“I’ve reason to know it,” said Harriet.

“I suppose so. By the way-hell! I seem to be putting my foot in it all round but I ought to explain that I’ve never heard him talk about you. I mean, he’s not that sort. It’s my mother. She says all kinds of things. Sorry. I’m making things worse and worse.”

“Don’t worry,” said Harriet. “After all, I do know your uncle, you know-well enough, anyhow, to know what sort he is. And I certainly won’t give you away.”

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t. It isn’t only that I’d never get anything more out of him-and I’m in a devil of a mess-but he makes one feel such an appalling tick. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been given the wrong side of my uncle’s tongue-naturally not. But of the two, I recommend skinning.”

“We’re both in the same boat. I’d no business to listen. Good-bye-and many thanks for the meringues.”

She was half-way up St. Aldate’s when the viscount caught her up.

“I say-I’ve just remembered. That old story I was ass enough to rake up-”

“The Viennese dancer?”

“Singer-music’s his line. Please forget that. I mean, it’s got whiskers on it-it’s six years old, anyway. I was a kid at school and I dare say it’s all rot.” Harriet laughed, and promised faithfully to forget the Viennese singer.

9

So,” said the Bursar, coming briskly up to the High Table for lunch on the following Thursday; “Jukes has come to grief once more…”

“Has he been stealing again?” asked Miss Lydgate. “Dear me, how disappointing!”

“Annie tells me she’s had her suspicions for some time, and yesterday being her half-day she went down to tell Mrs. Jukes she would have to place the children somewhere else-when lo, and behold! in walked the police and discovered a whole lot of things that had been stolen a fortnight ago from an undergraduate’s rooms in Holywell. It was most unpleasant for her-for Annie, I mean. They asked her a lot of questions.”

“I always thought it was a mistake to put those children there,” said the Dean.

“So that’s what Jukes did with himself at night,” said Harriet. “I heard he’d been seen outside the College here. As a matter of fact, I gave Annie the tip. It’s a pity she couldn’t have removed the children earlier.”

“I thought he was doing quite well,” said Miss Lydgate. “He had a job-and I know he kept chickens-and there was the money for the little Wilsons, Annie’s children, I mean-so he ought not to have needed to steal, poor man. Perhaps Mrs. Jukes is a bad manager.”

“Jukes is a bad lot,” said Harriet. “A nasty bit of business altogether. He’s much best out of the way.”

“Had he taken much?” inquired the Dean.

“I gather from Annie,” said the Bursar, “that they rather think they can trace a lot of petty thieving to Jukes. I understand it’s a question of finding out where he sold the things.”

“He’d dispose of them through a fence, I suppose,” said Harriet; “some pawnbroker or somebody of that kind. Has he been inside-in prison-before?”

“Not that I know of,” said the Dean; “though he ought to have been.”

“Then I suppose he’ll get off lightly as a first offender.”

“Miss Barton will know all about that. We’ll ask her. I do hope poor Mrs. Jukes isn’t involved,” said the Bursar.

“Surely not,” cried Miss Lydgate, “she’s such a nice woman.”

“She must have known about it,” said Harriet, “unless she was a perfect imbecile.”

“What a dreadful thing, to know your husband was a thief!”

“Yes,” said the Dean. “It would be very uncomfortable to have to live on the proceeds.”

“Terrible,” said Miss Lydgate. “I can’t imagine anything more dreadful to an honest person’s feelings.”

“Then,” said Harriet, “we must hope, for Mrs. Jukes’s sake, she was as guilty as he was.”

“What a horrible hope!” exclaimed Miss Lydgate.

“Well, she’s got to be either guilty or unhappy,” said Harriet, passing the bread to the Dean with a twinkle in her eye.

“I dissent altogether,” said Miss Lydgate. “She must either be innocent and unhappy or guilty and unhappy-I don’t see how she can be happy, poor creature.”

“Let us ask the Warden next time we see her,” said Miss Martin, “whether it is possible for a guilty person to be happy. And if so, whether it is better to be happy or virtuous.”

“Come, Dean,” said the Bursar, “we can’t allow this sort of thing. Miss Vane, a bowl of hemlock for the Dean, if you please. To return to the subject under discussion, the police have not, so far, taken up Mrs. Jukes, so I suppose there’s nothing against her.”

“I’m very glad of that,” said Miss Lydgate; and, Miss Shaw arriving at that moment, full of woe about one of her pupils who was suffering from perpetual headache, and an incapacity to work, the conversation wandered into other channels.

Term was drawing to a close, and the investigation seemed little farther advanced; but it appeared possible that Harriet’s nightly perambulations and the frustration of the Library and Chapel scandals had exercised a restraining influence on the Poltergeist, for there was no further outbreak of any kind, not so much as an inscription in a lavatory or an anonymous letter, for three days. The Dean, exceedingly busy, was relieved by the respite, and also cheered by the news that Mrs. Goodwin the secretary would be back on the Monday to cope with the end-of-term rush. Miss Cattermole was seen to be more cheerful, and wrote a quite respectable paper for Miss Hillyard about the naval policy of Henry VIII. Harriet asked the enigmatic Miss de Vine to coffee. As usual, she had intended to lay bare Miss de Vine’s soul, and as usual, found herself laying bare her own.

“I quite agree with you,” said Miss de Vine, “about the difficulty of combining intellectual and emotional interests. I don’t think it affects women only; it affects men as well. But when men put their public lives before their private lives, it causes less outcry than when a woman does the same thing, because women put up with neglect better than men, having been brought up to expect it.”

“But suppose one doesn’t quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose,” said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, “suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?”

“You can usually tell,” said Miss de Vine, “by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I’m quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is.”

“I made a very big mistake once,” said Harriet, “as I expect you know. I don’t think that arose out of lack of interest. It seemed at the time the most important thing in the world.”

“And yet you made the mistake. Were you really giving all your mind to it, do you think? Your mind? Were you really being as cautious and exacting about it as you would be about writing a passage of fine prose?”

“That’s rather a difficult sort of comparison. One can’t, surely, deal with emotional excitements in that detached spirit.”

“Isn’t the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?”

“Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it’s dead right, there’s no excitement like it. It’s marvellous. It makes you feel like God on the Seventh Day-for a bit, anyhow.”