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of him as they turned into Clint Lane. It was to be more than one summer before they saw him again.
    Meanwhile Margot had the safety of her guest in mind.
    â€˜By the way, Linden, don’t ever go near that chimney.’ She delivered the caution with some importance. ‘Those bricks aren’t safe. Alex once—’
    â€˜Don’t be such an ass, Meg. Why on earth should Linden go near the chimney?’
    â€˜Why indeed? But thank you for the warning, Margot. I won’t forget.’
    Margot was abashed: she had been silly and officious. ‘Ass’ didn’t matter. But ‘Meg’! She lagged behind and walked slowly past the row of workmen’s cottages on the right. They were always interesting. High on the ridge, exposed to all the winds of heaven, Clint Lane was the best place in Ashlaw for drying clothes. Moreover the tenants had splendid views over the rooftops of the village below to the distant blue fells in the west.
    But that was from the front windows, or from front doors rarely opened. The active life of the Judds and their neighbours throbbed in the narrow backyards with their ash-pits and privies, pigeon lofts and dog kennels, bicycles and pushchairs, but from the purposeful squalor of such scenes one had only to cross the lane to pick cowslips on the grassy bank and sit for a few blessed minutes in the shade of the hawthorn hedge.
    There was a homeliness here that Margot liked. She recognized some of their own towels from Monk’s Dene on Mrs Judd’s line – then turned. On the opposite side of the lane where a gap in the hedge gave access to the fields beyond, something had moved.
    â€˜Katie,’ she called softly. ‘Have you been hiding?’
    Katie didn’t answer but she didn’t shrink away either. It seemed to Margot that she was at home there among green leaves and budding may-blossom with her own back door close at hand. She was no intruder on the natural scene as she sometimes seemed elsewhere. Only her face was visible: pale-skinned, fine-boned, her features indeterminate below the fluff of fair hair rising like a halo, as if she had just alighted. Against her will?
    It was a glimpse of Katie that she was to remember. She had never seen her like that before – disembodied – so that one forgot the dismal clothes and the awkward foot and the sidling walk that made her seem – as she so often did – unwillingly earthbound.
    Katie’s hair stirred in the light breeze. Boughs and leaves glimmered in the fitful play of sunlight so that the face, half turned away, lost definition and became unfamiliar.
    â€˜Katie!’
    A gentle movement and the face was gone: she was alone and ran to join the others. Chapman and Mrs Grey were waiting in the car. The visit was over.

CHAPTER IV
    There were to be many similar days. The Greys came several times in their first year in Elmdon, sometimes the only guests, sometimes to meet other friends of the Humberts. There were picnics on the fells, tea in the garden, misty autumn walks, sledging in snowy fields, and afterwards card games in firelit rooms and songs at the piano: a pageant of family scenes varying only with the seasons; a life untroubled and safe and, in retrospect, seeming safer still.
    But it was changing. Even on that first spring day there had been prophetic signs, slight and untimely as the rustle of an early-fallen leaf presaging winter. It was after that first visit that Edward Humbert took to emphasizing a topic he had touched on before: the need for girls to be equipped to earn their own living. The argument that most of them would find husbands to support them was hopelessly out of date. A million spinsters and widows had been left to fend for themselves, unprepared and untrained. What was to become of them?
    â€˜Miss Bondless fends for herself,’ Margot reminded him. They had, as it happened, just said goodbye to her. She had been staying with the Pelmans and was