Freddy was not so fortunate. Hector found her in the grounds at St Agnes’ one afternoon when he had, as usual, arrived early for rehearsal; she lay on the grass, memorizing her words as the goddess Ceres. Hector had no fear of adolescent girls, for he had taught hundreds of them. Here, he thought, was someone he could pump about Griselda.

“I see you are getting your words by heart,” said he.

“Yes,” said Freddy.

“That’s right. We won’t make much progress until we are all perfect in our words.”

“I suppose not.”

“Do you find memorizing hard?”

“Not when I’m allowed to concentrate on it.”

“You should memorize each night, the last thing before you go to sleep. That is the best way to memorize formulae, or anything like that.”

“Really?”

“Why are you not at school?”

“I’ve been ill; I’m taking a term off.”

“Pity, pity; you shouldn’t break the flow of your education until it is complete. That is, if you can afford to keep up the continuity, which not everyone is able to do.”

“The doctor told my father to keep me at home. I’ve nothing to say about it.”

“Ah. Pity, pity.”

A pause, during which Freddy and Hector regarded one another solemnly.

“A very fine old house you have here.”

“Thank you.”

“How old, now?”

“Oh, about a hundred and thirty years, I suppose. Prebendary Bedlam built most of it.”

“Who?”

“You aren’t a native of Salterton, are you?”

“No.”

“Then it’s not likely you’d have heard of him.”

“You have a lovely big room, I expect.”

“No, quite small.”

“But your sister has a lovely big room, I expect?”

“She has two rooms; a sitting-room and a bedroom with the biggest bed in it you ever saw, with a crimson silk bedspread,” said Freddy, who was getting tired of this and decided to give the pryer some well-deserved mis-information. “She has a marvellous bathroom, with a sunken tub, and a peach basin, and a black John and a toilet roll which plays The Lass of Richmond Hill when you pull it,” she continued, beginning to enjoy herself.

Hector was not sure how he should take this. Long experience of girls of Freddy’s age told him that she was lying. Nevertheless, she was Griselda’s sister, and to that extent sacred. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“That’s very interesting,” said he. “And which would be her window, now?”

“Those big ones there,” said Freddy, pointing to her father’s windows. Was he a Peeping Tom, she wondered.

“Has your sister finished school?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, she didn’t lose terms like you. She’ll have been very clever at school?”

“Not very,” said Freddy.

“Really? But she was a leader, I suppose? I expect she was very much admired?”

So that’s it, thought Freddy. This silly old clown is stuck on Gristle. The dirty old man, chasing a girl less than half his age. Just another John Knox. With the concentrated spite of the eunuch, or the sexless, she said:

“No, she wasn’t liked, really, except by a few. But she was the champion burper of the school. She can swallow an awful lot of air, you know, and belch the first few bars of God Save the King, while saluting. She was always begged to do it on stunt nights.”

Hector walked away, saddened. The child was a liar, and perhaps not quite right in the head, but her blasphemy had wounded him, none the less.

Hector was wrong in supposing that Griselda did not notice him. She noticed that he seemed often to be in the way, that he changed colour and breathed heavily when she sang her little piece into his ear, and that he seemed to be physically timid and fearful of accidents. This last observation was unjust, and was the outcome of Hector’s solicitude for her; as Ariel she had to climb about one some platforms which Tom had put up at the back of the stage and disguised with greenery; it never entered her head to be frightened of these trivial heights, but whenever she had to get down from them, she was likely to find Hector there, with a hand outstretched, and a look of apprehension on his face; he would assist her to the ground, gingerly, and walk away, as though embarrassed. Larry Pye sometimes wanted to do the same thing, but she knew Larry; he wanted to squeeze her legs as he lifted her, and she usually jumped straight at him, causing him to skip ungallantly out of danger. But she assumed that Hector was a fusspot who thought that she could not jump six or eight feet without breaking something.

Hector, like everyone else in the company, came into the game which she played with Roger, as well. That young man had not fallen under the spell of Valentine Rich’s personality, as everyone else connected with the production had done in some degree. There was between them one of those unaccountable antipathies which occasionally occur, and which nothing can be done to remedy. Roger admitted that Valentine was an unusually capable director, but he did not like her; he set her down as a Bossy Woman; perhaps this was because he knew that she could never be influenced by his sort of charm. Valentine considered Roger a godsend as a juvenile lead in an amateur play, but she did not like him; he was a type which she had met many times in the theatre, and which, except for theatrical purposes, she could not endure. And although she was fully as tactful in her dealings with him as with the rest of the company, he sensed her dislike beneath her courtesy, just as she sensed his dislike beneath his compliance. Shut out from the group which was warmed and enspirited by Valentine, he made fun of it to Griselda.

She was quickly attracted by anything which savoured of sophistication, and to the young the easy, ill-founded cynicism which finds everybody and everything just a little second-rate is a kind of fool’s gold. It was flattering that Roger should make fun of the others to her; to be chosen as the confidante of a superior spirit is always flattering. Griselda was very far from being a fool; she had what Dr Johnson called “a bottom of good sense”, but she was not quite nineteen, and she had never met anyone like Roger before.

He, in his turn, was delighted that he had so quickly found a way to attract her. She was not, he recognized, like any girl upon whom he had tried his skill before. She was wealthy, which meant that he must be very careful, for one does not lightly seduce rich girls; they have too many powerful relatives, and are too much accustomed to getting the better of all things. He seriously questioned whether he could proceed to the usual conclusion of his plan with Griselda. Indeed, he marvelled dimly that gold, which could make an attractive girl so much more attractive, should also protect her so thoroughly. And as well as money, Griselda had the manners and the conversation of a well-bred girl who has read a great many books of the easier sort, and these qualities Roger mistook for worldly wisdom and unusual intelligence. For the first time in his life Roger had met a girl with whom he felt that a “nice”—well, fairly nice—relationship was worth cultivating. Griselda was capable of giving him something which he valued even more than physical satisfaction; she could give him class. The other thing he could find elsewhere when he wanted it. Never any shortage of that.

Thus they struck up an amused conspiracy against the rest of the company. Nobody cared except Valentine, who thought it bad for the play; except Hector, who did not understand it but who saw that Griselda was too often laughing in a corner with Tasset; except Pearl Vambrace, who had fallen as much in love with Roger as it is possible to fall in love with a man who never speaks to you except in lines written by Shakespeare, lines charged with a noble love which is nothing but play-acting.