"What was?"

"Some up at the house has made out there was likely an honour for you," the woodman offered.

"Yes, and I don't doubt," Mr Rock exclaimed, with violence. "The paltry intriguers," he said. "But they didn't tell you, did they, about the other?"

"I don't follow, Mr Rock, sir."

"It's the Academy of Sciences," the sage elaborated, boasting but frantic. "There's an election yesterday or today. If they elect me, I can spend the rest of my time in their Institute, or scientific poor law sanatorium, but I can't take my girl. Otherwise I may have some money, thank you. And then, of course, I can refuse. Would you hesitate in my place?"

"How's that, sir?"

"What's to happen to Miss Elizabeth?" he asked, talking as if to a servant in the days of his youth. "She's sick with her mind, Adams. Anyone can tell it."

"So you'll have the money, sir?"

"What do you think?"

"And good luck to you I say, Mr Rock."

"They'd like to have me out, this lot would, Adams," he said, calmer now. "It wasn't Mr Birt said about me, was it?"

"Why never in the world," the woodman answered. "Likely enough one of the girls only caught a word Miss Baker or Miss Edge let drop."

"Those two won't be sorry when my time comes," Mr Rock announced. "But I'll tell you. So long as she remains single I'll see they let her keep on at my cottage, the State I mean. I've some friends still in high places haven't forgotten the services I rendered. Why, when the State took over from the owner, and founded this Institute to train State Servants, it was even in the Directive that I was to stay in my little place."

"That's right, so you've often said," Adams hastily agreed.

"Well then," Mr Rock muttered, and fell silent.

"There's gratitude," he added after a moment, "Throw him out in the street."

"That's the way things are," Adams agreed, glad to let the matter drop.

"But are you safe, man?" Mr Rock demanded.

"Houses are that short there's no-one safe," Adams replied. Mr Rock was silent, for an entirely fresh idea had struck him. This woodman was a widower, living alone, and his was a five-roomed cottage. This had never occurred to Mr Rock before. Perhaps because he never could remember Mrs Adams was dead. And as long as Elizabeth was alive he would not let her be turned out, not if he had to hang for it.

Then the cry came a third time, much clearer, so that even Mr Rock heard, and the double echo.

"Ma-ree," a girl's voice shrilled, then a moment later the house volleyed back "Ma-ree, Ma-ree," but in so far deeper a note that it might have been a man calling.

"There's one been out on the tiles," George Adams remarked to make a jest, because he was relieved to hear just a girl hollering. But the sage made no comment. He had been struck by a second notion. What he asked himself now was, could Miss Edge and Miss Baker, in order to get him out of the house, have set Birt onto Elizabeth, be in league with the man to break a poor old fellow down by simply driving his sad girl out of her wits? To have her straitjacketed even, muffled in a padded room?

Up at the great house Miss Edge switched on lights in the sanctum to which she had risen in the State Service, hand in hand with Miss Baker. It did not surprise her to find this lady not yet down.

Edge was short and thin. Baker, who hardly cared for early rising, fat and short.

Both, at this time, were also on separate Commissions in London, sitting Wednesdays each week, which necessitated a start that day very much in advance of the usual hour. On such mornings their breakfast was taken in this seventeenth-century, grey-panelled room, under a chandelier, on furniture which included two great desks set side by side, and equal to the authority these two whiteheaded women shared.

The panelling was remarkable in that it boasted a dado designed to continue the black and white tiled floor in perspective, as though to lower the ceiling. But Miss Edge had found marble tiles too cold to her toes, had had the stone covered in parquet blocks, on which were spread State imitation Chinese Kidderminster rugs. As a result, this receding vista of white and black lozenges set from the rugs to four feet up the walls, in precise and radiating perspective, seemed altogether out of place next British dragons in green and yellow; while the gay panelling above, shallow carved, was genuine, the work of a master, giving Cupid over and over in a thousand poses, a shock, a sad surprise in such a room.

In spite of summer and that it was dawn, there was already a log fire alight as Edge moved across to draw one pair of curtains, merely to look at the weather, or to lower a window perhaps, she did not know, but the room influenced her to act on graceful impulse. She took hold on velvet, which had red lilies over a deeper red, and paused, as she gently parted the twin halves, to admire her hands' whiteness against the heavy pile. Delicately, then, she proceeded to reveal window panes, because shutters had not been used the night before, to disclose glass frosted to flat arches by condensation, so that the Sanctum was reflected all dark sapphire blue from electric light at her back because it was not yet morning. She could even see, round her head's inky shade, no other than a swarm of aquamarines, which, pictured on the dark sapphire panes, were each drop of the chandelier that she had lit with the lamps switched on in entering.

She also caught a glimpse of matter whisk across behind, then dart back to hide. She turned. Held her breath, or she might have screamed. And it was, as she had feared, a horrid bat.

She made one dive for the wicker basket and put that on her.

The anonymous letter she had torn into little pieces the night before, now lay like flakes of frost on her white head.

She crouched down in case this new thing could nicker up her skirts. And Miss Baker entered.

"My dear," Baker said, cutting the lamps off at the switch, going across to the window which she opened. A light came through, so grey it was doomed, together with a wisp of mist. The bat flew outside at once. Whereupon Miss Baker turned lamps on again. Edge rose, delicately took off the basket.

"If we could as easily rid ourselves of Rock," she said. Over one eyebrow, caught in a mesh of hair, was a torn piece of paper with, printed on it, the word "FURNICATES".

"You have something on your head," Baker calmly told her. Without a word Edge removed it, reread, and let the word drop from her fingers to spiral to destruction on the flames.

"What's for breakfast?" Baker asked. Edge looked at a wristwatch. "They have five minutes," she said, referring to the ten girl students whose turn it was to do orderly duties, that is to wait on these two Principals. Then she slightly yawned. She began, "Each Wednesday that you and I go up to Town," she said, "the weather we have here, Baker, is exquisite, truly exquisite. There may be black fog outside, just now, this minute, but we shall be cheated, dear. The sun will shine."

"I dread Wednesdays for that reason," Baker untruthfully agreed.

"And the day of the Dance on top of all," Edge mused aloud.

"Oh well," the other said.

"So much still to be done," Edge insisted.

"Least said soonest mended," Baker gave a hint. She moved over to warm her fingers at the blaze.

"If the whole routine is not upset already," Miss Edge complained, fidgetting with tableware. "Till we even have to go hungry up to our labours in London because they are going to Dance." There was no reply.