‘You’ll find my sermons tiresomely simple. I fit my discourse to the capacity of my audience, and – and here’s a strange thing – despite all these years of better-than-average education, our villagers are still simple. You’ll find them bilingual, too. Inside the classroom, all but the very dullest will speak and write with some regard for grammar; outside, all but the very exceptional revert to the vernacular. You mustn’t let that depress you. It’s just a fact that must be faced: hotly as the faddists would deny it, at least three-quarters of all compulsory education leads to nothing at all.’

‘I’ve always tried to bear in mind the Parable of the Sower.’

‘Precisely. Mind you, I have always thought he was either very careless, inexperienced or purblind.’

It was exactly the kind of remark which Rose Tilbury sometimes made, and Miss Mayfield laughed.

‘I’ll step into school on Monday, at about nine, just to introduce you. Until then, goodbye.’ He opened the gate which led into a short lane which served both school and church, skirted the Rectory and debouched into the road which led to Miss Mayfield’s house.

Once on her way home, she found her feet moving faster and more lightly than they had done since her illness. She had been away from her little house for less than three hours, and she was longing to get back to it, already imagining how the hall would look when she opened the door, how she would go into the neat kitchen and put on the kettle and take one of the rose-spattered cups from the hooks on the dresser.

Very faintly and far away, the admonitory voice in her mind issued a little warning: You mustn’t become too much attached to this house, you know, because one day you must leave it.

Yes, she answered it, I do know that, but perhaps when I leave, it will be to go and share a cottage with Rose, and that, of course, would make up for everything.

5

‘Lord, behold us with Thy blessing
Once again assembled here . . .’

THE TWENTY-FIVE PUPILS, RANGING FROM A TEARFUL five-year-old recently separated for the first time from its mother to a rather elegant young lady with a ponytail, faced their new teacher as the words of the traditional hymn for the opening of term was sung by those who knew them.