miss Hampton and
this is Miss Bent. They have brought a goat over from Southbridge for
the Sale. This is my old friend Sister Chiffinch, head of the Cottage
Hospital here."

"You'll excuse me, but are you the Miss Hampton that writes the books?"
said Sister Chiffinch, her professional eye gleaming as she observed the
newcomers. "I did so thoroughly enjoy that book of yours about the old
lady and her housekeeper. Some of the nurses at the hospital were quite
shocked, I do assure you, but I said, 'What Miss Hampton is thinking of,
Poulter'--that was Nurse Poulter, quite a pal of mine but a bit
antiquated in her ideas--'is not what you are thinking of,' I said, 'but
something far otherwise, which is the _idea_ behind it all; the _idea_,'
I said."

"Shake hands," said Miss Hampton. "I like your sort."

"What a sweet goat," said kind Sister Chiffinch, gazing beneficently
upon that very unattractive animal who was angrily eating some bits of
stale cake he found on the grass. "Do you want a ticket for him, Mr.
Dale?"

Robin took three and offered one each to Miss Hampton and Miss Bent, who
refused them.

"Didn't bring Pellas all the way here to take him home again," said
Miss Hampton. "Can't stay long in any case. Bent and I have to go to
Barchester to pick up some gin. We'll have to be off, Bent, to catch
that train. Come and see us when you're settled, Mr. Dale. Sister
Chiffinch too."

"I'm quite excited to have met you," said Sister Chiffinch, accompanying
them as far as the road. "I've often thought of writing a book myself
about some of the cases I've seen. Not till I retire of course."

"You'll be kind to Pellas, won't you?" said Miss Bent. "He responds to
affection."

"Rubbish!" said Miss Hampton. "Give him enough to eat and if he tries to
stamp on your feet whack him with a stick. You won't have trouble. Not
really a he, you know."

"Oh dear," said Sister Chiffinch. "Perhaps we could sell the kids," at
which Miss Hampton laughed so loudly that several people turned round to
stare. "Besides we don't know who will get him in the raffle."

"Doesn't matter who gets him in the raffle, dear woman," said Miss
Hampton. "You'll have to have him, you'll find. Come on, Bent."

And the two ladies walked briskly away towards the station.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Sale by this time was a mass of struggling buyers and bringers. Loud
were the complaints for buyers that there wasn't anything left to buy.
Loud were the complaints from bringers that they couldn't get near the
tables with their gifts. The Old Town was well represented by most of
the people we know. Sir Robert and Lady Fielding could not come as they
were in Barchester during the week, but Anne had come with Jane Gresham
and Frank, all the Watsons were there and, as the afternoon wore on,
many of the tradesmen and cottagers. Mrs. Merivale, who was secretary of
the Cottage Hospital Sale Committee, was enjoying herself rapturously,
ordering people about in the kindest way, settling disputes, repricing
goods whose tickets had come off, looking very pretty and receiving
congratulations on every hand on the engagements of two of her
daughters, which she had most dashingly put in the Times.

"Oh, thank you so much, yes, I am delighted," she said for the fiftieth
time as Jane Gresham stopped to express her pleasure. "Elsie's fianc is
such a nice boy, I believe. You know she is in the Waafs and he is a
Flight-Lieutenant, so it is really a coincidence. His mother wrote me a
most charming letter and is going to have part of her house made into a
flat for them for after the war. She was on the stage at one time, so
she thoroughly sympathizes with Elsie's dancing. And Peggie's fianc is
perhaps a _little_ old for her, he is thirty-two, but he is quite
devoted Peggie says and very musical. He is a Paymaster-Lieutenant at
Gibraltar and you know Peggie has been there with the Wrens, so it
really seems as if it was meant. He has private means. And I don't want
to anticipate, Mrs. Gresham, but I believe Annie will have some good
news to announce very shortly. She is in the A.T.S., you know, abroad,
and from what she says about a certain young man in the Signals I
believe there is something in the air. Do come back to tea, Mrs.
Gresham, I'm sure you're tired. Just any time you like. I shall be there
from four o'clock for an hour. And bring your dear little boy, and
anyone you like."

Before Jane could answer, more friends had come up to give their good
wishes, so she went back to the tables and bought a few of the less
revolting objects that had come in since she last made her rounds. At
the home produce table she found Miss Holly and Heather buying jam. She
greeted them both and asked Heather if her father was coming to the
sale.

"But how silly of me," she added. "Of course he wouldn't on a Tuesday."

"Not as a rule," said Miss Holly. "But he said he would try to come
before the end of the sale, didn't he, Heather."

Heather said yes in a fat, sullen voice. Her admiration for Jane was by
no means dead, but she felt that a witch had come in the place of the
real Mrs. Gresham who had been perfection. A horrible witch who was
trying to enchant daddy and make everything beastly. Half of her hated
Jane and wanted to kill her; the other half still worshipped the now
unseen goddess and longed passionately to find her again. And from all
these jumbled feelings the result very naturally was the sulks, and even
Miss Holly was getting rather tired of them and had gone so far as to
allow Mrs. Merivale to say that if any of her girls got like that she
would give them a good talking to. Still, Miss Holly was not Heather's
mother nor, unfortunately, was anyone else, so the schoolmistress made
Heather work twice as hard in lesson hours and rather left her to her
own sulks during the rest of the day. And thank goodness the Hosiers'
Girls' School would be reopening soon for the autumn term and she would
return to an ordered life.

Jane, who to tell the truth did not notice much difference between
Heather in the sulks and out of the sulks, was tired and very ready for
tea. Frank and Master Watson, under the eye of the old groom from the
Omnium Arms, were grooming the goat with a scrubbing-brush from the
little lobby where the gas ring lived and a comb provided by Greta Tory,
and each had a ticket for a rough and ready tea, so she told Frank she
would come back to hear the results of the various raffles and walked
slowly to Valimere, where she found her hostess alone.

"Tea is just ready, Mrs. Gresham," said Mrs. Merivale. "Now, don't say
No to sugar, for I have quite a store."

Jane said she didn't take sugar.

"Now, are you _sure_ you are not being unselfish?" said Mrs. Merivale,
"for really I have _oceans_."

This point being settled, Jane was very glad to drink her tea and rest,
while Mrs. Merivale expatiated on the excellence of her future
sons-in-law.

"I must show you the photos, Mrs. Gresham," she said. "This is Elsie
with her fianc. It's only a snap one of the boys took of their crowd,
but it gives you quite a good idea. That's her. It doesn't give her
colour of course, for she has quite glorious hair and her eyes are
screwed up with the sun, but the expression is _just_ like. And that's
Peter as I must learn to call him, the one that's lighting a cigarette.
It's a pity you can't see his face, but Elsie is going to send me a
better one. And now I must show you this of Peggie and Don, short for
Donald you know, because it's a proper studio photo. Don has three
married sisters and they have all written lovely letters to Peggie and
the eldest one wants me to go to her for Christmas; her husband is in
the wholesale hardware and member of a very good golf club. Would you
say any of the girls is like me? You never saw Mr. Merivale, but we all
think Elsie is daddy's girl and Peggie is mummy's girl--in looks I
mean."

As both snapshot and studio photograph were exactly like every other
snapshot and studio photograph and Jane had never seen the originals, it
was difficult to judge; but she said she did think Elsie's hair was like
her mother's, only not so curly, and that Peggie had the same pretty
eyes.

Much gratified, Mrs. Merivale said she was an old woman now, and what
did Mrs. Gresham think of this? Jane said it was the Sphinx, wasn't it
and what a beautifully clear print.

"Ah, but I mean what is going on under the Shadow of the Sphinx," said
Mrs. Merivale.

Jane said it looked like a picnic and what fun; and then pulled herself
up for showing so little interest and asked if they were friends of Mrs.
Merivale's.

"You see those two," said Mrs. Merivale, pointing out a young man and a
young woman in uniform whose heads were very close together. "That's
Annie and her boy-friend in the Signals. They were having a joke about
the old Pharaohs, that's why they're laughing. Her last letter said,
'Stand by, mummy, for some galopshious news'; so I guessed."

Jane, with the painful struggle of one talking a foreign language
without much practice, said he looked a charming boy and then despised
herself for time-serving. But her kind hostess's pleasure was so obvious
that she was glad she had made the effort.

"The girls say I ought to marry again," said Mrs. Merivale, "but that's
only their fun. And one sees people of my age doing quite awful things,
marrying people like Mr. Adams. Not but what he is very nice and pays
regularly and is really most considerate, but--well, you know what I
mean, Mrs. Gresham, as well as I do."

Jane did know. She knew, as a fact of life not to be disregarded or
avoided, that Mr. Adams was not of her class, nor even of Mrs.
Merivale's. One might say nature's gentleman, but nature, to judge by
the way people's teeth decayed and cuckoos threw young hedge-sparrows
out of nests and cats played with mice, was not really a good judge. He
had been very kind to her, going out of his way to help her about
Francis, never putting himself forward; and she knew that she was more
and more aware of his personality and was letting herself be attracted
by it. Her nerves were sorely strained by the scraps of news Mr. Adams
had brought and by the relentless ebb and flow of her hopes and fears.
If Francis were known to be dead, she thought when off her guard of Mr.
Adams's tweed-clad arm as something to hold by, to cling to. If Francis
were alive--no, she would not think any more of the chances; she would
think of other things. But every subject in the world led her exhausted
mind back to Mr. Adams who was not a gentleman and never would be. And
when she said gentleman, she meant what her father and friends would
mean and all her own instincts knew.

"You look tired, Mrs. Gresham," said Mrs. Merivale. "Ought you to go
back to the sale? Or what about the lodger?"

Jane looked stupidly at her.

"It's nice and sheltered if you'd like to stay here a bit," said Mrs.
Merivale, opening the door that led onto the little back veranda. "Mr.
Merivale always called it that. He said it reminded him of the time he
went to Italy with a Polytechnic Tour."

Jane's brain reeled slightly. So she told it not to, and said she must
go back and find Frank.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The result of the raffles was to be made known at half-past five, in the
faint hope that the prize-winners would collect their booty before they
left; a hope seldom realized, as ticket-holders mostly lose their
counterfoils, or go home leaving them with a friend who also has
tickets, neither party having noticed her own numbers. When Jane got
back to the sale, the tables were almost empty, the refreshment
committee were washing up the tea-things and the crowd was much less.
The old groom from the Omnium Arms, who liked to see things done
properly, had deeply disapproved the separate raffles of goat and
goat-carriage and had said at least three times to every one of his
acquaintance that a nice little turnout like that ought to be sold as
one lot. Effie Bunce, the Land Girl from Northbridge who worked for
Masters the farmer, then said she had seen a set of harness in the loft
that looked as small as anything. Masters, who had come down to see one
of the Omnium keepers about some wire, was found and approached by the
old groom. Masters was willing to oblige an old friend who had influence
at the tap and in just as much time as it takes to bicycle up to the
farm, find the harness, and bicycle back, the full equipment was there.
Masters, entering into the general enthusiasm, said the harness had been
there these twenty year, but he'd given it a good greasing from time to
time and if they would like it for the Cottage Hospital they were
welcome. Such of the Committee as could be found made an informal
decision that the harness and goat should go as one lot, which led to
frightful trouble when one or two more members found what was happening
and said the harness ought to go with the carriage. The Reverend (by
courtesy) Enoch Arden, who had been picking up a few books for the
Ebenezer Chapel Lending Library, said in a loud voice that thou (by
which he was supposed to mean anyone who was listening) shalt not seethe
the kid in its mother's milk; which statement, in view of the goat's
status, was quoted as a rare bit of fun in the Omnium Tap for many
evenings to come. It was then decided that the ticket-holders who won
respectively the goat and the carriage should have the option of
purchasing the harness by tossing a penny, upon which Mr. Arden went
home and prepared a powerful discourse upon animals that cleave the hoof
and lead the weaker brethren into what is abominable before the Lord;
only he delivered it as abhominable, which is far more frightening.

It was now half-past five. Several waste-paper baskets full of raffle
tickets were produced and numbers drawn by the youngest Girl Guide
present. Mrs. Merivale, to her great joy, drew the Elle-girl whom she
had given for the Cottage Hospital in a rush of enthusiasm and whose
absence, not to speak of the mark on the wall where she had been, she
had since bitterly deplored. Sister Chiffinch, who had come back for the
draw, had the egg-cosy made like a cock's head, and Master Watson, to
his silent satisfaction, got a large homemade cake. Finally the tickets,
for goat and carriage were drawn. The crowd stirred excitedly. Jane
became conscious of something looming behind her, turned, and saw Mr.
Adams.

"I'm looking for my little Heth," said Mr. Adams.

Jane pointed her out on the other side of the crowd, in company with
Anne Fielding.

"Ah, she's all right there," said Mr. Adams. "What's on now, Mrs.
Gresham?"

Jane, vaguely conscious of an aura of dislike emanating from the far
side of the crowd, said they were raffling a goat and a goat-carriage.

"Number forty-two," said the Girl Guide holding up a ticket. "A goat."

There was a short but pregnant silence while people scrumbled about in
their bags to see where that ticket had got to.

"Ow! it's my number," said Greta Tory. "I dunno what dad'll say if I
bring a goat back to tea. I _was_ a big silly to take a ticket."

The Girl Guide, who quite rightly did not consider it her business what
the lucky winners said, now drew another ticket, proclaiming, "Number
eleven. A goat-carriage."

"Cripes!" said Effie Bunce, who had adopted this unladylike expression
from some military friends at present quartered near Barchester, "it's
mine. Dad'll create to-night; so'll Mum"; for old Bunce the ferryman at
Northbridge was known far and wide as a wicked and foul-mouthed old man
and his wife not much better.

There was another silence, this time of embarrassment. No one could
force the girls to take their prizes; but no one else wanted the
responsibility.

Then did Sister Chiffinch, suddenly emerging at Jane Gresham's side from
among the crowd, like the Fairy Queen when the Demon King is at his
worst, say in a clear and refined voice,

"Oh, dear! And I did hope the Cottage Hospital would get it."

Mr. Adams moved forward a little.

"I _am_ disappointed for you," said Jane.

Mr. Adams took another step to the front.

"Sam Adams speaking," he said in a loud voice. "If those young ladies
don't want their prizes, I'll have much pleasure in handing the
Sekertary double the value of the tickets and presenting both lots to
the Cottage Hospital. Anyone anything against it? Right. Tell me what I
owe you Mrs. Merivale you are the Sekertary I think and I'll write you a
cheque."

If a by-election had been in progress at that moment, Mr. Adams would
certainly have been put in by the voters with no dissentient voice.
Greta Tory and Effie Bunce, giggling loudly, handed their tickets back
to Mrs. Merivale, who took them with a smile and said did Mr. Adams want
the harness too.

"Oh, do have it," said Jane, almost forgetting in her excitement that it
was Mr. Adams, and merely envisaging him as a benefactor.

"And I'll double that for the privilege of presenting Nurse oh, Sister
is it, sorry--Sister I should say, with the whole outfit," said Mr.
Adams without the slightest hesitation. "And I hope the kiddies that go
to the Hospital will have many a happy hour with it."

The enthusiasm was frantic and Heather, pushing rather roughly past Jane
Gresham, clung proudly to her father's arm. Frank and Master Watson
besieged each his respective parent or parents to be allowed to help to
take the goat to the Hospital.

"I don't know, Frank; _do_ be quiet for a moment," said Jane Gresham.
"Where are you going to keep them, Sister?"

"I've thought it all out," said Sister Chiffinch. "There's just room for
the carriage in that shed outside where the wheeled chair lives, and the
goat can go in the gardener's shed to-night and I'll get Old George that
does our vegetables to knock up a partition for him. He likes animals
and it will be a bit of interest for him," said Sister Chiffinch, who
had found an old-age pensioner to keep the Hospital garden well stocked
with potatoes and green vegetables. "I expect the boys would like to
help, wouldn't they? And really, Mr. Adams isn't it, I can't thank you
enough for your kindness. You must come in and see us some day. Such a
nice bright place it is and the nurses, well they couldn't be nicer as
the saying is, and our patients are so bright. Excuse me now," and she
hurried off to superintend the harnessing of the goat, which was
accomplished with the help of the old groom from the Omnium Arms, a good
deal of zealous hindrance from the little boys and some businesslike
advice from Miss Holly, who having lived for some time with an aunt who
bred them had not a single illusion about those unfriendly animals. Jane
then thanked Mrs. Merivale again for her tea and was just going when she
felt a touch on her arm.

"Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams at her side. "I only wanted to say don't
you worry about things. My pal's well onto that business we were talking
about and believe me he isn't one to draw back from going forward.
Anything that comes through you'll know at once. Heth and I shan't be
here much longer, but anything I hear in Barchester, you'll hear within
the day and Sam Adams saying it," said Mr. Adams, who appeared for the
second time that afternoon to be confusing himself with a golden-voiced
announcer.

Jane thanked him.

"You're tired, that's what you are," said Mr. Adams. "Look here. Mrs.
Gresham, I'll phone up Packer and run you up. No; no thanks. It's a
pleasure I assure you. If you don't mind coming to Mrs. Merivale's I'll
phone him up at once."

Jane was tired. She didn't much want to intrude on Mrs. Merivale again,
but the thought of a car instead of the long drag up the hill alone, for
Frank had got permission with Master Watson to see the goat home, was
too tempting. Mrs. Merivale was delighted to see them and took Jane into
the sitting-room while Mr. Adams telephoned. The exchange were very slow
in answering. The front-door bell rang shrilly and the knocker was
banged, Mr. Adams raised his voice. Mrs. Merivale went to the door and
came back with a telegram.

"Oh dear," she said to Jane. "It's one of those dreadful telegrams. I
don't mind once they're opened, but it's the opening. You never know
what's inside."

Jane knew the feeling well, though as the years had passed since Francis
left her she had stopped fearing them, for they were never about what
she longed to know.

"Shall I open it for you?" she asked.

"Oh, please, and do you mind looking if it's anything nasty," said Mrs.
Merivale.

"It doesn't look nasty," said Jane, "but it doesn't make sense. 'Fixed
episcopalian church to-day how's that mother in law letter confirmation
follows constant evil custom.'"

"It must be for someone else," said Mrs. Merivale. "Nobody would ask me
how their mother-in-law was. And what's all that about evil customs? I
wonder the post-office let people send such things. May I look?"

Jane saw no reason why Mrs. Merivale should not have her own telegram.
She handed it to her saying, "Perhaps someone is sending you a present
and wants to tell you the Customs will look at it."

"OH!" said Mrs. Merivale. "It's not a telegram; it's a cable, only the
place it comes from is too faint to read. I ought to have known, because
when the girls cable to me from abroad it always comes like an ordinary
telegram, only with the post as a rule, not by itself knocking at the
door, which is war economy I suppose, but very stupid because if it were
really important you wouldn't get it for much longer than you ought to.
Besides----"

Even as she spoke, studying the telegram the while, her voice trailed
away, her face became pink and her eyes brimmed. From the hall Mr.
Adams's voice summoning Packer to get a move on became peremptory.

"Oh, Mrs. _Gresham_! It has suddenly come to me," said Mrs. Merivale.
"Well, I always said Evie would be the first to get married though she's
the baby. Oh dear! excuse me, I'm going to cry."

"Don't cry," said Jane, rather alarmed. "What is it?"

"I see it all now," said Mrs. Merivale, looking into the infinite with
moist eyes. "It isn't Custom, it's Cutsam; that's Evie's American friend
she's always writing about and I told you just before tea I thought
there was something in the wind. It's from both of them. His Christian
name, if Americans do have Christian names, is Constant--such original
names Americans have."

"Is his name Evil too?" said Jane. "Americans do have funny names
sometimes."

"That's the post office," said Mrs. Merivale loftily. "Of course it's
really Evie. I dare say 'e' is rather like 'l' when you cable it."

"Packer will be here in a moment, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams coming
in. "Am I intruding?"

"Oh dear me, of course not," said Mrs. Merivale. "And really, Mr. Adams,
I have no right to be here when you are paying me for the use of this
sitting-room, but I was quite upset. I've had such a lovely cable from
my youngest daughter in Washington, from her and her husband. They've
just got married and cabled to tell me. I'll read it to you. It says
'Fixed,' well that's just American slang for getting married, isn't it,
'fixed Episcopalian Church to-day. How's that, mother-in-law'--he is a
cheeky boy to call me mother-in-law in a telegram--'letter
confirmation,' that means letter of confirmation of course, 'follows.'
And then both their names, Constant and Evie Cutsam. I do wish I could
have been there. Still, I dare say they'll come over with the baby
later."

Jane, who saw that Mr. Adams, not realizing that Mrs. Merivale's
utterance was merely prophetic, was rather nervous of what appeared to
him a tardy act of reparation on the part of Mr. Cutsam, quickly said in
an off-handed way that indeed it would be lovely if they had a baby some
day and brought it to see its grandmother. Mr. Adams's face cleared.

"Packer's just come to the gate, Mrs. Gresham," he said.

Jane said good-bye to her kind hostess and again congratulated her
warmly. Mrs. Merivale stood at the door while they got into the car.
Just as Packer was starting the engine she ran down the little front
path and laid her hand earnestly on the door of the car.

"Oh, Mrs. Gresham," she said, "excuse me worrying you, but I suddenly
felt quite upset about that Episcopalian Church. You don't think it's
R.C. do you," she added, looking round fearfully as if the Inquisition
were on her traces.

Jane answered firmly that it was exactly the same as the Church of
England. Mrs. Merivale's face cleared, she stood back and Packer drove
off.

"A very nice little woman," said Mr. Adams, and Jane was amused to
recognize in his voice the tone with which, a couple of generations
earlier, her grandfather would have qualified Mrs. Merivale's
grandmother as respectable. "My Heth and I can't be grateful enough to
you, Mrs. Gresham, for finding her. Everything has been most
comfortable. Now, you look worn out," he added, looking solicitously at
her. "Just lean back and don't worry."

Like so many of us Jane had almost lost the power of leaning back and
not worrying. That she was better off than many of her sisters she would
have been the first to admit, but the long strain of uncertainty, the
many nights of restless, useless wondering and uneasy sleep, the
self-control which she would have died sooner than betray, all these
were so many cracks in her being, cracks which might widen. And like
most of her sex she filled those cracks with unnecessary activities to
stop herself thinking. But nothing will do that. She leaned back
obediently, not like a comfortable house-cat on a cushion; like a
wild-cat uneasy in captivity. Mr. Adams's tweed-clad bulk beside her
seemed safe and comforting, and had the drive been longer she might have
yielded to her fatigued impulse and leant against it. But they were at
the gate of Hallbury House. Jane thanked him again and said how kind it
was of him to give the goat-carriage to the Cottage Hospital.

"You asked me to," said Mr. Adams.

Jane looked at him.

"You said you were disappointed when the Sister didn't get it," said Mr.
Adams. "And you said, 'Oh, do have it,' when the harness was going
begging. I thought you meant it. If you didn't, well that's that."

Jane saw that he was hurt. Too tired to reflect, she laid her hand on
his coat-sleeve.

"Of course I meant it," she said. "Sister Chiffinch is so grateful, and
so am I. All your kindness----"

"There's a lot of people," said Mr. Adams, not shaking off her hand but
sliding away from it and getting out of the car, followed by Jane, "that
would get the shock of their lives if they heard what you said, Mrs.
Gresham. I'm a business man, Mrs. Gresham, and I have business ways. But
you've been kind to my Heth and she thinks the world of you. And so do
I," said Mr. Adams looking straight at her. "And that's why I'm doing
all I can to make your mind easy about Commander Gresham. We'll hope for
news soon. We'll hope for good news. If it's bad news, well, I know
you'll take it much the same as good news. But good or bad, Sam Adams is
here and he's never let a pal down yet."

Jane, looking at Mr. Adams and hearing what he said, idly wished that
she knew how to faint. The afternoon had been so tiring; hope deferred
was wearing her down, and to fall into those large arms and forget
everything for ever would be a relief past words. At the same time
another Jane knew that this was not only weakness but quite silly. The
two Janes stood for an instant measuring their strength. Then Mrs.
Francis Gresham took command, noticing with a distaste she could not
overcome Mr. Adams's large hairy hands and the rather overpowering
clothes which never seemed to fit him by nature.

"I am more than grateful," said Commander Gresham's wife, "and I know
Francis will be if he comes back. Thank you so much for the lift, which
was just what I needed. Goodbye."

Mr. Adams said goodbye, got into the front seat with Packer and drove
away, talking about some half-inch bolts. Jane went indoors and told her
father all about the Bring and Buy Sale.




                              CHAPTER XIII


The summer holidays, if summer it could be called after the way it had
behaved, said Robin Dale indignantly, were almost at an end. On Tuesday
most of the schools were reopening, including the Hosiers' Girls'
Foundation School and Mr. Robin Dale's Select Academy for the Sons of
Gentlemen, as it sometimes pleased him to call it. Miss Holly was to go
back on Saturday to meet Dr. Sparling and make various arrangements for
the school year. Heather and her father were to leave Mrs. Merivale on
Sunday. Anne Fielding was to go back to Barchester with her parents
after the week-end and Miss Bunting was to go, as previously arranged,
to Lady Graham at Little Misfit for a fortnight's visit before taking up
her abode again at Marling Hall. For Robin there was the winter term at
Southbridge to look forward to; for Jane her daily duties with the
prospect of an emptier house when Frank also went to Southbridge after
Christmas and a friend the less when Robin had gone, and her unceasing
anxiety.

Miss Bunting, as we know, had not felt equal to the Bring and Buy Sale,
and as the week went on she felt on the whole less equal to anything and
spent a good deal of the day in her room, while Gradka waited upon her
and asked such supplementary questions about the English language and
literature as occurred to her active mind. Anne spent a good deal of
time at the Cottage Hospital with Frank and Master Watson, in whose
company she drove about the immediate neighbourhood in the goat-carriage
(by kind permission of Sister Chiffinch). Heather was not seen in the
Old Town, being a good deal occupied with the New Town Tennis Tournament
in aid of the Red Cross, in which tournament, to her own surprise and
her father's intense pride, she got into the semi-finals, partnered by
young Ted Pilward who had been given extended leave on account of an
impacted wisdom tooth and was to go on a course the following Monday.

Ever since Sister Chiffinch's kind offer of keeping an eye on his
venerable father, Robin had felt much easier in his mind about leaving
him; but to be on the safe side he asked Dr. Ford from High Rising, an
old family friend, if he would drop in to lunch one day and give a
report of his father off the ration as it were. Dr. Ford, who did not
fear any British Medical Association dead or alive, said he would
certainly look in on Saturday round about lunch-time, but what Robin
meant was off the record. Robin said he hated to be disagreeable, but
what he meant when he said off the ration was off the ration. So Dr.
Ford drove himself over to Hallbury in his clanking old car on Saturday,
called at the Rectory, was invited to stay to lunch by the Rector,
accepted with just the right amount of unwillingness and remained till
about three o'clock, talking with his old friend.

"Your father is remarkably fit," he said to Robin, who was lying in wait
for him by the clanking car. "In fact I see no reason why he shouldn't
live for ever. Do you ever think he is going mad?"

Robin said he sometimes did, but really he didn't.

"Not a chance of it," said Dr. Ford, apparently deprecating this diehard
attitude in his old friend. "You'll find he's a bit woolly at times and
sometimes he'll be woolly on purpose, like a child, but it doesn't mean
anything. Who looks after him?"

Robin said Dr. Shepherd.

"Old woman," said Dr. Ford, in defiance of all medical etiquette. "But
he won't do your father any harm."

Robin then mentioned Sister Chiffinch's kind offer to look in from time
to time.

"Not Nurse Chiffinch!" said Dr. Ford. "Bless that woman. She is a pearl.
I'll never forget the way she handled young Tony Morland and his
schoolfriend, who never opened his mouth--Wesendonck, that was the
name--when she was looking after George Knox's daughter Mrs. Coates and
her first baby. Lord! how Tony did talk. And now he's in Burma. Four
sons Mrs. Morland has and all abroad somewhere. And you've got a gammy
foot, haven't you," said Dr. Ford who had an insatiable curiosity about
everyone. "Mrs. Morland said you had."

Robin offered to show it to Dr. Ford who was delighted, and after a
pleasant ten minutes' talk drove down to visit Sister Chiffinch, while
Robin went off to Hall's End. Here he found Anne on the terrace with her
father and mother who asked him to stay to tea, and they sat there
talking while Sir Robert looked at a quantity of popular illustrated
papers smelling of bad acid drops and as he flung each aside said what
scandalous waste of paper the whole thing was.

"Go and get tea, Anne darling," said Lady Fielding presently. "Gradka is
in a fervour of jam-making with our last raspberries before she goes,
and I don't like to disturb her for tea. She doesn't mind Anne. What has
happened to those Adams people, Robin?"

Robin said he hadn't seen them since the sale, but he thought from what
Jane said that they were leaving to-morrow.

"Just as well," said Lady Fielding, dismissing people called Adams from
her mind. "I was sorry for the girl. She seemed harmless enough, but
Robert doesn't want us to get involved. Thank you, darling," she said,
as Anne appeared at the french window with the tea-trolley. "Robin will
give you a hand."

Robin helped Anne to lift the trolley over the low sill and Lady
Fielding told Anne to go and tell Miss Bunting tea was ready and ask if
she would rather have it upstairs.

"Anne told me Miss Bunting had not been feeling well," said Lady
Fielding, "and I thought she didn't look very fit when I came down. This
cold windy summer has done no good to anyone. I expect she will be
happier at Lady Graham's where they are all old friends. Tea, Robert?"

Sir Robert threw down the last of the illustrated papers and said he
couldn't think why people bought them.

"To look at, darling, I expect," said his wife. "Is Miss Bunting coming,
Anne?"

"Mother!" said Anne.

Robin turned quickly to look at her, for her voice was urgent.

"I think she's ill or something," said Anne. "She was sitting in her
chair having her kind of rest that she has, but she wouldn't answer me."

"You pour out Daddy's tea then," said Lady Fielding getting up, "and
I'll go and see. I dare say she was asleep."

She left the terrace with the unruffled air that carried her through all
her committees and various good works. Anne, already reassured by her
mother's calm and confidence, poured out tea and asked Robin to admire
her pearl necklace, worn in honour of her parents' visit. Robin thought
what fun it would be to give Anne a really good present, not just a
sponge, and determined to create a small sinking fund to be appropriated
to her twenty-first birthday. So they talked away and Sir Robert joined
in from time to time, and though they were all aware of Lady Fielding
telephoning in the hall, they pretended she wasn't.

"Robert," said Lady Fielding from the french window. "Miss Bunting isn't
at all well. I've just rung up Dr. Shepherd's house, but he is out and
his assistant is away. It is a nuisance. I wonder what I had better do
next."

"Oh, Lady Fielding," said Robin getting up. "Dr. Ford is down at the
Cottage Hospital with Sister Chiffinch, I think."

"Thank goodness for a real doctor," said Lady Fielding, who had no more
opinion than Dr. Ford of the Hallbury doctor. "I'll ring up at once."

This time there was no pretence of not listening from the party on the
terrace. It was soon clear that Dr. Ford was coming at once and that
Sister Chiffinch was mobilizing in case of need. Lady Fielding went
upstairs again and the others sat rather subdued till Dr. Ford's car was
heard. Gradka opened the front door and he went upstairs.

"Do you think Miss Bunting is going to die?" said Anne anxiously.

"I couldn't say, my dear," said her father. "I hope not, I don't know
why she should. Dr. Ford will tell your mother what it is. Where's that
new book of Mrs. Morland's, Anne? I cannot imagine how she goes on
writing a book a year and all exactly alike. Thank you, dear."

And Sir Robert took the book which Anne had brought from the
drawing-room. Then Dr. Ford was heard at the telephone and then he went
upstairs again and Lady Fielding came down.

"Oh, mummy, is Miss Bunting going to die?" said Anne.

"I hope not, darling," said her mother a little too cheerfully. "Dr.
Ford is with her and the ambulance is coming to take her to the Cottage
Hospital, Robert. He thinks she will be better looked after there. It's
a slight stroke, he says."

Robin and Anne, feeling very young and useless, went for a walk in the
garden.

"It's like Angela," said Anne after a long silence.

"Angela who?" said Robin, who had also been immersed in his own
thoughts.

"Keats. You know," said Anne.

"No, I'm afraid I don't know her," said Robin.

"But you _must_," said Anne rather impatiently. "The Eve of St. Agnes.

                    'Angela the old
    Died palsy-twitched with meagre face deform.'"

"So she did," said Robin. "But that doesn't mean that other people
will."

"Besides, her name is Maud, she told me so herself," said Anne proudly.
"I think hardly anyone else knows."

Robin said it was funny that some people never had a Christian name; at
least one never heard it. Though he had known Miss Hampton and Miss Bent
ever since he was in the Fifth Form at Southbridge School, he said, he
hadn't the faintest idea what their other names were. Anne said she
could not imagine Sister Chiffinch having a Christian name and was sure
all her friends called her Chiffy; in which she spoke more truly than
she knew, for ever since that excellent woman had begun her training she
had never been called anything but Chiffy, even by her pals Wardy and
Heathy that she shared the flat with.

But in spite of light conversation they continued to feel young and
useless, and also rather frightened and, in Anne's case, to feel rather
cold. So cold in fact that she shivered as they stood looking at nothing
in particular in the kitchen garden. Robin asked if anything was wrong.

"Only being cold," said Anne, looking at him with a mute appeal for
help.

"Poor old silly, why didn't you put a coat on?" said Robin. "I'll tell
you what we'll do. Go into the drawing-room and light the fire. I'm sure
your mother won't mind."

This excellent and practical idea made Anne cheer up like anything. Even
as they were going back to the house a few cold spattering drops of rain
were blown into their faces from a cold grey sky, and Robin said it was
bound to do that after the way the Minister of Agriculture had said it
would be a bumper harvest, and probably they would die of cold and
starvation, while any food there was would be going to Mixo-Lydia; also
any decent clothes and all the coal, he said rather crossly, for he did
not like to see Anne shiver and was himself considerably disturbed by
Miss Bunting's illness. For we are all apt to look upon our elders as
permanent and to resent any sign on their part of derogating from this
state; probably because it brings the thought of mortality too close to
our own dear selves. But by the time they had shut the french windows
and lighted the fire they both felt happier, and though the cold rain
was pelting down on the terrace, it seemed much more probable that Miss
Bunting would soon be better.

Robin, considering with quite fatherly care that Anne might be
frightened when the ambulance came, began to talk to her about
Southbridge and its glories, and drew so lively and pleasant a picture
of a schoolmaster's life there, the bed-sitting-room he would have, the
extreme niceness of the senior housemaster Everard Carter and his wife,
the strong probability that he would himself be a housemaster some day
that although the ambulance with its good St. John attendants, all
Hallbury men, came to the door, steps went quietly upstairs and came
slowly and heavily downstairs, and quiet voices talked in the hall, Anne
felt much warmer and happier and was sure Miss Bunting would be quite
well almost at once.

"You'll need a wife, won't you, if you are a housemaster?" said Anne,
after considering the whole affair.

Robin said he supposed he would. One could be a bachelor housemaster,
but then one might take to secret drinking or marry one's matron. And he
happened to know, he said, that Mr. Birkett preferred married men,
because they were less apt to want to move on.

"'High hopes faint on a warm hearthstone,'" said Anne thoughtfully. "I
think Kipling's marvellous, Robin, don't you?"

Robin said on the whole he did. And then they had a silly conversation
about wives for Robin, and Robin said he would marry Heather Adams and
have six little boys exactly like their maternal grandfather, called
Sam, Ham, Jam, Lamb, Pram and Ram, and Mr. Adams would give so much
money to the school that they would make him headmaster. All of which
silly conversation made Anne laugh so much that she stopped feeling
cold. And when Lady Fielding came in, she said how sensible to light the
fire and she was going to have done it herself, and Miss Bunting looked
very comfortable in the ambulance and would Robin stay to supper. Robin
said he would love to, but he thought he had better go back to the
Rectory as his father was expecting him, and Lady Fielding said she was
sorry, but he was quite right.

So Robin said goodbye, and after supper Sir Robert read aloud from Bleak
House and Anne felt safe and warm. Sister Chiffinch telephoned about ten
o'clock and said Miss Bunting was very comfortable and not to worry, and
she would ring up again next morning. So Anne went to bed in quite good
spirits.

                 *        *        *        *        *

If Anne had been a little older, she would have known that the
expression "very comfortable" as applied to an ill person, means exactly
what the relations, friends, or nurse in charge would like it to mean.
From the patient's point of view it means more often than not a night of
considerable pain, several bad nightmares, being woken when you least
wish it and not knowing where you are when you wake up, so that you feel
quite mad. Miss Bunting lay quietly enough at the Cottage Hospital. It
was strangely difficult to speak, so she was silent. Her right arm felt
unaccountably heavy, so she did not attempt to use it. Her self-control,
learnt through a long lifetime, was unimpaired and Sister Chiffinch was
entirely right in saying what she said about the Miss Bunting whom she
could see.

But Miss Bunting was also living another life of which Sister Chiffinch
knew nothing, of which even Miss Bunting's nearest friends were
ignorant. For five or six years the old governess, so many of whose
pupils had fallen in the last war, so many of whose older pupils'
children were falling and would yet fall in this war, had had from time
to time a dream that she flew--not in an aeroplane but with invisible
wings--to Germany, and alighting in Hitler's dining-room just as he was
beginning his lunch, stood in front of him and said, "Kill me, but don't
kill my pupils, because I can't bear it." The dream had always tailed
off into incoherence, but it came again and again, and Miss Bunting had
a sneaking feeling, which she condemned firmly as superstitious and even
prayed against on Sundays, though with no real fervour, that if only she
could keep asleep till Hitler answered, the war would somehow come to an
end. But so far she had always woken too soon.

During the night, lying very still in her bed at the Cottage Hospital,
unobtrusively but vigilantly watched first by Sister Chiffinch and then
by the night-nurse, Miss Bunting for the last time rose on invisible
wings and flew over to Germany. Alighting in Hitler's dining-room just
as he was beginning his lunch, she stood in front of him and said, "Kill
me, but don't kill my pupils, because I can't bear it," adding the
words, "and if you touch David Leslie, my favourite pupil, I shall kill
_you_." With an immense effort she remained asleep just long enough to
be certain that she had won. Then Hitler swelled and swelled till the
whole room and the whole world was full of him and burst, and all Miss
Bunting's old pupils came running up to her. Her heart was so full of
joy that it stopped beating, and kind Sister Chiffinch rang Lady
Fielding up at half-past seven on Sunday morning to break the news.

The Fieldings were not altogether surprised, but truly distressed, for
they had grown to respect and value the old governess during the year
she had spent with Anne. There was very little to do. Dr. Ford and
Sister Chiffinch were at hand, Mrs. Marling and Lady Graham were told on
the telephone, and Lady Graham's mother Lady Emily Leslie sent word that
if Mrs. Marling agreed, she would like the old governess to be buried in
Rushwater churchyard, as David had always been so fond of her.

"I think," said Agnes Graham's cooing voice to Lady Fielding, "that
darling mamma is going to design a tombstone with doves on it. Darling
Emmy and James and Clarissa remember her quite well of course, so does
darling John, but I think darling Robert and Edith are too small. We
were all so fond of dear Bunny. Darling David will be dreadfully unhappy
when he hears, and my husband will be quite unhappy too," though whether
Major-General Sir Robert Graham, K.C.B., would have subscribed to this
statement, we do not know. Probably not.

But though all was arranged and no one was truly unhappy about Miss
Bunting, a shadow of sadness hung over Hall's End. Not only was Miss
Bunting's death the last of an excellent and faithful governess and
companion, but with her, so the Fieldings and many other friends of the
old governess felt, one of the remaining links with the old world of an
ordered society had snapped. Nearly everything for which Miss Bunting
had stood was disintegrating in the great upheaval of civilization.

"It almost makes me envy the Adamses of this world," said Lady Fielding
to her husband.

"No need to, my dear," said her husband dryly.

"You know what I mean, Robert," said his wife. "They are on the top now
and they don't miss what is gone, because they never knew it, and they
are going to make a horrible new world just as they like it, with no
room for us. We are nearly as dead as poor Miss Bunting."

"I don't altogether agree with you," said Sir Robert. "Adams is very
wealthy and has a good deal of pull. But it will be quite a long time
before he and his lot can do without us and our lot. He won't turn that
girl of his into a lady."

Lady Fielding said she was rather glad that Anne had not seen so much of
Heather lately, and then the subject dropped as it was time to go to
church, and Lady Fielding said she had wondered about slight mourning,
but as it was summer she thought it wouldn't matter. This may sound
unreasonable, but all those readers who know how much easier it is to
mourn in a fur coat which covers everything and a black hat, than in a
summer frock, will understand. So Anne, who had fallen head over heels
into a volume of Poe's poetry which she had taken to bed on the
preceding night, was wrenched from her literary pursuits and accompanied
her parents to St. Hall Friars, all in their ordinary clothes.

The news of Miss Bunting's death had spread to the few people interested
in her, among them Jane Gresham, who felt as the Fieldings did that
another piece of the pre-war world had gone and the tide of a Brave and
Horrible New World was lapping a little nearer to her feet. Frank was
going to church with the Watsons and back to lunch with them afterwards,
so Jane and her father went to church unaccompanied. The Hallbury House
pew was across the aisle from the Rectory pew, which prevented the
occupants, unless they came in very late or behaved very badly and
turned round to look, from knowing who was attending the service. So it
was not until the Rector had blessed them and the congregation was going
out into the churchyard that Jane saw Mr. Adams and his daughter.

It was not a welcome sight. Her conscience had upbraided her during the
night for her weakness about Mr. Adams, telling her in no uncertain
terms that she was letting herself be as silly as any other young woman
whose husband was long away, or missing. Also, said her conscience, she
ought to be ashamed of herself. Mr. Adams had been very kind, but he was
probably kind to a great many people, and to him it was nothing to buy a
goat with its carriage and harness to please someone--well, someone he
liked, said Jane rather angrily to her conscience. But however she
thought and argued inside herself, the fact remained that she had liked
Mr. Adams more than she ever thought she could and had behaved in a way
that neither her husband nor her father could approve. What Mr. Adams
might do or say next she did not know, but now thoroughly frightened of
her own folly, she would have given anything to have him safely in his
works at Hogglestock.

But an admiral's daughter may not retreat, so she said good morning to
Mr. Adams and Heather very pleasantly in the porch. Mr. Adams responded
with what, to her guilty mind, seemed a curious manner, and Heather
hardly answered at all.

"Good morning, Adams," said the Admiral. "I haven't seen you up here
lately. And how are you, Heather?"

Heather, suddenly becoming the pleasant Heather she had been until
lately, said quite well thank you. Mr. Adams walked on with the Admiral
while Jane and Heather found themselves forced into one another's
company, which was little pleasure to either. Heartily did Jane wish
that anyone else were of their party, but the Dales and Fieldings went
in the opposite direction, the Watsons were busy in talk with friends,
so there was nothing for it but to follow the men towards Hallbury
House, Heather suspecting and hating Jane, Jane rather frightened of
Heather, who exuded an atmosphere of knowing more about Jane than Jane
would like her to know. All very foolish we may say: a schoolgirl
jealous of an attractive woman that her father liked, and an attractive
woman with a scrupulous conscience feeling guilt where there was but a
little folly. But so we are made.

Neither was Mr. Adams altogether at ease, for he had difficult things to
say and was by now beginning to suspect his daughter's feelings. But to
clear her doubts would mean acknowledging that what she imagined had
some real existence; and that he was not going to do.

When they got to Hallbury House the Admiral asked his chairman of
directors and daughter to have a glass of sherry, of which he had just
managed to get a few bottles.

"I expect Mr. Adams will want to get back to lunch, father," said Jane,
hoping against hope that her father or his guest would back her. The
Admiral said Nonsense, and Mr. Adams said Packer was waiting for him at
the Omnium Arms and could wait a bit longer, so the sherry was drunk and
talk touched on various topics and the discomfort grew.

But uncomfortable as it all was, it was even more uncomfortable and
frightening for Jane when Mr. Adams, who was accustomed to facing all
difficulties and bending them to his will, said to her,

"I've a little matter of business to talk over with you, Mrs. Gresham.
If the Admiral doesn't mind, will you take a turn in the garden with me?
I won't keep you long."

Instead of saying, "Avaunt, churl!" as Jane had rather hoped he might,
the Admiral, who knew that Mr. Adams had been busying himself on Jane's
behalf, seemed to think this quite natural and said with naval gallantry
that he hoped Heather would put up with his company meanwhile, to which
Heather, who was fair-minded enough to bear no grudge against the
Admiral for being the father of her fallen idol, said she would like it
very much and would the Admiral tell her about the electric welding
plant in his repair ship.

By this time Jane was almost shaking with fright, but she accompanied
Mr. Adams to the garden and pointed out how well the anchusa was
flowering this year.

"I've got something to say to you, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams.

Summoning all the Palliser in her, Jane stopped, faced him, and asked in
what seemed to her a normal voice, what it was.

"You needn't be frightened, Mrs. Gresham," said Mr. Adams looking down
at her, so that Jane, in one of those quick foolish thoughts that come
to one at the gravest moments, thought of the great _San Philip_ taking
the wind from the little _Revenge's_ sails. "What I'm going to say has
nothing to do with anything concerning any ideas you may have had or I
may have had about any feelings that may have passed in a temporary sort
of way between you and I."

Jane felt her cheeks burning at this far too accurate description of her
late encounter with Mr. Adams. She found it quite impossible to speak
and looked very hard at a spider who was sitting in his autumn net,
waiting for the tradesmen to call.

"My pal that I've told you about and his pal in the Intelligence," said
Mr. Adams, "haven't been asleep, Mrs. Gresham. There was a lot of fresh
news came in last week. I didn't like to say anything to you Tuesday,
though I nearly did; for fear it wasn't correct. But it's absolutely
O.K.ed now. I think," said Mr. Adams, eyeing her more closely, as not
knowing what the result of his words would be, "that you can take it
from Sam Adams that Commander Gresham is all right. You'll be hearing
from the Admiralty I expect before long, but I thought I'd give you a
friendly word, and you needn't be afraid to believe it, Mrs. Gresham,
because my pal and his pal have seen the man who had the news and it'll
only be a matter of shipping till the Commander gets home."

The spider, sitting comfortably in his study, smoking and reading the
Daily Arachnoid, felt his back-door thread quiver. He put down his pipe
and paper and went gently down the passage.

Jane went as white as she had been red. She tried to say something, but
no sound came from her and the spider held her whole attention. He had
by now ascertained that it was the butcher and was going cautiously to
the back-door to meet him.

"Well, that's all," said Mr. Adams, "I'm pleased to have done what I
could, Mrs. Gresham, and now I'll say goodbye and all the best. My
little Heth and I go home to-day. I know she'd like to thank you for
your kindness, for she really thinks the world of you. Don't you hurry,
Mrs. Gresham. I'll go and say goodbye to the old Admiral. He's a fine
old man and we all have a great respect for him on the Board."

The spider, having removed his shoes and tiptoed to the back-door, had
tied the butcher up in a neat parcel, put him in the larder, and
returned to the study where he picked up his pipe and went on reading a
review of "An eight-legged Traveller in English Hedgerows," by Webly
Spinner. Jane stared and stared at him and said nothing.

Meanwhile Admiral Palliser and Heather had a really delightful
conversation about electric welding and manganese steel until Mr. Adams
came back, when Heather's face fell into its late condition of heavy
sulks.

"Well, Admiral," said Mr. Adams, "it's your lunch-time and we must be
off. I don't want to make a mystery of what me and Mrs. Gresham have
been discussing lately and I think you can guess that I brought some
news of Commander Gresham. I may say that it's good news, and you can
take it from me that the Commander will be coming back as soon as there
is a ship. Sam Adams never says a thing if he can't prove it and back
it, and that's that. And I may say I was seldom more gratified, not even
when my little Heth here got her scholarship, than when I heard the
news, for we think the world of Mrs. Gresham me and my little Heth.
Don't we, girlie?"

The Admiral shook Mr. Adams warmly by the hand and with some difficulty
thanked him for his interest. Heather stood with her mouth open,
surprise, incredulousness, belief, mortification, chasing each other
across her heavy face. It was all too like heaven to be true. Mrs.
Gresham was still the most wonderful person in the world and her father
was as perfect as he had always been. How she could have been wicked and
horrible enough to think the wicked and horrible things she had thought,
she did not know. Her only regret was that her father said they must go,
and Mrs. Gresham was not there.

But as they walked down the flagged path to the gate, Jane came round
the corner from the garden, looking as beautiful and kind and wonderful
as ever and said goodbye to daddy and thanked him very much for all his
kindness. Heather had a romantic impulse to cast herself at Mrs.
Gresham's feet, stab herself, and say as her life-blood welled from
between her fingers, "I have misunderstood you, Mrs. Gresham and this is
my atonement." But her father said they must hurry along or they would
keep Mrs. Merivale's lunch waiting, so Jane said goodbye to Heather and
wished her the best of luck at Cambridge, the Admiral opened the front
gate, and Mr. Adams and his daughter went down the street to the Omnium
Arms, where Mr. Packer was waiting for them.

"Well now, girlie, you and your old daddy must get down to brass tacks
again," said Mr. Adams as they drove down to the New Town. "No more
holidays for us just yet. There's Cambridge first and then there's the
works. Had a good time, Heth?"

"Oh yes, daddy," said Heather. "I think Mrs. Gresham is different from
everybody, don't you, daddy?"

"I wonder what your mother would have thought of her," said Mr. Adams
reflectively. "Many's the time I wish mother was here, Heth. Still,
you're daddy's little partner, aren't you?"

"Yes, daddy," said Heather. "Oh, and daddy, Ted Pilward's going to be on
a course in Cambridge till Christmas and he says there'll be some dances
and he's going to ask me."

"Nice boy, Ted," said Mr. Adams. "Old Ted Pilward's a good sort too,
Heth. Our sort."

Lunch at Hallbury House was as embarrassing as a lunch must be where
father and daughter, both trained to suppress their emotions, both with
emotion very near the brim, are alone together. But they managed pretty
well and the Admiral knew that his daughter could look forward at last.
For him it might not be so happy. Jane and Francis might want not
unnaturally to find a home for themselves and Frank. To lose Frank would
be hard. But all this was far in the future and for the moment he would
think of Jane's relief from the long nightmare. That Mr. Adams could
have made a mistake he did not think. He trusted, and on very good
grounds, that his chairman would not make such a statement without very
authoritative knowledge, and his hope of official confirmation before
long was, we may say, amply justified. After lunch Jane said she was
going to play tennis at the Watsons and might be out to tea. Then she
let her father hold her closely for a moment, kissed him, and went
upstairs to change.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The tennis at the Watsons was not very serious, for now that Miss Holly
had gone they no longer had a good fourth. So they rang the changes on
Watsons, Jane, Robin and Anne, and there was a good deal of laughter
while the little boys skirmished about and ate a huge tea. A passing
reference was made to Heather Adams, but the waters of Hallbury life had
already closed over the heads of the summer intruders and flowed on
their usual calm course. Then Anne went home, Frank was torn indignantly
expostulating from the company of Master Watson and six new kittens
which the kitchen cat had hidden behind a wood-pile and guarded with
very unladylike spittings and scratchings. Jane sent Frank ahead and
said she would walk back with Robin.

"Do you know," said Robin, "that a great disgrace has occurred in my
family. The raffle tickets for our Aunt Sally went very badly. I think
people are so uneducated that they don't know what she is for. And no
one would own to having a ticket when the winning number was drawn and
the secretary can't read the name she wrote on the counterfoil, so she
is back on our hands. She came up, like Boadicea, in the milk-float this
morning. My father pretended he was pleased to see her again, but that
was only showing off. He is really a good deal mortified. Here she is."

They had entered the stable-yard by the wooden door and there, propped
up against the mounting-block, was Aunt Sally's matronly form. As they
looked a sound of voices came down the garden path and two clergymen
hove into view.

"Who has your father got with him?" said Jane.

"Oh, Lord, I'd quite forgotten," said Robin. "It's the Bishop."

"The _Bishop_!" said Jane, with a look of horror and incredulity
difficult to describe.

"I don't mean _that_ old woman," said Robin, thus irreligiously alluding
to the present incumbent of the see of Barchester. "It's Bishop Joram.
You know, that Colonial Bishop who did locum at Rushwater. He's got a
job in the Close now, something the Dean found for him, and he does duty
for other clergymen at odd times. He's taking evening service for father
and I think it will be a very good plan if he can come over once or
twice a week, especially in the winter when I'll be at Southbridge. But
don't say anything to father about it."

By this time the Rector and the Colonial Bishop had reached the stable
and introductions were made. The Colonial Bishop, who was highly
susceptible, at once fell in love with Jane; as he had previously fallen
in love with Mrs. Brandon and Lady Graham, and several other Barsetshire
ladies.

"Bishop Joram, whom we have all been so glad to welcome among us," said
Dr. Dale, entirely ignoring the fact that the Bishop had been in England
now for some four or five years and was very well known throughout the
diocese, "has given me the pleasure of coming to take the service this
evening, and spending the night under my roof. I shall be proud to sit
at his feet, for we have all heard of his fine work--where was it,
Joram? Borrioboola Gha?"

The Colonial Bishop said not exactly; it was Mngangaland.

"Ah yes," said Dr. Dale, in a voice whose aged wisdom would have led
anyone who didn't know him to think he knew where it was. "And what did
you say the text was on which you propose to preach to us?"

"I don't think I did say," said the Colonial Bishop. "It is from the
Book of Haggai, first chapter, fifth verse----"

"'Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: consider your ways,'" said
Dr. Dale triumphantly.

"I wish you were preaching, sir," said the Colonial Bishop. "I didn't
know anyone read Haggai now."

"But my dear fellow," said Dr. Dale, forgetting in his enthusiasm the
gulf of some thirty years that lay between him and his new friend. "My
dear fellow! never did I think to meet a clergyman in these degenerate
days who knew that great prophetic work. I have given much study to the
subject and written largely upon it. You must come and look at some of
my articles."

In his enthusiasm he was about to drag the Colonial Bishop back to the
Rectory, but his son reminded him that the service was at half-past six
and it was already ten minutes past.

"Thank you, my boy," said the Rector, rather downcast. "Never mind,
Joram," he added, brightening. "The psalms are very short this evening
and I dare say your sermon will not be unduly long."

The Colonial Bishop said ten minutes at the outside.

"Good, good," said Dr. Dale approvingly. "Tell me, Joram, in what sense
exactly do you read the words in the ninth verse of the first chapter,
'And when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it?' I have my own theory,
but it would greatly interest me to hear yours."

The Colonial Bishop made no answer. Dr. Dale, looking at his guest, was
seriously alarmed to see him staring fixedly at the old coach-house with
every appearance of insanity.

"Is anything wrong, my dear friend?" said Dr. Dale, touching the
Colonial Bishop on the arm.

The Colonial Bishop started and apologized, saying that he had been
quite carried away.

"I caught sight of something that reminded me so vividly of Mngangaland
that I quite forgot where I was. How on earth did it come here, Dr.
Dale?"

He approached the battered form of Aunt Sally, leaning up against the
mounting-block, and looked at her with affectionate reverence.

"That's our old Aunt Sally," said Robin. "We tried to get rid of her in
a raffle, but no one would have her."

"The absolute likeness of the Mnganga deity of cattle disease," said the
Colonial Bishop in a low reverent voice. "The trouble I have had with
her! You will hardly believe how difficult it was to stop the natives
sacrificing every eighth child to her--very large families they have,
you know; you must keep up at least fifty wives to have any position at
all. But I did it in the end. I painted her with luminous paint just
before the new moon and told them she was Queen Victoria. The light
shining from her on a dark night frightened them nearly to death and
ever since then they have only brought cigarette cards and empty gin
bottles as offerings. I hope I did rightly. One never knows."

Dr. Dale said one could but do what lay to one's hand.

There was another and rather embarrassing silence. Robin, looking at his
watch, said it was twenty minutes past six.

"Joram," said the Rector, touching the Colonial Bishop on the shoulder,
who started.

"I say, father," said Robin. "Do you think Bishop Joram would like to
take Aunt Sally? It seems a shame for her to stay here doing nothing."

The Colonial Bishop, a man of action, the terror of all backsliders in
his sub-Equatorial diocese, closed with the offer at once.

"If you can really part with her, Dr. Dale," said he, "I shall be more
grateful than I can say. I miss my black flock very much at times, and
she will make me feel that we are not entirely separated. I will wrap
her in my raincoat and put her in my little car if I may, just for the
night, and she will be in my lodgings--with a very respectable French
lady, a Madame Tomkins, a dressmaker, in Barley Street--to greet me when
I come back from my work. Thank you, thank you."

Robin then hurried the Colonial Bishop and his father towards the church
and came back to Jane.

"I do admire you, Robin," she said. "You don't think he'll worship it,
do you? Aren't you going to church?"

Robin said he thought the Colonial Bishop could quite well look after
himself and would not let Aunt Sally get the upper hand. And as his
father had a real bishop, if a colonial one, to talk to, he thought he
would take a holiday himself, and the Fieldings had asked him to supper
to say goodbye before they left Hallbury.

"I'll see you some time soon then," said Jane. "I think--no, nothing.
Good night, Robin."

She walked slowly home. No, she would not tell Robin yet. She would not
tell Frank. Her father would not speak if she asked him not to. Mr.
Adams she had already almost forgotten, and in any case he could hold
his tongue. She knew now, at last, quite certainly, what she wanted,
hoped for, waited for; and until the day of meeting came, not so far
ahead, she could be patient. Others should share her relief, her joy,
very soon; but for a little while it should be her private treasure.

                 *        *        *        *        *

So Robin went down Little Gidding and across the High Street to Hall's
End. In the drawing-room he found Anne alone with a good fire and Poe's
poems.

"You know about Miss Bunting," she said.

Robin said he did.

"Poor Miss Bunting," said Anne.

Robin said he was very sorry indeed, but Lady Fielding, whom he had
talked to after church that morning, had told him that she died very
quietly in her sleep.

    "'I lie so composedly here in my bed
    That you almost might, seeing me, fancy me dead,'"

said Anne thoughtfully. "I think Edgar Allen Poe is marvellous, Robin,
don't you?"

Robin said he did, though some of his poems were better than others.

"Poor Gradka cried dreadfully," said Anne, who seemed to Robin somehow
much more grown-up since the previous day. "She is going back to
Mixo-Lydia quite soon and she is going to have a school and call it
Bunting College; in Mixo-Lydian of course, but I can't properly
pronounce the College part. And she will tell oll her pupils that Miss
Bunting was an English lady who ollways hated Slavo-Lydia."

At this Robin began to laugh and Anne, amused by her own quite good
imitation of Gradka's speech, began to laugh too.

"Oh dear, Robin," she said, suddenly serious. "I shan't see you when I'm
in Barchester."

"Never mind," said Robin. "I'll come to Barchester at the week-end
sometimes. And when I'm at Southbridge I'll ask you all to tea in my
bed-sitting-room on Speech Days and Sports Days. All the masters have
tea-parties then."

Anne, the fire shining on her face, said she would love that.

"And don't forget that when I'm a housemaster I shall need a wife," said
Robin, half-mocking. "But that won't be for quite some time of course."

Anne, pensively playing with Dr. Dale's ring on her left hand, slowly
drew it off and put it on her right hand.

"Your father said I could be engaged to him until I wanted to be engaged
to someone else," she said. "And I don't think I'm old enough to be
engaged to anyone really, so I am going to wear his ring on my
un-engagement hand."

"If anyone asks you to put a real engagement ring on your proper
engagement hand," said Robin, "will you consult me first? I think I
ought to know, in case you need some good advice."

"Of course I will," said Anne. "But I don't think I'd like to be really
engaged, unless it was somebody I liked very much, like you."

Robin took her ringless hand, put the lightest of kisses on it and laid
it on her lap again.

Then Lady Fielding came in and summoned them to supper.






[End of Miss Bunting, by Angela Thirkell]
