Janet felt awkward. Gladys was obviously sincere in her pleading. She had been looking after the child, and if she and the doctor believed she should be in a boarding school, it was tough a possible governess arriving out of the blue.

“She wouldn’t be going to school until September,” she suggested cautiously. “I might take her over until then and see how we got on.”

Gladys’ tone was rude.

“Well, of course, I can’t stop you.”

“Goodness!” thought Janet. “What is this?”

“After all, even if I don’t teach her, I suppose Mr. Sheldon might decide to have a resident governess rather than send her to school.”

“Oh, no, he won’t! I put a stop to that. If a governess lives in, I said, I go out.”

Janet, for a person of twenty-five, had led a sheltered life. There had been no other women in her office to chatter, and discuss things with her. At home their friends were the children of Maggie’s friends. They had their faults like everybody else, but on the whole they were simple and straightforward. They liked a good time and a good laugh. They fell in love, some of them, and if so they got married. They were not a complex lot. Now, listening to Gladys, Janet felt as if she were on the edge of something new. Gladys’ husky voice had deepened and smouldered as she spoke of Donald. “She loves him,” she told herself, and, even as the thought reached her, she felt a revulsion. This was not love as she knew it; it was not love as she wanted to know it. It was fierce and possessive. The glimpse she had of Gladys’ heart was as if, used to an English wood, she had peered into a tropical forest. She got up, awkward as a schoolgirl.

“Thank you for the coffee. I . . . I must go.”

Gladys looked as if she were going to say more, but she changed her mind. She seemed to accept that Janet intended to take the job. Her manner altered. Janet was no longer a guest. She nodded towards the door into the passage.

“You’ll find Donald in one of the barns. Ask Ben, the yardman.”

Donald was deep in a discussion with his horse-keeper. He smiled at Janet and said he would not be a minute, then went on with what he was saying. A lot of the talk was incomprehensible to her, especially the horse-keeper’s replies. The blacksmith was apparently ill, and a horse called Samson was in need of a shoe. Donald was arguing with the old man on the advisability of taking him somewhere called Molston to be shod. The discussion finished by Donald laughing, and giving the old man an affectionate push to send him off. He turned to Janet.

“Stubborn old fellow. I often wonder whose farm this is. Well, what did you think of her?”