‘No harm done,’ said she. ‘Oh, your beautiful cap. I am sorry. But after all the wonderful emptiness and silence among the sand dunes, a place like a town seems to me a positive nightmare.’

‘Well, the emptiness and silence does seem to suit you,’ said Georgie, gazing in astonishment at her mahogany face. ‘I never saw anybody looking so well.’

Isabel, with a tug of her powerful arms, disentangled her cycle.

‘It’s the simple life,’ said she, shaking her hair out of her eyes. ‘Never again will I live in a town. I have taken the bungalow I am in now for six months more, and I only came in to Tilling to tell the house agent to get another tenant for Mallards Cottage, as I understand that you’re going back to Riseholme at the end of this month.’

Georgie had never felt more firmly convinced that a wise and beneficent Providence looked after him with the most amiable care.

‘And I was also on my way to the house agents’,’ he said, ‘to see if I could get a lease of it.’

‘Gracious! What a good thing I didn’t run over you just now,’ said Isabel, with all the simplicity derived from the emptiness and silence of sand dunes. ‘Come on to the agents’.’

Within half an hour the whole business was as good as settled. Isabel held a lease from her mother of Mallards Cottage, which had five years yet to run, and she agreed to transfer this to Georgie, and store her furniture. He had just time to change into his new mustard-coloured suit with its orange tie and its topaz tie-pin, and arrived at the luncheon party in the very highest spirits. Besides, there was his talk with Lucia when other guests had gone, to look forward to. How he would tease her about settling in London!