But a certain stimulus which had enlivened them all since Lucia’s advent from Riseholme was lacking. It was not wholly that there was no Lucia, nor, wholly, that there was no Elizabeth, it was the intense reactions which they had produced together that everyone missed so fearfully. Day after day those who were left met and talked in the High Street, but never was there news of that thrilling kind which since the summer had keyed existence up to so exciting a level. But it was interesting to see Major Benjy in his new motor, which he drove himself, and watch his hairbreadth escapes from collisions at sharp corners and to hear the appalling explosions of military language if any other vehicle came within a yard of his green bonnet.

‘He seems to think,’ said Diva to Mrs Bartlett, as they met on shopping errands one morning, ‘that now he has got a motor nobody else may use the road at all.’

‘A trumpery little car,’ said Mrs Bartlett, ‘I should have thought, with ten thousand pounds as good as in his pocket, he might have got himself something better.’

They were standing at the corner looking up towards Mallards, and Diva suddenly caught sight of a board on Major Benjy’s house, announcing that it was for sale.

‘Why, whatever’s that?’ she cried. ‘That must have been put up only today. Good morning, Mr Georgie. What about Major Benjy’s house?’

Georgie still wore a broad black band on his sleeve.

‘Yes, he told me yesterday that he was going to move into Mallards next week,’ he said. ‘And he’s going to have a sale of his furniture almost immediately.’

‘That won’t be much to write home about,’ said Diva scornfully. ‘A few moth-eaten tiger-skins which he said he shot in India.’

‘I think he wants some money,’ said Georgie. ‘He’s bought a motor, you see, and he has to keep up Mallards as well as his own house.’

‘I call that very rash,’ said Mrs Bartlett. ‘I call that counting your chickens before they’re hatched. Oh dear me, what a thing to have said! Dreadful!’

Georgie tactfully covered this up by a change of subject.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to put up a cenotaph in the churchyard to dear Lucia and Elizabeth.’

‘What? Both?’ asked Diva.

‘Yes, I’ve thought it carefully over, and it’s going to be both.’

‘Major Benjy ought to go halves with you then,’ said Diva.

‘Well, I told him I was intending to do it,’ said Georgie, ‘and he didn’t catch on. He only said “Capital idea,” and took some whisky and soda. So I shan’t say any more. I would really just as soon do it all myself.’