‘After so long in Africa, I imagine you feel it keenly,’ he said. ‘I should warn you here and now that Walwyk is much colder than London.’

Perhaps, she thought, his other appointment had been with some more suitable candidate, and he was trying to hint, kindly, that Walwyk was not the place for her. A sense of disappointment, of failure, made itself felt. It had sounded such an ideal post, so quiet, so entirely different from her present one.

Unobtrusively tea had been placed on the table, and from the position of the cups and the teapot she saw that she was expected to pour. She removed her shabby gloves, and hoping that no tremor would betray her nervousness, lifted the pot.

‘I take milk, and I like it put in first. No sugar,’ the Canon said.

She managed his cup neatly, but in pouring her own she felt her hand waver. Some tea slopped into the saucer.

‘I believe you are nervous,’ he said with a smile. ‘There is no need to be. I should be on tenterhooks, for I am still to be put to the test. I had a surprising number of applications, but there was something about your letter . . .’ He moved one hand sightly. ‘I’m seldom wrong about such things, though I may seem rash and hasty. And now that I have seen you, I have, no doubt at all.’

‘You mean . . .’ she began, and had no breath left with which to complete the question.

‘I mean that you are exactly what I am looking for. The question is, can you be persuaded that we are what you are looking for?’

It seemed too easy. It could, of course, be an answer to prayer, but Miss Mayfield, though her faith was strong and humble, had had considerable experience with prayers and knew that the answers were very seldom as direct and simple as this.

She said, ‘I haven’t asked my present Head for a testimonial. The Walwyk post sounded so attractive I feared there would be great competition. And to go back, having made plain that I wished to get away from Alchester, would have, been . . . Well, I shouldn’t have liked it much.’

‘The Miss Tilbury with whom you worked for an extremely long time, in what must have been testing circumstances, seems to have thought highly of you.’

‘I brought the original of that. And perhaps I should, in honesty, point out that Rose – Miss Tilbury – was my friend.’

‘That is itself a credential; twenty years together at the back of nowhere . . . I had great difficulty in finding Entuba, even on a large-scale map. What Mission was it, Miss Mayfield? CMS?’

‘Strictly speaking, I suppose it wasn’t a Mission at all, not in the usually accepted sense. It was Rose’s private and personal venture. She’s a . . . very exceptional person; almost a saint, I think.’