He came upon Elizabeth who was being her most warm-hearted with the girl.

"Have my comb, sit here, let me button this up," she was saying, Sebastian imagined, so there might, for not a moment longer, be displayed in full sunlight that expanse of skin how like vanilla ice cream where one of her jacket buttons had come undone. So Elizabeth drew the coat about the girl who, from raised arms, snuffling, and with an absent, ceremonious look, combed out the heavy hair a colour of rust over a tide-washed stovepipe on a shore.

"Why, you poor dear, there, that's better," Elizabeth was saying to Merode, "well… I can't think. . but we needn't bother now, shall we? Sib, she must go back with us, it's too far all the way up to the house. We're only a few yards, really, from our little place," she said to the girl. "Then we'll get a cup of hot tea, I mean to put inside you, d'you think you can manage?"

There was no reply.

"You take her on that arm," Elizabeth ordered Sebastian. "Now lean on me, dear, d'you see, that's right, only a step," and in this fashion they started off to Mr Rock's, neither Birt nor Merode speaking so much as one word.

Meantime, some five or six of those who had been sent to collect azalea and rhododendron had wandered through the woods, had stopped here and there, braving wasps and bees and even a hornet to cut out great bundles of bloom and were overlade now, for, even with arms outstretched, the red and white flowers came half up over their faces; the gold azalea nodding next their gold heads, in all this flowering they carried like a prize. Although they were so burdened, they had decided to move on to see Daisy, and had arrived to stand by emerald nettles at the edge of her sty.

She lay, very white, on a froth of straw and dung which fumed to the warm of day. She was on her side and twelve most delicate fat dugs in pink struck out from a trembling belly in a saw toothed frieze. She had violet, malevolent small eyes under pink cornucopia ears. Her corkscrew tail twitched as though its few inches could reach, in a hog's imagination, far enough to plague the brilliant, busy flies on her white, dirt dusted flanks. She was at rest.

"Isn't she sweet?"

"Do look,"

"Oh fancy," they cried out one to another through a frond of flowers held to bursting chests, "There, doze Daisy,"

"Isn't she a beaut."

Mr Rock came out of the cottage with two buckets of boiled swill. His eyes burned behind spectacles at this bevy of girls. And, when she heard his step, Daisy got up with a start and a heave to squeal with anticipation while her audience, crying out in the alarm they affected, backed from the now simmering pen.

But he did not feed his pig at once, because he had not gone three yards before he heard Elizabeth call 'Gapa,' and then there she was, tearing towards him, hair straight out behind, running with her legs extended sideways from the knees. The group round Daisy ceased to exclaim the better to watch the woman old enough to be its mother. And, in watching, they saw emerge down a ride behind Elizabeth the figures of Birt and the girl they knew at once for Merode. This set them off in whispers, as a cloud passes the moon, like birds at long awaited dusk in trees down by the beach.

While Elizabeth explained to her grandfather in a low voice, obviously with difficulty in making it plain, Merode and Sebastian drew near, and the child began to limp. When she was quite close to the others, who had drawn together, one of them cried out, gurgling, "Why what on earth's happened to you, Merode?"

Whereupon Birt knew for the first time who she was, and doubted his wisdom in bringing her to the Rocks. He also knew he must keep Merode away from friends until she had made out her account; because there would be reports to be written to Edge, and beyond, and that lady was certain to say the girl had been given an opportunity to concoct the tale.

"Dear me what a crowd," he suggested to Merode, in Edge's accents. "Don't you think we'd better take you back?"

"My leg hurts so, Mr Birt," she complained.

"You never said," he expostulated shrilly, becoming even more like the Principal. "Where does it pain most? Tell me."

By this time the crowd of students was upon them.

"Why, Merode," they cried, "Merode, just look at you," and "What on earth have you done to get in such a state, Merode?" and they giggled.

Upon which the redhaired girl burst into loud, ugly sobs. She put up hands to cover her face.

Elizabeth hastened back to the group followed by Mr Rock, who had set his buckets on the ground. Daisy set forefoot on top of the timber of the pen, and, at the sight of that dinner laid by, redoubled the squealing, to do which there had to be opened a great pink mouth to make display of golden fangs.

"Now my dear, you mustn't," Elizabeth told the girl, and put thin arms about her. "Really not, you'll be fine. We're looking after you now," she said, with a wild look around.

"Oh isn't it awful?" the child moaned.

"We'd best rush her up to the Institute," Sebastian suggested, in his common or garden voice.

"Whoever heard of such a thing, how could you, and in her state," Elizabeth replied, leading this girl in the opposite direction, towards their mauve and yellow cottage.

"Now all you others hurry back then," Sebastian ordered, Edge once again. "How d'you think the decorations will get done if you stand here?" he demanded. They went off. One or two still giggled. "They didn't say a word, not a word passed between her and that lot, you're my witness," he continued in all seriousness, but in a low voice for Mr Rock, unconsciously imitating now the manner of his colleague Dakers.

"Witless?" the old man asked, and laughed. "They don't go by their wits at that age."

Sebastian was so agitated he could not find it in him to answer.

"You should know, whose work it is to teach the creatures," Mr Rock finished, went back to his buckets. At this moment Sebastian noticed the pig's outcries for the first time. It might just have seen the knife the butcher was about to use. He was disgusted. To get away, he hurried after Elizabeth and the girl, into the cottage.

They took Merode back to the Institute as soon as they thought she was a little recovered, and handed her over to Matron, who sent for Marchbanks.

"Miss Edge and Miss Baker's in London," Miss Birks told the child. "You rest yourself while I fetch a cup of tea," she said. "And dear," she added, "I'd pull myself together if I was you. In their position they have to make reports. There'll be a lot of answers they'll be requiring, to know how you came to find yourself with

that Mr Birt, not to speak of the old prof's granddaughter." Merode opened her wet, red mouth, as though to explain. Then she thought better, and did not say a word.

"Why just look at you," Miss Marchbanks cried out the moment she entered.

The child was a sight indeed, lying in the surgery, on the couch covered in deep blue rubber with great highlights from tall windows, while she looked sideways over this older woman.

At the ends of her arms lying along her, she scratched with dirty thumbnails about the caked skin round the red nails of her third fingers.

"It's shock," Matron said, in a satisfied voice.

There was a silence. The girl did not cry, did not speak, just lay there, cautiously watching.

"Well I can't talk while you're in that state," Marchbanks announced, making up her mind. "Have you had anything to eat, at least?" But there was no answer.