‘Look, I do know. Old Rigby was my uncle Eric’s head stockman, and a bull they trusted absolutely went savage suddenly and killed him. The old girl had adequate compensation, but apart from that all she’s had these last years has been Ethel. And she does dote on her. You really can take my word for that.’

‘Why does Ethel live with her grandmother?’

‘She’s illegitimate. Her mother just ran away and went to the bad in Wandford, sometime during the war. When she had the baby, they notified Granny Rigby, and she went and fetched it right away. And I’m sure no child ever had a better home.’

‘You don’t think, then, that I should do anything about this?’

‘Just ignore it, and then next week put “cruel” on the spelling list, and whichever little brute wrote it will know you’ve seen the joke.’

Helping to dish up, and then eating her own lunch, Miss Mayfield turned this over in her mind. As soon as the meal was finished she went back to her classroom, took a new exercise book from the cupboard and counted its pages. When the class was assembled again, she said something vague about ordering stock and asked for all exercise books to be handed in so that she might judge how near they were to completion. That gave her an opportunity to leaf through all the books quickly. Only one had fewer pages than an unused book, and that was Sydney Baines’s geography book.

On the previous week there had been some dispute about whose turn it was to sharpen the pencils, which, in well-provided Walwyk, was done by a rather fascinating little machine. At the end of this afternoon Miss Mayfield said:

‘I’ve decided that in future the pencil sharpening is to be done in turns, alphabetically. So you will do it today, Sydney.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘I have a name, Sydney,’ said Miss Mayfield.

‘Yes, Miss Mayfield.’

She let him work away for a while, thinking over what she knew of him already. Most of her information had come from Miss Benson, and Sydney, because of his different colouring, had been the subject of one of her earliest inquiries. So now Miss Mayfield knew that Sydney’s father, Wesley Baines, was the village handyman; he could do anything, carpentry, thatching, shoe repairing, even watch mending; he was an unorthodox Walwykian, in that he was a staunch Methodist and walked to Renham every Sunday to attend chapel there; he had gone to the war, reached sergeant’s rank, and won a Military Medal; and he had married a ‘foreigner’, a Bedford woman who was a nurse. Miss Mayfield knew from observation that Sydney was intelligent and good-natured; watching him now as he performed his task, she saw that he was neat-handed and thorough.

Presently she said:

‘Sydney, come here a moment.’

When he stood by her tall desk she held out the paper and asked: