‘It’s beautiful,’ Miss Mayfield said in an awed voice.

Sometimes in Entuba, at the end of a burning, dust-tormented day, she and Rose had talked of the time when, very old, past all usefulness, they would retire and live in a small cottage in a green English lane. It was an impossible dream, and they knew it. Rose had once – only once – admitted that. It was just after she had spent her godmother’s legacy on the hospital.

‘We‘ll never have our cottage now, Deb. We’ll die in the damned hospital, either of bed-sores or an injection from an unsterilized hypodermic, being too feeble to see that things are properly done.’ That was the remarkable thing about Rose; she saw things clearly and unsentimentally. She had given her life and her money to Africa’s service, but she was entirely disillusioned about all but a very few of the people themselves. On that occasion, having made that gloomy forecast, she had immediately recanted and said:

‘I don’t mean that. I needed the hospital and God gave it to me. When I need and have qualified for a cottage, I shall have that, too, no doubt.’

Now, moving between the freshly leafed flowering woods on the outskirts of Walwyk, Miss Mayfield indulged in another little daydream. Out of her much-increased salary, perhaps she could save something; perhaps here, in the very heart of the country, she could find a tiny cottage and have it ready to welcome Rose in, say, twelve or eighteen years’ time; perhaps even, freed from the outrageous demands of Miss Stevens’s careerist experiments, she might find time and energy to do some extra work – a little coaching, an evening class. Under the heady excitement of her first glimpse of this beautiful place, she thought of addressing envelopes at so much a thousand, or baby-sitting.

The woods gave way at last to cultivated land along the highway, though they still loomed, green and mysterious on the skyline. A house, a large one, a good example of Tudor half-timbering, came into view.

‘One or two right substantial people live hereabouts,’ Ed said. ‘Thass Mr Frisby’s place. He breed them black-and-white cattle called Frisbians.’

Miss Mayfield tucked away this piece of information as a titbit to tell Rose.

‘He do very well in all the shows, and last year he sold a bull to somewhere abroad for three thousand guineas. Then this here next place is Mr Tharkell’s; he train race horses and he do well, too. I allust look out for his; he’s lucky for me. I bought this cab out of what I made backing Viking, and two years later, when Sibling run, I even borrowed a bit to put on, and that paid off my house. The only thing is, with him thass more a hobby like. He’ve got other interests, and he’ll take off and go abroad any time the fancy take him.’