"But it does so aggravate one, Baker; there is the cottage sitting up begging at me and I have set my heart on it."

"Well, Mr Rock won't live for ever, will he?" Baker asked, while she took a great bite off her toast heaped with marmalade and butter.

"I want action," Edge demanded.

"I don't know how you're going to get it, then," Miss Baker said. "And there's this about Sebastian. There's never come even a hint of trouble, the five years he's been here, between him and one of our girls."

"I am eating my heart out for that cottage, Baker."

"And all the while your stomach's crying aloud for sustenance. Look. I shall see Pensilby of the Secretariat of New Buildings at my Commission today, and I'll ask him if his Department would support a licence for an entirely new cottage."

"But new building does not come under that Ministry," Edge elegantly wailed.

Miss Baker then explained the acute approach to the official which had suggested itself.

"I see," Edge exclaimed. "My dear, you are splendid," she said, which was praise indeed. But she was not the sort to let anyone rest for any length of time on such a note. She had been looking at the other curtains, and now she rose from her place to walk daintily across. She paused an instant, then, courage in both hands, she swept these back as dramatically as the scene disclosed shone on her now smiling eyes. Because, except for what still hung over the water, the mist was evaporating fast, the first beech trees away to the right were quite freed, her Park itself was brilliantly clear, the sun up, a lovely day had opened and, as she watched, a cloud of starlings rose from the nearest of her Woods, they ascended in a spiral up into blue sky; a thousand dots revolving on a wave, the shape of a vast black seashell pointed to the morning; and she was about to exclaim in delight when, throughout the dormitories upstairs, with a sound of bees in this distant Sanctum, buzzers called her girls to rise so that two hundred and eighty nine turned over to that sound, stretched and yawned, opened blue eyes on their white sheets to this new day which would stretch on, clinging to its light, until at length, when night should fall at last, would be time for the violins and the dance.

But Edge had caught sight of two specks. She looked again. Two men had come out from under her Trees. One was carrying a yoke with buckets, so she knew him. She cried out, in shocked vexation, "Rock flaunts himself."

"What?" Baker demanded, jolted by the tone used into looking sharply from her plate.

"Why cannot the man take the back way?" Edge asked in a calmer voice. "Must he trail across our beautiful front, even with his swill?"

"He's rather a favourite outside this room, you know," Miss Baker said, to moderate her colleague.

"Tomorrow I shall speak about it."

"Well, I shouldn't give a hint in the kitchen, Edge."

"Stumbling over our grass," Edge protested, when there was a knock. "Come in," she invited, triumphant suddenly. The girl Marion entered. She stood just inside the door.

"Ma'am," she said, and swallowed.

"Yes, Marion?"

"Ma'am," she said, once more swallowing.

"Well?"

"It's Mary and Merode," and the child brought out everything, which was little enough, in a rush.

"They're not there, and the beds not slept in."

Half an hour later, punctual to the minute, Baker left with Edge in the car for Town. They had a number of reasons why they should carry on as though nothing had occurred. What they had decided was, that the police must be casually informed, yet be instructed, at the same time, not to make a search.

Meanwhile Miss Marchbanks could question other girls in the dormitory.

There was no point in losing one's head. The Dance must go on of course.

Mary was such a steady girl, in fact they would not even consider it (although Merode had no parents), Edge had said speaking for Miss Baker, and that it was all a mistake, as they would find when, after their hard day, they themselves returned. In any case, the two girls must be together, which made for safety. Baker had not been so sure.

But, as Edge pointed out, if they were to draw attention by staying down here to miss their Wednesday Commissions, they would look, when everything was cleared up by luncheon, as it would surely be, like nothing so much as old fools, or worse, yes, like a couple of old fools.

So they went. And two thirds of the students knew nothing whatever, at first, about the disappearance of these children.

Mr Rock left his yoke. When he came in alone by the outside kitchen door, he could just see Maggie Blain seated, in charge, at her kitchen table and beyond her, barely a part of one of the cookers. This was by reason of a great shaft of early sunlight which, as it entered one of the windows, shone so loud already that it bisected the kitchen, to show him air on the rise in its dust, like soda-water through transparent milk. It hid the line of girls beyond, fetching their own breakfasts at the other cooker. They were no more to him than light blue shadows, and their low voices, to his deafness, just a female murmuring, a susurration of feathers.

"The swill man," he called in a high cracked voice, bringing out the joke he had plied for ten years; anxious about his breakfast, because that depended upon Mrs Blain's present health and temper.

He felt it would be all right because she said, "Marion, a cup of tea for Mr Rock."

The girl and the old man came together over this, in the megaphone of light. When he was seated she whispered at him, "You didn't catch sight of Mary and Merode?"

He could not hear.

"You'll have to speak up, my dear," he said, "if you want me to understand."

"As you came along?" she said louder, at a loss.

"There'll be time and to spare for secrets when the music's playin'," Maggie Blain told her. "Will you come along tonight?" she enquired of Mr Rock. He decided that she sounded hospitable.

"I'm past it," he said.

"Might do you good," she said grimly. He did not like that tone so well.

"And you?" he asked, then felt faint for lack of food, so that he had to close his eyes behind the winking spectacles.

"Me?" she said. "I'll be so rushed all day with work I shan't seek to be on my toes when the hour strikes." He took this to be a bad sign. And he had only had the cup of tea.

"Oh, you'll come to our dance surely, won't you Mr Rock?" a girl's voice called from the shadows. But he was not even going to consider now that the Principals had not invited him. It was breakfast he was after.

"You shouldn't trouble about me," he said, with the one purpose in view. "This lady here's the one will have to bear the brunt," he said. But it drew no response out of Mrs Blain. So he kept silent for a time. The whispering began once more. If he could have heard, past the glow from that hot tea which flooded his senses, he would have caught these sentiments, "You didn't?"

"I did."

"Oh, but you shouldn't have."

"Why, whatever else was I to do?"

"But they'll turn up, directly."

"Mary and Merode?"

"I know, but all the same."

"There you are, you feel like me, like me, you see." And all the while a line of girls fetched their breakfasts, served themselves, the sleep from which they had just come a rosy moss upon the lips, the heavy tide of dreams on each in a flow of her eighteen summers, and which would ebb now only with their first cup they were fetching, as his tea made his old blood run again, in this morning's second miracle for Mr Rock.