“Are you cold, child? Are you trembling? Yes, your hands are cold. We had better go back to the house.”

“What have you been thinking about?” said Linda. “Tell me.”

“I haven’t really been thinking of anything. I wondered as we passed the orchard what the fruit trees were like and whether we should be able to make much jam this autumn. There are splendid healthy currant bushes in the vegetable garden. I noticed them to-day. I should like to see those pantry shelves thoroughly well stocked with our own jam….”

XII

“My darling Nan,

Don’t think me a piggy wig because I haven’t written before. I haven’t had a moment, dear, and even now I feel so exhausted that I can hardly hold a pen.

Well, the dreadful deed is done. We have actually left the giddy whirl of town, and I can’t see how we shall ever go back again, for my brother-in-law has bought this house ‘lock, stock and barrel’, to use his own words.

In a way, of course, it is an awful relief, for he has been threatening to take a place in the country ever since I’ve lived with them — and I must say the house and garden are awfully nice — a million times better than that awful cubby-hole in town.

But buried, my dear. Buried isn’t the word.

We have got neighbours, but they are only farmers — big louts of boys who seem to be milking all day, and two dreadful females with rabbit teeth who brought us some scones when we were moving and said they would be pleased to help. But my sister who lives a mile away doesn’t know a soul here, so I am sure we never shall. It’s pretty certain nobody will ever come out from town to see us, because though there is a bus it’s an awful old rattling thing with black leather sides that any decent person would rather die than ride in for six miles.

Such is life. It’s a sad ending for poor little B. I’ll get to be a most awful frump in a year or two and come and see you in a mackintosh and a sailor hat tied on with a white china silk motor veil. So pretty.

Stanley says that now we are settled — for after the most awful week of my life we really are settled — he is going to bring out a couple of men from the club on Saturday afternoons for tennis. In fact, two are promised as a great treat to-day. But, my dear, if you could see Stanley’s men from the club … rather fattish, the type who look frightfully indecent without waistcoats — always with toes that turn in rather — so conspicuous when you are walking about a court in white shoes. And they are pulling up their trousers every minute — don’t you know — and whacking at imaginary things with their rackets.

I used to play with them at the club last summer, and I am sure you will know the type when I tell you that after I’d been there about three times they all called me Miss Beryl. It’s a weary world. Of course mother simply loves the place, but then I suppose when I am mother’s age I shall be content to sit in the sun and shell peas into a basin. But I’m not — not — not.

What Linda thinks about the whole affair, per usual, I haven’t the slightest idea. Mysterious as ever….

My dear, you know that white satin dress of mine. I have taken the sleeves out entirely, put bands of black velvet across the shoulders and two big red poppies off my dear sister’s chapeau. It is a great success, though when I shall wear it I do not know.”

Beryl sat writing this letter at a little table in her room. In a way, of course, it was all perfectly true, but in another way it was all the greatest rubbish and she didn’t believe a word of it. No, that wasn’t true. She felt all those things, but she didn’t really feel them like that.

It was her other self who had written that letter. It not only bored, it rather disgusted her real self.

“Flippant and silly,” said her real self. Yet she knew that she’d send it and she’d always write that kind of twaddle to Nan Pym. In fact, it was a very mild example of the kind of letter she generally wrote.

Beryl leaned her elbows on the table and read it through again.