There were ten days remaining until the opening of the school term. The children had subscribed and sent her the pretty little wireless set, so it was natural enough that she should visit every one of them in their homes and tender her thanks.

Ethel Rigby was cleaning out her rabbits. Mrs Rigby had opened the door and said how nice to see Miss Mayfield, and was she quite better and what a shame it all was. Nobody could have been friendlier. She said that Ethel was with the rabbits.

‘Come through,’ she said.

And there was just a fraction of a second, just before Ethel had herself in hand again, when Miss Mayfield knew that to Ethel Rigby this was not just the return of a schoolteacher, restored after an accident, but something upon a different plane. A man in a laboratory, confident of the result of his experiment and then finding something fantastically different from his expectation, might have looked as Ethel Rigby did, raising her head from the hutch she was scrubbing. It was not surprise, or pleasure, or dismay. Nothing so human. Just for a moment Ethel’s pretty, pale, rabbity face wore the visual expression of all the curiosity of the whole human race. And what will happen now?

Then, pale, pretty and rabbity, she listened to Miss Mayfield’s words of gratitude; and she said her little piece: she hoped Miss Mayfield was better; she’d been sorry to hear about the accident.

Sydney Baines was alone in the cottage. Miss Mayfield had already heard, through Berta, that Mr Tharkell had offered Mrs Baines employment. Apparently, race-horses in training needed almost scientific attention, food weighed out to a fraction of an ounce, temperatures taken, their reactions to muscular exertion assessed. So when Miss Mayfield called at the Baines’s cottage, Mrs Baines was away at her new job and Sydney was bottling plums. Doing it very handily, too.

‘I came to thank you, Sydney, for your part in sending me that lovely little wireless set. It cheered me every day.’

‘The boys wanted to get a red one, but the girls said blue and white.’ Sydney’s voice held the discontent of all minorities. He had grown during her absence and lost some of his sturdy look. She thought, Poor child, he’s fatherless, and her determination hardened in her.

‘The colour really doesn’t matter. It’s the size and handiness that I like. I shall bring it to school sometimes next term, and we can listen to talks, and music and plays.’

‘Are you coming back to school, Miss?’

‘Oh yes. Of course.’

‘I’m glad of that. They said you never would. And we missed you.’

‘Do you still help Ethel with her rabbits, Sydney?’

‘Not like I did. You see, my mum is out all day, and my . . . I have to do a lot of things about here now.’

‘In fact, you are the man of the house now.’