‘I reckon you could keep her in till Christmas and she still couldn’t count,’ Mrs Rigby said pleasantly. ‘Even her rabbits, she’ll count ten one day and twelve the next.’

Miss Mayfield saw Ethel stiffen when the rabbits were mentioned. But she said with a land of peevishness:

‘It was twelve; and that’s too many now there’s no one to help with the food. I think I shall sell the lot.’

Mrs Rigby gave a little laugh, ‘You silly girl. What will you say next? You know you think the world of them rabbits.’

‘You mustn’t keep poor Mrs Head waiting any longer,’ Miss Mayfield said.

When she reached home she found that the post had brought her a letter which Berta had taken from the mat and put upon the gate-legged table. The address was typewritten, and the long buff envelope bore in the top left-hand corner the printed words ‘Certain Future Assurance Company’.

Like everyone else in the British Isles, she had from time to time received admonitory communications from various assurance companies, bidding her prepare for a comfortable old age, to insure against fire and flood, to make certain, in the event of her sudden demise, that her dependants would not be doomed to starvation. She almost did not open this latest arrival. She had picked it up and carried it in her hand into the kitchen, where she put it down. She made her tea and carried it into the sitting room. When she was about to go to bed, she remembered that on many occasions recently she had intended to leave a note for Berta asking her not to make such strong morning tea. It had become steadily blacker and blacker and was beginning to affect her digestion. Last term she would have found it easy enough to speak about it; now always in all her dealings with Berta was her awareness of the girl’s part – possibly unintentional – in fostering the rumour of her affection for Wesley Baines, and that had affected their relationship, so that now it was much easier to leave a note.

So she took a knife and slit the envelope, intending to use its clean inner side for her purpose. The note to Berta was not to be written that evening, for out of the envelope came a sheet of paper closely written all over in Mrs Baines’s characteristic characterless hand.

No date. No address.

Dear Miss Mayfield,