‘It would have been wonderful,’ said Eileen Rich. ‘Wonderful. The thing I should have liked above all.’

Miss Bulstrode was faintly surprised by the tense, although she did not show it. Instead she agreed promptly.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it would have been wonderful. But it isn’t wonderful now? Well, I suppose I understand that.’

‘No, no, I don’t mean that at all,’ said Eileen Rich. ‘Not at all. I—I can’t go into details very well, but if you had—if you had asked me, spoken to me like this a week or a fortnight ago, I should have said at once that I couldn’t, that it would have been quite impossible. The only reason why it—why it might be possible now is because—well, because it is a case of fighting—of taking on things. May I—may I think it over, Miss Bulstrode? I don’t know what to say now.’

‘Of course,’ said Miss Bulstrode. She was still surprised. One never really knew, she thought, about anybody.

II

‘There goes Rich with her hair coming down again,’ said Ann Shapland as she straightened herself up from a flower bed. ‘If she can’t control it I can’t think why she doesn’t get it cut off. She’s got a good-shaped head and she would look better.’

‘You ought to tell her so,’ said Adam.

‘We’re not on those terms,’ said Ann Shapland. She went on, ‘D’you think this place will be able to carry on?’

‘That’s a very doubtful question,’ said Adam, ‘and who am I to judge?’

‘You could tell as well as another I should think,’ said Ann Shapland. ‘It might, you know. The old Bull, as the girls call her, has got what it takes. A hypnotizing effect on parents to begin with. How long is it since the beginning of term—only a month? It seems like a year. I shall be glad when it comes to an end.’

‘Will you come back if the school goes on?’

‘No,’ said Ann with emphasis, ‘no indeed. I’ve had enough of schools to last me for a lifetime. I’m not cut out for being cooped up with a lot of women anyway. And, frankly, I don’t like murder. It’s the sort of thing that’s fun to read about in the paper or to read yourself to sleep with in the way of a nice book. But the real thing isn’t so good. I think,’ added Ann thoughtfully, ‘that when I leave here at the end of the term I shall marry Dennis and settle down.’

‘Dennis?’ said Adam. ‘That’s the one you mentioned to me, wasn’t it? As far as I remember his work takes him to Burma and Malaya and Singapore and Japan and places like that. It won’t be exactly settling down, will it, if you marry him?’

Ann laughed suddenly. ‘No, no, I suppose it won’t. Not in the physical, geographical sense.’

‘I think you can do better than Dennis,’ said Adam.

‘Are you making me an offer?’ said Ann.

‘Certainly not,’ said Adam. ‘You’re an ambitious girl, you wouldn’t like to marry a humble jobbing gardener.’