‘Here, here,’ said Jonathan, protesting. ‘Don’t get fanciful! If you live in the country you’ve got to put up with the weather. Whatever next?’

It stopped snowing during the night, so on the following day he took a spade, a shovel and a hard broom and, dressed in breeches and leggings and a thick pullover, began to clear a path at each of the doors of the house. The snow was light and soft and the work was easy. By eleven in the morning he had got as far as the kitchen dump at the back of the house, and beyond the end of the lawn at the front. He went indoors for his elevenses, and then announced his intention of going up to the College to find out how Miss Hughes was getting on and whether her friend had arrived.

The snow had ceased at about five o’clock that morning. All the footmarks of the previous day were covered up. A wintry sun was trying to break through, but there was still plenty of snow in the sky, and Jonathan, glancing up at the heavens as he left the house for his long and difficult walk, began to wonder whether he had wasted time in clearing paths from the house.

He reached the College thoroughly tired. Some of the time he had been up to the thighs in snow, and the going everywhere was bad. He called at the lodge before going on to the main building, and was firmly jerked inside by the formidable Miss Emma Wootton, the sister of Abel Wootton and Harry Wootton, and Bob Wootton’s painstaking aunt.

‘Well, sir,’ she said discouragingly, ‘you must want something to do!’

‘I came to find out how Miss Hughes was getting on,’ explained Jonathan, feeling rather like a small boy with jam on his face. ‘Did Miss Diana Bagthorpe turn up, do you know?’

‘Being Physical, she did.’

‘Oh, the PT lady, is she? I’m glad she made it.’

‘The bus got stuck outside Stroud. She came that way. She walked it from there.’

‘Good heavens! She must be an Amazon!’

‘No. Little and good is what she is. One of the wiry, tough ones. She was about finished, though, when she got here, and wet to the skin, like you. She felt she had to get here, because of Miss Hughes. A grand little creetur, she is!’

‘I should just about think so. I’d like to meet her.’

‘Well, you will. Now, sir, you’ll just get out of them there soaking trousers, and I’ll have ’em all dried out by the time you get back here. It’s not too bad from here to the College. Abel and Harry swept a path, so as long as you’re back before the snow comes down again, you’ll at least get up there dry.’

‘But I can’t—’