She wanted to run in the fields, to trip over mole-hills and sprawl in the mud. She was a Peter Pan to herself.

We did not run any more, but we talked. Nurse Robins told me about her life in hospital, but she said that she liked nursing boys most.

By this time we had climbed Askew Hill. We stood on the vague outline of the earthwork and looked across the Trent Valley. Far away at Willington we heard the trains shunting.

The footpath had been ploughed up on the other side of the hill and we sank ankle-deep into the clinging earth. It was dotted with silvery oyster shells. We sat on the stile and scraped the heavy mud-clogs off with sticks.

“What a long time you’ve been out!” Sister said when we got back. “Your tea’s waiting for you in the Common Room, Welch.”

I went in and found Sister’s dog by the fire. I played with its ears until it gave me a little nip, then I turned it over and rubbed its stomach, and it stretched out its paws as if it were hung up dead in a butcher’s shop.

As I drank my tea I turned over the pages of the book I had chosen off the shelf. On the flyleaf someone had written, “Sister expects that every man this day will do his duty.”

I laughed although I knew how old the joke must be. Every night Sister would come round and ask, “Have you done your duty today V’ She never varied her words, just as hospital nurses always say, “Have you had your bowels opened ?”

I tried to make the most of my last night, but the thought of going back to the House was gnawing at me.

I walked about the room and wandered in the passage. I even went upstairs, which was forbidden, and looked in all the empty rooms just as I had done at my cousin’s house.

The wards were very bleak in the half-light. They were like modern milking-sheds with rows of four-legged iron bedsteads instead of cows.

As I crept down again the dull maid saw me, but she did not say anything. I wondered if she would tell Sister.

          

No taxi came for me in the morning. The red band was taken off my hat and I left the Sanatorium, carrying my suitcase. I took the footpath through the fields behind New House so that I should meet as few people as possible. No one passed me. I walked very slowly. The House was empty when I arrived; morning school was not yet over.

I went quickly up to the notice-board to find out which study and which dormitory I was in, then I reported to Matron and stayed talking to her until the lunch bell rang.

The House had been gradually filling up. Feet stampeded in the passages and voices rang out. I was thankful that I had arrived early. It would be much better to meet at lunch when there was the business of eating to occupy everyone.

There were smiles and nods as I joined the long line streaming into the dining-room, but talking was not allowed until after Grace.

Haltingly at first the conversation flowed all over the room; then it gathered volume until it had reached a steady throb. I imagined that everyone was talking about me, and I expect they were. I tried not to look at anyone, but to smile and be natural.

“Be natural!” I told myself fiercely, “be natural.”

Watson was the first to speak to me directly.

“What have you been up to, Welch ?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing.” I tried to be casual. “I was fed up, so I thought I’d go to Devonshire instead of coming back here.”

I could see his eyes behind the slightly tinted glasses that he wore. They did not look dangerous.

“Tell us about it,” he said. “All sorts of rumours have been going about here.”

“About Iliffe taking me to Italy?” I asked.

“That was one; then there was something about you getting fifty pounds and going to Paris.”

So the money had grown to fifty pounds! I wondered who could have invented these stories. Other people were listening by now and questions were being passed down the table to me. Nobody seemed at all unfriendly and I tried to answer everything, only pretending that I felt adventurous and not desperate.

Across the room, at the prefects’ table, I could see the back of my brother’s head. His hair was so fair it seemed almost white. I wondered what he thought about it all.

There was a shuffling, then a silence as we all waited for Mr.