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Wait till you see them. As I told you before, they are very drab, and I was wondering if you would come over and give me some advice? "

"Oh." She shook her head now.

"I've never had any experience in choosing materials or matching colours, except for a dress or a blouse that Mother would be making for me or Cherry."

"Oh, I'm sure you've got perfect taste. Anyway, they have sent a great assortment of materials from Newcastle. I knew I could have asked Miss Netherton's advice, but you know' he poked his face towards her now

'her house is still dressed in the style of the fifties and I feel I want something more up to date, more modern, bright, cheerful ... Oh, the adjectives I use! Anyway, will you come?"

"I should love to, and also to see your home. Do you feel you're settled in it?"

"Oh, yes, yes. I feel different altogether." A sombre look came over his face as he added, "Life became unbearable up there, really unbearable. I went up yesterday to see my sister and she tells me there's going to be further changes. She doesn't know whether Raymond will bring his wife there. But between you and me, I don't think that young lady fancies being mistress of that house. Perhaps it's from what she has already heard. Anyway, her father is a widower and they have taken quite a big place outside Newcastle, and it's my opinion that Raymond will end up there. That, of course, would leave Simon in charge of the house." He stopped abruptly, wetted his lips, then said,

"Did I tell you I've acquired a carriage? Nothing elaborate. Also a trap. I enjoy the trap so much. I've brought it today. I've tied her up at yon end of the fence on the west side. Would you like to take a jaunt back with me and see my little hut?"

"Yes. Oh yes." She found herself smiling widely at him, for he appeared at the moment like a bright light suddenly illuminating her dull existence. And she added excitedly, "Would you mind waiting until I change my dress? Perhaps you would like to go and have a word with Dada and Ma in the barn?"

"I'll do that. Yes, I'll do that."

She hurried to her bedroom and after a moment of standing before the small mirror, which reflected her black dress and showed up her face as utterly colourless, she turned swiftly as if making a decision and went to the cupboard in the corner of the room. Two dresses were hanging there. She took down the saxe-blue one with a white collar attached, and after changing into it she again looked in the mirror, then turned the white collar inwards. Next, she took down a paper bag from the top of the cupboard and drew out a black straw hat, which she put on. She then opened the top drawer of a chest of drawers and took out a pair of black gloves and a white handkerchief. Lastly, she donned her black cloak. Now she was ready.

In the yard, where her mother and father were now standing with Timothy, she could see immediately that her parents had noticed she had changed her dress, and their surprise showed. But they did not comment on it, yet she knew there was censure in their eyes that after only a matter of weeks, she could shed her outward sign of mourning.

"I shall bring her safely back." Timothy was smiling from one to the other, but Nathaniel's answer was brief: "Drive carefully, then," he said.

"I certainly shall."

"Don't stay too long," said Maria now.

"The twilight still comes early."

"I won't." She looked from one to the other, then turned and walked away, leaving Timothy to say goodbye to them.

As they drove away she lifted her hand in farewell to them, but received no response.

She admired the horse and she admired the trap, and she told him so as he sat on the opposite narrow seat, and she laughed at him as he said,

"Get up there! Daisy."

"You call her Daisy."

"Well, it is instead of lazy, because she is the laziest animal I've ever come across. Look at her

stomach. She's too full of oats to work. Edward, that's the new coachman, he says we've got to cut down half her feed and stop giving her tidbits. But I can't resist giving her tidbits. She loves sugar and sweeties. "

"Well, in that case you mustn't grumble if she won't gallop."

"Gallop! I don't think she's ever galloped in her life. She wouldn't know how to. She belonged to my doctor's children. They are grown up now and he didn't know what to do with her. So that's how I came by her."

On entering the village, Anna was immediately aware that there were people standing outside the forge where a horse was being shod.

Timothy was sitting sideways and so he merely glimpsed them; but she was sitting facing them and she saw the blacksmith drop the horse's hoof, then straighten his back and stare towards her. She heard him distinctly shout a name, and then, glancing sideways, she saw one of his sons come out of the forge, and although she didn't move her head any further round, she knew that they were both looking in her direction.

Next, a woman about to enter the grocer's shop turned and stared, and was joined by a man coming out. And he stared. Then two faces seemed to pop up over the rim of bottled glass that formed half of the window in the King's Head. Lastly, where the road narrowed as it left the village, two farm workers stepped from the middle of the road onto the verge to allow them to pass. One of them touched his forelock, saying,

"Day Mr. Timothy."

And Timothy called back, "Good day, Roberts." But the other man just looked at them steadily, at least at her.

After driving some distance further on Timothy said, "It'll be all over the village tonight. Will you mind?"

"Why should I?"

"Yes, why should you? And anyway' he glanced at her' they know I'm harmless, at least they consider me so ... Poor Mr. Timothy. I get annoyed, not just annoyed but angry when I hear that, because I am not poor in their sense of the word."

She put her hand out and touched his knee, saying, "You shouldn't let that trouble you. They are ignorant. I ... we have all suffered from their ignorance for years, so, in a way, I know how you feel. But they would do you no harm ever, whereas us, they would like to burn us alive."

"Oh! Oh! Don't say a thing like that, Anna. As you said, it's ignorance, just ignorance because in the main they're not cruel, just stupid."

"I don't agree with you there, Tim. To me they are ignorant, cruel, and stupid. Do you know that my mother never came back from the town for years but that she had to wash her skirt?"

He turned his head quickly towards her, "Wash her skirt?"

"Yes, wash her skirt, because they would spit on her. Was she not living in sin? and this was the rub which annoyed them, being comfortably under the patronage of Miss Netherton, their landlady, at least of a number of them. Yet they didn't spit on the widow of a certain farmer who had died

eight years before but whose place had been taken over by the wife's own brother, and she produced a child each year. "

"Oh, yes, yes." He was nodding his head now.

"I know who you mean. But two of that family are idiots."

"Idiots or not, they're accepted. So why should we have been tormented all these years? Can you tell me the reason? Those children on the farm are not only bastards ... yes, I can use that word, at least to you, Tim, but they are the result of incest. But I think at the bottom of it the main reason, or one of them, is that my father educated my mother, and then they educated us as far as it was possible. We were outcasts, yet we acted as superior outcasts, and they couldn't bear that. They still can't. I ... I' she bowed her head now " I'm still afraid of the village, Tim. "

"Oh, my dear, you mustn't be; they can do nothing more. And as you said, you're under the patronage of Miss Netherton, and also, may I say so, of me, for what my patronage is worth. But that is the wrong word to use. It is my feeling of friendliness towards your entire family and knowing that I have in you a very, very, special friend.

Anyway, come along, smile; you cannot live with the dead, Anna. You are alive and your life is before you. Ah . here we are! And look.

"

He pointed to the horse's head.

"She knows the gate already, as she knows where the manger is and what's in it. Oh, she's a knowing girl.

Get up! there with you. "

The drive was short but it opened into a large gravel square, and there stood the house. It was creeper-covered and large flower-heads of wist aria were hanging over the upper windows. He pointed to them as he drew up the horse, saying, "That's growing on to the roof.

Fletcher, our gardener, tells me we'll have to get it down if we don't want the gutters to be blocked and water to come through the ceilings.

Oh, my goodness, the things that have got to be looked to when you take on a house."

He held out his hand and helped her down from the step; then looking at the man now standing to his side, he said, "Oh, Edward, see to her, will you? But I think you had better cut down her feed tonight."

"Yes, sir." The man grinned now.

"So you can give her more tidbits, sir."

Timothy said nothing to this but exchanged a knowing look with Anna; then, taking her elbow, he led her onto the pillared porch, through an open oak double door and into a hall. It was quite a large hall for such a moderate-sized house, and the broad stairs that went up from it were of plain oak and were uncarpeted and, pointing to them, Timothy said, "I nearly broke my neck on them yesterday. I must get them covered; in spite of Miss Netherton. She thinks it would be a sin to cover up that old wood. Well, my dear, let me have your cloak and hat."

He led her into a room at the far end of the hall and with a theatrical gesture he said, "The drawing-room, ma'am." Then added, "It's hardly bigger than the housekeeper's room in the Manor. But it looks comfortable, don't you think?"

She stood in the middle of the room and looked around, turning her body as she did so. She did this twice before answering, "I think it's lovely, Tim;

more than that, beautiful. And I don't know why you want to replace the curtains. "

"You don't?"

"No." She went over to one of the two deep-bay windows and, feeling the curtain material, she said, "It's beautiful brocade."

"But it's faded. It should be a deep rose. Look; pull open the pleats and you will see. "

"Yes. Yes, I can see from the pelmet and the fringe, but it goes with this room. I don't think you will ever improve on it."

"But if I had new ones made in the same colour?"

"They would be new, unworn, untempered, and shouting at everything else in this room."

He now turned slowly and looked about him before saying, "You know, I think you're right. Yes, you're right. I never thought about it that way; one thing shouting at another. Well, well, I'm so glad you came, Miss Dagshaw. You have saved me quite a bit of money."

They laughed together now; then he said, "Come and see the dining-room."

They were in the hall again when a thickset middle-aged man approached him, saying, "Would you care for some tea now, sir?"

"Yes. Yes, I think we would, Walters. By the way, this is Miss Dagshaw, a very dear friend of mine, and she's come to help me choose curtains. At least that was the idea, but she tells me now that I would be wrong to change the drawing-room ones."

The man smiled at Anna now. He had a pleasant broad face as he said,

"I'm sure the young lady is right; they are magnificent curtains, sir."

"But as I've said, Walters, they're faded."

"A lot of faded things are magnificent, sir."

"Ah. Ah." Timothy now pointed to his butler- cum-valet with his thumb.

"I'll have to watch out for him; I've already discovered we've got a philosopher here." And at that he left the man still smiling broadly and led her into the dining-room, saying immediately, "Now don't tell me you like these curtains."

She looked around the room at the mahogany table, chairs, and sideboard, and the two glass cabinets of china; then up at the glass chandelier hanging from the painted decorated circle in the middle of the ceiling, and she said, "Yes, I like them, but this room is not so light as your drawing-room and so I think you could have a less heavy curtain at the window."

"Ah, well, new curtains for the dining-room. Now come along and see what I would like to call the library but daren't. It is a glorified study."

The room was about fifteen feet long and twelve feet wide and two walls had shelves from floor to ceiling and these were filled with books.

The table was littered with more books, but in the middle of it was a large writing-pad. And when she looked at it he dismissed it saying,

"Scribbles, scribbles. I keep scribbling words in the hope that I may astound myself. You see, the Renaissance interests me, particularly the influence of Florence. You could say, one way and another, I waste a lot of time." And

saying so, he pointed to the French window and said, "That leads out into a little conservatory."

A few minutes later she was standing under the covered glass dome, and she turned to him, saying, "Little? Why do you call it little? It must run the length of the side of the house."

"It does, but I suggest at present I'm comparing the rooms with those in the Manor. But I'm not belittling it, oh no, because this is mine.

The conservatory up there didn't belong to me, it was only loaned, and then again much against the grain of the head gardener. We didn't see eye to eye; we didn't get on together. "

Showing her surprise, she said, "I couldn' tim agine you not getting on with anyone."

His face unsmiling, he stared at her as he said, "Under my " be pleasant on any account" facade, if I don't think a thing is right, I'm almost like you, yes I am, I speak out. I may tell you, I wasn't loved by all the staff in the Manor. You see, as though I were an idiot, a dear idiot, I was allowed to walk and wander where I would, until some people realised that nothing escaped me, and that if you were subject to epileptic fits it didn't mean that you were mental. It took quite a time for some people to realise this; but when they did, their attitude towards me changed: I knew too much about them and their pilfering. And it was on a big scale, too, the top hierarchy working in conjunction with the outside farm staff, and the suppliers all making hay when the sun shone, and even when it didn't.