He kicked the wooden ladder. Ouch. Then he placed the atlas in a gap on one of the lower shelves. Should he need it again – unlikely as that now seemed – he’d know where to find it.

He wondered whether, before he left, he oughtn’t to search for a dictionary and look up that word that Miss Sharp had used about him. What was it again? ‘Officious’?

No, on second thoughts, he’d leave it. Perhaps it was better not to know.

Chapter 17

‘Anyone else coming to church?’ Elsie asked, that first Sunday, over breakfast. She, Miss Sharp and Bill were going to the nine o’clock service in the village.

Maggie sipped her tea and eyed the others around the table over the rim of her cup. No one else seemed keen.

‘Chance to take a gander at Snowden village,’ Elsie added. She and Pam had walked the mile down to Snowden yesterday and Elsie was now an authority on the place. ‘Honest, it’s like something out of a fairy story!’ she said. ‘Golden stone and thatched roofs, made completely of hay!’

‘Straw, Elsie, I think you’ll find,’ Ray said, from across the table. He took a bite of his toast.

‘I stayed in a cottage with a thatched roof once,’ Pam said, ‘and in the middle of the night, a mouse fell on my head.’

Nancy squealed. ‘Never! I’d have died on the spot!’

Elsie was still in raptures over Snowden. ‘There’s a shop and a post office, a pub—’

‘The Royal Oak,’ Norm interrupted. ‘They serve a jolly nice ale in there.’

‘Of course,’ Elsie continued, darkly, ‘you’ll hear no church bells ringing this morning. They’ve been SILENCED!’ She made a chopping motion with her knife. ‘Only to be rung, in the event of INVASION!’

There were groans and exasperated sighs around the table. ‘Oh, don’t bring us all down,’ Pam said. ‘Not on our day off.’

‘No,’ Nancy agreed. ‘The sun’s shining and we want to enjoy ourselves. Less of the doom and gloom, please.’

Miss Sharp glanced at her watch and wiped her mouth with her napkin. ‘Come along, Elsie, Bill, or we’ll be late.’

Norm announced that he and Geoff would be spending the day hiking around the lanes.

Elsie pouted. ‘Have you noticed, how it’s a “hike” if the men do it but a “walk” if us girls do the very same thing?’

‘Not taking the bicycles out again, chaps?’ Pam asked archly.

Norm coughed. ‘No. We went a fair distance yesterday and …’ He shuffled in his seat. ‘Well, it was a long time since I’d ridden a bicycle.’

Everyone laughed.

‘I can tell. You walked into breakfast like a couple of cowboys,’ Pam said. ‘And, Geoff, you got far too much sun. Your face was as red as rhubarb. Did you get some calamine lotion on it?’