‘I’m trying to give a fair picture. You see, I intensely dislike changes. I don’t wish you, in six months’ time, when you have been in Walwyk for six weeks, to come and tell me that you are lonely, unhappy, buried alive, stagnating in a backwater.’ He brought out each expression as though it were set in quotation marks. ‘I have a long memory. Some twenty-four or -five years ago we had three changes in as many years, bad for everybody. Then we settled down and that was delightful. Our present Headmistress has been with us for twenty-two years and is leaving for the happiest of reasons. I should like to feel settled again, after Easter. So . . . would you like some time to think it over before deciding?’

Once or twice during the course of her lifetime Miss Mayfield had been aware of a voice in her mind which had issued a criticism or a warning which had little or nothing to do with her conscious thought. As though another, more cautious and sophisticated person had made a comment. It happened now. The voice said quite clearly, You should see the place.

But this, she argued back, is the last week in November. If I am to leave Alchester at the end of the Easter term, I must give in my notice by the end of December, to take effect at the end of April. I have no other free weekend before Christmas. And then there are the fares. She thought of Miss Stevens; she thought of the ‘flatlet’ which she shared; of the fog; the clatter.

She said, ‘I think I have decided. If you consider me suitable, I should like, very much, to come to Walwyk.’

‘Splendid. I will confirm, in writing, my offer of salary and accommodation. And I hope, from my heart, that you will spend long happy years with us. Now, what are your immediate plans? Are you staying in London overnight?’

‘Oh no. I must get back. I looked up the trains. There is one at five-fifteen. I might even catch that.’

He glanced at his watch.

‘If you wish to, you shall,’ he said. They rose and walked towards the entrance. Nobody came running, complaining that the tea had not been paid for. He was known and trusted here, obviously.

Outside the door the man in uniform flicked a finger and a taxi slowed and swerved. As it did so, suddenly from nowhere a little wizened old woman popped up, holding on her arm a flat basket in which lay small bunches of desiccated white heather. She said, in a mechanical, whining voice:

‘Buy a bitta white hevva for luck for the lydy, sir?’

The commissionaire made a wide, scornful gesture of dismissal. Canon Thorby cried:

‘Wait! We’ve had our luck, haven’t we, Miss Mayfield, but we may as well have the symbol of it.’