“The address … ah, let me see now — I think I can remember it — it’s the Salway Private Hotel, Beach Street.”

“Her name first, stupid — I can’t write without knowing that, can I?”

“Krafft — Leni Krafft.”

“Goodness — it sounds foreign.”

“Oh yes, I forgot to tell you — she is foreign — and she doesn’t speak much English.”

“Oh, really now? She’s not a Hottentot, by any chance, or a wild woman from Borneo? You’re always so vague about these things.”

“She’s German.”

“Well, that’s all right. At any rate it might have been worse. The Murdochs always had German governesses. What made her leave Germany?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I shall write to her, anyhow. I suppose she can understand a letter written in plain English?”

“Oh yes.”

So Leni got a letter written in plain English. It offered her the job of looking after Gerald at a salary of sixty pounds a year if she proved satisfactory after a trial.

Leni came to Calderbury in March. “You’d better meet the train,” said Jessica, “since you’re the one who knows her”; and David said all right, he would if he got through his visits in time; otherwise Susan would have to do the recognizing as best she could. But it happened that he did finish in time, though it was dusk when he reached the station. The station-master nodded as he climbed to the platform.

“Evening, doctor. Off on your travels?”

“No. I’m just meeting somebody.”

“Train’s late to-night. Only just left the junction. Twenty minutes yet if you’ve anything else to do.”

“No, thanks, I don’t think I have. I’ll just walk up and down.”

“Well, it’s good exercise, they say.”

A laugh — silence — his own footsteps thudding softly on the wooden planks — chimes from the Cathedral — a quarter to five. And as he walked he began to think, really for the first time in his life, about Leni. She was coming to Calderbury. She was coming to live in his house. It was odd the way these things happened.

He watched the darkness fill the sky and absorb the lights of Calderbury into a faint glow over the roof tops. He heard five chimes from the Cathedral, the last stroke blown a little sad by a wind that suddenly veered. Then, with a whang of wire and a small answering clatter, the signal fell. The train emerged from the cutting across the river, clanked over the iron bridge, and came streaking through the water meadows like a familiar friendly ghost. Whereat Calderbury’s one porter held himself ready for the improbable event of any one requiring his services. “G’d evening, doctor.”

They talked for a moment about the porter’s little girl, who had been ill and was now recovering.

The train was in.

“Shall I take ’is luggage, sir?”

“Whose luggage?”

“Your friend’s. Thought you was meeting a friend.”

“Oh yes … but … it’s a lady. I don’t know whether she’ll have any luggage. Well, maybe she will … Yes, take it down!”