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watch Martha from there.
    “I was surprised to hear you’re a professor,” Cherry said. “Aren’t professors supposed to be old and solemn?”
    “I’ll be old eventually,” he assured her. “In the meantime, I’m only an assistant professor.”
    “Are you terribly learned?”
    “Well, I have a Ph.D., but I ask my students not to call me ‘doctor.’ Plain ‘mister’ is good enough. I’m on my way to meet a dozen of my students now,” he volunteered. “We’re taking a student tour through England.
    They went ahead on a charter plane, with the Kimball kids’ parents as chaperones temporarily—I was delayed, I had to take care of some business for my mother. I’ll meet the students in London and take over.”
    “A student tour sounds like a wonderful way to study,” Cherry said. “Where are you going?” Peter described their three-week itinerary—a stay in London, on to Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon, north through the Lake Country of Wordsworth, and fi nally into Scotland to Edinburgh.
    “We’ll go on bicycles part of the way. I’ve done that before,” he said, his face bright with the memory.
    “We’ll fl y home just in time for the opening of the fall semester.”
    “Your itinerary is much the same as Mrs. Logan’s and mine,” Cherry said.

    40 CHERRY
    AMES,
    COMPANION
    NURSE
    “I hope we’ll see each other along the way.” They compared the timing of their routes. It seemed possible they would meet. “At least perhaps in London, these next few days,” Peter Holt said. Cherry told him the name of their hotel, sure her employer would not mind. He said, “You know, I’d like a chance to get to know Martha Logan a little. Her work is—”
    “Oh-ho, so it’s not me you’d like to see again,” Cherry teased.
    Peter simply grinned and shook his head. “Mrs.
    Logan is charming, but she’s not my reason.” He looked squarely at Cherry. “By the way, have you noticed the honeymoon couple sitting next to me? Their clothes are brand new; she’s wearing orchids or something; and they’re so absorbed in each other they don’t know the other passengers exist. Ah, well, I’m for romance.” Cherry smiled and said nothing. Their conversation hung there, unfi nished. She peered down the aisle.
    “Excuse me, but I think Mrs. Logan is awake now.” They started to their seats. Martha looked refreshed, and remarked on how rapidly the afternoon was fading.
    The clouds below them glowed with sunset refl ections as the plane fl ew ahead into a dusk-darkened sky. It was two o’clock by Cherry’s wristwatch. Martha had already set her watch fi ve hours forward to London time.
    They took another slow, unsteady walk. Mr. Hazard rose to ask if he might come back to continue their chat. On returning to their seats, they found Mr. Hazard persuading the brisk young businessman across the aisle to trade seats with him for a while.

    FLIGHT TO LONDON
    41
    This time Peter Holt joined in the conversation, perched on the arm of his seat. Martha introduced the young man to Archibald Hazard, who half ignored him.
    Perhaps Mr. Hazard felt entitled to a monopoly on Martha Logan’s attention, Cherry thought, and did not want Peter’s competition. For Peter more than held his own in their far-ranging conversation. Peter outshone the older man, who cut him short by saying:
    “Do you plan to be in London long, Mrs. Logan?”
    “For about a week,” she replied.
    “So shall I. Then possibly to Paris. You, too?”
    “No, a leisurely trip through central England—
    Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon, the Midlands, up to Lake Windermere to the Carewe Museum—”
    “The Carewe Museum!” Mr. Hazard interrupted her. “What a privilege! How I envy your having entree there! Such a jealously guarded collection. I’ve never even tried to get in.”
    “Well, I suppose they’d never have let me in, either,” Martha said, “except that I need to see those famous old portraits for my next book.”
    “I’ve