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    â€œNot at ’oame ’ere,” says Paula often, “thoase Gatherins. They’re Southeners.”
    â€œWell what about you?”
    â€œThey’re different. Different again from me.”
    â€œHow?”
    Paula thumped the iron about and turned it flat side up and gazed intently at it as if it knew the answer. The silver triangle was scorched all over with rusty stripes where she had burned things.
    â€œYou’ll burn your face.”
    She moved the iron nearer to her cheek, country brown and red though it had seen little but cold Yorkshire weather for years.
    â€œI don’t know roightly,” she said. “It’s what used to be called County. Before that it was Gentry.”
    â€œGentry’s a bit ancient,” I said, “and I don’t like County. It’s not right to say County.”
    â€œYou mean it’s not county to say County. Don’t you come this Marxism-we’re-all-one with me.”
    â€œNo—I don’t mean that,” I said. “But it’s only people who think they’re less than County who talk about County. I’m not less than Mrs. Gathering.”
    â€œNobody could be
more
than Mrs. Gathering.” We laughed and Paula put the iron down and was Mrs. Gathering round the kitchen. First she was Mrs. Gathering walking about and picking flowers, waving her hips extremely slowly. Then she was Mrs. Gathering arranging herself on her sofa and meditating on Lovely Ideas: and then—because I may as well tell you that Paula is like this—she became Mrs. Gathering in bed with Dr. Gathering who was the little fat cushion Paula puts under boys’ heads when they’re concussed after rugger. Slowly, slowly Mrs. Gathering folded Dr. Gathering into her arms and moaned, “Ooooooooh! Horold!” Dr. Gathering’s name is Harold but Paula says that in the south and among the County that is the way it is pronounced, the letter a.
    Oh Paula makes you die, and when I met Mrs. Gathering soon after this in the lavender walk I had to try very hard not to remember the concussion cushion and dissolve. I blinked like mad. I wriggled about. I grinned very wide. She seemed surprised by the grin which was a very thorough-going affair for the smallness of the occasion, but she took my hand in hers and I heard her say, “Marigold. Marigold Green. Your dear mother—” and her eyes grew damp. “Such a sad shame. It might have been so different.”
    She was looking now of course not at my grin but at my skirt hem which was coming down and at a hole in the knee of my tights. Paula is termagantal about clean fingernails but never sees clothes. The sole of one of my sandals was flopping about a bit, too. But I was furious because all this damp-eyed business was nothing more or less than criticism of Paula and father. “I am perfectly happy.” I announced, and gave her a good hard gleam from behind my specs. They are plastic non-break lenses and if you get the angle right you can magnify the eye-ball just about enough to fill the lens. It was an immature thing to do at fifteen I suppose but it was the fruit of years of practice and for some time had done rewarding things to Miss Bex, my form-mistress, and could sometimes make her yelp and knock jam-jars full of daffodils down the back of the bookcase, drip, drip, drip, all over the red Warwick Hamlets, making them bleed.
    â€œOh, of course my dear,” said Mrs. Gathering falling back, and I noticed for the first time (you see how big she is) that Jack Rose was standing just behind her, holding her Boots library books. She had been strolling round the park with him, father’s House Captain, Captain of Rugger, tall as a lily, all among the lavender and the red hot pokers.
    And Jack had a very confident and pleased look on his face as he watched me and smiled down at me encouragingly. He had grown even more gloriously good-looking since the time he had