‘Mitch telled me,’ she said excitedly. ‘He said I could be his dep – dep – deputy, and have my dinner at Lyons Corner House . . . Ooh, Tess, I’d rather do that than anything in the world.’

Mitch, already starting to move the rabbits from their big cage into an even bigger one in the stockroom, grinned at Tess. ‘So if you was hoping for company on your trip into the country, hard luck! You did say you’d pay for Elsie’s dinner and your gran said she thought we might close for an hour so that she could come with us. If it’s all right by you, of course,’ he added hastily.

Tess was about to say that it would be fine by her when the door opened again and Sammy Higgins came into the shop. He was an old school friend of Snowy’s and had always been a keen bird fancier, and now he bred budgerigars and canaries in a large aviary which took up most of his back yard. Because he was genuinely fond of his birds he declared he would only sell them through Tess, knowing that she would take great care of them while they were with her and would make sure buyers knew what they were taking on when they were sold.

‘Mornin’, Tess. How’s me old pal Snowy gerrin’ on?’ he asked. ‘I keep meanin’ to write to him, but somehow I never get round to it.’ He was carrying a large and well-appointed cage containing three bright-eyed little occupants which he now put carefully on the counter before turning his attention to Tess once more. ‘Snowy were always interested in birds, so when he comes home mebbe he’ll come into partnership wi’ me. I could put up an aviary at the end of his garden, if Mr and Mrs White would agree, and we could share the profits.’

Tess pulled a doubtful face. Snowy’s parents lived a good half-mile away and had a proper back garden. She could not imagine either of them taking kindly to an aviary on their spotlessly maintained lawn. Since Snowy had gone to Malaya she had visited his parents several times and liked them both. Mr White had congratulated her on her business acumen, whilst she and Mrs White had talked of make-up, clothes and other feminine matters, and Tess thought they approved of her. Naturally enough, when she visited they had compared notes about their son’s letters, and Mr White had suggested jobs in the teaching profession which he thought might suit him.

The last time this had occurred Mrs White and Tess had exchanged quick, apprehensive glances, which proved to Tess that Snowy’s mother, like herself, had reservations about Snowy’s ever taking to such a post. Had he gone into one straight after leaving university it might have been different, but by the time he came home he would have lived in the real world, as he put it, for more than two years, and Tess thought that he might find academia both unexciting and tedious after life with the army.