“He never!”

Florrie nodded.

“Cross my heart he did! And told her to get out of his house, and the sooner the better-at least that’s what it sounded like-and threw open the door and told her to go and pack.”

“Well, I never!”

Florrie nodded again, even more emphatically.

“And I got caught as near as a toucher. I don’t know how I got out of the way in time, I don’t reelly. I wouldn’t have, only they didn’t come out-not then. And the door stayed open, so I could hear all the rest of it-and my goodness if it wasn’t a Row! There was something about a letter he’d had-and that would be the one that came Thursday morning-and he said it was a filthy letter about a filthy thing.”

“He didn’t.”

“He did, straight! And she screaming out that it was all a lie! And then he said he knew quite well who it was as had written all those letters, and she said who was it, and he said wouldn’t she like to know. And then-Dad, what do you think he said then? He said maybe she’d written the letters herself! It didn’t sound sense to me, but that’s what he said. He said it would be one way of breaking off Miss Valentine’s marriage and getting out of her own, only she’d better make sure Mr. Gilbert would marry her before she walked out!”

Mr. Stokes took a sip of the sickly looking greenish fluid in the cup he was holding and swallowed it with relish. He said,

“Who’d er thought it! Has she gone?”

Florrie shook her head.

“No-nor doesn’t mean to, if you ask me. Said how was he going to make her go if she didn’t want to? And I’d say that brought him up with a bit of a turn, but I didn’t rightly hear any more, because that’s where he shut the door, and I didn’t like to go near it again.”

“Then how do you know she isn’t going off?”

Florrie giggled.

“I’ve got eyes and ears, haven’t I? The Colonel, he banged out-took the car. He just told Miss Maggie he wouldn’t be home to lunch and off he went. Mrs. Repton, she come down as if nothing had happened, and she hadn’t been packing neither, for I looked in her room. And at lunch, when Miss Maggie was talking about poor Miss Connie’s funeral and saying of course they would all go, and had they anything like mourning that they could wear, Miss Valentine said she hadn’t anything but grey, but she could wear a black hat with it. And Mrs. Repton-you know how bright she dresses- she said all she’d got was a smart navy suit which wouldn’t be at all right, but she supposed it would have to do. So the funeral not being till Tuesday, it doesn’t look as if she was thinking of getting off in a hurry, does it?”

“She wouldn’t want to make talk,” said Mr. Stokes. “There’d be a lot of talk if she went away before the funeral. Not but what there’ll be a lot of talk anyway.”

It would not be the fault of the Stokes family if there were not. When Florrie’s elder sister Betty came in the whole story had to be gone over again. And when Ivy was added to the family party, and the son Bob, and presently Florrie’s boy friend and Betty’s boy friend dropped in, it was all repeated. And with each repetition there was a tendency to place more and more emphasis on the fact that Colonel Repton had said he knew who had written the anonymous letters.

Later on that evening Florrie and her boy went over in the bus to Ledlington to the pictures. Waiting in the bus queue were Hilda Price and Jessie Peck. After such preliminaries as, “You know how I am about not talking,” and, “You won’t let it go any further, will you?” Florrie passed from hinting to narrative, the story lasting most of the way over in the bus, with the result that the boy friend, who was not really very much interested in anything except himself and his motorbike with Florrie a bad third, began to show signs of temper. How many people Hilda and Jessie told is not on record, but they were competent news-mongers.

Betty Stokes, who had been going steady with Mrs. Gurney’s son Reg for the past two years and was expecting to be engaged at Christmas, went round with him to his mother’s, where they spent the evening. In the intervals of playing rummy she related the latest instalment of the Manor serial. It was received with a good deal of interest.

Ivy, who was only sixteen, ran over to a girl friend who was also one of a large family. Her version of the row at the Manor was certainly the least accurate of the three, but not on that account the least interesting. She had a lively imagination and a good deal of dramatic sense. Her performance in a play got up in aid of the local Women’s Institute had been noticed in the Ledshire Observer. Her rendering of the Repton quarrel was an exciting one.

“Florrie, she was right next the door and she couldn’t help hearing him tell her he knew all about the way she’d been carrying on, and she could go to hell. Those were his very words, and they didn’t half give Florrie a turn. She came over ever so queer, because she thought whatever should she do if the Colonel got reelly violent. She couldn’t just stand there outside the door and let Mrs. Repton be half killed-now could she? And the Colonel might have turned on her if she’d come between them. Just like something out of a film it was. Florrie said her heart beat ever so. And the Colonel says, ‘Leave my house!’ he says. And she says, ‘How are you going to make me, I’d like to know.’ And they get on to those poison-pen letters, and he carries on something dreadful and he says he knows who wrote them…” And so forth and so on, the girl friend’s family coming in with appropriate responses and a good time being had by all.

It was not until late that night and just before she dropped asleep that the girl friend’s mother was suddenly visited by the thought of Connie Brooke. It was a vague ghost thought without clarity or definition, but it went with her into her sleep and it was still there when she woke in the morning. If she could have put it into words they would have been something like this, “Connie Brooke knew who wrote those letters, and she is dead.”

There are days which come up so bright and fair that they hardly seem to belong to the workaday world. When Miss Silver rose next morning to golden sunshine and an unclouded sky she reflected that it was doubly pleasant and appropriate that such halcyon weather should adorn a Sunday. She recalled George Herbert’s words:

“Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky-”

The end of the verse, with its reference to the dew which would weep the fall and death of the lovely day, she considered to be morbid, and did not therefore allow her thought to dwell upon it. She found the service in the old church most pleasant and restful, the lessons read plainly and well, a simple sermon, hearty untrained singing, and Mettie Eccles at the organ.

As they walked home afterwards, Miss Renie said in a plaintive voice,

“Mettie has always played. She has so much energy, but my dear sister used to say that her touch was hard. Esther had a very cultivated musical taste.”

Miss Silver remarked that she had liked Mr. Martin’s sermon. Miss Renie’s very slight sniff might have escaped a less acute observer.

“He has been here a long time, and people are fond of him, but he does not keep up his dignity,” she said. Then, with an abrupt transition, “I suppose you noticed that there was no one in the Manor pew?”

The following day was dull and rainy. It was Miss Maggie’s afternoon for the Work Party which, begun during the war, had proved so pleasant a social gathering that it had established itself as a permanency. There were, unfortunately, always the displaced and the distressed to work for, and no lack of piteous appeals for their relief. The party met at a different house each week, and its members vied with each other in the provision of simple refreshments. There had been some considerable speculation as to whether Miss Maggie would take her turn this time or allow it to pass to someone else. Opinion was divided on the subject, some ladies considering that the Reptons had really had enough on their hands, and that it would really be more delicate if they remained in retirement until after Connie’s funeral, whilst others held the view that the Work Party was not so much a Party as a Good Work and as such nothing should be allowed to interfere with it. Mettie Eccles made herself the mouthpiece of this second view, and not without authority, since she allowed it to be known that Miss Maggie had consulted her.