“I don’t see why not.”

Thomasina felt very much as she did on the occasion when she took off a shoe and threw it at Peter. The heel had cut his forehead and left a small white scar, and Aunt Barbara had talked to her about Cain, and being a murderess. All very horrifying when you were eight years old. She was twenty-two now, and they were in a public park, so she controlled herself.

“You just don’t want to see-that’s all! But I did, so I sent Jeanie a wire for Aunt Barbara’s address book, and there they were-Elaine and Gwyneth Tremlett,Wyshcumtru, Wyshmere.”

Peter laughed in a superior way.

“I don’t believe it. No one could possibly have an address like that.”

“Elaine and Gwyneth did. So I wrote and said I had just come across their names in Aunt Barbara’s address book, and were they still there and a bit about Tibbie and the hand-loom, and this morning I got a letter from Gwyneth who is the weaving one, and she said they had moved and gone to this place, Deep End. A ”Colony of Seekers“ she called it, with oh, such a wonderful man at the head of it. And she could never forget dear Mrs. Brandon, and they did sometimes take a paying guest so if I ever wanted a country holiday perhaps I would give them the great pleasure of making my acquaintance and renewing what had been very pleasant memories. There was a lot more like that, all underlined and gushing.”

“Now look here, Thomasina-”

“It’s no good, Peter-I’m going down.”

“You can’t possibly!”

“Oh, but I am. I wrote off at once and said I was yearning for a country holiday.”

“If you will stop to think for a single instant-”

“Yes, darling?”

He said with extraordinary violence,

“Don’t call me darling!”

“Well, I don’t really want to.”

“Then don’t do it! What I want you to do is to listen. You are paying this Miss Silver of yours to try and trace Anna Ball- she has gone down to Deep End for that specific purpose. If you go butting in, the odds are you will queer her pitch. To start with, there’s your name. Anna Ball may quite easily have talked about you when she was down there.”

“Anna never talked about anybody. That was what was wrong with her-she was all shut-up and tight. I don’t see her having a heart-to-heart with Gwyneth and Elaine.”

“She probably had a photograph of you.”

“Well then, she didn’t-at least it wasn’t with her. She only had one, and it was in the top of the trunk she sent to me.”

Peter leaned forward and put a strong gripping hand on her wrist.

“If you don’t make a mess of it one way, you will another. You’ll be going down there under false pretences for one thing, and you’ll be a serious embarrassment to Miss Silver for another. The whole thing is probably a complete mare’s nest. Anna went there and came away again, and just hasn’t bothered to write. But if there is anything wrong about the place-I don’t say there is, but supposing there was-you might be running into something that would make you wish you had listened to reason.”

Thomasina was only waiting for him to take breath. When he did she was more than ready.

“Why should I be going down under false pretences? I never heard of such a thing! I’m not calling myself Jane Smith or Elizabeth Brown, am I? They did know Aunt Barbara, and I am her niece, and if they want a paying guest and I want to learn folk-weaving and have a holiday in the country, why shouldn’t I?”

“Because you don’t want anything of the sort. You wouldn’t go within twenty miles of these Tremletts if you didn’t want to go snooping round about Anna Ball.”

Thomasina went quite pale with anger.

“You just said that because it was the nastiest thing you could think of!”

“Perfectly correct.”

“And it isn’t true!”

“You wouldn’t be so angry if it wasn’t.”

“Yes, I would! I don’t like lies and unfairness! I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with Gwyneth and Elaine. Aunt Barbara wouldn’t have been friends with them if they hadn’t been all right. She liked them, and Gwyneth called her ‘Dear Mrs. Brandon.’ So why shouldn’t I go and be a paying guest? If they are all right, and everything is all right, then I just learn a little folk-weaving and come away again. You are not going to pretend there is anything wrong about that, I suppose!”

“And if everything isn’t all right?”

“Then the sooner it’s found out about the better!”

There was quite a long pause. Thomasina’s colour came back rather brightly. She had reduced Peter to silence, a thing which had practically never happened before. This was extremely pleasing. But when the silence had gone on for quite a long time it didn’t feel so good. A small cold wind blew about them. The clouds were lower and had the rather horrid leaden look which is a presage of snow. She became aware that her feet were frozen, and that it would be much nicer to go and have tea somewhere instead of sitting mouldering on a park bench without even the satisfaction of saying how much you hated it. She looked sideways at Peter, who was staring gloomily at nothing at all, and was just going to look away again, when he turned with one of his abrupt movements and caught both her hands in his.

“Tamsine-don’t go!”

It was always dreadfully hard not to weaken when he called her Tamsine, but if you didn’t keep your end up with Peter you would be a trodden slave before you could turn round. The spirit of all the Border Elliots rebelled. She smiled right into his eyes and said,

“Darling, of course I’m going.”

CHAPTER XI

After a week at Deep End Miss Silver had seen no reason to modify her first impressions. What she called her scholastic career had come to an end so many years ago that she might have expected to find it strange to be teaching children again, yet it was not strange at all. By what arts she had brought Jennifer, Maurice and Benjy to accept her teaching was just one of those things which cannot be explained. There are people who can manage children, and people who can’t. There are qualities which compel respect. When they are present they are respected. Miss Silver possessed these qualities. In return she respected the children under her charge-their privacy, their confidence, their rights. These things, though never put into words, are deeply felt. They establish a sense of security and evoke a responsive trust.

It is not to be supposed that the Craddock children became orderly and disciplined in a day or two. Jennifer remained aloof, with flashes of interest. Maurice, sturdy and literal-minded, was discovered to have a passion for trains. His attention was captured and his heart won by the fact that Miss Silver had had the forethought to provide herself with a book which displayed upon its cover the picture of an enormous engine very strikingly coloured in Prussian blue and scarlet, and inside, in addition to many other illustrations of trains and engines all duly named and numbered, a quite extraordinary amount of information about railways. Margaret Moray, who had a boy of the same age, had assured her that nothing in trousers between four and eight could possibly resist its lure. Little girls would find it dull, but any normal boy would eat it and ask for more. The number of miles between London and Edinburgh, the number of miles between Edinburgh and Glasgow, the history of the Flying Scotsman and the Coronation Scot, innumerable and solid facts about bogies, about fuel, about taking in water-these were meat and drink.

Mrs. Charles Moray was perfectly right. From his first sight of the blue and scarlet engine Maurice simply never looked back. He could be heard murmuring the names of favourite engines in his sleep. With a maddening persistence he imparted technical details during the family meals, a circumstance particularly obnoxious to Mr. Craddock, who considered himself to be the fount of knowledge and had no desire to receive instruction from a child of seven. A frown descended upon the Jovian brow, a ponderous displeasure filled the room. When Mrs. Craddock’s faint attempts to change the subject were disregarded her hands shook nervously. On one particularly trying occasion she dropped the teapot, scalding her wrist and flooding the table, but during the ensuing disorder Maurice could still be heard reciting the stations between London and Bristol, with Benjy chirping behind him and getting half of them wrong.