Perhaps, she thought, he was not in London. She invented a hundred reasons why he could not come, yet she still waited for the footsteps; she hoped, she feared, she waited.

She had met him once, only once, and in that one meeting she had fixed on him all her hopes, her dreams, her imagination of the word “love,” and she knew it was foolish, yet she had done it, and now she was frightened that he would come and she would discover that he was ordinary after all. Just another man who would stare at her as the men in London stared.

The next morning her hopes faded. So much time seemed to have passed since the letter was given to the clerk at Westminster, and it was impossible for her hope, fear and apprehension to stay at the same pitch. Campion was helping Mrs. Swan’s maid in the small kitchen, plucking two scrawny chickens that had been bought that morning. She plucked with short, hard tugs while the maid was drawing the first bird, her hand plunged up to the wrist in entrails. There was a knocking on the door. The maid went to rinse her hand in the bucket, but Mrs. Swan called that she was by the door and would answer.

Campion’s heart was racing. It could be just a customer, come to fetch a cushion cover or curtain square, and she tried to calm her hopeless expectancy. He would not come. She tried to persuade herself of that. There were voices in the hall but she could make out neither the words nor the speakers.

Mrs. Swan’s voice grew louder and most distinct. She was talking of the chickens bought that morning. “Prices, dear! You wouldn’t believe it! I remember when you could feed a family of eight on five shillings a week, and good food too, but now you couldn’t give a man a square meal for that. Oh dear, my hair! If I’d known you were coming I’d have worn a cap.”

“My dear Mrs. Swan, you beauties obviously attract each other.”

It was he! The voice crashed on her with such sudden familiarity that it seemed she could never have forgotten. It was Toby, and she could hear him laughing, and Mrs. Swan offering him the best chair, refreshment, and she hardly heard his reply. She had been pulling at the last, obstinate small feathers on the chicken and her apron was fluffy with the small wisps. She took her bonnet off and her hair hung loose. She knew she was blushing. She brushed desperately at the small feathers, twitched her hair transferring the feathers to her head, and then there was a shadow in the doorway. She looked up and he stood there, grinning at her, and the grin turned into a laugh, and in that one moment she knew it was all right. She had not been wrong about him, she would never be wrong about him again.

She wondered how she could ever have forgotten his face with its easy smile, its curly red hair falling either side of the strong lines of jaw and cheek. He looked her up and down. “My little feathered angel.”