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grains of the meal powdered my skin, the last bubbles of champagne left me, drifted up through the gaps in the tiles and burst sadly in the darkness beyond.
    I dragged my shirt over my gritty back, feeling a sense of coming back to my own world. I buttoned my coat, picked up the syringe and the bottle of pituitrin and climbed out of the pen. I had a last look before I left. The bicycle lamp was shedding its final faint glow and I had to lean over the gate to see the row of little pigs sucking busily, utterly absorbed. The gilt carefully shifted her position and grunted. It was a grunt of deep content.
    Yes, I was back and it was all right. I drove through the mud and up the hill where I had to get out to open a gate and the wind, with the cold, clean smell of the frosty grass in it, caught at my face. I stood for a while looking across the dark fields, thinking of the night which was ending now. My mind went back to my school days and an old gentleman talking to the class about careers. He had said: “If you decide to become a veterinary surgeon you will never grow rich but you will have a life of endless interest and variety.”
    I laughed aloud in the darkness and as I got into the car I was still chuckling. That old chap certainly wasn’t kidding. Variety. That was it—variety.
    Susie, Messenger of Love
    The big room at Skeldale House was full. It seemed to me that this room with its graceful alcoves, high carved ceilings and french windows lay at the center of our life in Darrowby. It was where Siegfried, his brother Tristan, and I gathered when the day’s work was done, toasting our feet by the white wood fireplace with the glass-fronted cupboard on top, talking over the day’s events. It was the heart of our bachelor existence, sitting there in a happy stupor, reading, listening to the radio, Tristan usually flipping effortlessly through the Daily Telegraph crossword.
    It was where Siegfried entertained his friends and there was a constant stream of them—old and young, male and female. But tonight it was Tristan’s turn and the pack of young people with drinks in their hands were there at his invitation. And they wouldn’t need much persuasion. Though just about the opposite of his brother in many ways he had the same attractiveness which brought the friends running at the crook of a finger.
    The occasion was the Daffodil Ball at the Drovers’ Arms and we were dressed in our best. This was a different kind of function from the usual village institute hop with the farm lads in their big boots and music from a scraping fiddle and piano. It was a proper dance with a popular local band—Lenny Butterfield and his Hot Shots—and was an annual affair to herald the arrival of spring.
    When we arrived at the Drovers’ the bar was congested while only a dedicated few circled round the ballroom. But as time went on more and more couples ventured out and by ten o’clock the dance floor was truly packed and I soon found I was enjoying myself. Tristan’s friends were an effervescent bunch; likable young men and attractive girls; I just couldn’t help having a good time.
    There was no pairing off in our party and I danced with all the girls in turn. At the peak of the evening I was jockeying my way around the floor with Daphne and the way she was constructed made it a rewarding experience. I never have been one for skinny women but I suppose you could say that Daphne’s development had strayed a little too far in the other direction. She wasn’t fat, just lavishly endowed.
    Battling through the crush, colliding with exuberant neighbors, bouncing deliciously off Daphne, with everybody singing as they danced and the Hot Shots pouring out an insistent boom-boom beat, I felt I hadn’t a care in the world. And then, across the dance floor, I saw Helen.
    When the music stopped I returned Daphne to her friends and went to find Tristan. The comfortable little bar in the Drovers’ was overflowing and the temperature like an