Miss Silver said, “Dear me!” and continued to peruse the column. Two-thirds of the way down an unusual name caught her eye. Anna-one did not often come across the name in that form-

“Anna, where are you? Do please write. Thomasina.”

She did not remember that she had ever encountered a Thomasina. Pleasant to find these old-fashioned names coming back into use again. Ann, Jane, Penelope, Susan, Sarah-they had roots in English life, in English history. She approved them.

Beyond this approval there was nothing to hold her attention. There was nothing to tell her that a first faint contact had been made with a case which was to call forth all her courage and test to the uttermost the qualities which had brought her success.

She went on to one of the breezier appeals.

“Be a sport! Young man, 25, no money, no qualifications, needs job urgently. Will you give him one?”

Having finished the Agony Column, she folded the Times and laid it aside. The news had already reached her through a somewhat lighter medium. To the articles, correspondence, etc., she would give serious attention in a more leisured hour. At the moment her correspondence claimed her. She went over to a plain, solid writing-table and began a long affectionate letter to her niece Ethel Burkett, who was the wife of a bank manager in the Midlands.

Each member of the family was touched upon. Dear John, so kind, so hardworking-“I hope he has quite shaken off the cold you mentioned.” The three boys, Johnny, Derek and Roger, now all at school and doing well. And little Josephine, who would soon be four years old-“She is, I know, everybody’s darling, but you must be careful not to spoil her. The spoiled child is seldom happy or well, and is the cause of constant unhappiness in others.”

Having reached this point, she could pass by an easy transition to the disquieting affairs of Ethel’s younger sister, Gladys Robinson. Her small, neat features took on a shade of severity as she wrote.

“Gladys is a case in point. Her thoughtlessness can no longer be excused on the ground of extreme youth, since she passed her thirtieth birthday a year ago. Her behaviour is increasingly selfish and indiscreet, and I am very much afraid of an open breach with her husband. Andrew Robinson is a worthy man, and has been exceedingly patient. Gladys should have discovered that she found him dull before she made her marriage vows. She really thinks of no one but herself.”

There was a good deal more about Gladys. Thomasina Elliot’s appeal to Anna Ball had passed completely from Miss Silver’s mind.

CHAPTER II

I can’t think why you bother about the woman,” said Peter Brandon.

Thomasina Elliot replied with simplicity,

“There isn’t anyone else.”

Peter gave her one of his loftier glances.

“Do you mean she hasn’t anyone else to bother about her, or you haven’t anyone else to bother about? Because in that case-”

Thomasina interrupted him.

“She hasn’t anyone else to bother about her.”

They were sitting side by side on a rather hard bench in one of those small galleries which specialize in winter shows. The walls were covered with pictures from which Thomasina preferred to avert her gaze. She had already changed her seat once because, without being prudish, she found the spectacle of a bulging woman stark naked and apparently afflicted with mumps embarrassing. On reflection she thought she had better have remained where she was, since she was now confronted by an explosion in magenta and orange and a quite horrible picture of a woman without a head holding an enormous frying-pan in her skeleton fingers. She was therefore more or less obliged to go on looking at Peter. She would have preferred not to do so, because he was being superior and interfering, which meant that she would have to be very firm and go on snubbing him, and it is very much easier to snub someone when you can present them with a cold profile. She was, of course, perfectly well aware that she had not been favoured with the best kind of profile for snubbing purposes. It was not regular enough. It was not in fact regular at all, though it had been considered agreeable.

Peter Brandon considered it a waste of time. He preferred her full face because of her eyes. Thomasina’s eyes were really quite undeniable. Unusual too, though more so in England than in her native Scotland, where wide grey eyes with black lashes are by no means out of the way. Thomasina’s eyes were of the bright clear grey which has no shade of blue or green. Peter had once remarked that they matched his flannel trousers to a hair. What distinguished them from other grey eyes was the fact that the bright grey of the iris was rimmed with black. Set off by very dark lashes and a skin which glowed with health, they were well worth looking at. Peter looked at them from a superior height and repeated his original remark. “I can’t see why you want to bother about her.” Thomasina had not exactly a Scots accent, but her voice lilted a little. She said,

“I ve told you.”

“Was she the one with the squint, or the one who breathed very loud through her nose? Being frightfully conscientious about it-like this-” He was a personable young man, but all in a moment he managed to produce a pop-eyed stare and a heavy snuffle.

Thomasina repressed a giggle.

“That was Maimie Wilson. And it’s too bad of you, because she couldn’t help it.”

“Then she should have been drowned in infancy. Well, which was this Anna female-what did you say her surname was?

“Ball,” said Thomasina in a depressed voice. “And you’ve seen her quite often.”

He nodded.

“Yes-your school leaving party-flowing cocoa and stacks of girl friends. Anna Ball-I’m getting there…Dark girl with an oily skin and a ‘Nobody loves me-I’ll go into the garden and eat worms’ kind of look.”

“Peter, that’s horrid!”

“Very. Fresh air and exercise strongly indicated. Outside interests lacking.”

“Oh, no, you’re wrong there-absolutely. It was one of the things that made people not like her very much. She didn’t take too little interest in other people’s affairs. It was quite the other way round-she took a great deal too much.”

Peter cocked an eyebrow.

“Nosey Parker?”

“Well, yes, she was.” A kind heart prompted her to add, “A bit.”

“Then I don’t see why you are bothering with her.”

“Because she hasn’t got anyone else. I keep telling you so.”

Peter stuck his hands in the pockets of his raincoat, a gesture equivalent to clearing the decks for action.

“Now look here, Tamsine, you can’t go through life collecting lame ducks, and stray dogs, and females whom nobody loves. You are twenty-two-and how old would you be when I first patted your head in your pram? About two. So that makes it twenty years that I’ve known you. You’ve been doing it all the time, and it’s got to stop. You started with moribund wasps and squashed worms, and you went on to stray curs and half-drowned kittens. If Aunt Barbara hadn’t been a saint she would have blown the roof off. She indulged you.”

Properly speaking, Barbara Brandon was a good deal more Thomasina’s aunt than Peter’s, because she had been born an Elliot and had only married John Brandon, who was Peter’s uncle. She had not been dead for very long. A bright shimmer of tears came up in Thomasina’s eyes. It made them almost unbearably beautiful. She said with a little catch in the words,

“It-was nice.”

Peter looked away. If he went on looking at her he might find himself slipping, and it was no time for weakness. Discipline must be maintained. He was helped on this rather arid path by the fact that Thomasina almost immediately tossed her head and said with complete irrelevance,

“Besides, I don’t believe you ever patted my head in my pram.”