‘This is grand!’ said Deborah, greeting Mrs Bradley. ‘I betted Jon you wouldn’t come! I said you’d be off on a toot to some conference or other. Do tell me what worked the charm!’

Mrs Bradley told the tale of the kitten and the two spills.

‘Good for the kitten!’ said Jonathan. ‘Look here, Deb, it’s barely three o’clock, and Aunt Adela says she had lunch on the train. We’ve time to go out and see a bit of the park.’

‘Indeed you have not!’ protested his wife at once. ‘Aunt Adela is going up to her room, and then, when she’s ready for it, I’m going to ring for tea, and by the time we’ve had tea it will be dark, and in any case you’ve got to go into Cirencester for those parcels. You had better go now and we’ll have tea as soon as you get back. It won’t take you long. I thought you were in a desperate hurry to put the car away!’

‘Don’t nag,’ said Jonathan, kissing her.

‘Do you like the house?’ asked Deborah, when tea was over and Mrs Bradley had been taken upon a conducted tour of the oak-beamed, gloomy, friendly, surprising old place.

‘Immensely,’ Mrs Bradley replied with the utmost sincerity.

‘Yes, so do I. I’m glad I’m going to have the baby here. He’s twins and I’m going to call him Mary Crispin.’

‘Indeed?’ said Mrs Bradley, studying her niece-by-marriage with interest. ‘This is glad news.’

‘You’ll be godmother, won’t you? I do so much want you to be.’

‘I shall be delighted. When do we first greet your heirs?’

‘Not until May, I’m afraid. Can you bear to wait until then? I don’t honestly think I can.’

‘I shall count the days, and mark them off on my calendar.’

‘You’re nice,’ said Deborah contentedly. ‘I’m very, very glad you could come. Please will you come at the time? I shall feel safe with you in the house.’

Mrs Bradley lay that night in an oak-beamed, mullion-windowed room with a view to the west and an ash-tree outside the window. She thought of Provost M. R. James’ story, but slept none the worse for that, and after breakfast she, her nephew and his wife went out for the promised expedition.

The weather was cold but not bitter, and the sky was still lowering and grey. They took a short cut from the house by way of a door in a wall, a path between centuries-old yew hedges, black, close-leaved and cleanly silent, and an iron fence over which Jonathan climbed and then lifted Deborah, and over which Mrs Bradley hopped like a robin.

This fence divided what might be called the garden proper from a paddock which climbed rapidly and (said Deborah, hanging on to Jonathan’s arm) unnecessarily uphill to the woods.