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swinging baskets of geraniums and wrought-iron signs.
    The antique shop was rather more austere than the rest –white-painted, bow-fronted, with the name
Moorhead
in plain black letters above the window.
    If David had been disposed to, he could have found the job for Cressy even before Mrs Brindle did; for the Moorheads were his friends. But Cressy’s future had been something he would not meddle in. He had written his deft little letter of apology to her, and ignored her plea for help. She had decided to make her own way and had angrily tried to put him out of her mind, hoping, she told herself, that she would never see him again.
    Yet, at the end of her first day at work, she did. She was at the back of the shop, polishing brass, when he walked in with Nell Stapleforth. ‘Well, well,’ he said, raising his eyebrows, and went through to the room at the back to have a word with his friends, leaving Nell to potter about the shop as she had wanted to.
    Toby and Alexia Moorhead were brother and sister. Their father had been the local Rector. When he died, he had left them a little money, and they had started their antique shop. It had solved for them the problem of finding some kind of work which they could do together, and both had a flair for buying and had made a good business of it. They were a quiet pair, and self-contained, with a physical beauty which seemed the reason for their never separating, never being seen with inferior partners. Both were tall, and had silky black hair, and a gesture of putting it aside from their brows. They had dark skins and rather long, fine features. They looked like twins, but were not; though of a near age, in their late twenties. This morning of David’s visit, they were wearing the same putty-coloured shirts and trousers.
    ‘What on earth is
she
doing here?’ David asked. ‘It
is
that MacPhail girl from Quayne, isn’t it?’
    ‘She’s cleaning a coal-scuttle, I hope,’ Toby said.
    ‘You know, I wouldn’t wonder if she isn’t quite a bothersome and eccentric girl.’
    ‘Hush,’ Alexia said, going on with her accounts.
    All the same, Cressy, sullenly polishing the scuttle beyond the half-opened door, had heard him.
    ‘Charming!’ Nell kept saying to her, taking up, and putting down, and peering short-sightedly at porcelain marks and price tickets. She had a little dog like an ant on a silk-cord lead. It was hardly a dog at all, and made her seem even larger by the absurd contrast.
    Cressy, wondering who she was, felt spiteful towards her, and would not have minded if she had dropped something and broken it, or if her dog had lifted its leg against the needlework-covered stool.
    ‘Enchanting!’ Nell said. ‘Enchanting!’ she said again, louder, as David came back into the shop with his friends. She held up a Wedgwood bridal group, and Alexia stood rigid until it was safely back on its shelf. ‘Yes, it’s one of our favourite things,’ she said, when she could breathe again.
    ‘So you’ve managed to get out into the wide world?’ David said to Cressy. The ‘wide world’ being just the village, she thought his words must be sarcastic. He was wondering how it could be any better sitting there in her dark corner amongst the polishing rags than up at Quayne feeding the hens, or whatever it was she so resented doing there.
    To his dismay, he saw, before she bent her head, that her eyes had brimmed over. A tear actually fell on her dirty fingers. He dared not now introduce Nell to her, as he did to the others, or make any more inquiries, or even glance at her again. He simply seemed to include her in the general farewells, but not in the hope of meeting again that evening.
    ‘She is very sensitive,’ Toby said.
    ‘Touchy,’ said Alexia.
    ‘But willing.’
    ‘In a driven sort of way.’
    ‘And cheap.’
    It was after dinner, in the red and white sitting-room, with a little fire, just lit, to brighten things up, as Midge had said.
    They were discussing