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ear. “Really, Emmeline—those cats!” said Mildred Blake.
    CHAPTER V
    Susan went down to Mrs. Alexander’s general shop next morning to pass the time of day and to get a picture postcard of the church with the six-hundred-year-old tunnel of yew which led up to it. The Professor would like to have one. She was turning over the postcards and waiting for Mrs. Alexander to serve Dr. Croft’s housekeeper, who could take as long to buy a tin of shoe-polish as a girl who is choosing a dance-frock, when Clarice Dean came into the shop and fell upon her with effusion.
    “I’ve been longing to see you! Miss Blake came home from Mrs. Random’s and said you had come! You are going to catalogue the books at the Hall, aren’t you? I wish I had a nice easy job like that, but”—with an exaggerated sigh—“we poor nurses have to work!” She lowered her voice, but not much. “Now do tell me, is Edward Random here? Someone told me he was, but Miss Blake says he wasn’t at tea. Did he come by the later train?” She dropped her voice just a little further. “Or did he shirk the tea-party?”
    She might sigh, and she might complain about being hard-worked, but she appeared to be in very good spirits. She had a bright, dark prettiness made up of vivid colouring, brown wavy hair, and dancing hazel eyes. She had run out in her cap and a highly becoming blue uniform with short puffed-over sleeves of white muslin.
    The voice in which she asked about Edward was not really quite low enough. It had a sweet carrying quality. Mrs. Alexander and Dr. Croft’s housekeeper both looked round.
    Susan said,
    “You had better ask him. I am buying postcards.”
    Clarice laughed.
    “How discreet you are! But he is here now?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “We were quite friends, you know. Oh, years ago—I had only just finished training. I nursed Mr. James Random when he had influenza, and of course I saw quite a lot of Edward. That’s how I came to be here last year when Mr. Random died—he wouldn’t have anyone else. And we all thought Edward was dead! Dreadful—wasn’t it? I’m longing to see him again and hear all about everything! Miss Blake says he won’t utter, but I think he’ll tell me!”
    Susan said, “I don’t think—” and then stopped. Edward would have to deal with Clarice himself.
    Dr. Croft’s housekeeper said in her slow, heavy way,
    “Well, it’s no fault of yours, Mrs. Alexander, and I’m not saying it is, but I do say and I won’t go from it, that things aren’t the equal of what they were before the war. Nobody won’t get me from it that they’re not—not the boot-polish, nor yet the leather you have to shine with it. Nothing’s the same as what it used to be, nor won’t be again, but I’ll take a tin of the black and a tin of the brown and just make the best of them like we’ve all got to nowadays.”
    Mrs. Alexander had a fat, comfortable laugh. She said,
    “That’s right, Miss Sims, and better put a good face on it. Not but what you won’t find the polish is all right, for I use it myself.”
    She moved over to the other end of the counter. The warmth in her voice was for Susan.
    “Well, my dear, you’re back again and welcome. What can I do for you?”
    Susan bought postcards, and Clarice matches.
    “I don’t know where they go to. And Miss Blake said to ask if you had ripe tomatoes—and oh, two pounds of the cooking apples Miss Ora likes. She said you would know.”
    Mrs. Alexander looked gratified.
    “Why, yes, of course—off our own tree, and I don’t know the name, but it’s a good one. My father always give it a hogshead of water first week in July to swell the apples, and we’ve kept right on doing it. But you’d better have the dozen pounds like Miss Blake always do. Two pounds won’t go no way with Miss Ora—no way at all.”
    Edward Random walked down the village street without looking to left or right. As he passed Mrs. Alexander’s shop, Clarice Dean ran out and stopped him.