‘Now that is interesting,’ said Georgie. ‘Practically every time that I’ve passed Mallards during these last two days Elizabeth has been writing in the window of the garden-room. Frightfully busy: hardly looking up at all. I don’t know for certain that she is writing her Odyssey – such a good title – but she is writing something, and surely it must be that. And two of those times Major Benjy was sitting with her on the piano-stool and she was reading to him from a pile of blue foolscap. Of course I couldn’t hear the words, but there were her lips going on like anything. So busy that she didn’t see me, but I think he did.’

‘No!’ said Lucia, forgetting her lecture for the moment. ‘Has she made it up with him then?’

‘She must have. He dined there once, for I saw him going in, and he lunched there once, for I saw him coming out, and then there was tea, when she was reading to him, and I passed them just now in his car. All their four hands were on the wheel, and I think he was teaching her to drive, or perhaps learning himself.’

‘And fancy his forgiving all the names she called him, and putting his teeth on the doorstep,’ said Lucia. ‘I believe there’s more than meets the eye.’

‘Oh, much more,’ said he. ‘You know she wanted to marry him and nearly got him, Diva says, just before we came here. She’s having another go.’

‘Clever of her,’ said Lucia appreciatively. ‘I didn’t think she had so much ability. She’s got him on the hop, you see, when he’s ever so grateful for her forgiving him. But cunning, Georgie, rather low and cunning. And it’s quite evident she’s writing our adventures as hard as she can. It’s a good thing I’ve wasted no time.’

‘I should like to see her face when she comes back from her drive,’ said Georgie. ‘They were pasting the High Street with you, as I came. Friday afternoon, too: that’s a good choice because it’s early closing.’

‘Yes, of course, that’s why I chose it,’ said Lucia. ‘I don’t think she can possibly be ready a whole day before me, and if she hires the Institute the day after me, nobody will go, because I shall have told them everything already. Then she can’t have hired the Institute on the same day as I, because you can’t have two lectures, especially on the same subject, going on in the same room simultaneously. Impossible.’

Grosvenor came in with the afternoon post.

‘And one by hand, ma’am,’ she said.

Lucia, of course, looked first at the one by hand. Nothing that came from outside Tilling could be as urgent as a local missive.