‘And you’re sixteen and a half although you look thirty.’

Walter brightened. ‘Yes, I do look a bit old for sixteen-six, don’t I? Not much chance of being stopped to show my licence. No one would take me for under age, would they?’

‘And I’ll add another thing I know about you,’ Charles went on, still concentrating on keeping his head clear. ‘You’re a motor enthusiast. History started for you when the sparking-plug was invented.’

A happy smile came over Walter’s square-cut, dusty face.

‘Well, don’t let’s say the sparking-plug,’ he said in the tone of a connoisseur who dwells lovingly on some abstruse point in his pet subject, ‘let’s say—let’s say the differential.’

Mrs. Braceweight had spent the morning shopping at the neighbouring market town. ‘By the way, I nearly forgot, Lumley,’ she said as he held the door open for her to get out of the car, ‘my husband wants you to meet the 2.45 at the station. I didn’t catch the name quite, but it’s a young man who’s coming to be Mr. Walter’s tutor during the summer. There won’t be more than one person who looks like a tutor getting off the train.’

He murmured some kind of discreet agreement—he never talked to his employers—and carried her parcels into the house.

After lunch he took the Daimler over. The tiny station was in the midst of its one daily half-hour of alertness, for the next train in was the one which waited patiently for any passengers alighting from the express, and clattered round the neighbourhood dropping them at smaller and smaller stations. It was the only train on which anything, or anyone, from the larger world ever reached them.

Charles sat smoking on the bench outside the waiting-room. His peaked cap lay on the seat beside him. The Daimler stood patiently in the sun outside, its leather giving off a hot smell. The train was signalled, and fussed into the station. Charles kept a look out for someone who looked like tutor to a rich man’s son. Two people got off. One was a middle-aged woman carrying a side of bacon. The other was George Hutchins.

In spite of his tranquillity, and the fading of his various grudges against life, Charles had to admit that his character was not really growing more benign as he lived longer. On the contrary, he was less willing to sit down under an insult than he had ever been. And the very existence of Hutchins, within five miles of himself, was an insult. He decided to be offensive.