Summer Every Day

SUMMER EVERY DAY Jane Arbor

When Laurel volunteered to look after a friend' boarding kennels for the summer she expected to be kept busy -- but what made the whole thing really difficult was the obstructive attitude of the landlord, Clive march, and his still more unpleasant girl-friend Blanche.

CHAPTER ONE AUNT ANITA came down to the gate as Laurel was strapping on her crash helmet. "I suppose you're going down to Sally's, dear?" she asked. Laurel nodded. "To help her to pack and to get my last briefings. I'll probably stay until after she's done the evening feeds, so expect me when you see me, will you, Aunt A.?" "All right, dear, though you'll phone if you won't be in to supper? That poor child Sally! Is she in much of a state?" "Just pulled two ways, I think. Naturally enough - about the Kennels - but she's quite rapturous about their allowing John out of the Clinic for up to three months and even longer if he goes on improving in Switzerland." Aunt Anita agreed. "And of course she must know she's lucky that you're free to stand in for her while they're away." Laurel laughed. "Huh? Lucky? That'll be for her to say yea or nay to when she comes back!" Then with a "See you - " gesture at her aunt, Laurel opened the throttle of her scooter and let it slip into its cruising speed. Her friend Sally Duke had taught her to drive a car, but she couldn't afford one, so had taken to a scooter as the next best thing. It was Uncle Leopold who had said that the two of them made a kind of female centaur, and the name had stuck to the scooter. Laurel went everywhere on it - shopping, to her secretarial job when she was doing it, which she wasn't at the moment; down to Sally's once or twice a week and as far afield as she needed to go. Sally's rented cottage was only about a mile away, but it was on the fringe of a different world from Rodiam village where Laurel lived

with her Aunt Anita and Uncle Leopold. For the village was of "spreading chestnut tree" vintage - a trodden green, a huddle of houses, the church, two public houses and a shop-cum-post office which smelled of the things it sold, whereas Rodiam New Town - all neat sapling- lined avenues and supermarkets and perambulators on Saturday afternoons - began and spread just a few hundred yards from Sally's place. The New Town had been a 'building since before Laurel had come to the village and she could remember when it was the "in" thing to regard it as a blot on the countryside and a threat to an age-old way of life. But in the last year or two the genuine villagers had come to accept it. Now they weren't apologetic about windowgazing in its boutiques: they shopped in its chain stores and used its laundrettes, and the over- sixties of the village were completely sold on the New Town when it began to send up a coach to take them to Bingo sessions. The New Town had grown even faster since various factories and the chief laboratories of Pan-Oleum, the oil people, came. And the more young families with gardens and the freedom to keep pets, the larger grew Sally's clientele for the boarding kennels she had started in the outhouses and loose-boxes attached to her cottage. Until, two years earlier, Laurel had found herself sharing a table for coffee with Sally in Ringdown, the nearest big town, they hadn't met since Sally had left boarding-school, four years Laurel's senior. At school that had been a big gap, but at Laurel's then eighteen and Sally's twenty-two, it had already ironed out, and that morning it hadn't mattered at all. On both sides there had been a lot to tell and to hear. For instance, though Laurel's surname was still North, Sally wasn't a Fraser any more. She was married to a John Duke. But before she told Laurel about him she had puzzled.

"Wasn't your home somewhere in the Lake District? Kendal?" "No, Ambleside. After my father retired from the Army, he and Mother ran a guest-house there." "But now you're living down here?" Laurel could remember wincing. She always hated telling people. "I am - over at Rodiam village with my aunt and uncle North," she had said. "Dada and Mother always had to take a winter holiday, and one November before I left school their plane crashed over Jersey. They — " Sally had understood. "Don't talk about it if you'd rather not!" she said, and they were silent for a minute or two. Then she asked, "What are you doing now? Have you got a job?" Laurel had, and told her that she acted as secretary to Alma Frayne, a writer whose output was two novels with exotic foreign backgrounds every winter and who spent at least three months of the rest of the year abroad, collecting local colour for them. She lived in Laurel's neighbouring village of Butesholme, to which Laurel commuted by Centaur every day and was able to live at home. "Miss Frayne pays me a retaining salary while she's away, so that when I've finished any arrears of work for her, I can take a temporary job or not as I please. Suits me- But I'm doing all the talking. What about you?" Laurel added to Sally. Sally had said slowly then, "Well, I suppose I must count some blessings. At least John - my husband - is alive, and there are hopes he may improve a good deal more with time." "Alive? Improve?" Laurel had queried, and had heard how John Duke, a schoolmaster, had caught polio just after he and Sally were married. He was then still in an iron lung in Ringdown Clinic, a

specialist hospital, and a few months earlier Sally had sold up their Cambridge home and had come down to Ring- down to be near him. But she had to live somewhere and to earn money in some way which would make her free to spend some time with John. And there, she claimed, she had been fortunate enough to rent a furnished house on the outskirts of Rodiam New Town and had started a holiday home, mainly for cats, though she took a few dogs too and was prepared to stretch a point for guinea- pigs or pet rabbits. She was advertising in the local press and in the shops in Ringdown and Rodiam, and was already getting bookings through personal recommendations. That had all been two years before the afternoon , when Laurel went to bid Sally au revoir and bon voyage; when John's condition had improved to the point where Sally had permission to take him out of the Clinic for a long holiday on Lake Lugano, where they had been lent an apartment by John's surgeon. But there was one-snag - the season was May, the beginning of the Kennels' busiest time. And though, as Sally said as they finished her packing, "I haven't any choice. John must come first," she and Laurel agreed that it would have badly harmed the Kennels' reputation if she had had to cancel all her summer bookings at short notice. "That's where you come in," she told Laurel gratefully, and though neither put it into words, Laurel knew their thought was the same that, supposing John's improvement didn't hold, the Kennels might have to serve their purpose for a long time to come. Laurel said, "You should be blessing Alma Frayne." For it was her employer's decision to spend the summer in North Africa which had left her free to take over for Sally in her absence, which she could do, having helped Sally so often that she knew the drill from A to Z. The bookings, the accounts, the cooking and washing-up; the feeding, the exercising of the dogs, the constant watch for 'off

colour' symptoms which meant a call to the vet; even the gracious speeding of parting guests who also never signified "Thank you for having me", so precious to them was their escape to their own homes and renewed freedom at the end of their stint in kennels Laurel knew it all so well that Sally claimed to have few qualms about leaving her to it. There was, however, so much to discuss that Laurel stayed over for supper, both of them exchanging questions and injunctions until, as Laurel was about to leave, Sally said, "I've just sent a cheque to the agents for this month's rent. But as I'd hate to get caught out with it overdue, you'll pay next month's on the dot, won't you?" "Of course." Then Laurel repeated something she had said before. "You know, considering all you have at stake here, you ought to have a more secure tenancy than monthly." Sally nodded. "I do know. But when I took the place; with John's future so uncertain, the arrangement suited me as well as it did my landlord. Anyway, the agents said he wouldn't alter it, and when he seemed agreeable to my starting the Kennels, I didn't press the point. Let sleeping dogs lie - in more senses than one!" "Cats too," Laurel agreed, then stated something she already knew. "You've never met this landlord, have you?" "Never. He went abroad. Our only dealings are through his agents. But my idea of him and this place is that he may have bought it as a country cot to retire to in his old age. Though if he doesn't come near it between now and then, I'd give a lot to see his reaction when he finds the New Town has burst out all over on his doorstep!" Sally giggled.

Laurel laughed too. "Could be he's a henpecked little man with a wife who'll love the New Town, and he'll have to like it - or else," she said idly. Then it seemed high time she went. Sally said a little shakily, "Well, good luck, Laurel dear. And thank you - thank you from both of us — " At which, guessing she wasn't going to sleep much for worry about John, about the Kennels in Laurel's hands, about the whole future, Laurel said in her best American, "Think nothing of it, ma'am. You're welcome !" - and left.

The next morning the rain was coming down in straight rods. On subsequent mornings Laurel would be going over to the Kennels much earlier, but Sally would have done the breakfast feeds before she left and Laurel had to go into the New Town first to give a kennel order at the butcher's and to remind the corn-chandler about cat-litter. It was Saturday and the rain had brought out all the weekend shoppers in cars instead of on foot. The streets were choc-a-bloc; there were queues at every set of traffic-lights, and just as Laurel was able to put the Centaur to a rare spurt on a clear stretch, a cat streaked out from the pavement inches from the front wheel. Laurel jammed on both brakes and came to an emergency stop of which, in her L-plate days, she would have been justly proud. But the cars breathing down her neck didn't seem to approve, and as a big one swept past her, the driver glanced meaningly her way. She was glad to see that his hurry didn't get him very far. Just before the next junction a delivery van was blocking everything and the lights changed twice before it manoeuvred itself out of the way.

Halting in the outside lane, prepared to turn right, Laurel heard a voice at her elbow. It came from the heavy Continental car which had just passed her. Its driver, she saw at closer view, was a man in such Technicolor - a tan like boot-polish, eyes so blue by contrast that he might be newborn, a thatch of fair hair sun-bleached almost white - that he was a positive affront to an alleged summer day whose temperature was somewhere in the lower fifties Fahrenheit. He said drily, "Very fancy performance. But oughtn't you to keep antics of that sort for the nursery slopes, instead of trying them out on wet streets in a rush hour?" Laurel stared at him. "Fancy stuff? You mean my dead stop back there? But there was a cat - !" Those eyes disbelieved her. "I saw no cat," he said. The lights had gone to amber and there wasn't much time. But she meant to have her say. "Then for the cat's sake, it's a good job I did, isn't it?" she retorted, and took her right-hand turn as he moved straight ahead. "Fancy", indeed! Why, Laurel was pretty sure she had recognised the cat - a marmalade Manx job who had spent last Christmas at Sally's. She felt she would have liked to be able to produce his name and address to her beachcomber critic - not that she was likely to share a halt at traffic lights with him again. She did her shopping, then went to the kennels. The cottage - herringbone brick under a mellow tiled roof - stood back from the road behind white palings and a small apron of lawn. At the side there was a wide drive-in to the garage, empty now of the car which Sally had taken with her, and a high locked gate

giving on to the courtyard which was flanked by the stables which Sally had adapted to the needs of her guests. There was an open netted run where the dogs could fraternise if they chose. The cats mostly preferred to keep themselves to themselves in their own cages and private runs. At right angles to the back of the house was an annexe, a two-roomed wooden chalet where Sally took in stores, in summer did her correspondence and which, at a pinch, could take an overspill of cages. At the front gate there was a big wooden cut-out of a dog and cat supporting between them a name board - 'The Dukery Kennels. Pets Boarded', and Sally's name and telephone number. Laurel parked the Centaur, looked in on the four cats in residence and had a short romp with brother and sister Corgis in the run. Then she let herself into the house with the key Sally had given her overnight. Sally's post lay on the mat. Advertisements of pet foods and a cat journal. A couple of receipts. An obviously private letter for Sally which she put aside and a typed envelope with a Ringdown postmark. "Open anything typewritten," was to be her rule, so she opened this one . .. and needed to reach for a chair as she read its contents. She breathed aloud, "Oh no!" then looked at the date-stamp on the envelope. That made it true. In the course of post it had crossed with Sally's cheque for the rent, for it was a formal month's notice to quit from the agents, "at the direction of our client, Mr. Clive March," with the added note that as Mr. March was anxious for immediate possession he would "meet" Sally financially if she would vacate at once.

Laurel read the letter again and again, numb with shock for both Sally's sake and her own, having to break such news to her. Why, oh, why had she been so blind to the obvious wisdom of protecting herself from such a cruel coup es this? Taking stock, Laurel saw the hopelessness of finding other premises for the Kennels. Anyway, it was the satisfactory set-up here which had done much to gain Sally her County Council licence, and a move could be the kiss of death for any business. No, only a miracle could save the Dukery Kennels from putting up the shutters thirty days hence... A miracle? What a hope! For even if she dug in her heels on Sally's behalf and refused to be "met", where would that get them? A mere useless month's grace. The house belonged to this man March. He wanted it. If she stood on Sally's rights for that month, he would be all the more keen to take his pound of flesh at the end of it. Finis. Laurel reached for the bookings diary and looked through it. The numbers mounted steadily in June and July to a continuously full house of forty cats and ten dogs in August through to September. All that lost cash for Sally and all those good people to disappoint! Appalled, she thrust aside the grisly thought, and had gone through to the kitchen to do the day's cooking when there was a knock on the front door. Back in the tiny hall, she could see the reflection of a man's head, but when she opened to him all that was presented to her was his back. She coughed discreetly and he came about to face her - in the same split second as she recognised that straw-white hair and something about the assured carriage of that head. Her critic at the traffic-lights. Well, well! She saw that his first glance had recognised her too, even minus her raincoat and crash helmet. But he said nothing until he had allowed himself a goldfish-bowl scrutiny of her wellingtons, corduroy

slacks, cable- stitch pullover under one of Sally's striped butcher's aprons; and of Laurel herself, feature by feature, she felt, from her overwide mouth to her inward curving black hair and green eyes under flyaway brows which had been her Irish mother's gift to her. As if I were being filed in some mental inventory, she thought, and was sorely tempted to the pertness of "Stare, stare, like a bear ..when he said, not making a question of it, "You are Mrs. Duke," then swung round again, pointing a forefinger which twitched with annoyance. "That thing! What's it doing there?" he wanted to know. She followed the line of the finger. "That? The name- board of the Kennels? Surely it speaks for itself?" From over his shoulder, "It does indeed." He turned on his heel again. "But what I'd like to know, Mrs. Duke, is why it is there?" This was beyond Laurel, so she dealt with the one misconception she could put right. "I'm not Mrs. Duke," she told him. "I'm her deputy while she is unavoidably away. But anything you — " "Away? Since when?" he snapped. "Just this morning. She's taking her husband to the Italian lakes for convalescence." "But she would have heard from me before she left? That is, from " He broke off. "But of course you wouldn't know me. My name is March, Clive March. Mrs. Duke's landlord, dealing through Smeedon and Guy of Ringdown, as, if you are a friend of hers, you may have heard?" Clive March! Could their last night's mental picture of Sally's landlord have been further from the reality? Or - considering he

might need careful handling - could Laurel's own fate have played a more puckish trick than the cat episode on Western Parade that morning? She said faintly, "I have heard - " and as he spattered rain in a wide arc from his hair, she stood aside. "Please come in." "Thank you." His bulk and his height so dominated the hall that she had to back into the sitting-room before he could follow her. He waited for her to sit. Then they faced each other with a world of cross-purposes between them. Laurel led off. "My name is Laurel North. I don't live here with Mrs. Duke. My home is in Rodiam village, and I'm managing - " she corrected herself tactfully, "that is, I was to manage the Kennels while she is away, as I've said. And so, as I have her authority to deal with her business correspondence, I've just read your agents' letter which arrived after she left." He considered all that. Then "So? And you'll have understood it? And can put me in touch with Mrs. Duke?" Laurel grasped the nettle, "I can," she said. "But I'd rather not. Or not just yet, please." "You'd rather not? And why not, may I ask?" "Because - " she began. And then, "Tell me, Mr. March, just why were you so outraged by the signboard at the gate? You must have known about the Kennels all along. Sally couldn't have started them without your authority, and I know she had it, for she told me so." "Had my authority to launch out into a scale of animal boarding which that sign seems to be advertising? She certainly had not," he denied.

"She would never have dared to use the premises so, if she hadn't had the green light from you!" He stirred and crossed a leg. "Look," he said, "I was abroad. I've been working in the North Sahara for three years and all my dealings with Mrs. Duke have been through my agents. I didn't know when I might need to return here, so a short notice lease suited me as it seemed to suit her. And when I gave her permission to look after some cats here, I supposed she wanted to baby-sit a few for her friends. I certainly never envisaged the thing snowballing into the business for profit which the agents tell me it has, and as that board seems to imply. And as a matter of interest, how many creatures are being housed on my property, and where?" "Mainly in the stables, which are fitted out for the cats; the dogs are separate, of course, with their own run. At the moment there are only four cats and two dogs. But they come and go. The numbers vary, with the peak in high summer when people go on holiday." Then Laurel put the ball in his court. "You know, Mr. March, it could be argued that you should have checked whether more was being read into that permission of yours than you meant." His curt nod seemed to allow that. "I agree. On the other hand, Mrs. Duke could equally have kept me posted, couldn't she?" "Smeedon and Guy knew! And where was the sense of doing it at all if she was only dabbling and probably making a loss?" Laurel demanded. He shrugged. "All right, leave it. It's water under the bridge. The point is now that I want to reoccupy this house as soon as possible. So I need to contact Mrs. Duke at once, to see in how short a time she can wind up her business."

Laurel stared at him dumbly. Then she blurted, "But I told you - I don't want you to ask her to do that. Her husband has been ill for a long time with polio. She's had to earn their living with the Kennels and will probably have to go on doing it. She simply cannot wind them up in the space of a month. It's impossible!" "I'm sorry, but the terms of our lease were quite clear. The unfortunate complications are of Mrs. Duke's making. And though I won't press her to let me have the place at once, I must insist on moving in a month from now. Anyway, it shouldn't harm her connection too much to set up elsewhere." Laurel realised she hadn't touched him anywhere, and the sheer complacency of that got her on the raw. She said, "There isn't any 'elsewhere' that I know of, and I've lived around here for years. Besides, Sally - Mrs. Duke - has put money into this place; winter heating for the stables, cages, a lot bigger refrigerator than yours, first-aid equipment - the lot. For pity's sake, Mr. March, haven't you ever heard of goodwill? What do you suppose it would do to Sally's, if she had to cancel all her summer bookings - just like that?" Laurel snapped her finger and thumb. Without batting an eyelid - "I've mentioned, I think, that the complications are Mrs. Duke's problem?" he murmured suavely. At that Laurel thought it time to pull out all the stops. As if thoughtfully, she said, "I wonder if you realise, Mr. March, just how many domestic pets in this country are put to sleep before their owners go on holiday? It runs into thousands, and supposing only one or two of Sally's cancellations led to that, would you still regard it as a problem that was no concern of yours?" It didn't work. His pitiless logic laid a finger on the flaw at once. He shook his head. "I'm afraid you have a fallacy there. Anyone who cared enough for their pets to book them in advance to a kennels

wouldn't be daunted by a change of premises nor even a closedown. They'd simply look for another place to board them. No, I'm sorry. Though I'll compensate Mrs. Duke for any fixtures she has to leave behind, the terms of the notice must stand." As he spoke he stood. "So now if you'll let me have an address for her, Miss - er - North?" Laurel had one last fling. "But the cheque for this month's rent has already gone in." "Then I'll see that it's returned to her. Now - the address, please?" Laurel stood too, her legs feeling like loose knitting. "No," she said. "No?" Then, almost indulgently, "You know, I don't think you can mean that, can you?" "But I do. I have Mrs. Duke's authority to act for her in all her business affairs. For a month she has the right to refuse you the premises, so I'm doing that for her, and I'll tell her what the position is when I see fit. Do I make myself clear, Mr. March?" Laurel was ashamed of the pomposity, but it seemed to have some effect. For a long moment he repeated that dressing-down kind of stare. Then he said coolly, "Entirely. But in case you want to refer anything back - " He tore a sheet from a memo pad, scribbled on it, folded it and handed it to her. When he had gone she looked at what he had written. It was the address and telephone number of an hotel in the New Town, and for good measure he had added the number of his agents, which she already knew. She remembered there was a word - Pyrrhic, was it? for the kind of victory which didn't get you anywhere, and it seemed she had one. She had gained a respite before she need break the news to Sally. But she hadn't saved the future of the Kennels at all.

Meanwhile there was the day's work to do. She went back to the kitchen, prepared the cats' food for their suppers and soaked meal in readiness to mix with the dogs' meat. She "cleaned out" and dangled the youngest cat's toy to her for a while. In the house again she did some dusting, then grilled the fish she had brought for her own lunch. In the afternoon she leashed the two Corgis and took them for a walk. When she got back there were several telephone calls to make and answer, and at five she gave tea to a client who was putting in her cat for a week's stay. To none of them did she utter a word about the doom that was uppermost in her mind. She left the evening feeds as late as she could, in fairness to Aunt Anita. It wasn't an ideal arrangement to have no one sleeping at the Kennels. But her aunt was against her staying there alone overnight, and she always tried to fall in with the unwritten rule on punctuality for meals. The rain had brought down an early dusk and it was raining again when she locked up and wheeled out the Centaur, only for it to add the last straw by refusing to start. Laurel resorted to the usual persuaders of reluctant two-strokes. She shook it soundly; coasted downhill and went into gear, and when she had wasted all the downhill she had, she changed the plug, though without result. That meant carburettor trouble; the service garage would be shut and it was Sunday the next day. Nothing for it then but to push the thing back up to Sally's and to walk home. But just as she was about to turn the one car she had begun to hate the sight of loomed up out of the steamy dusk and her antagonist of the morning drew alongside to ask, "Trouble? Anything I can do?"

Laurel shook her head. "No, I've done it all, short of taking down the carburettor, which I can't do. I must take it back to the Kennels and leave it there." "And then?" "I shall walk home." "To Rodiam village, I think you said? Yes? Well, I'm on my way there to dine with a friend, so I'll give you a lift." He leaned to open the passenger door of the car. "Get in." She clung to the Centaur's handlebars. "Thank you, but — " "Get in." He alighted himself, took the scooter bodily from her, then held out his palm. "If you don't want it left out in the rain all night, I shall need the garage key," he said. "Oh . . . yes." Without a thought of withholding it, she fished in the pocket of her raincoat for Sally's bunch. But he must have misread her fumbling, for a gleam showed in his eye. "It's all right," he said. "You can trust me to return it. I'm not thinking of claiming squatters' rights." Laurel felt herself flush to the roots of her hair and she almost slapped the bunch of keys into his hand. Without a word he trundled the Centaur away up the gradient, making nothing of its dead weight. When he came back he dropped the keys into her lap and said, "Sorry to pile on the coals of fire, but you hadn't turned off your fuel tap. I did it for you." Laurel almost choked over her "Thank you", and she sat beside him, fuming that the 'coals of fire' bit showed he knew she was resenting accepting anything at his hands. Every encounter of the day had

contrived to put her on the wrong foot with him, and to have to be obliged to him was too much! Meanwhile the big car gobbled up the distance between the Kennels and the village. There was no time for conversation except for her to tell him where she lived. He put her down at the gate and kept the engine idling before going on. He said, "Now remember, when you get that machine repaired, no more practising emergency stops in heavy traffic - do you hear?" Laurel laid hold on her patience. "I've told you once -1 was avoiding a cat!" He shook his head. "Not good enough. Proverbially cats have nine lives. You've only one, and I daresay you have someone who cares quite a lot that you stay in one piece?" She looked him straight in the eye. "Yes," she said, "I have," and let him make what he liked of that.

CHAPTER TWO BY Monday Laurel had made a decision. It meant pocketing her pride and going cap-in-hand, but if the Kennels were to be saved it seemed the only thing to try. Not that she had any relish for the task. For though one could argue that the man could only say No to her proposition she had a pretty shrewd idea that this man's No would carry barbs in its tail. She did some of the morning jobs while a boy was working on the Centaur, and when it was ready she telephoned Clive March's hotel to ask if he were in. He was and would see her, the message came back through the receptionist, and when she arrived he was awaiting her in the lounge, his "Good morning" to her having no air of surprise that she had phoned him. She took the chair he offered her with the feeling that she was sitting on the edge of it, which she wasn't, and the question on which her whole case depended came out with no finesse at all. He echoed it after her. "How long do I expect to be occupying my house after I've claimed it? Well, not that it's any business of yours, but a probable two or three months, a possible month more. Why?" "Because — "she began, then took in the full enormity of what he had said. "Two to four months?" she yelped. "You can't be serious? You'd force us to wind up the Kennels and you'd turn Mrs. Duke out for just that time? Why, I thought — " "Yes?" he invited. "Well, surely that you wanted it yourself for long enough to justify your demanding it from her. Say a couple of years or indefinitely something like that." "And you wouldn't consider that my legal ownership of the place gives me the right to ask for it back, even though I might mean to

vacate it again in a matter of days or a week? However, that aside, you haven't told me yet why you found it necessary to ask?" Laurel hesitated. For though, as she had said, she had been thinking in terms of years, it was the few months ahead which bothered her most. Give Sally those three months, and the thing might sort itself out. If John progressed as they hoped, she might not need the house for long after they came back, or Clive March might have relinquished it once more. In any case, three or four months would take them near to the Kennels' slack season, when the bookings could be tailed off to nothing. She sat up very straight and began again. "Because," she said, "supposing I let you occupy the house at once, would you agree to my carrying on the business of the Kennels as usual? Because if you would, Sally needn't know - yet, at least - that you've given her notice, or about the threat to the Kennels or - or anything," she finished lamely. "In other words, you're withdrawing your Saturday's ultimatum - on conditions? Then just how important is it that your friend shouldn't know?" She drew a long breath. "Terribly," she told him. "Sally went off quite happily, and I'd move mountains to keep her that way. And as I'm living at home and don't need the house - or almost not, I see no reason why you and I couldn't share it. Though I suppose it does rather depend on what you want it for." Somehow she knew he wouldn't say "To bring my wife to". He looked too - footloose. "Handsome of you to ask," he murmured. "However, skipping the obvious that I want to live in it, it's to be my working base for preparing facts, figures, reports. Urging a case — But perhaps you've heard what my fine of country is?"

"From Sally? No." "I'm with Trans-World Forestry - T-W.F. for short - a set-up with an imposing name and ideals, but a good deal shorter on funds and influence. Largely, its aim is the replanting of the eroded dust-bowls of the earth - the Saharan fringe, for example - with the vegetation they used to grow before wind and sand and eager beavers of timber-fellers had their way with them." Laurel nodded. "I've read and seen something about it on TV. Before, I'd always thought that things didn't grow in deserts only for want of water." He brushed that aside. "On the contrary, in the Sahara there's water in plenty below the surface - the drillings for oil and natural gas have shown that. No, water is no problem, once seedlings have taken a hold, and the answer to that is the spraying of the dunes with crude oil in order to bind the sand, so that the roots don't shift in a gale. When they're anchored by spraying they don't stir, and for the past three years I've been out in the field getting pilot schemes going. And they're going . . . But it takes more than muscle and patience. It has to be proved to sponsors with the funds to back their faith in us. That means getting the oil people on our side. And so I've turned backroom boy for a time, in order to get down on paper the kind of evidence which should serve as our battering-ram." Laurel saw a link. "Oil people? You mean Pan- Oleum who are here in the New Town? That's why -?" "That's why," he confirmed. "They weren't here when I left Rodiam earlier, but it seemed too good a chance to lose - to man the assault from my own doorstep, so to speak." "You hope to interest them in your oil-spraying scheme?"

"I want to sell it to them as a duty they mustn't duck." He paused. "Which brings us back to the bone of contention - my house. Your sinister 'almost not' needing it - what did you mean by that?" They were indeed back to square one. Uneasily Laurel said, "Well, I do use the kitchen, for cooking the feeds and for washing-up. But there's an oil-cooker in the chalet for overflow cooking when we're busy. At a pinch I could manage the lot on that. Then the telephone I could do outgoing calls from home, but there would be the inward calls, I'm afraid." "And when you weren't there, who would answer them?" "I have to be there every day, seven days a week, and when I said I would move mountains, I meant it. I'd have an extension phone fitted and I'd even pay for an answering service. Then you wouldn't be troubled at all." "And you suggest I shouldn't be troubled either by your busy pottering, by your tradespeople, by a constant traffic of assorted animals, and not least by the dogs' barking and the cats' caterwauling while they're there?" Laurel said desperately, "I don't think you'd be seriously disturbed. Some dogs do bark a bit at first, but cats have too much dignity to caterwaul in confinement." Then, as she thought of a certain Siamese mum due in next month who could give her the lie on that, she added, "Anyway, you can scarcely hear the animals in the house. Even Sally had to listen quite hard for them." She stopped. She had used up all her arguments. This was it. Now or never. "Please, Mr. March," she begged, "will you try it? If for no longer, at least for the month of our notice to leave?"

She couldn't tell from his expression whether it was to "be Yes or No. Then he nodded slightly. "I'll hand it to you - you're a fighter," he said. "When do I move in?" "Any time you like. Today?" "You don't insist on my agreement in writing?" She was too relieved to insist on anything. She handed him Sally's keys for the second time, only for him to wave them aside. "You'll need them until you've moved your mountains," he said. "Meanwhile I'll settle for pulling the bobbin and lifting the latch when I want to get in" - which showed, Laurel thought, that he was almost human, quoting Red Riding Hood like that. When they parted company he didn't say when he meant to arrive, and the fact that he didn't until two days later gave her the chance to do some cleaning around the house and to make him up a bed. In the meantime she had sent a card to Sally. "Love to you and John. Not to worry, everything here going according to plan" - without allowing herself a qualm of conscience that it wasn't strictly true.

Aunt Anita seemed as relieved as Laurel was over the outcome of her diplomacy. She and Laurel's Uncle Leopold had had no children, and when he had retired as a schools' inspector, he lived for his cacti and his orchids and she at second hand in other people's affairs. She got committed so easily that Laurel doubted if she saw herself as a mere onlooker at all. For instance, when she heard about Clive March she really suffered at the thought of further disaster for Sally and John, and her awe at Laurel's success in bearding the man did a lot for Laurel's morale.

Meanwhile she busied herself with the problem of where Clive March could have been dining in the village on his first evening. "With a friend, you say he told you, Laurel? Now who? Surely we know everyone it could be? Funny too if, say, the Bennets or the Sykes or someone know him well, that they've never mentioned knowing Sally's landlord, don't you think?" Laurel failed to follow the reasoning of that and said as much. But her aunt was already off on another tack. "I've another idea," she claimed. "Maple Cottage in Rutter Lane! It's been empty since the Osbornes left it, but I did hear it had been rented. Much more likely that it's quite new people who know your Mr. March, so perhaps he was going there." For the moment she was content with this flight of imagination. But before Laurel met Clive March again she had heard from her private grapevine that Maple Cottage had indeed a new tenant - a Mrs. Anthony, a widow, for whom the house was being done up, but who might or might not yet have moved in. When Clive March did arrive at the Kennels Laurel was cleaning out the stable, with the doors locked while the cats' cages were open, which was one of Sally's firmest rules. Laurel heard his car and voices and when she came out with a sack of Utter in one hand and a shovel in the other, he was taking suitcases from the boot while his companion stood by. She said good morning and as he introduced them — "Mrs. Anthony - Miss North" and the name clicked in Laurel's mind, she realised what a fright she must look by contrast with the other's elegance. She wondered enviously why she never managed to tie a headscarf as if it were a Dior draped turban, and though she half hoped Mrs. Anthony had made the mistake of silly shoes with her yellow silk raincoat, she hadn't. Her cream kid knee-high boots did everything a

girl could wish for her slim legs, and the identical rain that was streaking Laurel's hair to rats' tails was only settling in dewdrops on her flawless peachy complexion. Silvery shadow on her lids made her eyes appear larger than they were. But they were bright and noticing as a kitten's as she summed up Laurel in her turn. She said, "There! What a time for Clive to choose to arrive - right in the middle of your chores!" Laurel propped the shovel and the sack against the wall. "Not at all. I have chores of some kind or another most of the day," she said, and to Clive March, "I think you'll find everything in order. The weather has been so dank that I've been having the electric fire on in the sitting-room for an hour or two every evening, and I've made up a bed with aired linen." Before he could say anything there was a bubble of amusement from Mrs. Anthony. "Made up beds and aired rooms - what a domestic pair you sound!" She tapped his wrist. "You'd better look out, Clive. From here to slippers-by-the-fire and bedtime cocoa could be only a step, you know!" She may not have meant offence, but Laurel felt her hackles rise. Clive March slanted a look at her. "But not at Miss North's hands, I think," he said drily, adding as he moved towards the house with the suitcases, "Mrs. Anthony has really come to see you, Miss North. So when you're free, would you join us in the house?" Laurel let them go and didn't hurry to follow. When she did go in, he had set out his own glasses, and bottles which he must have brought with him were at the ready on a tray. Laurel chose sherry and sat down and asked Mrs. Anthony, "You wanted to see me?" "Why, yes. As soon as Clive told me — But I'll begin at the beginning. I'm a widow, my husband was with Pan-Oleum, and I've

just rented a little house in Rodiam Village, where I'm only camping until the decorators move out and leave me in peace. That could take some weeks, and my worry is about Bobo, my miniature poodle. I want to put him in kennels until I'm settled in, and when Clive mentioned your set-up here, I thought it would be a good thing to leave him with you." Laurel would have liked it better if she had asked first whether she could take him. But there was room enough for a dog for some weeks ahead and she said so, mentioning Sally's terms and her few sensible rules. But Mrs. Anthony brushed aside details to ask, "And I could see him whenever I wished? Take him out myself?" "Of course. He'll be much happier if you do." Laurel put down her glass. "I'll get a non-liability form for you to sign, and then you might like to see where Bobo will be housed?" Mrs. Anthony wrinkled her nose at the streaming rain. "Not if it means puddling out in that just now," she said, and when Laurel brought the form she would have signed it without glancing through it. Laurel clamped a hand firmly beside her beautifully manicured fingers which held the pen. "Please read it first. It sets out your responsibilities as well as ours, you see." She looked up. "Mine? Such as?" Then without waiting for a reply she flipped the paper across to Clive March. "You read it, there's a dear," she coaxed. "The small print always bores me so, and in any agreement one just never seems to win." Laurel was tempted to retort that if you didn't trouble to learn what you were agreeing to, you didn't deserve to win. Meanwhile Clive March had read through the few clauses and handed back the form.

"It's all right," he told Blanche. "You're signing that Bobo has been inoculated and to the best of your knowledge is carrying no infection. On her side Miss North promises all reasonable care and reserves the right to call in veterinary attention if and when she may decide fit. The rest is to the effect that you should give two days' notice of wanting to remove your pet." "Is that all? Easy." She signed, but eyed Laurel curiously as she stood, ready to go back to work. "Tell me, do you really relish being a kennelmaid, at the beck and call of other people's pooches and moggies all day long?" she asked. Laurel had always hated to hear cats called moggies, and she bridled. "Yes," she said baldly. "Anyway, they're not merely other people's animals. While they're here, Sally Duke, who owns the Kennels, tries to treat them like guests she has invited to stay." "Nice thought!" But the smile wasn't quite sincere. "And from kennelmaid you'll be stepping up to - where, when the time comes? Do tell! Because we're really interested, aren't we, Clive?" The silver eyelids fluttered at him. Laurel said coolly, "I don't really know. I suppose if kennelmaiding were my profession I'd want to know where the higher rungs led. But it isn't, as it happens." "Not?" "No, I'm a secretary. I work for a novelist, Alma Frayne. But I'm more or less out to grass for the summer while she is away." "A secretary? There now, Clive! If you asked Miss North very nicely, and always supposing she could read your atrocious fist, she might be persuaded to do some typing for you in her spare time!"

Laurel was glad she had said "more or less". Because it was true Alma had left her some manuscripts to correct and finish, and though she had meant to work on them at home, she at once resolved to take them down to Sally's and to be seen to be too busy to be thrust on Clive March as a part-time copy typist. She began, "I'm afraid I'd find it difficult to fit anything more into my day - " But Mrs. Anthony had already lost interest as she tapped her wristwatch. "Clive! The appointment with my solicitors! And weren't you going to take me to lunch afterwards?" "Of course. Give me five minutes to stow some of this gear and we'll be on our way." They drove away together later and when he reappeared he was alone. Laurel was in the kitchen, about to set out the evening feeds when he came in to say, "Blanche Anthony forgot to tell you she would like to deliver her poodle tomorrow morning, if that's all right with you?" "Quite. I've made a run ready for him." As Laurel spoke she was doing her special sleight-of-hand trick with a set of enamel plates, flicking them one by one from the pile to settle in a circle round the central pot from which she would be doling the rations of rabbit. It was silly, but she fancied herself at the trick, and it did nothing at all for her self-esteem when one of the plates slipped and skittered to land at the man's feet with an appalling clatter. A flying saucer could hardly have made more noise as it settled. He winced slightly and handed it back. She rinsed it perfunctorily before putting it on the table, and her "Sorry" clashed with his murmured, "Just as well, of course, to start with enamel before

progressing to the Royal Worcester - " which stung, as he said it without the glimmer of a smile. He stood watching while she fished for rabbit with a ladle. "Tell me, how are your mountains moving?" he asked. "My -? Oh, well I've made a start. As soon as the oil is delivered for the chalet cooker I can move out of here, and I've rung up about the telephone. But that will take longer. You know how it is, getting anything done with telephones. Or perhaps you wouldn't, if you haven't been in England lately." He nodded. "I can imagine. Anyway, I asked because I was going to suggest that if we could come to some arrangement about timing, you might continue to do your cooking here if you wish." "Here?" It was an olive-branch Laurel hadn't expected and she was ready to bubble with gratitude. "You mean you wouldn't mind? I shouldn't be in your way too much?" "Let's say," he quashed her, "that I've some fire- risk qualms about your concocting your witch's brews on an oil cooker in the annexe. You're safer here with electricity." "There's also the washing-up, and when the place is full, there's a lot," she warned him. "You'd have to do a Box and Cox with that too, I suppose." "Or," she said, not to be outdone in handsome gestures, "if you would leave yours stacked, I could do it all together." "Thanks. As for the telephone, if there are going to be delays over the extension, it might be hardly worth your while going ahead."

She read a warning note into that. "You mean it could be for only - a month?" "Don't jump to conclusions. I didn't say so. Anyway, you'd better call off the Post Office engineers, and if you can train your clientele to call you in your working hours, I daresay I can cope with the odd call out of them." "That's awfully good of you," Laurel said, meaning it. "And you needn't bother to listen to what they want - some of them do waffle! If you would just give them my home number, 9-3812, and ring off, that would be fine." He watched while she finished dealing with the feeds and he opened the door for her when she had arranged the plates on a tray. As she went past him, "When you've done that, will you be going home?" he asked. "Not straight away, but soon," she promised him. "Why?" "I wondered what you regard as your working hours? Why, that is, there is a camp-bed in the annexe you call the chalet? If I hadn't reoccupied the house, were you planning to sleep there while Mrs. Duke is away?" "Of course not. I told you, I live at home. The bed is Sally's, because in emergencies she has sometimes slept out there." "Emergencies - such as?" "Well, one of the animals being ill, or mother cats have been known to kitten while they've been here, so she liked to be immediately on hand." "I see - as long as you realise that I couldn't allow you to do the same?"

"Of course," she said, knowing she had blushed. "Anyway - " she began, then stopped, realising the rest of that sentence would have been a gaffe too. He didn't let her off. With that uncanny knack of his of being one jump ahead, he said, "You were going to add - 'Anyway, now there's going to be a night watchman on the premises, it doesn't matter so much' - h'm?" That had been exactly her thought. She had worried about the place being left all the hours from dark till morning, and one of the better things about their arrangement was the fact of his being there if anything unforeseen should happen. She nodded. "Something like that," she admitted. "Exactly like that, I think," he said And then as she moved on, "But it's night watchmanship only against fire, burglary and Acts of God, remember. Emergency midwifery emphatically out. Understood?" She was concentrating on balancing the tray and could only flash him a glance from under her lashes. "Understood," she echoed, and found herself liking him for the very first time.

At home she was able to fill in the gaps in the clues Aunt Anita was working on. It pleased her to learn that without much doubt Clive March had been Mrs. Anthony's dinner guest at Maple Cottage on his first night. And Mrs. Anthony had connections with Pan-Oleum, had she? Or her husband had, before she was widowed? How old a woman was she, then? Oh, only about in her middle twenties, poor child? Well, as soon as she could be judged to be settled in, Aunt Anita must call - being of the tail end of a generation who did 'call' on newcomers.

Laurel's uncle joined in to speculate wistfully as to whether Mrs. Anthony would do the right thing by the Maple Cottage garden. Laurel said that she didn't look the gardening sort; that she couldn't see Blanche Anthony in muddy wellingtons, and her manicure was too perfect. Which drew from Aunt Anita the rebuke that she mustn't be uncharitable; it was perfectly possible to be an expert gardener and still have lovely hands. It was simply a matter of thick gloves and vaseline, as Laurel ought to know. Laurel did, and knew she had sounded waspish. But she still felt that though Blanche might enthuse over a perfect rose, she would see that someone else did the pruning. She wasn't the horticultural type. She passed on all that Clive March had told her about his work, but she couldn't do much for her aunt on the subject of his connection with Mrs. Anthony, except for their link with Pan-Oleum. "But he's not in oil, you say?" she worried. "Like a sardine - take your choice, in oil or tomato?" Laurel teased, and found herself wishing there were just a shade more resemblance between Sally's landlord and anything as confined and inert as a. sardine in a tin. Infinitely more predictable he would be, if he were. However, they had parted more or less in accord overnight, so that, when she went down in the morning, she was not prepared for the wrath in store. She had parked the Centaur and was crossing the yard after visiting the animals when Clive March appeared at the kitchen door with a distinct air of being Not Amused. "Look," he said, "I realise your working day starts early and that you can't foresee everything. But do you think a word in your clients' ear might discourage them from calling as early as five-thirty a.m.?" She stared. "Half-past five? You're joking! Nobody would — "

"Oh, they wouldn't? Then I must have imagined a small boy in an anorak who naturally didn't expect to see me, but who asked me if I were Mr. Duke and if so, was I better; said Mrs. Duke was expecting him, but that if she wasn't around, not to worry. She knew he would be delivering 'these' some time, and if I would take charge of them, that was O.K. by him." As he spoke Clive March stood aside and pointed to one of the cat hampers which Sally would lend to people who hadn't their own. From it came the faintest mewing in chorus and when Laurel opened it on one tabby and one black-and-white kitten, light dawned. "Oh," she said. "Yes. In an anorak? Carroty hair? That would be Benny Parfit. He does a newspaper round before school, so that would be why he came so early - " "To put his cats in your care at that hour? Was he afraid that later there might be a queue for places?" Laurel shook her head. "No. He needn't have got you up at half-past five, of course — " "In fact I was up. I was working." "Yes, well - I was going to say that those kittens are only in transit. Sally is so much in touch with people that when they have kittens for disposal, she can usually find homes for them. But as I couldn't know just when these two would be ready to leave their mothers, I couldn't have warned you they'd be coming in." "You don't consider you should have mentioned that in addition to the boarding business, my house was also a kind of bring-and-buy exchange mart of domestic pets?" he asked with sarcasm. Laurel said, "I didn't think of it. No money passes. It's simply a service that Sally gives. I certainly hope you won't be disturbed in

the same way again, and if you insist, I'll call a halt. But if people can't look to us to help, a lot of surplus kittens may be put to sleep." She might have known how he would react to that, and he did. He said, "Hitherto cosseted pets turned adrift for the lack of a holiday camp for them. You've tried that one. Now it's coveys of kittens doomed from birth. I must say, young woman, you've brought tearjerking to a fine art!" "But it's true. At least, the kitten bit is," she protested. He nodded briefly. "All right. You can take it that I'm suitably harrowed. Just keep the traffic in control as far as you can, is all I ask." He turned on his heel to allow her into the kitchen. "I didn't know what to do for your protégés, so I took the line of least resistance and did nothing," he added. "That's all right." When he had gone, Laurel soaked cornflakes in warm milk, made sure the doors were secure and let the two babes out of their basket. They immediately dived for cover, and as she crawled after them — That made twice that the man's bite had been less vicious than his bark, she thought, cheered. He must have a heart somewhere after all.

Later she arranged for the kittens to be gathered to the bosom of their new family. Much later still, when Mrs. Anthony's poodle hadn't yet arrived, she began to wonder what hours that lady regarded as "morning". As it was early closing day she wanted to get to the shops before one o'clock and was beginning to count minutes when the telephone rang and Mrs. Anthony was on the line.

"Is that the Kennels? Blanche Anthony here. I was going to bring my poodle in, but I'm having trouble with my car. Could you collect him instead?" Laurel apologised, "I'm sorry, I can't. I have no transport." "You haven't?" She sounded affronted. "I'd have expected you could offer it as part of your service." "Normally we can," Laurel told her. "But at the moment I haven't the use of a car." "Tch! Oh well - " A moment's silence. Then, "Is Clive there? If so, will you tell him it's Blanche calling, and that I'd like to speak to him?" "You'll hold on?" Laurel went to knock at the door of the little den behind Sally's sitting-room, where the stutter of her landlord's typewriter all morning had made nonsense of Blanche Anthony's crack about his bad handwriting calling for a secretary. His sharp "Come" was a sign that Laurel's interruption was unwelcome and his forefingers went on hammering at the keys as he looked up. "I'm busy," he said. "I know there was nothing in our unwritten pact about respect for my privacy when I'm working. But I'd rather like to be sure of it, all the same. What do you want?" Laurel's eyes took in the litter of typewritten sheets, lists of tabulated figures and the spread of a blueprint, held flat by books at its corners. "I'm sorry," she said. "But Mrs. Anthony wants you on the telephone. Her car has broken down and she can't bring her poodle without it."

"Blanche? Oh - " Subtly his manner changed and he pushed back his chair. "All right, I'll come." He followed Laurel out and she left them to it. A few minutes later he called to her that he was fetching Mrs. Anthony and the poodle, and as it was then too late to catch the fishmonger, she frittered time, waiting for them to come back. It was petty, she knew, to contrast the way he jumped to Blanche's bidding with the arm's length at which he kept her. But she did. Bobo, when he arrived, was as exquisite as a Regency dandy. He was groomed in a lion's mane cut and his collar was scarlet leather studded with brilliants. He tittupped across the yard on his spring heels and shuddered with distaste as the Corgis hurled their greeting to him through the wire of their run. Laurel slung the check-chain she had ready round her wrist and held out her hand for his lead. His mistress gave it to her but looked at her watch. "I'm very late, but I couldn't help it. Aren't you going to house him straight away?" "Presently," Laurel told her. "But if you're in a hurry, don't wait. He'll be all right with me." But they both stood by while she gave Bobo a hand to sniff and squatted low enough for him to set slim paws on the knees of her slacks. She scratched his throat and tickled his ear and chose her moment for slipping on the check-chain and detaching his bauble of a collar. When she handed it back Blanche Anthony took it as if it stung. "What are you doing?" she demanded. "Bobo has never worn one of those chain things in his life!"

"Not even as a pup, when you were training him?" "I didn't have to train him. He's always known it all." Then he was the first pup of any spirit who did, thought Laurel. Aloud she said, "Well, I'm afraid he must wear a check-chain while he's here. Supposing he was startled while I had him on the leash, he couldn't slip the chain as he might slip his collar." "Fair enough. It's a wise precaution, Blanche." That was Clive March, unexpectedly an ally, and Laurel threw him a grateful glance. Blanche Anthony shrugged. "Oh, all right." Her own glance at him implied "If you say so." To Laurel she went on, "Not, surely, that you need to take Bobo out of the run, if I'm calling to walk him every day? And how shall I collect him if you aren't here when I come?" Laurel said, "I'm almost always here, and if you could let me know when you're coming, I'd see that I certainly was." "So that I could never come on impulse? How tiresome ! Couldn't you let me have a key to the run, just in case?" "I'm sorry." Laurel shook her head. "The outer gate is always kept locked too. I've got a responsibility to the other owners, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to share the blame if any of the animals went loose." But before she could answer that Clive March came to the rescue again. "Why not let the thing work out in practice? For instance, Blanche, do you want to come again today?" "Oh dear, must I say? No, I suppose not. My car - "

"Tomorrow, then?" His tone had a bored masculine patience. "Oh, I suppose so. I'll phone - " she smiled up at him. "And now, Clive dear, I'm afraid you're going to have to drive me home again, do you mind?" She went then, to Laurel's amazement, without a backward glance at the little dog, who whimpered and stamped his dismay at seeing her go. As Laurel comforted him, "There, Bobo fellow! She hasn't gone for ever - she'll be back," she would have liked to think the other woman's abrupt departure was because she couldn't bear to leave him. But for some reason Laurel hadn't enough charity in her towards Blanche Anthony to give her the benefit of the doubt.

CHAPTER THREE THE next morning, determined to be on hand whatever time the telephone rang, Laurel loaded Alma Frayne's manuscripts into the Centaur's pannier and worked on them with one ear cocked, whenever she wasn't seeing to the animals. But there was no call from Mrs. Anthony and she did not come, which meant that all the dogs, including Bobo, missed their walk. She came the next day, made rather a show of exchanging his chain for his smart collar and took him out. When she left she said she would come the next day - and did, though she was half an hour late. The following day she didn't arrive; on the next she came to ask Laurel to take Bobo out with the other dogs, as she "hadn't the time". While they were out she spent the time she hadn't got with Clive March, and after that her arrivals were so chancy that Laurel always walked Bobo with the others. During that first week or two Laurel stepped as delicately, landlordwise, as she knew how - mainly by keeping out of his way. He made this easy. Mostly the door of the den was shut, and from the few utensils he used she suspected he ate out of tins and packets. When she casually reported this at home, Aunt Anita at once began to worry, lest he wasn't being properly nourished. "Couldn't you cook him a full meal sometimes, Laurel dear?" she urged. "Or better still, invite him to join us here for luncheon, say one Sunday? After all too, with both of you working in and around the same house as you do, perhaps your uncle and I ought to know him, don't you think?" To which Laurel agreed vaguely, "Yes, all right - some time," for some reason putting off the moment of producing Clive March for their inspection, while wondering what social conventions were

being flouted by their being within shouting distance all day, yet avoiding each other like the plague. That was when their pact was about a fortnight old, and that day she had only said good morning to his back. But the next morning when fate handed her a card that was almost too good to be true, she stood squarely in his path when they met. "Yes?" his lifted brows queried. "Are you in a hurry? Could you spare a moment to come and look at a cat who has just arrived?" she asked. "A cat? Why?" Without answering she led the way to the stables where, housed in one of the largest pens, sat an orange Manx, about the size of a fullgrown hare. Clive March surveyed it. "M'm - a pretty fine specimen. So?" Laurel said, "So - his name is Simon; he lives over a shop on Western Parade, and I wanted you to meet him because, as far as I know, he still has all his nine lives - thanks to me." She kept her eye on Simon while she waited for the penny to drop, and after a moment's silence, it did. There was a reluctant chuckle. "The implication being that he has nothing for which to thank me? This is the chap you avoided with that headlong stop of your machine?" Laurel nodded. "I thought then that I recognised him, and I did. He's been in before. And I wanted to prove to you that he wasn't a figment of my imagination that day."

"Some figment, I admit. All right, J apologise for doubting you, if that's what you want." He moved about, reading the cards pinned to the occupied pens. '"Mrs. Dumpty. Prefers water-and-glucose to milk. No tinned foods. Special treat - prawns. Date in. Date out. Owner's address.' 'GrabPuss and Monty. Must share cage, food-plate and bed or will pine for each other. Combined appetites - colossal.' 'Lord Jim. Any proprietary foods on offer. Alternatively, rabbit. Scorns cold milk — '"He turned to Laurel. "Talk of personal service! Do you cater for all their whims like this?" "We've no choice, if we're to keep them happy." "And are they?" "They bear up. The odd one or two may pine or yell themselves hoarse, but cats have stood too much from humans over the centuries not to resign themselves with dignity when they must." "And the dogs?" "They show their feelings more openly and perhaps their fear of desertion is more acute than a cat's. Sally says people who can disappoint a dog when they needn't are capable of letting down their best friends without turning a hair." "H'm. A pretty biased yardstick that, wouldn't you say?" Laurel defended Sally. "It's not such a bad one. There are people, mostly women, I'm afraid, who regard pets merely as matching accessories or status symbols, and I agree with Sally. I doubt if I'd trust anyone who could wantonly dash the hope from a dog's eye when he recognises a footstep or gets a familiar scent on the air."

"Yet you wouldn't be above coming to terms with such people in the matter of boarding their pets?" She said, "That's different. That's Sally's business, and if I accept pets on her behalf, do I have to like their owners too?" He turned his chill unnerving stare upon her. "I'd still have thought you would feel debarred from sitting in public judgment on them," he said. She stared back. "In 'public' judgment? I'm only talking to you! And you began it by asking me — " He cut her short with a nod. "I plead guilty to that," he allowed, then added, "And of course I might have expected that at your age you'd be cocksure enough to feel entitled to criticise other people's shortcomings which don't happen to be yours." "In other words, you think I'm intolerant?" she accused him furiously. The glimmer of a smile touched his mouth. "If we're calling names, I'll settle for 'rather insufferably young'," he said, and left her without a clue as to whether he guessed she had been criticising Blanche Anthony, and with the uneasy suspicion that he, not she, had won that round.

Her thirty days of grace sped on too fast. She had heard from Sally several times. After a slight setback after the journey John was now making wonderful progress; they watched the weather maps every day and only wished England could get a slice of their wonderful sunshine. How were all the resident creatures? Were the advance bookings good? Laurel wasn't finding the work too much, was she, and would she be sure to write all the news?

Laurel did - except the one item which weighed the heaviest on her. On quiet days when there were few telephone calls and the traffic in clients and animals and tradespeople was small, she persuaded herself that the tenancy had nothing to fear. But on others, when the telephone never stopped ringing and the general to-and-fro wouldn't have shamed an international airport, pessimism gripped her, and she saw the inevitable eviction staring her in the face. The weather that month was atrocious, the only blessing being that one didn't know then that there was worse to come throughout the length of a so-called summer which broke all records for lack of sun, and for cold and rain. Morning after morning she arrived at the Kennels, wet or windblown or depressed by cloud, and she rarely seemed to get a "sunny interval" for walking the dogs - in two batches, now there were more of them. On the afternoon before the day she had begun to think of as zero hour for the Kennels it was pouring with rain when, with four dogs in tow, she met Dan Rose, the postman, at the gate on her way in. "Save me a step, Miss? Take your own mail?" "Of course, Dan." She took the postcard he waved at her, yearned over the never-never blue of Lake Lugano, and on the reverse side read Sally's "Don't forget the rent, dear," emphasised by an outsize "!". Dan was lingering. They were old friends and she guessed he had enjoyed the view of Lugano before she had. "It's from Mrs. Duke," she said. "We could do with a bit of that sun over here, couldn't we?" He agreed with feeling. "And you can say that again. Still - " he tilted his head and brushed a raindrop from his upturned nose -

"what I always say is - got it from me mum - 'It never rains but out of doors, and when you're in love it's summer every day'." At once Laurel forgot the postcard and even the threat hanging over her. She stared at Dan, wondering how she had missed until then the significance of that pug nose and that long upper lip. Though of course he had no accent - With the ache of nostalgia for the lilt of a voice she would never hear again, she said, "Why, you must be Irish, Dan! I always thought you came from Liverpool?" "And I do, so. Born and bred there. But never heard of the 'Pool Irish, Miss? Them that fled from all the ugly years? Well, my greatgranddam on me mum's side was among them, see. And how is that you knew, suddenly? What was it I said that set you agape at me, as if you'd seen a ghost?" "Heard one," Laurel corrected wistfully. "It was that bit about it's only raining out of doors ... and the rest. Because my mother was Irish too, and she used it to cheer people up, though I've never met anyone else who'd heard it." Dan grinned. "Until I popped it at you? Well, what d'you know? So that was all, was it? I was afraid you thought I was getting fresh or something. I mean, no business of mine whether you're in love or not. But as long as you saw it was just my larking, no harm done, huh?" "Of course not," she assured him, and as he went off with a jaunty "See you — " she remembered thinking, Thank you, Dan. "... When you're in love, it's summer every day." If that were true, then it had still been "summer" for them both, that night of blind fog over Jersey when her mother and her father had died together, and she was glad.

But for herself? How true was she going to find it when she fell in love - really in love -? she wondered. Would everything change, turn rose-coloured, all's- right-with-the-world, just like that? As she braced herself for the coming interview with Clive March, the fallacy of the thing hit her between the eyes. Of course - the magic only worked when two people were in love. Which made it true of her parents, who had been each other's all-inall. But for her? Suppose, when it happened to her, she found she was the only one doing the loving? What then? When she went to knock at the door of the den she took one of Sally's blank signed cheques with her as a kind of talisman against getting her marching orders from Milord. She said, "About tomorrow? Am I to write your agents the cheque for next month's rent or not?" "Just a minute." It took all of that before he gave her his attention. Then he said, "Next month's rent? If it's due, and you mean to remain in business - why not?" "It's due," she confirmed. "I thought you'd know. Because this is the end of the month we agreed on, and now it's for you to say whether the business stays here or goes." " 'Goes'? Do you mean you have other premises in view?" "Good heavens, no! I should have said, 'goes phut'. I told you—" He nodded. "I remember as it was one of the pistols you used on me - that there was no alternative roof under which your charges could lay their heads. Well, how do you find the arrangement panning out?" She enthused diplomatically. "Awfully well. You've been very accommodating. And you?"

"Better than I feared. And as I seem to have no moral choice but to share my quarters with a succession of four-leggeds, yes, I'll settle for going on as we are. How's that?" (So that hurdle was behind her!) She beamed at him. "You know you had the choice, and still have. But I may send off the cheque and carry on until you-?" He followed her glance at the littered desk. "Until I -? You're calculating how soon you can hope to be rid of me?" She felt herself colour. "I was doing no such thing." (Oddly enough, she wasn't. Somehow his going out and coming in and the sound of his typewriter had become a sort of companionable punctuation to her day.) She went on, "You had told me what you were working on, and I wondered how it was going, that's all." His astonishing blue eyes met hers. "Nice of you to ask. But as of now - to coin a phrase - it isn't." "You mean the Pan-Oleum people don't want to know?" "They aren't committing themselves. Their own backroom boys are straining to experiment. But while the boardroom characters are clutching the purse- strings, it's so much deadlock to date." "So what happens now?" She found herself caring that something should. He shook his head. "No short cuts, I'm afraid. Just plugging away at marshalling the evidence over and over. Talking one's head off. Making a nine days' wonder of a eucalyptus tree or an acacia growing six feet in its first season, because it's firmly rooted. Selling. Selling the idea of making a future for people who've been fighting the elements for too long— " He broke off, his look

studying her. "But why am I opening up to you, young Laurel? Would you know?" She warmed to "young Laurel". She said, "Well, I asked you, didn't I? And I'm interested. You seem to care so much, and I've always been a bit of a pushover for people who are willing to fight tooth and nail to achieve what they want." "Being cut to something of the same pattern yourself, eh?" "I? Oh, you mean how I dug in my heels about keeping the Kennels here? Well, I was desperate, and if you hadn't agreed to give the thing a trial, I don't know what I should have done." "Don't you?" he retorted. "No, I can't believe that if I had refused, you would have shot your only bolt. I wouldn't have put it past you to stage a lock-out, or even, in the last resort, to have slipped me a nip of weedkiller in my coffee!" The gleam in his eye was provocative, and she met his mood. "Don't tempt me," she parried. "You could yet regret having put ideas into my head ... Where can I buy some weedkiller?" He laughed at that and she laughed with him, and for the rest of the afternoon she went around in a "something nice is happening" glow, which lasted until she went home. She was still basking in it when at supper Aunt Anita said, "I called on Mrs. Anthony this afternoon. She's charming, isn't she? So sadly young to be widowed. But she's very brave about it. She says she was badly broken up at first, but it happened over a year ago and she's beginning to look forward again now. Did you know your Clive March and her husband had been each other's best friends?" The glow faded. "No. Were they?" Laurel asked.

"Yes, the three of them were very close for years. Mr. Anthony was a seismologist with Pan-Oleum and he was out on soundings with his team when he was killed in an accident to his jeep in the Spanish Sahara. That's on this nearest side of Africa, isn't it?" "Yes. But Mr. March wasn't there. He came back from the North Sahara to England." "Oh, nor was Mrs. Anthony. She was at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, where all the Pan-Oleum executives were based while they were taking up the oil concessions - is that the word? They still are, but Mrs. Anthony had to come home in the end and live on a pension from Pan-Oleum. Meanwhile, she and Mr. March had kept in touch, and what she would have done without him she doesn't know." Laurel thought she might as well hear it all. "And which of them was the first to decide to come here?" she asked. "Mrs. Anthony didn't say, but his agents handled the first negotiations for Maple Cottage." "And when he goes back, she will still be here?" "Well, yes, perhaps. Though I get the impression that they may be on the verge of getting engaged. At any rate Mrs. Anthony hopes she may be able to help him to make his breakthrough to PanOleum's V.I.P.S." Engaged. The glow was quite gone now. Laurel said sourly, "Why, what could she do for him that he couldn't do for himself?" - to which her aunt said reasonably, "My dear child, how should I know? Supposing she knows the right men at Pan-Oleum and he doesn't, perhaps she can pull some strings. Anyway, I told her not to call back formally. Instead I suggested they both come to luncheon

together on Sunday week, and have left it to her to invite him. So now you needn't bother, dear. It's all settled." Oh, it is, Laurel thought, and would have claimed a prior commitment on the spot, if it had been fair to leave all the work of the luncheon party to Aunt Anita. Instead she said "Good," with no enthusiasm at all, and ignored the old-fashioned look she got as she changed the subject. She woke the next morning to a gloom as all-pervading as her shortlived elation had been. For some quirk of her own she had evaded asking Clive March to lunch herself, and now Blanche Anthony had taken over from her, just as it seemed she was planning to forward his case with Pan-Oleum, and her resentment over both was as sharp as if it sprang from jealousy of Blanche, which was absurd. Meanwhile, in view of her overnight reprieve, she had to decide whether she ought now to admit to Sally that she had been lying by omission until then. She ought to be able to, on that unwritten armistice with her landlord. But some premonition that any trouble ahead would be personal to her alone, held her back. Let Sally's blissful ignorance continue for a while, then. Laurel had eaten humble pie once, and if she must, she could again. But she was still worrying at it as a problem when Clive March came by as she munched egg salad in the feeble sunlight at the door of the chalet. He halted. "Is that all you have as a midday meal? How used you to manage before I came?" he wanted to know. She pointed out, "As far as I was concerned, there was no 'before you came' - or only a couple of days. Whenever I helped Sally before that I used to go home to lunch, or we had it together here, as she made it her main meal of the day."

"Then why aren't you cooking for yourself now? From some fool notion to make the least possible use of the kitchen? You need more than a cold snack to keep you going through all the hours you work." "That's all right. I have a proper supper when I get home and it suits me to picnic here. Anyway, look who's talking," she added tartly. "You eat almost entirely from tins yourself." "Two blacks don't make a white, and my digestion settles for whatever diet I offer it. Besides, I lunch out pretty often, and it occurred to me that you might be willing to join me some time. Tomorrow, perhaps?" She would have liked to accept, but her private demon wouldn't let her. "Blanche Anthony today; Blanche Anthony whenever she beckons, with you sandwiched in between" it whispered in her ear. So she said, "Tomorrow? Thanks, but I'm sorry. I must be here for some people who can't give me a definite time for delivering their cat by car." "Thursday, then?" he offered. She shook her head. "Not possible either. I've got another young cat due for its inoculation jab on Thursday, and that means waiting around for the vet." Though both excuses were mainly true, they sounded thin, even to her. But he accepted them with an indifferent nod. "Some other time, then," he said, and went on to the garage for his car. When he returned mid-afternoon she was on the telephone, regretting to a distant client that, having no transport now, she couldn't collect a dog. When she replaced the receiver he queried, "You are having to turn away custom for want of transport? Couldn't you or the owners hire?"

"/ couldn't," Laurel said. "It would eat up all the profit, and in this case, though the owner would like to send her dog here, there are kennels nearer to her which she thinks she must use instead." "How far from here, this client? Can you drive a car?" "How far? Right across the county - forty miles each way. Yes, I can drive. I used to drive Sally's car sometimes. Why?" "Could you drive mine, do you think?" She saw where the cross-examination was leading, and though she quailed at the comparison between his juggernaut and Sally's Mini, she said, "I think so. Yes, I'm pretty sure I could." He said, "I'd prefer you to be quite sure. When was this dog supposed to come in?" "On Friday. You mean you would let me go for him in your car?" "That," he said, "was the rough idea." And then, before she could thank him, "Fortunate your client didn't want you there tomorrow or Thursday. You would have had to refuse, wouldn't you?" — which proved how little her excuses for both days had convinced him. He saw through too much.

Friday was one of the few lovely days that wicked summer produced, showing that it could if it liked. When Laurel went down to the Kennels the sky was palely cloudless and the sun was already gaining heat. At sight of the car standing out in the driveway she had a little shiver of nerves. She had expected to be given an instruction spin before being allowed to take it out on her own, but nothing had been

said about this. Could she really handle the thing? Wondering, and seeing herself under its owner's critical eye as she set out, she was lingering to peer at the controls when his voice behind her made her start. "She's all ready. What time do you plan to get away?" he asked. "I've the chores to do first and I must give the dogs a short run. I thought about half-past eleven," she told him. "Right. You'll let me know when you're ready?" "Of course." She added diffidently, "You're really " prepared to trust me with her?" "Trust you? Alone? Without ever having seen you at the wheel of a car? Good heavens, no!" Her jaw dropped. "But you asked me — " - "Whether you could drive, meaning more or less whether you had a valid licence. Certainly with no idea of letting you loose alone in my car, sight unseen," he cut in. "Oh, you may drive her. But this trip, not alone. I thought you would understand I should be coming too?" "I didn't. But—" she smiled faintly - "to tell you the truth, I'm rather relieved." Which was the understatement of the year, but she couldn't share with him the glow of pleasure which made nonsense of her refusal to lunch with him those other times. He said, "I should hope you are relieved! All right then, half-eleven, and you may take over once we're clear of the town." He was as good as his word. Five or six miles out he stopped and they changed places. As she slid into the driving-seat he said, "You

can have her from here to Holmoak Laver, where we're lunching at the Blue Boar. Is that safety-belt all right for you?" "Yes, fine. But - lunch?" Her echo was blank. "I'd planned to go straight over to Stainton and back, perhaps just stopping for coffee on the way." He laughed. "You're feeling shanghaied? Well, maybe you have been, at that. And let's hope it will teach you in future not to shy away from a well-meant invitation as if you'd been stung." "I didn't duck away! I was tied up on Wednesday and yesterday. And come to that," she rounded on him, "don't you know that when you've had an invitation turned down, it's not too good manners to press on regardless?" "And don't you know," he retorted, "that it's even worse manners to accept the use of a man's car and then refuse him your company over his roast and two veg.? On your way now. We're lunching at Holmoak Laver - no argument." They were travelling with the car open, and once Laurel got the feel of it, it was sheer bliss to drive. Her hair streamed back in the wind and she lifted her face to the sun and revelled. She felt her companion's glance directly on her once or. twice, and when she opened up on a road as straight and flat as a stretched ribbon, he said, "You'll do. And it's good to put your foot down, isn't it? It gets things out of the system." Not looking at him, she said into the wind, "What sort of things out of the system?" "Just anything you want to be rid of. How would I know what is in yours?"

He couldn't, of course. But he was right. Driving that morning, she had thrown off every care she had. She should have known better, but she had convinced herself that the lovely day was the first of a spell of real summer. She was heady with speed and warmth and she was free of the weathervane pettiness of mood she had been wallowing in all the week. The rather dreary hum with which she sometimes accompanied the "phut-phut" of the Centaur's engine became a real tune which she didn't identify until the voice at her side asked, "And do you?" "Do I what?" She stopped singing and thought back into the song's rhythm - "I know where I'm going; And I know who's going with me. I know who I love; But the dear knows— " That was enough. She laughed. "Know where I'm going? Oh, mostly, I think," she said, and knew she wanted this day's 'going' to last longer than it could. There was nothing to the hamlet of Holmoak Laver except the Blue Boar, which was an old coaching inn with a county-wide reputation for its welcome, its service and its food; the place which came to everyone's mind for lunching or dining in luxury. They had dry sherries in the bar before going to the dining-room, and whether or not it was the effect of the sherry, she felt more at ease with Clive March than she ever had until then. He seemed to relax with her too, dropping his usual caustic raillery to talk about his job and his hopes and fears for his project. While he was talking she thought, So this is what dedication is - and realised how much she wanted him to put the thing through with Pan-Oleum by his sheer conviction of the worth of it and without tangling even a little with Blanche Anthony's alleged ability to pull strings.

They had finished their coffee and had just said, their voices clashing, "Ought to be moving," when a movement and a familiar waft of perfume behind Laurel's chair made her turn. Blanche herself, followed by a crinkle-haired, thickset man who nodded to Clive March as the latter stood, acknowledging them both. The other man was introduced to Laurel as Graham Mortimer. "Of Pan-Oleum, you know," Blanche said to Laurel. And as the two men exchanged remarks, "Fancy our all meeting here! When I saw Clive's car outside, I thought he would be alone. I hadn't realised you could drop everything at the Kennels so easily, but so nice of you to take pity on him and lunch with him when I couldn't, owing , to this date I had with Graham here — " Outside the sun was still shining, but for Laurel it suddenly went out and stayed out. She didn't think Clive March had heard the claim, so she supposed she would never know whether he would have gone with her to Stainton if Blanche Anthony had been free to lunch with him today. Not knowing, she couldn't win, so she gave Blanche best. She said flatly, "Actually we're on a business trip over to a place called Stainton, near Bournebury." "Business? Clive's business?" Blanche's sharp echo implied that if Laurel said Yes she was poaching her preserves. Laurel said, "No, mine. Fetching a dog to be boarded," and saw her complacent smile as Laurel stood, calling the men's attention to her. One of them said, "Yes, let's go," and the other ushered Blanche to their table. Back at the car again Clive March offered, "Will you go on driving, or shall I?" "You, please."

He looked his surprise. "I thought I might have to fight you for my own steering-wheel, to judge by your rapture before lunch!" "Yes, but — We ought to get on, and you'll drive faster than I dare." "As you say — " They talked as he drove, but they weren't on the same wavelength as they had been. He offered a thumbnail sketch of Graham Mortimer as one of the Pan-Oleum V.I.P.s who was interested in his project, and Laurel supposed she responded in all the right places. But the journey and the day she hadn't wanted to end had begun to look as if they never would. Irreparably spoilt for her, both of them, by a woman who had only to see her to want to needle her; who didn't like her and whom she couldn't like. On Laurel's side it wasn't just a personal allergy either. She could have ignored that. But as she made casual conversation another part of her mind was facing the truth of her hostility to Blanche Anthony. They both wanted the same man. It was as simple - and as shattering - as that. How had it happened, in face of the little she knew of him and the still less that he must care about her? Wondering, she stole a glance at his profile and remembered the too-easy nonsense of "When you're in love, it's summer every day." Summer? What a hope! This side of his going out of her life, as he would before long, what summer was there in prospect for her?

CHAPTER FOUR DURING the days which followed that drive to Stainton Laurel felt she must have walked and talked and worked as usual, even though her misery longed to hang out a 'Do Not Disturb' sign and though if anyone had said, "Something is wrong. Tell me?" she might have dissolved in tears of self-pity. Fortunately for her control, no one did, and her honesty knew that it wasn't misery all the time, while she could look forward to seeing something of Clive most days; seeing and hearing him and even clashing with him while she was free to love him in secret. The ache for the excitement and delight of his loving her in return was a crying for the moon which she would never reach and she was willing to settle for less. Clive . . . Her thoughts had long since dropped his surname, and it helped a lot when she began to use 'Clive' aloud - easily at home and casually to Blanche Anthony. If he loved her and were going to marry her, it did precisely nothing to level the two of them up. But she wouldn't have been human if she hadn't wanted to show Blanche that she wasn't the only one to have his friendship and sometimes his confidence. He and Blanche duly came to luncheon, and Laurel had the heartwarming experience of seeing her aunt and uncle taking to Clive at once. This wasn't surprising in Aunt Anita's case - she was always content to accept people as she found them. But self-sufficient Uncle Leopold was much more sparing with his friendship, and Laurel was so glad for him to like Clive that it was almost worth while to be left with Aunt Anita to entertain Blanche while the two men repaired to the greenhouse for a gloat on the habits of succulents and cacti.

"A most knowledgeable fellow on desert flora," was Uncle Leopold's verdict, and Laurel basked in secondhand glory. After Stainton Clive had said that, rather than risk losing a booking, she could borrow his car whenever he wasn't using it himself. But the next time she did take it - and without his leave - it was in a crisis that was nope of her making. One morning Blanche rang to say that she could now have Bobo home. She would collect him the following afternoon at two o'clock. Laurel was going to be sorry to see Bobo go, and she was under no illusion that his leaving would mean the place would see less of his mistress. She would be there - to see Clive - as often as ever. But the next day two o'clock came . . . and three . . . and four. Laurel rang Maple Cottage twice without getting a reply, and at five she had to make an essential journey to the chandler's before closing time. What was more, she had to walk, as the Centaur was in dock for overhaul. Clive was out, though not in his car, so she left the front door on the latch, knowing that if Blanche arrived, she would have no scruples about walking into the house as if it were her own, even though the yard gate had to be locked against her. But when Laurel came back her white Mini was at the gate and she was urging Bobo into it. Laurel could hardly believe her eyes. She had left him locked in the open run! She stopped alongside the car. "I was expecting you at two and I had to go into the town," she explained. "How did you manage to get Bobo?" "Yes, well - I was delayed. Oh, Bobo, tiresome creature!" Blanche scrubbed irritably at a mark made by his eager paws upon her skirt.

"I wasn't to know where you were, so I let him out myself," she added. "Well, I know you could get through the house, but the run was locked," Laurel pointed out. "So? I've been here often enough to know where you keep the key." Her eyes narrowed and she tapped Laurel's arm patronisingly. "All right, all right! I didn't lift anything else, and if you're worried about that murderous chain you made him wear, I left it behind in the run!" Laurel almost choked at the sheer impudence of that. She said, "I'm not worried. I'm simply annoyed at your having helped yourself to a key you had no right to touch.'' Blanche's brows drew together. "Not even to release my own dog? Oh, come!" "Not," Laurel said woodenly, "while he was still my responsibility until I handed him over to you. And certainly not from a run where other unleashed dogs were playing about." "Oh, them - " Blanche checked and suddenly was on the defensive. "But you always keep the yard gate locked. You said so!" Laurel should have been warned. But her reaction, She didn't relock the run-gate and she knows it, was not fast enough. She had just begun, "So I do, but - " when there was a scurry at the open front door and Patrick, the young highly-strung Alsatian she had fetched from Stainton, swept out of it down the front path, leaped the low front gate and was away. Give her her due, Blanche seemed momentarily as shocked as was Laurel. Then she was making excuses - "It must have followed me

into the house and through — " and Laurel was flinging orders like confetti. "Give me Bobo's lead — " She reached into the car and snatched it. "Get back and close the house-doors against the others. Then chivvy them back into the run if they're out, and lock it. Lock it, do you hear?" Blanche complained, "I don't know that I can. The key is very stiff. That's why - " Too angry to be anything but brutal, Laurel cut in, "You unlocked it. You'll cope now, if it takes you an hour." "But the Alsatian? What about that? And why have you taken Bobo's lead?" Laurel said, "Suppose you guess. I'm going after Patrick, of course." It occurred to her that she could have commandeered the car as well as the lead, but in the few seconds that had elapsed she had made other plans. Clive's car, standing in the driveway, was there for the using, and if ever she needed transport, she needed it now. She went to it, praying the ignition key was there, and it was. She switched on and backed out. On her way to the house Blanche called, "You're taking Clive's car? You can't — " But Laurel ignored her, only waiting to see the front door slam without any of the other dogs having got free. Patrick had set off downhill and hadn't doubled back, she knew. But at the bottom of the gradient the road branched four ways, three of them leading to different parts of the town, the fourth towards open country. As far as there he wasn't in sight, but with the idea that if he were making for the town someone might have seen him, she chose one of those roads first.

She drove along it until she must have overtaken him if he were still going. Then she went back and tried the second one and the third, the latter all intersections and busy evening traffic. She stopped to enquire once or twice of people who, though ready to help, were mostly vague as to whether they had or hadn't seen a loose Alsatian. From somewhere along the third road she was able to cut through to the country one, which she travelled until it seemed impossible that Patrick could be ahead. So she turned back to explore a branch road as a last hope, and a little way along that, there he was, going at a steady lope. She passed him slowly and drove on a hundred yards or so, before stopping and walking back towards him, swinging Bobo's lead easily as if she too were merely out for a stroll. She had a bad moment as she reached him, for he tossed his head and was ready to dance away. But when he heard her voice coaxing him, he let her clip the lead to his check-chain and trot him back to the car. Apparently bearing no grudge, he got in and reclined on the back seat like the aristocrat he was. It wasn't far back to the Kennels from there, and all was going well until suddenly, through no fault of Laurel's, it wasn't. From her side of the sharp brow of a hill, she could just see the roof of a van parked on the right on the far side of the crest, and as she topped the crest an oncoming car shot over into her path, rounded the van as the three of them were levels and streaked away. For Laurel there had been a split second of panic before she fought the steering-wheel, slewing it over to gain the few precious inches by which the rogue car had missed her; inches which had become a foot or two of grass verge before she brought Clive's car to a halt. She had jolted poor Patrick on to the floor and she was shaking with the aftermath of shock. She didn't feel like moving on at once and was hoping she looked as if she had chosen to park slightly a-tilt just

there, when another car overtook her, halted a few yards ahead and reversed back. Two men got out. One was a stranger to her; the other, of all people, had to be Clive. They both came to her, Clive looking all the questions he had the right to ask. But he spoke to his companion, "All right, Bo- water. Thanks for the lift, but this is my car, and I dare say it will get me home from here." The other man eyed Laurel and Patrick curiously, said, "O.K. - if there's nothing I can do," and went back to his own car as Clive motioned Laurel over to the passenger's seat, taking the driver's himself. Not much wanting to know, Laurel asked, "Who is that?" He said, "Just a chap from Pan-Oleum," then jerked his head at Patrick. "Taking him home already? But this isn't the road for Stainton." She said, "I know, and he isn't due home for a fortnight yet. But he escaped from the run, and I had to borrow your car to follow him up." "Escaped? I thought you prided your security as being foolproof?" Laurel was tempted. But as it did more for her self- respect to cover up for Blanche than to blame her to Clive, all she said was, "It should be, as long as the yard gate is locked. But Patrick was cunning enough to bolt through the house when the doors were open at the same time as the dogs' run was." "Well, I'm glad you jumped to it and took the car. But - this?" Clive's gesture meant the crazy parking on the verge. "Having yourselves a picnic on the way home?"

She managed a feeble grin. "Nothing so gay, I'm afraid. I - just sort of landed up here, after nearly being wrecked on the road." "Wrecked? How?" She explained with demonstrations and he listened, frowning and tight-lipped. He confirmed, "I remember we met the same fool 'way back. I suppose you didn't get his number?" She giggled shakily. "Get his number? What do you think? I believe I did the last yard or two of road with my eyes tight shut!" Clive shook his head. "Not you. You must have kept your nerve for as long as it mattered or he would have caught you head-on." Crooking an arm across the steering-wheel, he turned to scrutinise her. "You're all right now? Would you like to finish the job?" She looked at him gratefully. "You mean — on the principle of remounting straight away when you've taken a toss? If you'll trust me, yes, please." "Come along, then." They changed places again and she knew that she drove faultlessly all the way back. Blanche's car was still at the gate and Clive went into the house while Laurel went to put Patrick away. To console him for his recapture she stayed to play with him for a while, and then went in search of Blanche to return Bobo's lead to her. She was on her way out to her car with him. Laurel clipped the lead to his collar and straightened to meet the glint of hostility in Blanche's eye. "How you must have enjoyed blaming me to Clive for the hound's escape!" she sneered.

Laurel pretended to play along by nodding. "Made my day," she agreed, and then, "In fact, I did nothing of the sort. When he asked me how it had happened, your name wasn't even mentioned." Blanche stared her disbelief. "That takes some swallowing! And if it's true, why did he put me through the hoop? For instance - where was I when it happened? Where were you? Had / left the house doors open? Or opened the run on my own? - the lot. Of course I didn't deny anything, but if you hadn't at least hinted it was my fault, why should he have suspected me at all?" "Credit him with second sight, why don't you?" Laurel retorted. "Anyway, whatever he knows now on top of his guesswork, he'll have heard from you, not from me." Blanche's expression kept its doubt for a moment longer. Then, ignoring Laurel, she switched on a seraphic smile and addressed Bobo directly. "That's her story and she's sticking to it. Ah well, come along my poppet. We have blotted our copybook, you and I. Not one teeny bit popular around here, either of us. Though not so madly difficult, eh, dearie, to be able to guess just why — " With which cryptic exit line she swept away, though Bobo rather spoiled the upstage effect by hanging back and whimpering his dismay when he found Laurel wasn't going along too. She didn't see Clive again until she was about to leave much later, when he came into the yard to say he would drive her home. His tone made an order of it and she didn't argue. They had stopped at her house before he said out of the blue,

"I hope you'll forgive Blanche. She's contrite enough about her part in this afternoon's crisis. But I'm wondering at the impulse of generosity which kept it to yourself." Laurel said, "It wasn't generosity. When you asked me about it, Patrick was safe and sound, and I realised I wasn't going to like myself if I made a meal of whose fault the whole thing was." "Not crediting me with the curiosity to question how you came to break your own security rules so far as to let it happen?" He paused. "However, this 'not liking yourself' rather intrigues me. If you're finding the importance of needing to, you're growing up fast." "Really? In so short a time from being 'insufferably young'?" she couldn't resist thrusting at him. He laughed, taking the point. " Touche, but I revoke none of that, and you can always console yourself with the logic that you had to start young in order to grow up." For a moment or two he studied her across the dusk inside the car. Then he said, "You know, young Laurel, that for all our proximity down yonder, you're still so much uncharted country; that I've rarely seen you other than nose-down to your job, though I suppose you must play sometimes - with someone?" "Well, of course," she said. "How? Dancing? Games? Gossiping? Men? Getting yourself kissed?" She made her pride answer. "All those - some of the time." His eyes narrowed. "You could say I asked for that. As I did once before on our first day's crossing of swords, if you remember?"

She remembered. "I wasn't liking you particularly that day," she told him. "Come to that, nor I you. But we've made some headway since, wouldn't you say?" "I hope so." "Enough?" Her heart lurched and her wrists were trembling. He was watching her, intent, as if the question were as important as it sounded. But as she knew he couldn't mean what she hoped he did, she told herself she had played this scene before. She was sure she recognised the male way of leading up to a casual kiss, and it made him no different from any other man she would have kept at bay. As lightly as she could she said, "Oh, I don't think so, do you? Necking in cars isn't really one of my favourite things." "Necking?" The word exploded like a firework and spent itself about as coldly. He turned full round, and as she moved to get out of the car his hands came down on her shoulders, holding her in her seat. "Believe it or not, nor one of mine. I've never yet kissed a woman in earnest, without its meaning something to one of us, if not both. But if all you're expecting is for me to make a pass, I daresay there has to be a first time — "he said, then drew her so close that she could see herself mirrored in his eyes, kissed her long and expertly on the mouth and let her go. Not another word passed between them and Laurel scarcely was aware of leaving the car. She wasn't nearly twenty-one for nothing and she had kissed and been kissed before for all sorts of reasons.

But never until then in a contempt she had been raw and touchy enough to invite herself.

She spent most of that night fighting jealousy of all the unknowns Clive had kissed, 'meaning something', and scolding herself for the little she had of him while it was there - which couldn't be for long. When her alarm clock buzzed she would have given much to ignore it and play truant, if the job hadn't been what it was. She got up, hating the day, dreading coming face to face with Clive and hoping she would be spared another brush with Blanche. (When he kissed her, what did they make it mean?) At Sally's the garage doors were wide open, there was no sign of Clive and there was a typewritten envelope addressed 'Laurel' propped against the card- index drawer in the chalet. She tore it open. Also typed and signed with a scrawl which could have been anything, his note said — "Forget it, will you? My mistake. Up to date we've made a fair job of the landlord-tenant thing. Rather a pity to let a ha'porth of umbrage cut across it now, wouldn't you say? Don't wait for me to report as night- watchman tonight. I shall be back, but not until very late." It wasn't an apology and as an olive branch it didn't exactly blossom. But it wasn't the snub direct which she felt she deserved. He meant it to save face for them both when they met, and for that she was grateful. She was expecting the vet to one of the cats that day. She hoped it would be Mr. Longin, the head of the practice; not Mr. Derek, whom she didn't much like. But in fact it was neither. The man who arrived was a stranger with a shock of carroty hair, freckles like a

rash and a grin he used as a kind of social bellpull - to announce that he was there and to assure himself of his welcome. He thrust a hamlike hand towards Laurel. "Mrs. Duke? I'm Nicholas Berne, Mr. Longin's New Boy. Or no - they did tell me - Mrs. Duke is away, and you are -?" "Laurel North," she told him. "I'm Mrs. Duke's deputy. Do I take it you are the new partner Mr. Longin was expecting?" "Well, yes and no," he grinned. "That is, I'm on locum terms until I either make the grade or decide myself against teaming up here." He referred to a card and became professional. "Now it's one of your cat boarders you're not too happy about?" "Yes." She described the cat's symptoms, then went to fetch her. When he asked for her name and gave time to fondling her, Laurel warmed to him for knowing the importance of a good bedside manner and the puss took the jab of the injection without a murmur of protest. He counted out vitamin tablets for her and Laurel showed him to the bathroom to wash his hands. As they went through the hall she thought he was noticing the masculine evidence of Clive in the shape of driving gloves and a heavy raincoat, and when he rejoined her he said, "I'm wondering whether I've got you wrong, and you're 'Mrs.' too?" "No, I'm single," she told him and briefly explained the set-up while he repacked his treatment bag. When she offered him coffee he accepted eagerly, and as they drank it companionably at the kitchen table they found they had a lot in common, in that his home was in the Lake District as her own had been. He was living in digs in the New Town and, outside the practice, knew no one. On an impulse she asked him to luncheon with her

people on the following Sunday, and he was on his third cup of coffee when Blanche Anthony walked in. Her arrival flung Laurel back into yesterday's vexations with a jerk, but from Blanche's manner no one would have guessed they weren't the best of friends. "Coffee?" she crooned like a TV commercial. "Could I have a cup too?" As Nicholas Berne stood and was introduced, she treated him to a brilliant smile and launched upon an extravagant, backhanded praise of Laurel. "Do you know, this girl works all the hours there are - slaving for creatures who aren't even her own and mostly couldn't care less? Oh dear - " with a guilty finger to her lips - "I suppose I've said the wrong thing to you, if you're a vet. However, Laurel has to do the lot under the ghastly handicap of having to watch every step with her landlord, who could throw her out any time. Not that I'd permit him to, but I daresay she'll have told you about Clive March?" "Yes. Tricky." Nicholas Berne stood again and this time stayed on his feet. When Laurel went to show him out she explained Blanche in a word or two. "She's a friend of Mr. March's," and then, trying how it sounded aloud, "I think they are more or less engaged." When he had gone Laurel didn't return to the house, but she was not to escape Blanche so easily. Laurel had begun to weed the front border when presently Blanche reappeared on her way back to her car. She waved a headscarf as she passed. "Tell Clive that I've collected the scarf I left behind the other night, will you?" she asked. "I shan't see him today."

"O.K. Any time." She paused on the path. "Nice lad. Easy game. Congratulations." "On what?" Not looking up, Laurel spoke to her handfork. "As if you didn't know! Coffee in the kitchen; a lot of fresh stubs in the ashtray; his car standing outside for long enough, as I saw for myself when I came past earlier. If you handle that boy properly, I'd say you could claim him as a scalp any time you want to." "Always supposing I want to." "But of course! And depending on whether there's any professional etiquette against vets in attendance and kennelmaids walking out together? Anyway, you must see that his happening along just now is rather timely for you?" "Timely?" "Face-saving, then." When Laurel did not reply, Blanche went on, "Look, you weren't born yesterday. You must know the value of having another man in tow when the one you want hardly realises you exist female-wise. Except of course when you force him to go all chivalrous with some transparent ploy or other!" Laurel clawed puddingy soil from the tines of her fork and stood up to face her. "You're talking about Clive, I gather?" "Who else? Do you imagine I don't know why you've been so obstructive with me from the start? My dear, if ever I've seen hackles raised, I've seen yours! Why else should I have had to tell your aunt just how matters stand between Clive and me?" Laurel said, "Check. You and he are engaged?" "There's nothing official yet — "

"But you wanted me to know. Why?" "I've told you. Because, if you're getting your own ideas about him, you're wasting your time." "And why should that bother you?" But Laurel didn't make her answer that one. She went on, "If you're as intuitive as all that, I'm surprised you don't know that romantic ideas need some encouragement to survive. You've seen how Clive March and I are placed here - together and Box-and-Cox apart. Can you honestly say that either of us is in danger of growing anything romantically explosive from that?" "I never suggested he was in danger - just warning you that you could be embarrassing him, making yourself a nuisance. And a man does hate having to fob off a woman, and almost never, in my experience, manages it with any tact." Laurel couldn't resist it. "In your experience?" she purred. "I've been around. I mean, I've watched it happen," Blanche snapped. "I was only warning you, that's all." She left Laurel wondering how far she was convinced that Laurel wasn't interested in Clive. And she had been right about something else. That friendly half-hour with Nicholas Berne had done a good deal to take the sting out of the episode overnight. As Laurel went back to her gardening, she knew she was looking forward to Sunday.

She took her cue from Clive's note and they met the next day as if nothing had happened. At first she didn't want to meet his eyes. But when she did, there was only his usual interest there - interest in what they were saying, nothing more.

When she had told Aunt Anita about Nicholas Berne, her aunt became as concerned for his bachelor handicaps as she had for Clive, and hadn't much sympathy with Laurel's suggestion that at least Nicholas had a, proper landlady, and surely take-home meals and launderettes were science's own gifts to rootless young men. It was Uncle Leopold who dropped a surprise into their plans for Sunday lunch by asking Laurel if she would take a message to Clive from him. In his precise, H.M. Schools' Inspector voice he explained, "I've been giving thought to a problem he put to me when he was here, and I've written to suggest we discuss it further." He peered at his wife over his spectacles. "I was thinking we might invite him again, my dear? Say one Sunday soon perhaps?" "Of course. This Sunday, along with Laurel's new friend." She turned to Laurel. "What about Mrs. Anthony? Ought we to have her too?" But Uncle Leopold spared Laurel from yelping No. He and Clive would be talking technicalities, and Laurel would have this other young man — " - And I can occupy myself cooking and washing- up?" Aunt Anita teased him, as she agreed that Blanche might be not only rather bored but also a shade de trop. So the invitation was added to the note; Laurel delivered it, and saw, as Clive read it in her presence, that he was intrigued by her uncle's wish to discuss his problem further. And it appeared from the length of the letter that Uncle Leopold had gone into details. Clive read it, frowning, concentrating. "Seems your ' uncle may have an idea here," he mused. "You'll know that we discussed my project, and from the lot he knows as an amateur about arid zone growth, he claimed to know the difficulties I'm facing. Now he

suggests the case for spraying might be proved to Pan- Oleum by reproducing for them actual desert conditions in miniature - and his idea is for a model sand- dune in a laboratory-built wind tunnel; seedlings, some sprayed with crude oil, some not ; both subjected to blasts of ten to sixty plus miles an hour, and results compared." "Do you think it would work?" Laurel asked doubtfully. "And who would lay on the wind-tunnel and the experiments?" Clive grinned wryly. "Pan-Oleum's boffins should. But if necessary, I'd do it with my own bare hands. Now I wonder— " As Laurel left him, absently fingering her uncle's letter, she doubted if he knew whether she was there or not. He had been thinking aloud, and if this was really the breakthrough he needed, she could only be glad for him. She remembered the morning when he had put a limit of about three months on his stay in England. If anyone had told her then that she was going to dread his leaving, she would have come up with some smart- alec retort like "You have to be joking." Come autumn, she would have thought then, Sally would be back to carry on - or not, according to John's health. She herself would be working again for Alma Frayne, and Clive wouldn't be there any more. But now - autumn looked for her only as a time when he wouldn't be there, and she would be left with this ill- starred summer to forget.

CHAPTER FIVE LAUREL had a feeling it would not be long before Nicholas Berne would ask to be called "Nicholas", and that Sunday he did - of Aunt Anita, who looked pleased. "Of course we will," she told him. "I'm of the generation that waited for leave to use people's first names. But it cuts through barriers, doesn't it?" She turned to Clive. "What do you think, Mr. March?" He sipped his sherry. "That it tends to save time. And if you had the courage of your convictions, you would have said, 'What do you think - Clive?'" She crowed with laughter. "Of course I should. And indeed I have called you by your first name since Laurel began to. I hope you don't mind?" "Why should I? After all, I call Laurel 'Laurel' within speaking distance; out of it, she answers to a yell of 'Hi'!" That evoked a general laugh and they went in to lunch. Over it Clive responded to Nicholas's lively interest in his work. In answer to questions - For the most part, his colleague reclamation-workers were a hotchpotch of a dozen nations. To date they lived in movable camps, with primitive headquarters in the nearest township. At present they were on a mere shoestring of finance, but once they were fully sponsored, it need be only a few years before the schemes had created their own oases. Nicholas asked, "Meanwhile, for you pioneer characters it's life on a shoestring too? No sweethearts, no wives?" Clive shook his head. "No sweethearts, unless you count the local selection. But there are a few wives - the kind who have what it takes."

"What does it take?" "Ask yourself," Clive shrugged. "On the humdrum level - no supermarkets, no household gadgetry, a fiendish climate. On any other - a sense of humour, bags of courage; faith; also the fact of only sharing top place with her husband's work, of not always coming first with him by undisputed right. And though a lot of women can't make that grade, who can blame them?" As he spoke Laurel couldn't see Blanche, for one, making it - a grain of satisfaction which, however, didn't last long. For it was fairly obvious that Clive had been thinking of her when he allowed that it wasn't fair to ask it of some wives, even if you could of others. Others . . . Was she the type either? Laurel wondered. And how could she find out? She wasn't going to be given the chance. After lunch Uncle Leopold and Clive went into a conclave, and Nicholas, who had some professional calls to make, asked Laurel to go along for the drive. She went. They had tea out and when Nicholas wanted to talk about Clive, she let him, nursing a little special pleasure in using his name casually, as if he were just a third person, instead of the man who could make cloud and fine weather for her at will. Nicholas said, "The man's right, of course. It does take a particular type of girl to accept that she'll almost certainly have to share any worthwhile chap with something else - his work, or other people anyway, something." Laurel said, "You mean, doctors' wives, clergymen's?" "M'm. Or any other of the creative lot, from nuclear fission bods- to tame poets, I suppose. Or aren't tame poets all that worthwhile?" She laughed. "How should I know? And I'd say that more girls than you'd think can adapt to almost anything when they - " she changed

"are enough in love" to "have to", and added, "I hope I could myself." Nicholas threw her a quick look. "Oh, you could," he agreed rather too readily, considering this was only their second encounter. He dropped her at the Kennels for her evening chores just as Clive returned too. Clive reported that he thought he and Uncle Leopold had made progress; then Nicholas left and Clive and Laurel went their separate ways. After that he made several more visits to confer with her uncle, but usually during the day when she was not at home herself. Meanwhile the Kennels saw as much of Blanche as ever, and it was about at that time that she dealt brutally with Laurel's silly hope that Clive might realise before it was too late that she was neither the covered- wagon type, nor the sharing kind. She wasn't. She couldn't have been more frank about that. But in her eyes it didn't matter, and she wasn't settling for decorative grasswidowhood either. She had, she said, other plans for Clive.. . When it suited her she had a thick-skinned knack of ignoring previous frictions. Nor had she any regard for the value of other people's time. So that as she drifted into the chalet one day as Laurel was beginning a letter to Sally, she put it aside and tidied her desk drawers instead. While Blanche was smoking she threw back her head, blowing a smoke ring and arching her throat. "Where's Clive?" she asked of the chalet roof. "He's seeing Pan-Oleum about setting up his wind- tunnel demonstration." "Wind-tunnel - phooey! He's wasting his time."

"Try telling him that," Laurel advised. Blanche brought down her glance. "I'm not that naive. Cut the string of a man's pet kite and you've had it," she claimed. "Oh no. I can hold my tongue, so that when Pan-Oleum is willing to play, he can go on kidding himself that it's been all his own unaided work." "Which it will be," said Laurel. "Except for the germ of the idea which my uncle gave him." "Don't you believe it," Blanche scoffed. "Anyway, why do you suppose I've been cultivating that dreary bore, Graham Mortimer, if not with the sole purpose of selling Clive to him? When I succeed, as I shall, Clive and his precious project should be home and dry, and I'm not expecting him to be too fussy as to how it happened." Laurel mocked, "Look - no hands! You must be very sure of your powers of persuasion." "I am, fairly. After all, even if I can't do it by sex- appeal there's always — " Blanche checked, her lips thinning to an ugly line. "I mean, I'm a widow through P.-O.'s admitted negligence over my husband's death on duty. I've let them get away with quite a bit to date, but I don't have to go on doing it." Laurel felt slightly sick. Common sense should have told her that a great organization like Pan-Oleum couldn't be held to ransom by a puny threat of blackmail by one of their pensioners. But the thought of Clive's being involved in anything so despicable took her halfway to believing Blanche. She said, "You wouldn't dare! Even if you could do anything for Clive that way, supposing he found out?"

Blanche lifted a shoulder. "Ever heard of a prizewinner suggesting there ought to be a re-count? He'll have got his sponsorship. Is he going to grumble?" Laurel longed to shout to heaven, "Yes! Clive isn't like that," but all she said aloud was, "I'd back him to get there under his own steam, I think. But when he does and . . . you and he marry, and he goes back to field work, are you going to be able to face the conditions of his life out there, or -?" Blanche's smile was pitying. "My dear, with all that Pan-Oleum cash behind him I don't have to face anything. He's not likely to be going back." "He will! It's his one dream!" "Then he'll have to wake up. He'll be handling the thing still. But not from a tent nor in a temperature of fifty degrees Centigrade. He'll be directing operations for Pan-Oleum from somewhere a good deal more civilised. Say Las Palmas." "He isn't employed by Pan-Oleum. He's with Trans- World Forestry." "Do you need to tell me that? But he could always switch to PanOleum if they made it worth his while, and I daresay they may." Blanche stubbed her cigarette and stood up, smoothing invisible creases from her hipster pants. "Time I went. You're wearing your busy face. Or is it your 'Save Clive from Blanche the Harpy' one? How are you getting on with your coppertop vet with the grin? Been out driving with him, haven't you?" "Once or twice."

"Yes, so Clive told me, and I said, wasn't it a good thing for you both - all those ailing domestic pets in common. And he said — " Blanche broke off to point. "What's that?" Laurel followed the line of her finger. "What does it look like? It's a bed." "A - " The small chuckle was an insult. "Well, well - I'll say you don't miss a trick!" "No, do I?" Laurel snapped. "Look - black silk sheets and monogrammed pillows! Too too seductive - no?" Raging, she swung up from the desk and twitched off the folkweave spread to show the ticking-covered palliasse in all its nudity. "If you must know, it belongs to Sally Duke, it's been there for years, and I've never yet entertained anyone on it." But Blanche was not abashed. "If you say so, though it looks convenient, and it's funny I'd never noticed it before — " She left Laurel hanging on to the very last tags of her temper. It wasn't until she calmed down that she realised she hadn't heard what Clive had said about Nicholas and herself, and she would have given a lot to know.

She hoped Clive would keep her abreast of the wind- tunnel experiments. But they rarely met, except on their way somewhere, and she had to ask her uncle instead. He was reassuring. They had worked out speeds and stresses and resistances and Clive had produced a model to scale. No reason at all why the science of the evidence shouldn't convince Pan-Oleum, was Uncle Leopold's verdict, though why was she so worried lest it shouldn't, he wanted to know.

She hadn't reckoned on her anxiety showing, especially to him, who wasn't strong on insight where humans were concerned. But fortunately for her pride he went off on a wrong tangent of reasoning by deciding aloud to his own satisfaction that it was because she wanted to feel more secure at "that place below" and to have it to herself again. Meanwhile Nicholas contrived to be around a great deal. He only visited the Kennels on professional calls, but Aunt Anita encouraged him to drop in whenever he was passing, and the number of his calls which took him up to Rodiam village around suppertime became a family joke. Aunt Anita mothered him, Uncle Leopold awed him and he and Laurel liked each other. Once, late one night when she went out to see him off, he kissed her - shyly, experimentally, then stood back and tilted her chin. "Like that?" he asked. She hesitated for only a moment, and when she said "Yes", it wasn't a He, though she knew it put him in a new light which she had been trying not to see. Nicholas was beginning to fall in love with her, and if there had been no Clive March within her orbit, she might have fallen in love with him. He was the Boy-Next-Door with whom nearly all the happiest marriages she knew of were made, and when she said "Yes" to his kiss it was in a moment of craving the simplicity of loving him, not Clive. But there had been no spark in it; it asked too little; it said nothing to her heart. She didn't want it to happen again, and it turned Nicholas into a problem that must be faced. It was from him that .they heard some worrying news before it made headlines in the local press.

Part of the New Town was an overspill area for London which housed a hard core of bored, frustrated misfits who at best were a mild nuisance and at worst resorted to vandalism, taking a special delight in varying the form of their mischief. They would even be quiet for months, then they would surge into new activities. Their latest effort, according to Nicholas, had been an abortive attempt to break into the aviary of rare birds in the New Town Gardens; luckily the night patrol had surprised them. But a couple of days later Nicholas rang Laurel at the Kennels to say that there had been an overnight break-in at Mr. Longin's surgery kennels when only a lad had been on duty. Only one dog had gone loose and had been recovered, but a lot of wanton damage had been done and, "I wanted to warn you, Laurel," said Nicholas. "How's your-own security?" "Oh, pretty good," she told him. "Why, do you think they might try something here?" He said, "They just might. They weren't caught last night. If I were you, I'd have a word with the police and ask them to keep a sharp eye on the place at night." "I'll do that," she promised. "Though when I leave at night, it isn't empty. Clive March is in the house." "All the same - " Nicholas demurred, and she promised again to do as he said. The police were helpful and stolidly reassuring that they would' 'look around", but when she rang off she went to check her defences, just in case. The house, the garage and the yard-gate which linked them could all be locked, and the yard-gate was too high for scaling, except with a ladder. The dogs would all be in their separate pens and the cats secure in the stables. The back of the place gave on to a narrow lane locally known as a "twitchell", and it was the weak link in the security. But the boundary fence was of wire, eight feet high, the

twitchell was a daunting riot of brambles and, she told herself, there was always Clive ... He would be there ... So much for confidence due to be shattered. He had already left when she had arrived that morning and in the early afternoon he rang to say he wouldn't be returning from London that night. "All right?" he asked, sounding in a hurry. "Yes - all right." What else could she say? But after he had rung off she hung absently on to the receiver thinking the thing out. She couldn't appeal to Nicholas, for he also, she knew, was meeting his favourite aunt in London for dinner and a theatre. But Laurel knew she would have neither peace of mind nor be able to get sleep at home if she left the place unguarded in the circumstances. That meant camping there herself. But if her aunt had heard these types were still on the prowl, she was sure to write 'Forbidden' across that. Laurel could only hope she hadn't heard, and the feelers she put out at suppertime, showed that her aunt hadn't. Fortunately she knew already that Laurel was worried about the weakling of a batch of kittens which had been born to one of the boarders, and though Laurel had meant to take the kitten home with her, she had purposefully left it at the Kennels to furnish her with an excuse to spend the night there with it. Aunt Anita worried, "I don't like it a bit your sleeping there alone, dear." (If only she could be left alone!) "Why not? Sally always was," Laurel pointed out. "And even if Clive were going to be there tonight, I could hardly expect him to give a milk feed every two hours, could I?" she added, and escaped before Aunt Anita thought of suggesting she should bring the kit home.

Sadly she feared there was little hope for it, as its mother had rejected it and it had to be fed through a feeding spoon and teat. But she fed it as soon as she returned to the Kennels, then wrapped it warmly in flannel in the chalet before going herself on a nightwatchman tour. Lights in the house and the chalet - on or off? Off in the house, she decided, as seeing them from the road, the police might question them and knock her up. She collected Sally's sleeping bag and a couple of pillows from her room" and dossed down on the bed in the chalet, drinking coffee from a flask and using her torch to peep at the kitten now and then. Until she fed it again two hours later she was wide awake, with every nerve a listening-post, it seemed to her. Once she heard the fastening of the yard-gate being tried. The policeman on the beat, she thought, comforted, and was sure of it when she heard the creak of gravel under a heavy tread moving away. She had meant to stay awake, and though she must have relaxed, she could have sworn she hadn't drooped an eyelid in sleep when she started upright at another sound which she could neither define nor place before it stopped, leaving an even more sinister silence behind. She had slept, she realised dazedly, as she threw off the sleeping bag, reached for her torch and staggered out into the yard. Though that noise could have been anything, all was quiet there - the stables closed, and from the dog-pens only the rustle of one of them resettling for sleep. But as she glanced towards the house panic leapt at her throat. A will-o'-the-wisp - the beam of a torch - was weaving about beyond the nearest window, and as she watched something - a chair? - crashed to the floor at the same instant as the window became a square of light.

The police again? She had locked the house! They couldn't have got in. But someone had - someone who had used a torch and collided with a chair before they found a light-switch. And the daring of that! At the moment Laurel felt she could have dealt better with a whole posse of noisy but visible hooligans, rather than with this lone intruder who seemed to be feeling his sure way towards her. From the window he could have spotted her own torch. She flicked it off and stood as leadenly rooted as if a magnet were holding her down. She waited. Nothing. No more noise. No more lights. Then the kitchen door to the yard was opening and she stared at the dark shape behind the torch-beam which raked a wide arc, found her and fastened her in its dazzle. She flinched, shaded her eyes and plunged. "Clive - !" Between laughter and hysterical tears, she brought up hard against the bulwark of his body, and he had to put his arm round her to steady her on her feet. It was his turn for surprise. He held her off, though didn't let her go. "Laurel! By all that's - What are you doing here?" he demanded. She took refuge in inanity. "What are you? You said - " "Never mind what I said. I changed my mind and drove back. You haven't answered my question. Why are you here? Have you any idea what time it is?" She hazarded a bemused guess. "No - maybe after midnight?" "It's nearer two in the morning. Now -?" He stood aside for her and she went ahead of him into the kitchen, feeling like a naughty child. But she rounded on him. "I couldn't have known you would be coming back, could I?" she challenged. "Over the phone you said it would be all right if I didn't."

"Yes, well, it happened that I felt I couldn't leave the place unoccupied tonight. Nicholas had rung up to warn me that those hoodlums - you know, the ones who broke into the Gardens - were on the rampage again and - " "Berne rang to warn you, but didn't do anything else about it?" "He couldn't," she defended Nicholas. "He had to ( be away tonight, but he advised me to contact the police, and it was only when I knew you wouldn't be home either that I decided to sleep here myself, just in case there was trouble." "Of all the crazy notions! What could you have done alone if there had been? I'm surprised your people allowed it." She admitted, "They don't know yet that the gang broke up Mr. Longin's kennels last night. I told Aunt Anita I wanted to be here to nurse a sick kitten. Which was partly true. There is one." "They knew you weren't expecting me?" As she nodded he flicked an impatient gesture. "But my good girl, what possible right had you to ask deliberately for the kind of trouble you might have collected? You deserve to be roughly spanked, though I suppose you rather fancied your role of standing on the burning deck?" "Of course I didn't. But if there were any risk to the animals from a break-in, I wasn't going to leave the place unguarded. If those characters had turned up, the animals couldn't help themselves. I could at least phone for help." "Yet you didn't camp in the house, as near to the telephone as you could get - even assuming they would have given you a chance to phone. You didn't know who I might have been, yet, half asleep, you set out across' the yard, advertising yourself with a torch - 'Here I am. Come and cosh me, why not?' "

She said lamely, "I hadn't meant to drop off. I was only just coming to when some noise startled me." "Probably my car engine shutting off." He paused. "Well, that's that. Now get your things together and I'll drive you home." But she thought of all the explanations that would entail and she stalled. "There really is a sick kitten, and if you say it's nearly two o'clock, it must be fed again now, and twice more before morning." "What's the matter with it?" he asked. "It's the runt of its litter. It doesn't seem to want to live and the mother couldn't care less. I have to get a half-teaspoonful of baby formula into it every two hours, so I've got it by Sally's bed in the chalet and I thought --" "Then don't," Clive cut in. "You're not staying out there for the rest of the night. I am. You are transferring to Mrs. Duke's room and taking your patient along with you. And if you hear any brouhaha from this alleged gang, you're to stay put there - do you hear?" She said meekly, "Yes" and "Thank you." It meant she could go home on the Centaur in the morning and if the whole thing proved a false alarm, there need be no questions asked. Clive took the feeding paraphernalia she needed and she carried the kitten up to Sally's room where the bed was partially made up. He watched while she got a few drops of milk between the kitten's jaws, then gestured at her shirt and slacks. "You'd be more comfortable if you got out of those," he advised. "Shall I give you a call at - what is it - four o'clock?" She told him no. Though she didn't think she would sleep again, she would set Sally's alarm clock and make sure of waking to time. He

said, "Goodnight, then, and don't try not to sleep, will you?" He stooped over the kitten's box for a moment and as he straightened he said, "If you're afraid of assault - from any quarter - I've always heard that a chairback under the doorhandle has its uses - " And what did he mean by that? she wondered until after he had gone, when suddenly she knew. It was a throwback to that blushmaking scene in his car when she had thought he was making a pass and he wasn't. And though he had promised "no umbrage" over it, he hadn't been able to resist a crack about it when one offered. She supposed she should have been thankful he hadn't waited to see her writhe, but on one thing she was determined. Face to face with him in the morning, not by the bat of an eyelid nor a word was she going to to let him guess she had understood. The night remained quiet, but she didn't sleep again. She fed the kit at four, but at six it didn't seem able to take anything. Of course it was fully light by then and when she went downstairs she met Clive in the hall. He said lightly, "Six of the clock, and all's well?" making a question of a night-watchman's call, and she was so worried about the kitten that she forgot about putting on an act with him. "I'm afraid I've lost the battle," she said. "It hasn't taken its last feed.'' "No?" He took the box from her and lifted the flannel by a fraction. "What now, then?" "It'll die, unless — " "And you say its mother won't suckle it? But why not try again?" Laurel shook her head. "It wouldn't be any good."

"Even though, this way, you know you can't win? Where is the mother and the rest of the brood? There are others, I suppose?" "Yes, three. She is in the stables, in her pen, and they are all feeding well." He lifted the flannel again and addressed the kitten. "And you, you sap, haven't the sense to compete? Come on, show your lady mother you're as good a man as they are. Won't you - just to please?" He turned to Laurel. "Want to try?" She felt it was hopeless, but she got the stable key and they went over. The mother had chosen to nurse in a shallow dressbox lid, and when Laurel put the kit in this she could have wept to see the blind weaving of its head in search of mother-warmth, sensing it was near though unattainable. Clive and she had knelt side by side to watch results. Laurel began, "She won't - " but she felt his hand clamp down over hers on the floor. "S'sh!" he whispered. "Mum is going to investigate." And so she was. Without ceremony she scattered her other offspring and sat up, nosing the air, taking the babe's scent. It squeaked; she took a step towards it, administered a quick lick to the tiny head and uttered a "Pru'up" of welcome. Then she slid lithely on to her side again, gathering the prodigal in to its share of food to the tune of her purring - which Laurel had always thought one of the sweetest avowals of contentment in the world. After a moment the pressure of Clive's hand slackened and Laurel disengaged her own and sat back on her heels, breathing a long sigh. He sat back too. "Once she's taken to it, it will be all right?" he asked.

"It should be. I hope so." "Then bless her for being a sensible mother. If she had you anxious, she had me in a cold sweat!" He stood, offering a hand to help Laurel up, and just then she would have forgiven him anything, for sounding genuinely as if he cared whether or not a mere scrap of kittenhood came into its own.

CHAPTER SIX THE gang of hooligans certainly varied its approach. The Kennels had no further. trouble from them, but a few nights later they were misguided enough to raid the flower-beds of the quarters of an R.A.F. dog-handler, whose charge happened to be loose in the garden. The dog fastened on one of them and hung on while the others fled. As the price of his freedom the victim meekly "grassed"; the rest were duly rounded up and warned, and the neighbourhood was bothered no more for the time being. As the travesty of an alleged summer progressed, Laurel's work at the Kennels stepped up. Bad weather or no, people had booked for holidays and went on them; all day and every day cats and dogs were being booked in, delivered, boarded, exercised, medically attended when necessary, and signed out. Her desk in the chalet was a mountain of paperwork; she had to find help with the washing-up and some of the cooking; her hours were much longer, and if she hadn't known already how thoroughly Sally earned every penny, she would have been in no doubt of it during that hectic rush. She was learning too the extent of involvement in other people's problems which Sally's work entailed. Sally was right - a common concern for animals had a way of bypassing the ordinary barriers. Animal 'shop talk' had a way of turning into personal gossip within minutes and from there, Sally claimed, you could find yourself with a good friend or, less happily, tangled in worries which weren't even your own. As Laurel was to find, the afternoon she encountered old Mr. Evan Morgan when they shared a public- gardens seat for one of her rare idle half hours.

Aunt Anita's dentist was in Ringdown, and Laurel had left her helper in charge at the Kennels while they went over by bus, and Laurel had time to fill in while the dental appointment was kept. That afternoon happened to be fine for once. Ring- down Gardens, on the site of the ancient Abbey, Were full of people and perambulators and bouncing balls; the rain had kept the lawns a green such as they say exiles dream of, and the flowerbeds were in a splendour of colour. Laurel found a seat and feasted her eyes. People moved in beside her and away again, and the first thing she noticed about the little figure at the far end of the seat was the wicker cat hamper beside him. The man sat forward, hunched, his gnarled old hands dangling between his knees. Now and again he turned to poke a finger through the hamper's 'window', then hunched again, staring. At last curiosity took Laurel up beside him. "May I speak to your puss?" she asked. "I'm very fond of them." He jumped and his hand went defensively to the hamper's handle. But as he took in her question he relaxed and smiled. "Speak to my Taffy? Why not?" he said, and would have opened up the hamper if Laurel hadn't said she would pay her respects through the window. Inside was a young smoke-grey cat with the hint of tabby 'markings to his under fur. With the eternal patience of cats, he sat neatly folded, paws tucked under, though he politely advanced one to play with the bobble tied to the wicker which she swung for him. "Where are you taking him?" she asked his master. "Taking him? Oh, I just bring him here and then back again when I go, see?" The soft Welsh accent bore out "Taffy" and also his own name when she heard it later.

"You mean you take him along with you when you go for a walk?" "Well, I have to, see." The bright eyes clouded. "I can't go far, but I like to sit and look at the flowers and when I come out I can't leave Taffy in the house without me. They - don't like it." Laurel sensed a small tragedy. "Who don't?" she asked. " They - the people I live with, my stepsister's son and his wife, Len and Elsie. They're kind enough, though you could say she is a bit sharp. They have a nice home too, look, and a young baby. But they say now they didn't count on me bringing Taffy along and if they'd known, they wouldn't have offered — " His chin quivered and he broke off". Laurel gave him time before she put the question or two which brought out the whole story. His name was Evan Morgan and he had spent his working life in 't'pits' of the Rhondda Valley. He was a widower of some months and when he had accepted a home with his step-nephew, he hadn't thought to mention that he was accepting for Taffy too. After all, they knew about Taffy - about how he and his wife had taken him in as a cowed stray and had fed and groomed him to his present sleekness. So he had never thought of there being no welcome for Taffy. Nor of Elsie's exaggerated fear that Taffy might molest the baby; nor of every chair being piled high with assorted objects, lest Taffy should choose to curl up there. Good people they were, Len and Elsie. It was just that they didn't care for cats. So, just in case, to avert possible trouble while he was out, he took Taffy along to the Gardens when he went there himself. Laurel's heart ached for him, but, like him, she had to give babyconscious and houseproud Len and Elsie their due. They had had

Taffy thrust upon them, and though they might have compromised for the old man's sake, he could hardly expect it of them as a right. There was little enough she could say and still less that she could do. She urged patience and praised Taffy's condition and told Evan about herself and the Kennels. His eyes lighted. "You look after people's pets when they go on holiday? Well, there's the good thing now," he said warmly. But boarding-kennels were no solution to his problem and when Laurel had to leave him, they hadn't found one either. But before they parted she wrote out for him her name, the address of the Kennels and its telephone number. "Just in case I could help some time," she said. He thanked her, but fingered the paper doubtfully. "I've never been very good at the writing," he said. "Then telephone," she advised. "If you went to the Post Office a clerk would get the number for you, and then you could just talk to me, as we're talking now." He nodded. "Maybe. Maybe," which promised nothing. And though she hated abandoning him to his problem, she and Aunt Anita agreed on their way home that it was a deadlock which only some give and take on both sides was likely to break. She hadn't wholly forgotten it, but she had thrust it a long way back in her mind when, a week later, Aunt Anita told her that Blanche Anthony was giving a party. "It's rather too late for a housewarming; it's more to return people's hospitality. She has invited the three of us, and she asked me to tell you that she wants you to bring Nicholas too."

Laurel's spirit rose. She wasn't accepting Blanche Anthony's hospitality without a struggle. She said, "I'll tell Nicholas, but I can't possibly go. I suppose it's for cocktails, and that's just about my busiest time." "It is for drinks, but late in the evening. Eight to ten - you could surely manage that?" Laurel dug in her heels. "I've never finished by eight these nights," she claimed. But her aunt remained unmoved. "Well, just for once I hope you'll make an effort, dear. I think you would for anyone other than Mrs. Anthony, and you can't be churlish, considering she had enough thought to realise your early evenings are busy and Nicholas has evening surgery, and so made the invitations for eight onwards, as she specially wanted you both there." "Churlish" stung. Laurel hated her good manners to be in doubt. Aunt Anita said no more and neither did she, shelving her decision until she had passed on the invitation to Nicholas. But for the evening in question he had a genuine previous engagement, which threw the thing back into her court. She looked at it dispassionately. She didn't want to go, and she was sure Blanche didn't want her - except to flaunt her pairing with Nicholas and her own claim upon Clive. She was undeniably busy and Nicholas couldn't go. So surely there was nothing so very uncouth about refusing, Laurel argued - without allowing for Clive's cool assumption that, Nicholas or no Nicholas, she would accept. Cornered, she pleaded that she was rarely able to leave the Kennels now until long after eight.

He brushed that aside. "Eight is an elastic term for this kind of gettogether. Blanche will understand, and I'll be here to drive you up myself just as soon as you can get away. How's that?" Laurel tried again. "It could spoil her numbers. She wanted Nicholas too, and he can't make it." "But with an effort you can, and I hope you will." He paused, holding her glance and adding with a spurt of irritation in his voice, "For goodness' sake, Laurel, can't you move anywhere these days unless Berne goes along too?" "Of course I can!" "Then to prove it, show a little social poise. You're merely hatching excuses. So you'll accept, or I'm going to want to know the real reason why." "Oh, are you?" "I am," he confirmed. "Blanche is a friend of mine of very long standing, and I'm not having her slighted for some adolescent whim of yours which I'm pretty sure you couldn't defend." "I'm not a child. I should hope you could give me credit for having grown out of adolescent whims by now," she raged. "I hope so too," he agreed equably. "I shall tell Blanche to expect us both at some undefined hour and I'll be at your disposal to drive you at any time you say." Laurel's last ditch was a practical difficulty. "I couldn't go straight from here in my working get-up. I should have to go home and change." "Then I'll drive you home first and wait while you prink."

She had to give in. "All right. I don't know why you have to make such an issue of it, but if it matters so much, I'll go." "Good girl! It matters," he said. So Aunt Anita accepted for her, and on the day her part-time helper and she worked like beavers, getting the evening work forward, allowing her to plan to have cleared up by the time Clive, who was out, called back to take her home. There was an hour's work after Mrs. Brannigan, her helper, left, and, almost finished, she was hoping Clive would appreciate the effort she had made when the telephone rang. "New Rodiam 91929. The Dukery Kennels," she said in her professional voice, only to be greeted by a breathy silence. She tried again. "The Dukery - " and this time clashed with a tremulous, "Who is that? This is me, Evan Morgan," and then a whispered aside, "She is there, answering. But what do I do now?" Another firmer masculine voice came on the line. "Miss North? I got your connection for Mr. Morgan here - you know him? He seems rather distressed, but he says you will help him. So shall I put him back on the line?" "Thank you very much. Do, please," Laurel said, and after another whispered exchange there was Evan Morgan telling his tale. It seemed the Len-Elsie-Taffy conflict had come to a head. There had been an ultimatum - 'That cat goes, or else -' and old Evan had chosen to leave too. But where for him? And where for Taffy? Even the Post Office had been closed for the night and, with the help of his good Samaritan, he had rung from the call-box outside it. So could Laurel meet him there if he waited? If she didn't come, he didn't know what he was to do ...

Laurel was nonplussed. Ringdown and Rodiam were an hour's bus journey apart, and she hadn't the use of the Centaur, since Clive would be driving her home and she hadn't come down to the Kennels on it. She said, "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Morgan, but I can't possibly come over tonight. I couldn't be with you for an hour or more, and — " "But it's tonight I need you, see," he pleaded. "And you said — " "I know, I know," she broke in, her thoughts racing as to how to advise him. The police. The R.S.P.C.A. Both would help him, but she doubted whether he would venture near either. He had blindly pinned his faith in her and she felt she was letting him down. She began to calculate times. If she were lucky to-catch a bus, she could be in Ringdown by a quarter past seven; half an hour to cope with Evan and Taffy; again if she were lucky, back at the Kennels by a quarter to nine - a full hour after she had promised Clive she would be ready to leave with him! However, there was nothing for it. She told Evan to wait for her at their seat in the Gardens, and after scribbling a note to Clive, she caught an outgoing bus with seconds to spare. She had told Clive, "I have had to go out. So don't wait for me and apologise to Blanche for me." And on the way over to Ringdown she had time to wish she had been more explicit. She also had time to speculate on what she was going to do about Evan and Taffy when she got there. Evan was waiting with the hamper, a fibre suitcase and a holdall beside him, and her heart lurched with pity that a lifetime's possessions could possibly be so few. She was fully rewarded by his eager greeting, and she was relieved to find that, while he had waited, he had booked a room for himself.

"At just a little temperance place near by," he said. "But they wouldn't take Taffy. So I thought I'd better take the room, as it was the only one they had." Laurel was relieved. She had feared she might have had to send him back to Len and Elsie and go along herself as peacemaker which could take a long time, with little success. Evan said he had money enough to stay at the boarding-house for a while, until he could find himself a room 'with some widow woman, maybe', who would welcome Taffy too. Laurel said, "Fine. But you must let Len and Elsie know where you are. Send them your address tonight, and meanwhile I'll take Taffy and look after him until you can have him back." Evan must have been hoping for something of the sort to .happen, but his eyes brimmed with gratitude. "But," he hesitated, "supposing it took me a time to find a place? I mean, you take in cats for business' sake? You do it for money?" Laurel threw Sally's profits overboard as she knew Sally would have done herself in the circumstances. She lied, "For customers, yes. For friends, not always, and I can usually find a corner for one more. So you get settled and when you are, I'll bring Taffy back to you." The rest was easy. She saw Evan safe, herself telephoned his neighbours who would give Len and Elsie a message, and Taffy and she caught the next available bus. But it had taken all and more than the time she had calculated and when she reached the Kennels, with Taffy wailing his desolation at foghorn intervals, it was after nine, and to her dismay Clive's car was still parked in the garage entrance. She let herself into the house and met him in the hall. He looked from her to the hamper and back again, his face a study in coldness.

She said lamely, "Oh dear, you waited after all! I told you I might be very late, so why did you?" "Perhaps," he said, "because I guessed how much it would annoy you to find me waiting. Since you obviously never meant to be punctual, it wasn't going to suit you at all if I were still here when, by your reckoning, you would be far too late to join Blanche's party!" She stared, scarcely trusting her ears. She echoed, "I never meant -? You can't think that! Why, all day I've been cramming hours of work into quarters, in order to - You're actually suggesting I schemed this? But I promised you I'd go!" "Only under duress; because I made an issue of it. You know, if you had this kind of shabby escape in mind, I'd have thought more of you if you had stood your ground and refused to go." She said quietly, "I've done nothing shabby. I promised to go because you said it mattered to you that I should, and I'm not in the habit of breaking my word." She stopped there, resolved not to yield another inch, and for a long minute they looked at each other in silence. Then Clive said, "Why couldn't you have explained more fully in your note whatever emergency took you out?" "Because there wasn't time. I had to catch the next bus to Ringdown, meet someone there and get back again. My mind was on a dozen other things when I wrote you." He glanced again at the hamper. "That amount of urgency to collect a client's cat? Surely not?" "That amount. And not a client's cat. Just a homeless cat, belonging to a homeless old man." Suddenly she had had enough of Clive's

distrust and of the whole coil of the evening's events, and feeling tempted to howl with self-pity, she turned aside with the hamper. Clive's hand on her arm arrested her. "Homeless? Both of them? How did you get involved?" "They aren't now," she explained. "The old man has found himself a bed, and I'm holding the cat for him. We'd made friends in Ringdown a while back, and when he got into a fix he appealed to me for help. And now, if you don't mind, I'd like to house the cat." "I'll come with you." Clive took the hamper and went to unlock the stables while she collected a plate of cat food. They both stood watching him nose his strange quarters until Clive said, "I'm sorry, Laurel. Whatever else you may be, you're not double-tongued. You have methods of using your will, but you don't resort to tricks." Disarmed, she said, "Well, thank you. I'm sorry I flared too. But supposing I hadn't come back until much later on, would you still have waited for me?" "I should." "And missed a lot more of the party, just in order to trounce me when I did show up?" "That, yes. But also because when I've made a tryst I keep it." She flinched from all that "tryst" ought to mean and didn't between herself and him. "Tryst? That's an old- fashioned word if you like!" she mocked. "Yes, isn't it? Positively lovers'-lane archaic," he agreed.

"And so, rather out of context, if you intended to trounce me, wouldn't you say?" "Quite. I wonder where I dug it up?" Dismissing it, he looked at his, watch. "And now - to Blanche's as soon as you've changed. How long will you need?"

Blanche's party was true to type - a jostle of people which overflowed on to her small patio and garden; a clink of glasses, spiralling cigarette smoke and a lot of brittle talk. Laurel was under no illusion that, if she hadn't gone, she would have been missed, for, apart from a few neighbours from Rodiam village, most of the guests were strangers, people from Pan-Oleum and others from London. Clive and she were soon separated by a deputy of Blanche's whom she sent to take Clive over to her group and back again to Laurel to take her a drink. The two chatted small talk until Aunt Anita came over to scold and then to sympathise over the crisis which had made Laurel so late. "In fact, your uncle and I will soon be leaving. Of course you won't want to come yet, but as Clive March brought you, he'll surely see you home, won't he?" she asked. Laurel said, "If he doesn't, I daresay I can manage the length of Rutter Lane and the Green by myself." But just then Clive came to join them and he assured Aunt Anita that of course he would be seeing Laurel home. He put a hand under Laurel's elbow. "I'd like you to meet a T.-W.F. colleague of mine. He is a mutual friend of mine and of Blanche, but I didn't know he was in England or that he would be here.''

He introduced the man in question as Donald Achill and Laurel as "the curator of the menagerie I found parked on my premises and whom I haven't succeeded in evicting yet." To which Mr. Achill said, "Ach, tak n' notice o' the mon's bark - " and gripped Laurel's hand until the bones creaked. The three talked together for a while. Then Clive moved off and Laurel mentally summoned all he had told her, in order to discuss reafforestation in arid places with her companion. He needed no steering into talking about Clive, declaring, "There's none knows the job better and he handles men wi' the kind o' gift few of us hae. The worst pity would be lest he should be lost t'Trans- World, once he has this thing wi' Pan-Oleum sewn up." Laurel's heart sank. She remembered Blanche's hints. "But need he be?" she asked. "Ah - needn't. But he could be persuaded. And I wouldn't know whether the factors that'll be pulling at him could be strong enough to sever him from active fieldwork when he has to choose." Laurel said faintly, "You mean - supposing Pan- Oleum should want to make it worth his while?" Donald Achill nodded. "Aye, though not only Pan- Oleum might be tearing him." He paused to eye her thoughtfully. "I don't know what you may know of either of them, but if it's not cutting across any loyalties, would you say I'm right in thinking our hostess might be using her weight to persuade him too?" Laurel had seen the doom coming. She hesitated. "Oh - Blanche? I I don't really know. Don't you?"

"Ah, I do, I'd say," he said with conviction. "For tell me now, can you see an exquisite like Blanche roughing it in camp with wives such as mine?" Laurel saw a chance to change the subject. "Have you got your wife in camp with you?" she asked. "Aye. That is, until I brought her home to have our baby, which means I'll be going back alone for too long a while. But with Blanche now" - he wasn't to be headed off - "she's not the type. Which goes to show how far Clive March is deluding himself if he thinks he can mould her differently at will." "You know for certain then that they're likely to marry?" He shook his head. "I do not, though mebbe I'll have a word wi' Clive before I go back. And if you're judging that it's nae affair o' mine," he eyed her firmly, "then I'd hae ye know that I'm as concairned for Blanche too, knowing Clive to be no mon to let any woman go free, if the thing didna work out." Laurel was glad then when some other people joined them. For though Donald Achill might have a friend's right to analyse Clive's affairs, she certainly hadn't. She didn't see him again when the group broke up and she was feeling more at ease with some Village people whom she knew well when Blanche came to do her belated duty as a hostess to her. "But of course I understand," she purred in answer to Laurel's apologies for her own lateness. "When Clive rang up to say you weren't available, he sounded pretty mad, and I believe he half suspected you'd deliberately stood us up. But I said, 'Oh no, Laurel wouldn't. She must have something urgent to lay on for her tykes or moggies, you'll see.' Because she is like that, isn't she?" Blanche appealed to the group at large. "For instance, the way she works

from dawn to dark - and after - at those kennels, and all, one supposes, in aid of other people's animals." An innocent who didn't know Blanche as Laurel felt she did agreed, "And how! We've always said Laurel couldn't be more conscientious if the Dukery Kennels were her own, and how grateful Mrs. Duke should be to her when she comes back." Which gave Blanche time to sharpen her next arrow - one for which even Laurel was not prepared. "You're so right," she agreed. "For instance, there was this night a while back - you know, when those thugs were playing up the New Town - and it seems Laurel decided she couldn't trust the police or her landlord to deal with them if they broke in. So what does she do but demand of Clive that he allow her to stay there for the night? Of course he dealt with it by insisting that she should go properly to bed in the house while he kept watch. But it did put him in rather a spot. After all, I might have expected The Worst! But did Laurel turn a hair over what people might think? Not she! Not a thought for her own reputation, let alone his!" Laurel could hardly believe her ears. Never had she heard so many half-truths told in as few breaths, and she longed to brand the lot as lies. But for one thing, Blanche was her hostess, and for another, people were only looking sympathetically at her, as if none of the story's nastier implications had reached them. Deciding she must laugh it off, she said lightly, "Well, it makes good telling of my devotion to the job, doesn't it? Or it would-if the details were accurate. But in fact there was no question of my not trusting Mr. March, nor of my foisting myself on him, since he wasn't going to be there — " Blanche narrowed her eyes. "Oh, come! He was there. Who else could have told me about it?"

Laurel emphasised firmly, "He wasn't going to be. He had rung me to say so. So I camped out alone until he came home unexpectedly, and I stayed on until it was light, because I had a weakly kitten which had to be fed artificially every two hours. But of course Mrs. Anthony is right - I didn't give a thought to my 'reputation'. And even if I had, I think I could have assumed I could trust my friends to understand." A shade too quickly Blanche said, "But of course — !" and a kindly soul patted Laurel's arm with a more sincere, "As if there were anything in that to misunderstand, Laurel dear! What else could you have done?" Blanche had turned away and from the corner of Laurel's eye she saw Clive approaching. Blanche claimed him by clasping both her hands round his arm, but Laurel had had enough. She offered her own hand and said again, "I'm so sorry I was late. But do you mind if I leave now? Thank you so much — " "Leave? Oh, must you?" The question meant nothing and Blanche went on, "Oh, you mean you want Clive? Clive!" - she lifted an imperious finger. "Coachman duty - Miss North's carriage, and don't spare the horses, there or back!" Under cover of the laughter which this sally evoked Laurel moved away, Clive following her outside. She felt tired, rubbed the wrong way and ready to pick a quarrel, and as they went towards his car she said perversely, "It's not worth your while to get out of line just to drive me across the Green. Let's walk. I've a question to ask you. Or perhaps two." Wheeling, he matched his steps to hers. "O.K., all set for questions. Go ahead."

It was fully dark now and she hadn't to look at him. She began, "Well, I think you must know that Blanche and I don't like each other well enough for her really to want me at her party. Yet you said it 'mattered' to you that I came, and made such a thing of it that I couldn't refuse. Why did you?" There was a pause. Then, "May I counter that with a question to you? You haven't enjoyed it, and now you want to blame me?" "I didn't particularly expect to enjoy myself. Which makes your question beside the point. Mine was — " "All right, you've put it once. Do you really want the truth?" "I shouldn't have asked if I didn't." "You may not like it much. It was because I had a whim to test whether you would do something I asked, for no other reason than because I asked it." "I see. Though when I gave in, I don't know where that got you." "When you agreed - just where I. wanted. Petty of me, no doubt, but I rather fancied a moment of power, and you wouldn't believe what it did for my ego - You had a second question?" She ignored the mockery in his tone. "Yes. Why, when you told Blanche about the night we spent together at the Kennels, did you have to distort all the truth out of it?" "Distort it?" He was grave again. "I did nothing of the kind. I told her casually how I found you there and that I let you stay until morning for the newborn kitten's sake. What was wrong with that?" "Nothing - except that as a story it suffered a sea- change in Blanche's telling of it to an assorted audience tonight. Fortunately no

one seemed to think it made me into the kind of Scarlet Woman she implied, but that was no thanks to her." Warming to her grievance, Laurel went on, "And if you don't accept now that Blanche Anthony and I just don't jell, then you never will. But don't thrust us together again socially for any reason at all - please!" Clive said, "All right, you needn't work yourself up. It doesn't become you. I'll have a word with Blanche about her editing of the story. But you know, all this reminds me that I've heard somewhere that, paradox though it sounds, a common feeling for animals is positive tinder for bringing out humans' hostility to each other? And it seems to check. With Blanche's devotion to her poodle, and your concern for him as a likely ground of rapport between you - what happens instead? You choose to disapprove of her treatment of him; she thinks yours too high-handed by half. And so, on every other count whatsoever, the fur will fly for evermore!" Work herself up? Laurel nearly choked. "It's not true. You must have heard that from some smart-alec who thought it a clever thing to say. For it's usually the other way about. Look at Mr. Morgan and me - we were on common ground almost at sight. And you can't suppose, surely, that it's only because of our differences over Bobo that Blanche and I -?" "And if not, what else?" They had reached her house and they halted. "Perhaps you'd better ask Blanche," she said, then flung away from him through the gate. She knew he stood and watched her until she let herself into the house. Then she heard his footsteps going firmly away - back to Blanche.

CHAPTER SEVEN LAUREL never heard what resulted from Clive's 'word' with Blanche about her lying version of the night at the Kennels. Nor did she expect him to ask Blanche - or be told - what was at the root of their antipathy. Her parting gibe had been hurled in temper; blush-making afterwards and, it was hoped, to be ignored. Clive did ignore it. The climate between them was cool for some days, but then, without giving her a clue he had remembered old Evan Morgan's dilemma, he offered his own solution to it. Up to date Evan's dreams of a kindly 'widow woman' with a room to let had come to nothing, and Laurel had begun to fear that he couldn't afford his temperance hotel much longer, when Clive intervened. Before going abroad, he said, he had employed a housekeeper who, when she retired, had moved to Ringdown. She had always, Clive recalled, been devoted to cats. But the last time he had seen her she had told him that, with arthritis threatening, she dreaded the thought of not being able to care for a beloved pet and to leave it to other people's mercies when she died. "Not that she is near that yet," said Clive. "Within her capacity she's still active enough, and her cottage has a spare room. So if your old man would meet her by helping with some of her housework and the shopping, I'm sure she wouldn't quarrel over terms, and it might prove an ideal arrangement for the three of them." Laurel gloated, "You think she would welcome Taffy too? Oh, I do hope so! Will you give me her name and address, so that I can tell Evan to go to see her?" "And if they fix it, you'll want to take Taffy over?"

"I promised Evan I would, when he found somewhere. I'd have to dash over one afternoon." "Well, let me know and I'll drive you. I owe Ellen a visit, and she can lay out the Welcome mat by giving us some tea." For a long time afterwards Laurel was to remember that afternoon the drive to Ringdown, restoring Taffy to Evan, admiring his bright bed-sitter, and afterwards sharing tea and Clive's and Mrs. Mather's gossip - as one of her happiest of that summer. Mrs. Mather was white-haired and rosy, with a lovely round Norfolk accent and she addressed everyone, including the men, as 'm'dear'. Each of them was 'm'dear' to her, except Taffy, who was 'm'pet', and it was good to see her joy in the little cat and his calm acceptance of her homage as if he had been born to it. Mrs. Mather had known Clive most of his life, and as they swopped anecdotes, he came alive for Laurel as a boy with a background not unlike her own. It was all very cosy and homely and made the threat of Blanche Anthony seem very far away. She would be there again. Laurel couldn't escape her. But at Ellen Mather's tea table, with its crocheted mats and rose-pattern- ed china, where Clive sat too, Blanche might have winged into outer space, for all the thought Laurel gave her. She had still written nothing to Sally about Clive's return, and with their holiday now more than half over and John doing well, it seemed rather pointless to broach it now. But she hadn't reckoned with chance and with Sally herself, who forced it on her with an anxious letter which Laurel couldn't ignore. She and John - Sally wrote - had been discussing the Kennels one day when John had questioned whether there wasn't some ruling in

the boarding licence about the necessity for the premises to be occupied by someone during the whole twenty-four hours. Horror of horrors! Sally - her expressive style was nothing if not colourful - had practically expired on the spot! For at John's question she had realised that, bat- brained moron that she was, she had risked her licence being revoked by letting Laurel run the business from home, with nobody, sleeping in the house at night. Anyhow, better late than never, so could Laurel possibly move in from now on? Or if her people objected to that, could she arrange for her helper to do so? Or someone, please! At first Laurel hadn't an idea how to deal with this blow, and when she looked up the licence she found the clause there as Sally feared. As dismayed as Sally, she was poring over the thing in the chalet when Clive's shadow struck across the door on his way to the garage. Clive! Their loophole of escape! She shot out, stopped him and thrust Sally's letter at him. "It's from Sally Duke. She's just realised that she - we - the Kennels could be in real trouble with the County Council unless - Well, anyway, read it." When he looked up from doing so, she saw that he had got the message. He tapped the licence with a fingernail. "So what's your problem?" he asked. "You've got someone on the premises, day and night, haven't you? I'm here when you aren't." Laurel nodded. "If you think you would - count." "Why shouldn't I - technically speaking? And you must have hoped so when you appealed to me. Though I do wonder that the solution didn't occur to Mrs. Duke herself."

"It couldn't very well," Laurel admitted. "You see, I've never told her about your being here, nor about our agreement to share the place, nor - anything." He looked his blank surprise. "Why on earth not?" She defended her reasons. "I didn't think it fair to worry her while I knew you could put the whole set-up in jeopardy if you decided to throw me out." "Still afraid I might? I thought we'd agreed on 'no molestation'. However this forces your hand. You'll have to admit to me now." And oddly, when she wrote back to Sally she was glad of the necessity to 'admit' to Clive. Launched upon her saga of his explosive descent upon his property; their initial battle of wills over the lease; attempting a physical description of him, she told herself she could be writing him out of her system. But time was to show that all she had done had been to hand him over to Sally's irrepressible curiosity. The process took no longer than the time needed for Laurel's letter to reach her. Laurel was out when she rang up and Clive had left a message by the telephone. He had answered it to Sally; would give Laurel the details later. Meanwhile he gathered Mrs. Duke was contented with the happy ending and she would be writing to Laurel. An hour later he appeared in the stables where she was grooming one of the long-haired cats, whose protests were both vocal and lethal. He donned gloves and held her while Laurel smoothed her ruff while he related Sally's call more fully and Laurel thanked him for taking it. Then suddenly he asked, "Tell me, in the current jargon, what is a dreamboat?"

Laurel stared. "A dreamboat? Oh well, a charmer, a bit of a spellbinder - male gender. Why?" "Just that Mrs. Duke claimed you had deceived her in describing me as a fire-eating gargoyle whom you had partially tamed but of whom you were still wary. Whereas, she said, I sounded quite a dreamboat of a landlord, and which was I really?" Laurel could have slapped Sally. "And what did you say to that?" "That I denied 'fire-eating' - I never touched the stuff. 'Gargoyle' I accepted - though it wounded my pride, and I needed notice of 'dreamboat'." "And—?" "And nothing. She laughed and rang off." He opened the cage door and when Laurel had put in the cat, she said, "Well, I know Sally adores a bit of dramatic licence, but I can't think how she made either 'fire- eater' or 'gargoyle' out of what I wrote about you." "She must have read between the lines." "Lines which weren't even there," Laurel snapped. "In proof of which I ought to be given a copy of your letter, oughtn't I?" She felt he was deliberately baiting her and she didn't answer. But in order to escape him she had to brush past him, and as she moved he caught at her wrist. "Laurel-" With her name his tone had altered, turned serious, and as she glanced up at him they were as close as lovers about to kiss. If he

had been Nicholas she would have expected him to kiss her, and a second later Nicholas was there, beating a rat-tat on the stable door. Clive dropped her wrist as if it had stung him. "Who's that?" he said. "Nicholas Berne, I daresay." She unlocked the door and with a cursory nod to Nicholas Clive strode away to the tune of Nicholas's favourite greeting, "Sorry if I'm late. I had to see a dog about a man," which, well- worn joke as it was, somehow never failed to tickle Laurel's funnybone and she laughed aloud. Clive didn't look back.

Meanwhile the work churned on and the boarding- season came within sight of its peak. Of course 'round the clock' didn't literally describe Laurel's day at the Kennels, but sometimes it felt like it. And as if she hadn't enough on hand at the time, her aunt came up with a favour to ask of her. As secretary to the Rodiam Village Women's Guild it was her job to enrol speakers for the meetings, and had thought it a good idea to invite Blanche Anthony to give the members a chat and colour film show of the Canary Islands. "She has some wonderful film of Grand Canary and Teneriffe, and people would bound to be interested in what she can tell them about living there - marketing and domestic help and whether it's all true about the climate, and I thought — " Laurel looked up from some accounts she had taken home. "How do you know Blanche Anthony can speak in public?" she asked. When Aunt Anita was set upon course she hadn't much use for 'can't'. "Well, she can talk most interestingly, as you would know

dear, if you weren't too prejudiced to listen. So why shouldn't she be able to hold people on a platform, with her films for illustration?" "Mainly," Laurel said, "because spouting from a platform and chatting at a party are two different things, as Alma Frayne found when she first went on a lecture tour about her travels." Aunt Anita allowed there was a distinction, though she felt sure Blanche must know something about what a lecture entailed. But in case she didn't - "Well, you mentioned Alma Frayne, and I've just thought of that scheme you worked out for her, which you called her 'pattern'. You know?" she urged Laurel. Laurel did. It had been an arrangement of Alma's lectures by headings and key-words which would remind her of important or humorous points she wanted to make. From her original script she would select these, and Laurel would print them hugely in capitals, so that the merest glance would catch the eye, enabling the talk to flow smoothly on, giving the audience the impression that Alma had scarcely needed to refer to notes at all. Laurel said, "Yes. But what's the connection?" "Well, if Blanche prepared a sort of script, I thought that if you could go over it and set it out to that kind of pattern for her - " Aunt Anita's voice trailed away. There were few jobs Laurel could have relished less, but when Aunt Anita urged faintly, "Just for me, dear?" she gave in. "All right," she said. "But Blanche must turn in her script and give me time to work on it. I won't have her breathing down my neck." So a few days later Blanche delivered her manuscript and Laurel took it down to the Kennels to deal with when she had some time to spare.

It covered quite a sheaf of paper - twenty sheets at least, and it certainly contained a lot of facts. But they were so stodgily expressed that Laurel was wondering how the thing could be pepped up with some human interest or humour when, on discarding the last sheet she had read, she realised that on the next she was reading something quite different - the rough draft of a letter in the same handwriting, which had been caught between the sheets of manuscript. • "Graham my dear." (Graham? Ah yes, Graham Mortimer, the PanOleum executive with whom Blanche had lunched at the Blue Boar on the day Clive and she had driven to Stainton, Laurel recalled.) Though she knew she shouldn't, she had taken in too much of the first few lines to be able to resist reading the rest of what there was. She even read it twice, hating every querulous word. "Graham, my dear - Sorry to pester, but isn't it high time you quit stalling? After all, you must know as well as I do that there's not a hope of a genuine breakthrough for C.'s little pipe-dream. So you must engineer one. Preferably something he won't see through, though as long as he's foxed until after I've made my plans for him, this isn't vital. "What is vital is that you get on with it. He plans to leave England in September and I mean to see he doesn't go empty-handed from P.-O. Also that he lands up where I want him - which is definitely not under canvas on the fringe of the Sahara. I mean to have a civilised, honeymoon. Anyhow, if you're not to be persuaded by all the nice ways I know (and I know some, you'll admit?) I have some in reserve which P.-O. may not care for — " That was the end of the intruding sheet and there wasn't another. Laurel thrust it aside, feeling sick. Sick with herself for breaking the code that one doesn't read other people's letters. Sick at realising Blanche had made no idle boast - she had ways of forcing Pan-

Oleum's hand, or at least Graham Mortimer's, and she meant to use them to trick Clive. Sick... It seemed likely that the fair copy of that letter had already gone to Graham Mortimer. So that when Clive claimed success for his project, Laurel would never know how much of it had been Blanche's doing, and this thought she hated. She forced herself to wade through the rest of the manuscript, and when she decided, on finishing it, that as it stood she could do little with it, she used that to her aunt as her reason for going to see Blanche about it. It was a fine evening after the day's usual ration of rain, and Blanche was stretched on a sun-lounger on her apron-sized piece of lawn. There was an upright chair which Laurel took and was glad Blanche didn't offer any more hospitality, for it would have choked her, she felt. Had she liked Blanche more she could have been more tactful about the manuscript. As it was she advised bluntly that as Blanche had colour film of the local scenery and costumes, she should cut her wordy descriptions and substitute some snappy anecdotes or a few stories against herself. "They always go down well," Laurel added, though doubting whether Blanche had ever told a story against herself in her life. "And you would know all about it, of course?" sneered Blanche. "From my employer's experience of intimate lecturing, yes," Laurel said. "She learned the hard way, but she knows all the tricks now." Blanche flicked the papers with the back of her hand. "But I can't slog through all this again. I'm doing it for charity, you know, not for money."

"The Guild pays expenses. Also a fee if you insist," Laurel pointed out. "Anyway, if you care to recast your talk on the lines I've suggested, I'll work on it again. But now I have an apology to make to you about something quite different." She fingered the sheet of paper she had held back. "By mistake you sent this with your script, and I have to confess I read it." She handed the letter over. Blanche's eyes sparked. "But this was the draft of a private letter!" "With which you'd been rather careless, hadn't you?" "And you have the nerve to admit you've read it!" Laurel nodded. "It wasn't fair not to tell you I had." "Fair! Schoolgirl-ese! And so, your conscience nicely polished by confession, what now? I take it that, as soon as you realised it was about Clive, you deliberately read it through?" "Yes," said Laurel. "Twice." Blanche pretended admiration. "Well, well! Handsome of you. Or should I say brazen? So you read it in aid of what? You didn't learn anything new from it, for I'd already told you I should be pulling strings for Clive. But maybe you wanted to memorise it, in order to report on it to him? Or perhaps you took a copy of it to pass on as proof of my - I suppose you'd call it intrigue?" As levelly as she could Laurel said, "I didn't make a copy, and I've no intention of mentioning it to Clive. You have my word for that." "Then why, apart from whitewashing your conscience, come to blab to me that you'd found the thing?" Laurel drew a long breath. "To - to beg you to hold your hand," she said. "To beg you to ask Mr. Mortimer not to use whatever influence

he has to push Clive's scheme, just for your sake. To ask you, please, if you love Clive, to give him all the rest of the time he has to push it through Pan-Oleum himself on its merits. It's a sound project, as he's determined to prove to them. And if it goes through, don't force him to abandon his real work as the price of your agreeing to marry him. He deserves better than that." Blanche rose, dusted herself down and began to fold the sunlounger. Laurel took that as her dismissal and stood too. Over her shoulder Blanche said, "You are besotted, aren't you? I believe you'd rather see him fail than succeed my way." "Leave him alone, and he won't fail," Laurel said stonily. "Such touching faith!" Blanche straightened. "Such a pity too that when Pan-Oleum does come through with backing beyond his hopes, you'll never know whose doing it was - mine or his. Goodnight to you." Laurel made no reply. She supposed she should have known who held all the cards.

It wasn't until she was in bed that night that she remembered Bobo had not been in the garden with Blanche. Odd, that. He was so much her shadow that he would surely have been yelling his protests if he had been shut up in the house. But Aunt Anita enlightened her the next morning. Embarrassed, she said, "Of course you had to know sooner or later, but I thought Mrs. Anthony might have told you herself last night. She has - well, parted from him. As she'll be leaving England in the autumn, she thought it was best."

Laurel was shocked. "Parted from him? But he adored her - and she him, or so she claimed. How could she?" Aunt Anita nodded. "I knew you'd be upset. With, you, dear, black is so very black, isn't it? Anyway, she told her neighbour Mrs. Abbacourt, she was going to advertise him for sale — " "Advertise him? Sell him to just anyone who replied?" "Perhaps, but listen. Mrs. Abbacourt knew a young family with a big garden, who were brokenhearted after their own poodle was run over. So Bobo has gone to them, and it could be that in the end he'll be happier, romping about with youngsters, than he was with Blanche Anthony, who did seem to think of him, I admit, as a sort of status symbol, like a Rolls or a mink coat might be - do you know?" Laurel did, though she was surprised that Aunt Anita should say so, as it was her first uttered criticism of Blanche, though she was going to be really shocked a few days later at her next glimpse of Blanche's feet of clay. Aunt Anita didn't often visit at the Kennels, but that morning, when Laurel's phone had seemed permanently engaged, she said she had despaired of getting through, so had called instead. . They talked in the hall. "Dear, what do you think?" Aunt Anita was rather out of breath. "Mrs. Anthony has suddenly cried off giving her talk to the Guild! Now! The day before the meeting, with almost no hope of my getting another speaker in time. She says she finds she had a previous engagement. But she had looked at her diary in front of me, and had said she was free!" Laurel said, "Well, I did tell you she hadn't let me have her script back after I had suggested she should alter it."

"Yes, but - Oh dear, do you think she took offence at your criticism, and so pretended another engagement?" Laurel was pretty sure Blanche had taken offence at more than her advice on the manuscript. But that was between the two of them, and Laurel was furious that Blanche should take out her spite against Aunt Anita and her beloved Village Guild. Laurel said, "Could be. If so, I'm sorry. But if I hadn't asked her to alter it, your members would have been whinnying with boredom." Aunt Anita was not listening. "It's really too bad of her," she fretted. "But though I will not appeal to her again, I just don't know how I'm to fill her place. Still" - squaring her shoulders and moving towards the door, "you're busy, child. I mustn't impose - " She broke off as Clive came out from his room at the same moment as the telephone rang again. Laurel heard them greet each other as she picked up the receiver, and when she replaced it they were still talking. Aunt Anita's eyes had lost their worry as she claimed, "Do you know, Laurel? Clive has offered to step into the breach. He'll give a talk to the Guild about his own work. Now isn't that being really generous of his time?" Clive smiled. "Not so generous, at that. I've told you, I don't promise not to plug Trans-World Forestry's scheme by which anyone can buy a tree for twenty-five pence and have it planted in the desert." "Oh, plug what you like, you good, kind man," crooned Aunt Anita, radiant. "Keep our members agog for forty-five minutes, that's all I ask. And I know you can, from the way you had us riveted the day you lunched with us, and how you've got Laurel here, all tensed for Pan-Oleum to back your project - Tomorrow then? Three-thirty? You'll be there?" She sailed away after blowing him a kiss.

When she had gone, Clive asked, "Will you be there?" Laurel shook her head. "I'm afraid not. The Guild is for the leisured. I'm one of the world's workers." "Also, according to your aunt, one of my converted?" he rejoined, then frowned. "Tomorrow? The eighteenth? Strange, I thought Blanche had told me she was talking to your Guild on the eighteenth. Still, I suppose I could have been mistaken." He gestured at the phone. "If you're not using it, may I have it?" "It's all right. I've finished - I hope - for the moment," Laurel told him, wondering whether he too, for once, suspected Blanche of having lied as to a 'previous engagement' which had claimed her.

CHAPTER EIGHT THE next day Laurel did not see Clive before he was due at the Guild meeting, and in the early afternoon Nicholas looked in without her having called him. "Know what? It's not raining!" he grinned. "Though according to the long-range forecast it's going to, most of the next thirty days." Laurel grimaced. "Surely it can't?" "Considering the example of our last thirty days, care to bet on that?" he invited. "So what about using this wan sunlight to come with me while I make a call on a farmer about his bull at Pennan Croft, the far side of the Beacon?" "Now? I can't," said Laurel. Nicholas sighed. "'I can't'! D'you know that's becoming an automatic reflex with you, my girl? Press a button and out it comes. Why can't you - just for once?" "Because - " She spread her hands, hoping the gesture expressed the daunting range of the afternoon's tasks. « Nicholas sympathised. "Well, I know, but couldn't Mrs. Brannigan hold the fort?" "Maybe, but she leaves at five." "Who's talking about five? Take the road round the Beacon nothing on it at this hour of the day; full speed ahead; back again easily before five. What about it?" Laurel weakened and fell. The road which ran round the base of the spur of the North Downs, Callanhoe Beacon, was very 'minor' and

by no means the shortest way to Pennan Croft, but it was pleasant and traffic-free - ten miles or so of old-fashioned track, bordered by the heathy downland which climbed gently to the Beacon's summit. There was a sharp wind which buffeted the car, but the sun was warm through the glass and she revelled in her truancy from the job. Nicholas and she exchanged snippets of news and talked shop; at Pennan Croft he saw his bull patient while the farmer's wife made tea for Laurel, and they turned for home in good time. On the way Nicholas announced he had decided against staying on with Mr. Longin. He needed wider experience before he took a partnership, and when he went on holiday three weeks hence, he planned to look around into the prospects of various other practices which offered. "Fetching up for keeps in the Lake District, I hope," he said. "Well, wouldn't you? Don't you ever hunger for the Lakes as I do?" "I used to. Not so much now," Laurel told him. "Now, if I left the village, I should miss it quite a lot." "I bet, if you went back to the Lakes, they'd get you again. Meanwhile, Laurel honey, what happens next for you? You hand over the Kennels to Sally Duke, and what then?" "I go back to Alma Frayne when she comes back." "No holiday of your own in between?" "I don't know. I haven't planned any. It depends on how the returns of Sally and Alma dovetail." "But supposing there were a gap, would you consider going back to the Lakes? With me? To meet my folks? If only for a long weekend?"

Laurel's heart missed a beat. That 'To meet my folks' was something she had half expected and dreaded for some time. She had done her best to keep the thing with Nicholas on an easy-going keel, wanting him to enjoy their being together, but hoping he would only remember her later as one of several girls he had taken out and kissed a few times before he fell seriously in love; Dear, uncomplicated Nicholas! Even if she found herself with time for a break at the end of the summer, she instinctively knew she mustn't go home with him to meet his people, and she didn't know how to answer him. But for the moment she was spared doing so as the car's engine checked, coughed, responded once to pressure, then died completely. Their simultaneous glances at the petrol gauge showed that the finger had quivered to zero. They both spoke at once. Nicholas breathed, "Well, can you beat that?" and Laurel said foolishly, "You've run out." He nodded. "The unforgivable sin in a doctor or a vet. But not my fault, honey. We were operating all morning, and I asked one of the stable lads to have her filled up for me. Ought to have checked, though, before we started out." He turned worried eyes on Laurel. "Look, you don't think I'd pull that corny old gag on you, do you?" Her smile should have reassured him. "Of course not. But what now? We're miles from the nearest garage, aren't we?" "As you say. At least three to the main road. So here's where I take to my flat feet, though I'll probably get a breakdown lift back." Laurel alighted too. "Shall I come with you?" He looked pleased. "That's a girl!" He tucked a hand under her arm and fell into step with her. "Sweet of you not to turn and rend me. I know a lot of girls who would suspect I laid it on, on purpose."

"I bet there are a lot who wish you would!" she teased. He grinned. "You can cut the flattery. Which reminds me - when the car conked, you hadn't answered my question - had you? Was that because you knew it meant more than it said? Was it, Laurel?" He had halted, turned her gently to face him. "Yes, I know we're in a hurry and the last thing I ever expected was that I'd be proposing to you in a half-gale on the side of the Beacon. But that's what I am doing. You'll come with me to the Lakes, and after -?" She looked down at his thumb, gently stroking the back of her hand. "I - I can't, Nicholas," she said in a strangled voice. "But you must have known? Even that first time I kissed you and you said you liked it?" "Yes, perhaps." She couldn't lie to him. "But I haven't wanted to know, don't you see? Because — " He said it for her. "Because you don't love me enough. But I'd settle for that, at least at first—" "No." She shook her head, knowing that she loved someone else more than enough. "I couldn't do that to you. Because in marriage people have got to feel as much as each other, even if differently." "And you're waiting for a Lochinvar out of the West who'll make you feel it? But Lochinvars don't happen to girls nowadays - only ordinary guys like me!" As he spoke he turned her again and walked her on, his fingers twined with hers. "You think you've answered me, but you haven't for good," he went on. "I've got to ask you again. But for now, say we carry on as if none of this had happened, until after I come back from my leave yes?"

She said shakily, "Bless you. But you can't want to go on seeing me?" He threw her a rueful glance. "Line of duty - can't very well help myself, can I? Unless I turn over the Kennels business to Mr. Longin or Derek or Mayhew. No, I'm stuck with you, my girl, until I go on leave, during which I hope you'll have time to miss me. Meanwhile we mustn't dawdle if I'm to get you back anywhere near that deadline of yours. What was it - five o'clock?" When they reached the garage they got a return lift by breakdown truck and were back at the Kennels not long past five after all. Nicholas couldn't stay as he had an evening surgery, but when Laurel got out of the car he joined her. Ordinarily they had a routine for parting - a casual 'See you' - or 'Wotcher -' in working hours or, if he took her home, he might kiss her cheek. But suddenly now he took her unawares by drawing her to him to kiss her in what she could only have described as a claiming way on her lips. She broke free. "Nicholas, you promised -!" He pinched her cheek. "Just signing off for a while. A touch of carnival before a fast," he grinned, and got back into his seat, though as he moved off he gave way to Clive's car coming in. As they each raised a hand to each other she couldn't know whether or not Clive had seen Nicholas's possessive kiss. But she didn't wait. She had remembered something which sent her plunging through to the refuge of the yard. That crack of hers about her being one of the world's Workers! He would think she had refused to go to hear him speak in order to go jaunting with Nicholas, and if he had also witnessed their parting, that took too much explaining away.

Not that anything but her apparent duplicity would matter to Clive, she thought drearily as she pulled on her boiler suit and began to tackle the evening work. He couldn't be hurt by seeing her kissed by someone else.

According to Aunt Anita his lecture to the Guild had been an unqualified success. "He had us all enthralled," she claimed. "He had to answer so many questions that he practically gave us a second talk. But what do you think? You know Mrs. Anthony's 'previous engagement'? Well, when Mrs. Abbacourt came past her cottage on the way to the Guild, Blanche Anthony was sunbathing on her lawn! She even waved to Mrs. Abbacourt, as if to make sure she was seen, giving us a deliberate snub. I wasn't disposed to judge her before that, but now I'm inclined to agree with you, dear, that she may not be quite the nice person one believed her to be." Which, though about as far as Aunt Anita's criticism of anyone ever went, did show, Laurel thought, that her disenchantment with Blanche had set in. Since her own clash with Blanche Laurel had realised that she was right. Laurel would have to doubt the truth of Clive's success if when - it came. For unless he - or someone - could convince her that Blanche had had no hand in it, the fear that he wasn't proof against leaning on her, making use of her, would always be there to rankle . . . there with her until she forgot him, as she must learn to in time. But it was on the day on which Nicholas began his leave that the 'someone' turned up ... in one of those mammoth cars which looked as if they were sold by the yard of bodywork and which drew up at the outer gate as she was on her way out.

She recognised the driver as Graham Mortimer, whom she had met once and had glimpsed at Blanche's party. He had a magnificent Dalmatian dog sitting upright beside him, and when he saw Laurel he rolled down his window and leaned out. "Miss North?" He beckoned her over, his smile pleasant. "I wonder could you board my dog Cadet for a couple of weeks? I have to be away, and though it's very short notice, I'd be obliged if you could." Laurel wasn't anxious to oblige any friend of Blanche's, but she had a dog-pen free and she hadn't the right to turn down business for Sally merely on her own prejudice. She stroked the dog's smooth head. "I could just make room for him. You mean you would like to leave him now?" she asked. "Please. Might I see where he'll be housed and say au revoir to him?" "Of course." She led the way into the yard and they settled Cadet in. As she watched the obvious accord between man and dog her Blanche-induced hostility fell away, and when they adjourned to the house to settle details, she offered him coffee. "That would be nice. But weren't you just going out?" "Only dashing into the town and back. I can go later." She explained Sally's rules and he signed Cadet in. Two cups of coffee later he was still there, taking an interest in everything she could tell him about the working of the Kennels. She said, "Just for the record, as it helps us to know - who, if anyone, recommended us to you?" And when he said, "Why, Clive March, your landlord," she was relieved. She was afraid it might have been Blanche heaping coals of fire, which she could not have borne.

"I suppose you'll be glad to have the whole place to yourself again after March leaves?" Graham Mortimer asked. (Glad?) Laurel said, "I shan't be here myself very long after that. Though I don't know just when he means to go - do you?" "Not to a day. But I gather he'll be off before long, now he has our O.K. to his project more or less in the bag. You'd know all about his work on it, I daresay?" She nodded. "Yes, though I didn't know Pan-Oleum had actually decided to back him." "Yes well, it's no secret now that he's as good as home and dry. We're standing behind him. Short-term, it's going to be an expensive sponsorship, but we'd be fools to allow the long-term possibilities for crude oil to slip through our hands." "You're saying that Pan-Oleum is really sold on the statistics and the data and all that?" "To the hilt." She plugged away, needing to have it almost in words of one syllable. "Mr. March has proved there's something big there for you, as well as for Trans-World Forestry? He's done it only on his facts and his experiments? He didn't have to pull any strings or - or rely on influence to push the thing through?" It was a loaded question, but if Graham Mortimer saw the drift he gave no sign of it. He laughed and rose. "My dear Miss North, you shouldn't believe all you hear about the power game!" he scoffed mildly. "March had to sell his ideas in the language we hardbitten directors speak and understand - that of profitable facts and figures. He has had a tough haul, but he's made

it without having any good fairies to root for him. Does that answer your question?" "Yes, and I'm glad." That sounded flat, but she had to keep a bubble of relief out of her voice. If this man had ever received Blanche's threatening letter he had discounted it, along with whatever other coy menaces or promises she may have used on Clive's behalf. He had taken her real measure, if Clive hadn't. And at that moment she felt she could have hugged him for being so incorruptible. Before she saw him away in his car she had one more question to ask. "I suppose this is none of my business," she said. "But now that the thing will go through successfully, will Mr. March be joining PanOleum to work on it?" There was a moment's silence. Then with an odd look which she had to meet, he said, "The answer to that is also No. March has made it clear he is far too committed to his work for T-W.F. to join us, much as we'd appreciate his know-how." Graham Mortimer paused. "I gather that's what you were hoping to hear?" She nodded. "Yes." Again that searching look. Then quite gently, "My dear, you have put the man pedestal-high, haven't you? I had no idea! But you shouldn't let it matter too much, you know. He'll be going away soon. Marrying too, one understands — " She cut him short. "I know," she said. "And I haven't let it matter 'too much'. It's just that - " But she wasn't ready with a defensive lie,

and she checked there lamely, despising herself for having kept her secret from everyone else, only to hand it, gratis, to this stranger. But he had all the right instincts. He gave her time. He opened and shut the boot of his car, opened the bonnet and tinkered, muttering, and then made a leisurely job of being ready to move off. Then he looked her straight in the eye. "We're forgetting this. It never happened. But anything I can do, any time - Remember?" She echoed, "It never happened. Thank you." Then she watched him out of sight. He wasn't a stranger after all. She had made a friend. Clive gave the news first to her uncle by telephone and Laurel kept faith with Graham Mortimer by pretending she hadn't heard it already. Aunt Anita press- ganged her into being at home when Clive went to the house to give them the details. Which was as well, for it helped to have other people there when she told him how glad she was that it had gone through. She was able to make her congratulations sound as levelly sincere as anyone else's, and it was left to Uncle Leopold to ask about Clive's future plans. "First, a final report to my organisation," Clive told him. "A lot of meetings with Pan-Oleum to settle details, and then a mopping-up operation for my affairs here. Meanwhile I shall be seeing off Mrs. Anthony, who is going back to Las Palmas in a week or two." "Oh yes, she said something about leaving in the autumn," said Aunt Anita. "But if she goes as soon as that, it's hardly autumn quite yet, I'd have thought." Clive said, "No. But her plans were always rather fluid, and she only took her cottage on a weekly rental. Now she is going back to the Canaries for a while. At first, staying with some friends of mine."

"Oh -? Yes, of course - I see — "As she left each sentence dangling, Aunt Anita could hardly have invited him to add, "Until we get married" more plainly than she did. But when he said nothing to help her out, to Laurel's relief she dropped the subject of Blanche. Instead she told him how much they were going to miss him when he left. At which he slanted a look at Laurel. "There are ways of missing," he said. "How do you know Laurel hasn't tied a ballpoint to her calendar, reminding her to cross off the days?" Aunt Anita protested. "But of course she hasn't! Why, she's loved having you - " Which sounded as much as if she were tactfully speeding him from a party that they all laughed. Laurel too, though she had begun to feel that from then on until his going, something would be slowly dying inside her. A day or two later there were cigars and Napoleon brandy for her uncle and a great sheaf of flowers for her aunt. On Clive's card with the former he had written, "I might still have been groping and pleading without your help" and on the latter, "Thank you for more than hospitality", which pleased them both immensely. They were delivered on the same day that Laurel had a long letter from Sally, putting her in the picture about John. He was very much better, but his surgeon had urged him to attend at the Ringdown Clinic at least until Christmas. But as this was impossible if they went straight back to Cambridge, where John's teaching post was still open to him, Sally was hoping to come back to the Kennels and to have John there with her. "But of course it all depends on Our Man in Possession !" wrote Sally with a peppering of exclamation marks. "That is, whether he's prepared to let me have the place for, say, another six months. If, as you write, there are good bookings for the autumn, the money would

be useful until John can work again, and the longer I can run the Kennels, so much better for the goodwill when I come to sell. "So please, Laurel love, will you sound out your Bogeyman on the subject? Tell him I won't ask for his signature on the dotted line, any more than you did. Honour among thieves - No, that doesn't sound quite right. Perhaps I mean noblesse oblige or something. Anyway, bless you, lamb, for being such a stalwart. John and I can't thank you - there aren't any words! Longing to see you and the assorted beasts. Love and all that. Sally." That letter and another by the same post from Miss Frayne, putting her own return a fortnight after Sally's, seemed to rule Finis to Laurel's summer, such as it had been. So many weeks hence she would have begun to look back on it - the summer of the ghastly weather and the day-long work she had loved; the summer Clive had been a passing ship in her life and Nicholas had wanted to marry her. All of it happening from one May to one September, and all of it dwindling at last, she supposed, to the memory of a few months gone irretrievably by. As it happened she didn't have to ask Clive the exact date when he would be leaving. He volunteered it, and when she put Sally's problem to him, he said he would instruct his agents to offer her a six months' firm lease, with the option of another one for as much longer as might help her to sell the goodwill of the business. "I'd suggest a three-year term, perhaps," he said. "I'm not likely to need the place in that time, if I ever do again." Three years ... a lifetime. "Not even as a pied-a-terre when you come back to England?" Laurel heard herself asking. He shrugged. "I doubt if I'll need to come back. I can see that length of work ahead of me, and most of the time I'll be making my home

wherever it takes me. For the moment, back where I came from. After that, T.-W.F. will name it and I shall be there." So what kind of a compromise had Blanche agreed to? Laurel wondered. According to Graham Mortimer she had lost out on her plan to pin Clive to an executive's desk in Las Palmas. But as Laurel couldn't see her making her home wherever his work took him, what was the solution for them? And whose dominance, his or hers, would win? Clive had said that Blanche would leave before him. But she seemed to stay on, and by the time the village grapevine had it that they would probably leave together, Laurel already had a problem which had nothing to do with either of them. It had begun for her on the day Nicholas went away, the day Graham Mortimer had brought her the news about Clive. In the afternoon she had taken in a new cat for boarding, and when she went to give the evening feeds it refused to take anything. Nothing to that, of course. Sally and she were used to newcomers needing time to settle down. But as she toured the other pens, doling out plates and saucers of food, the new boy sneezed violently . . . and again . . . and a third time. She went back to him. Still nothing to it really,' she told herself. He was homesick; he hadn't fancied what she had offered him, or he had a tickle in his nose. But she still didn't care for the look of his fur or the hunched way he was sitting, though he had come in with a clean bill of health. If Nicholas hadn't been away she would have called him. But by then it was after Mr. Longin's surgery hours and she hesitated to worry him that night. However, she was taking no chances. As soon as she had dealt with the other cats she moved Sam, the new boy,

cage and all, to the shed at the top of the courtyard which was Sally's isolation ward for either dogs or cats. She went back to him several times before she left for home, and though on her last visit he was dozing, he woke to sneeze in little paroxysms and while she soothed him her mind was already querying, 'Cat 'flu'? - that scourge of the cat world to be dreaded only one degree less than the worse killer, enteritis. She had never seen a case of either, but Sally, who had done voluntary work in an animal clinic in Cambridge, had told her how it could spread like wildfire, and any cat, apparently quite well overnight, might be down with it in the morning. There was no sure inoculation against it, as it was of changing types. Even the first cat to catch it in a community might not be the carrier; it could kill or debilitate, even under expert treatment, and the only consolation was that, though it was a form of dogs' distemper, dogs could not catch it from cats. So much Laurel knew. But she said nothing at home that night, nor to- Clive, nor to Sally when she wrote, telling Clive's offer in regard to the lease. For two or three days no one but her helper and Mr. Longin knew that she had isolated Sam. His owner was on holiday and Mr. Longin advised that until they were sure of his symptoms, Laurel should not worry her. But by the time that Mr. Longin admitted Sam to be a typical case of cat 'flu, she had two more cats sickening and the problems bristled frighteningly. There were cats due to come in, others due to leave, others again whose people were away on holiday. But they all had to be warned and given the choice either of keeping back their pets or fetching

them away or leaving them where they were - which latter was Mr. Longin's advice, if they were already in residence. Some people decided one way, some another, but the upshot for Laurel while they talked it out was that she had to spend many hours she could ill spare, telephoning clients or seeing them or writing to them. And by the time she had twelve patients on her hands, everyone had to know. All her tradespeople trod in an antiseptic foot-dip and left their deliveries in the drive, and Mr. Longin's daily visits escaped the notice of none of her neighbours. But there wasn't a single suggestion against her management, nor a whisper of criticism from one of them, except from the quarter she might have expected - from Blanche Anthony, who made it her business to interfere on behalf of Graham Mortimer's dog, Cadet. When she went to see Laurel the latter was disinfecting cages in the garage, and if she had been in any mood to see the funny side, she might have enjoyed the contrasting figures she and Blanche cut Blanche in a scoop-necked silk sheath, with a new hair-do and perfumed with Numero something, and she herself in dungarees, wellingtons and a shower-cap, and smelling to high heaven of soapsuds and antiseptics. Her knees creaked with weariness as she straightened and wiped her forehead with the back of her rubber glove. "Yes?" she said with no enthusiasm, and Blanche took her cue from the pervading aroma and the foot-dip at the gate. She looked Laurel over, wrinkled her nose in distaste and said, "You need to take all these precautions against this thing your moggies have wished on you, and yet you're still keeping a valuable dog like Graham Mortimer's on the premises? Others too, I suppose, but I

happen to be bothered about Cadet, and apparently up to date you couldn't care less about the risk to him." "Moggies" Laurel was used to from Blanche, but the insinuation that she was risking anyone's dog or cat through sheer indifference was more than she could take. She said with furious sarcasm, "That's right. I'm Nero, having myself a ball while Rome burns. Looks like it, you think? Well, Mr. Mortimer's dog is still here and is going to stay, because that's the way Mr. Mortimer wants it." "But he couldn't, if he knew what's been happening." "He does know, because I rang him up and told him." "You -?" Blanche's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How did you know where to reach him?" "Because I never accept an animal unless I'm given some address or telephone number in case of emergency. And when I told Mr. Mortimer that dogs couldn't catch this germ from cats, he said he was quite content for Cadet to stay." "I don't believe it! And how do you know dogs don't catch it?" "A fact. Ask any vet," Laurel advised. "As for the rest, you could ask Mr. Mortimer yourself." She bridled. "I certainly shall. And offer to take Cadet from you and look after him myself." "Then do it now," Laurel invited. "I'll do it when I choose!"

Laurel dug in her heels. "No, you'll do it now and in my hearing. You doubt my word, and I'm entitled to that. And if Mr. Mortimer wants me to hand Cadet over, you can take him with you straight away." Of course Blanche wasn't to be forced, and for a moment it was almost possible to hear their wills clashing. Then Blanche turned and stalked towards the house, throwing over her shoulder, "Very well, and may you enjoy it. Though you'd be better employed getting the dog ready to leave." The number she wanted was a call to Gloucester, and she made it Personal. When Graham Mortimer came on the line they chatted for a minute or two and then she launched into a tirade which she didn't let him interrupt by so much as a word, and which went beyond anything of which Laurel had thought her capable. "Listen, Graham - about Cadet. You can't possibly mean to leave him at these kennels, if you've been told the truth of how things are. If you could see for yourself or hear what is being said about the place - cats going down like ninepins and spreading their germs everywhere, and people whipping away their cats and dogs as fast as they can - And say what the woman likes about hygienic conditions and strictest precautions, it's just much sales talk. An epidemic of this size doesn't just happen. She must know she's guilty of some neglect or other. So really, Graham — " She got no further. But indignant as Laurel was, it was not she who cut her short. It was Clive's hand which reached for the receiver and took it from her as smoothly as if she had willingly given it up. She stared at him, her eyes snapping, and Laurel looked behind him. His workroom door was open and he could have heard it all while they, their backs turned to him, didn't know he was there. The receiver crackled. He put the earpiece to his ear.

"March here, taking over from Blanche," he told Graham Mortimer. "Yes, I know what it's all about. But will you take it from me that you needn't worry for your dog? What's that? Yes, I understood from Laurel that you'd already decided he could stay, and indeed there's virtually no risk for him. Laurel is isolating every cat at -the first sign of trouble, keeping it in quod and nursing it until it's clear ... "Yes, and probably more of it to show, she fears. But I'm afraid Blanche has the whole picture distorted. None of it could have been foreseen, and meanwhile Laurel is coping. She has this place about as aseptic and sterilized as a maternity ward. Yes, she is here . . . You'd like to tell her the dog stays? Good — " Clive handed the receiver to Laurel. As she took it Blanche flashed a look of sheer venom at his back. But when he faced her she was laughing. "Outflanked and outnumbered with a vengeance! Do excuse me, while I creep under a stone — " Her nerve and her sureness of Clive left Laurel speechless. If she, Laurel thought, had been caught out in such spite by a man she was going to marry, she would have needed, not a stone, but the biggest concrete block she could find. But Blanche merely tucked a hand in Clive's arm and they went out together. Laurel heard her car leave as she hung up after speaking to Graham Mortimer, and Clive came back alone. He stood, barring Laurel's path. "I'm sorry about that," he said. "Whatever Blanche's concern for Mortimer's dog, her smearing of you was vicious. I must say you looked as if I'd cheated you of saying your own piece, but I don't apologise for taking a hand."

Laurel said, "You don't have to. It was good of you to stand up for me, and I should probably have said too much. Because you don't believe, do you, that it was all in aid of the dog?" She might have known he would cover up for Blanche. "I'd prefer to think so," he said quickly. "Meanwhile, you needn't fear it will be repeated elsewhere. I've seen to that." Watching her take her gloves from the pocket of her dungarees and ease them on, he added, "Anyway, I hope I was right? You have got things under control?" She sighed. "More or less, though I wish I'd been furnished with a couple more hands and an extra leg or two." "So that you could wear them down to the bone? You seem to be in perpetual motion as it is. What's your worst problem, would you say?" "I don't know that there is a 'worst', except the sheer endlessness of the jobs. The vet's visits take so much time; then there's all the sterilizing and disinfecting, and getting meals that the ill ones can't eat, and keeping to their pill routine, and still not neglecting the well chaps. I never seem quite to catch up, and I begin to panic and feel " she groped for a word - "hunted." Clive nodded. "I know that driven, crowded feeling. But I doubt if you are hounded by the piling work half as much as you are by the caring and the fret you're expending, are you, Laurel?" Surprised, she looked at him. It was something she hadn't faced herself, though as soon as he put it into words she knew it was true. "How did you know?" she asked. He said, "My dear girl, I'm not blind. Physically, you've got enough discipline and energy for two. But you're exhausting yourself with pity and self-blame and fear of worse to come. You're suffering with

every one of your patients and all their owners; it's compassion and responsibility multiplied to the nth degree, and it's becoming all too much for you. Come - isn't it so?" he urged quite gently. "I'm right?" He was, so shrewdly that she was shy of letting him know it. She had to go on fighting, but she was breaking her heart lest the thing should claim even one victim which she might have saved if... or if... or if... And it had taken Clive to understand this when no one else had. If he had brushed off her spurt of self-pity as being due to mere overwork or had advised her coolly to bring in more help at any cost, she wouldn't have crumpled as she did. But his insight, his cutting through to the real heart of her despair utterly disarmed her. Her chin quivered childishly and suddenly she was seeing him through a mist of tears. He stared. "Laurel, child - you're crying - !" He cut the distance between them in a couple of strides, but she didn't remember whether he said anything else. She was only aware of the thudding pulse of his heart as he held her close while she cried and cried, her face muffled in the hollow of his shoulder.

CHAPTER NINE CLIVE let her cry for a while, then turned her about and propelled her to his study, where he swept papers from a chair so that she could sit down. She fumbled for her handkerchief. He took the one from his breast pocket, dropped it into her lap and left her. When he came back he handed her a drink and stood over her. She choked on the fiery taste. "That's practically neat brandy!" she gasped. "A medicinal dose. What did you think it was - cold tea?" The brandy did something for her control, but nothing at all for her humiliation. For something to do when she had emptied the glass, she dragged off her hideous shower cap, and twisted it between her fingers until Clive reached for it and took it from her. "Stop fidgeting and look me in the eye," he said. "I suppose you know that if you go on like this you're heading straight for a nervous breakdown?" She shook her head. "Of course I'm not. I am worried and I am tired, but I'm very far from all-in. I'm sorry about all that - idiocy just now, but you shouldn't judge from it that I'm a bundle of" nerves. It was just that you were kind and understanding at a moment when I was particularly on edge." Evidently she had said the wrong thing to prove her case. "Exactly," Clive agreed. "You were overstrung to a pitch where it only took a sympathetic question or two from me to find your breaking point, which is typical of nervous strain, didn't you know?" He reached for a chair and straddled it. He went on, "It all confirms a feeling I've had for some time that you're too conscientious and dedicated for this job. You give it too much, identify too closely with it, suffer too much. Oughtn't you to stay a lot more detached?"

She shook her head. "That's where you're wrong," she told him. "One wouldn't do it at all or be good enough at it to make, money or build goodwill if one didn't really love doing it and see every one of one's patients as individuals, all different, and almost all of them lovable, though in different ways. Anyway, nobody could be less detached than Sally is, and she's been successful enough, goodness knows." "Not having met her, I wouldn't know about that. Meanwhile, I'm glad that when I go and she returns I shan't have to think of you under this kind of pressure indefinitely. You'll be giving it up when your Sally comes back, won't you?" Something - the effect of the brandy? - must have dulled her wits to stupidity, or she would have realised what that question had really asked. It was only later - and too late to put the record straight - that it dawned on her that Clive, remembering the possessive way Nicholas had kissed her, had probably been asking her to admit that she wouldn't be returning to Alma Frayne either, as she and Nicholas were engaged or near to it. But at the time it passed completely over her head and Clive's next question was briskly practical. "All that aside," he said, "how soon do you calculate you'll be out of the wood?" "There's no knowing," she told him. "Though now I've grown a sixth sense for the thing and am isolating much earlier, we may have begun to beat it." "You've not considered sending the whole lot home?" "Good heavens, no! Mr. Longin wouldn't hear of it. It would only add to the risk of its spreading outside."

"And each patient is ill - how long?" "Oh, they vary. Some perk up after a day or two; some take ten or longer. The serious risk is pneumonia. I'm afraid there may be two on the verge of that now - a tabby named Patsy and a Persian torn, Leo. You haven't been here the last two nights when I've gone home, but I've been staying as late as I possibly could, because I could hardly bear to leave them." To that Clive said, "Are you hinting you'd like to stay here at night until you're over the hump?" "Hinting? No—" "But you wish you could?" As she nodded, "Well, why not?" he added. "Though I would only move out on condition someone stayed with you. Say your Mrs. Brannigan. Would that help?" "Would it?" she enthused. "But how can I expect you to move out when you're so busy clearing up your affairs?" "What are hotels for? I should camp at one in the New Town, and I shall probably be in London the last few days before I leave for good." He stood up. "That's settled, then? As soon as you can get someone to keep you company, you'll move in?" Gratefully she did, the next night. Mrs. Brannigan returned after she had given her husband his supper, and somehow everything was easier from then oh. Previously her worst hours of tension had been those she had been forced to spend at home. But now she was always up at first light; there was more time in the days, and one came at last when no new cat was sickening and the others were on the mend. And that day, she thought, was her happiest for a long, time, before her two dooms, Clive's going and Nicholas's return, overshadowed her spirit once more.

Nicholas was no letter-writer. His correspondence with her had been one or two picture-postcards, and though she had written back once, she had not mentioned the epidemic and had begged Mr. Longin's silence too. She had feared Nicholas might cut short his leave to come back to help her, which she didn't want for his sake and, more selfishly, for her own, putting off the evil day of his wanting her answer, which she knew had to be No. Clive had put up at the Rodiam Arms and came and went during the day, emptying the house of his papers and all the personal things he had scattered around. Most of his final week he spent in London. But her aunt had asked him to spend his last evening but one with them at home, and that would almost certainly be Laurel's last time of seeing him. Nicholas was due back on the previous day, and on the morning of that day Mr. Longin dropped his bombshell. As soon as the last of the current boarders, both cats and dogs, could be sent home, the Kennels must be closed for fumigation and sealing and must not accept any more bookings for a minimum of six months. Even if it wasn't his duty to advise it, the County Council could enforce it. No, he was afraid there was no way round it. That six months' quarantine was the only answer to the risk of another outbreak, and they didn't want that, did they? Fervently Laurel agreed that it had been a nightmare which she dared not bequeath to Sally. But - six months! Just the time Sally and John needed as a breathing space, with the business bringing in money until John should be earning again. More disastrously, a break in continuity which could spell death to Sally's hope of selling the- goodwill. People finding other holiday homes for their pets; all those bookings for the autumn and Christmas having to be cancelled; and worst of all for Laurel, the guilt, deserved or not, of feeling she had let Sally down.

So much for her summer's stewardship! And at the end of it, no business for Sally to come back to, and, owing to Laurel's wellmeant silence, Sally hadn't even been warned! Of course Mr. Longin had to leave her to her problems. But he promised that Nicholas should come round to see her as soon as he reported for duty. "Make all the use you can of him, my dear, for in more ways than professionally, you've got a good man there," he added as he got into his car. Didn't Laurel know it! Nicholas was too good for her, a cry-baby for a moon out of reach, and far too good to hurt irreparably by agreeing to marry him for less than love. Until he arrived that day she neared rock bottom of self-reproach, and when he did come she was on the telephone, trying to convince an unknown woman that her boarded cat was not, and never had been, at the Kennels. When the other woman claimed that it had been collected a fortnight earlier by a man driving a grey van and accompanied by a child and refused to listen to Laurel's protests that she owned no grey van, nor employed a man, nor had any knowledge of a child, Laurel glanced round at Nicholas in despair, and he took over. Laurel heard him describe himself as the Kennels' veterinary surgeon; assure this Mrs. Simnel that Laurel had accepted no new boarders for the last three weeks and then reel off from memory the addresses of every pets' boarding kennels within a radius of thirty miles. After a vague murmur from the other end of the line, "Yes, do that," he encouraged, and rang off. He went to squat on his heels before the chair into which Laurel had flopped. "Madam has promised to call the places I gave her, and will ring you back," he said. "It's obvious - she says she's new to the

district and she had you muddled with wherever the cat really went for its hols. Simple." He shook his head at Laurel. "You know, you'd be laughing this off like crazy if it hadn't come on top of all the rest." He stood and drove his hands deep into his trouser pockets. "And about that, Laurel - why didn't you let Longin tell me, or tell me yourself? You know I'd have cut everything to come back and help you." She nodded. "I guessed you might, but I didn't want you to. It wouldn't have been fair — " "Fair?" he exploded. "Fair? Haven't you the faintest clue to what loving you means to me, girl? Or were you afraid I'd start crowding you, after I'd promised to give you time -?" He broke off as the telephone shrilled. "Oh, fire and brimstone, now what?" He went to answer it and spoke briefly. "Really? I'm so glad. As you say, All's well that ends well - No, no trouble at all. Any time — " He hung up. "Our Mrs. Simnel again. The first place she tried in Ringdown had the cat and will be returning it. 'It could happen to anyone,' she claimed. I ask you - handing over a pet without confirming the address of the place it was going to! People - /" Again he went over to Laurel, drawing her to her feet and into his arms. As she stiffened, "No, Laurel, please! Yes, I am crowding you, but I can't help myself. Look, doesn't this say something to you? I mean it to — " But before his lips found hers the front door opened after a perfunctory knock and Blanche Anthony came in. This time, without releasing Laurel, Nicholas really swore, and Blanche's brows went up in mock apology for her intrusion.

"Oh dear, oh dear! So sorry! Interrupting something, am I?" she crooned at Nicholas, ignoring Laurel, who had never until then seen Nicholas really brusque, though he was then. "As it so happens, you are," he told Blanche coldly. Her glance measured his nearness to Laurel. "And - don't tell me it's more than a passing clinch? One of those torrid love-scenes labelled 'purple passion' - no?" Nicholas nodded. "Doing its best, in face of sundry interruptions, including yours. However, stick around long enough, and for good measure you could find yourself listening in to a proposal of marriage." She chose to ignore the irony. "Really? The news slays me! Or does it? Didn't one see it coming? But do tell, when ought I to open my piggy bank to buy the wedding present?" "There's time enough," said Nicholas tautly. "It's usual to wait until you're invited to the ceremony, but if you're bent on counting the cost of a set of fish-knives, go ahead. It won't affect the result." "As if I supposed it would! Though isn't the lady lucky to have someone like you around, bending over backwards to pick up the pieces?" Blanche drawled. "Meanwhile, if I may raise such a mundane subject, my car has broken down and I do want to telephone my garage. That's why I called in - do you mind?" "Not at all. We'll leave you to it." Nicholas's hand went down Laurel's arm and found her fingers. She had no choice but to go through with him to the chalet, where he flung open the door to the courtyard and breathed long, and deeply, as if he needed pure air. He turned back and sat beside Laurel on Sally's camp-bed, only his hand now resting on hers.

"Phew! Now I know what you've always had against that woman she's rank poison!" His smile a little twisted, he added, "You didn't mind my letting her think our thing was all settled? You knew why I had to?" Laurel could guess. It was his male pride which wouldn't admit to Blanche's derision that her Yes to his proposal was in question, and it was for the same reason - to save face for him - that she had said nothing to contradict him. And when he went on, "After all, it can't matter to us what she knows or thinks she does. She won't be among those present much longer, will she?" Laurel nodded agreement. For it didn't matter that Blanche would surely run hotfoot to Clive with the news. Clive might be interested. But he wouldn't be affected. Clive wouldn't care. Nicholas plunged on. "But I've got to know. I haven't nagged you. You didn't ask for time, only to turn me down now?" She had to remind him wretchedly, "I didn't ask for time. You offered it to me. But you ought to have let me tell you then. You shouldn't have gone on hoping." He shifted position and sat further away. "Then it's No after all?" She couldn't look at him. "It has to be. I - I'd bring nothing to you that you'd have the right to ask. And less isn't good enough - don't you see?" He stirred impatiently. "And I'd figured that we'd already got so much that the rest would come." He paused there for so long that she was forced to look questioningly at him. Slowly then, as if he had to work it out, "Laurel, that crack of Blanche Anthony's about my 'picking up the pieces'? What did she mean by it - if anything?"

Laurel bit her lip. "I - don't know." "Not, for instance," he pressed, "that she thought I was getting you on the rebound from some other affair that had gone sour on you? There's hasn't been another fellow for you? Or not since you and I -? Not this summer, for pity's sake?" Already she despised her lie. She said, "I'm afraid - this summer, or she wouldn't have known about it. But not an 'affair'. Just one of those hopeless things people have to get over, because the other person doesn't even know." "But she knew?" The tilt of his head indicated Blanche. "Laurel - oh no? Not - March? That was why she was so venomous about you? She had need to be jealous of you?" Laurel shook her head. "No need at all, as she knows very well." "You mean there's been nothing for you on his side?" (Nothing? An over-hasty judgment or two. The odd, unexpected kindness. Some rough justice. A few confidences about his work. One meaningless kiss - ) "Nothing," she told Nicholas. "Blanche guessed, the way women can of each other. But he hasn't known, and he never will now." "Unless she tells him - just for the laugh." "Unless she tells him," Laurel echoed bleakly, and Nicholas's pity for her brimmed over. He moved again to sit beside her and take her hands. "My poor, poor Laurel! In the same boat, you and I. And it hurts, doesn't it? Want to tell me about it? Or not yet? Some time?"

"Some time, please," she begged. "Though there's little enough to tell. Just one of those things - " She sighed and squared her shoulders. "Let's talk about you, may we? Have you found a practice you want to join? You've quite decided to go?" "If I hadn't before, I have now. You'll understand that I can't -?" -As she nodded he went on, "Something I hadn't told you earlier - I felt that if you did happen to turn me down, I had to have a defence in reserve; just moving on in this country wouldn't do. I'd need to get further away from you than that." His mouth curved into a wry grin. "The way chaps used to go big game hunting - you know?" Ashamed, she said, "Yes." "Well, so while I was away I went into the idea, with a particular eye on New Zealand — " "New Zealand! That's terribly far away!" "Not far enough for me to forget all this too easily, though it may help. Anyway, I've an older cousin who is a vet in Auckland, and he'll take me into his practice. So now I think I shall go. You do understand?" "Nicholas, of course! But - the Lakes? You said — " He nodded. "I know. But the Lakes will wait for me. I shall be back." As if by common consent they left it there and went on to discuss Sally's problem of coming back to find that, at least for six months, she had no business to carry on. But Nicholas thought it wise for Laurel not to try to write the news, but to break it to her in person. He also did his best to reassure Laurel in the matter of lost goodwill; there was such a need for a holiday home for pets in the New Town

that he felt sure the business would pull up again, always supposing Sally wanted to carry it on. Laurel knew that she was dreading his going that day, though she knew she had no right to feel herself deserted. They didn't refer to Clive again until Nicholas was in his car, about to drive away. "Well, so much for my zero hour," he said. "When's yours?" She flinched at the bald question, but she understood why he hadn't been able to wrap it up for her comfort. She said, "Soon now. He's coming to us for a meal tomorrow night. I shan't see him again after that." On a sudden impulse, clutching at straws, she added desperately, "Nicholas, I suppose you wouldn't -?" He knew what she meant, and he shook his head. "Come too? No, I'm afraid I couldn't. Not really fair to ask me, is it?" As of course it hadn't been fair of her and she deserved his refusal. She watched his car out of sight through a mist of tears, and she had never felt so alone in her life.

The next evening she had planned to go home early, in order to help her aunt before she bathed and changed. But during the afternoon Aunt Anita rang to pass on a strange message from Clive. "He has just telephoned to ask if you were at home or down there. When I told him, he said to ask you to stay there and wait for him. He would call for you and bring you up in good time, but you weren't to leave the Kennels until he came." "But — " Laurel began.

"I know, dear. Odd of him, but I think you'd better wait, as he says. You will? Then I'll expect you together when I see you — " Aunt Anita rang off. Laurel waited. For two hours in a chill of nervous questioning as to Clive's reasons. And when she did think she heard Clive's car, it was only the local florists' van arriving. She opened the door to the van driver, ready to dispute the delivery of a magnificent bunch of gladioli which she certainly had not ordered. But the man wouldn't take No from her. "Name of March," he insisted. "To be delivered here and this card to be left - with 'em. Right, then? Sign, please — " "All right." But as she cradled the flowers in her arms and took the sealed envelope from him, a hand reached over his shoulder, filched his pencil, signed the delivery docket and proffered a tip. "Thank you. Fine," said Clive, shutting the door on the man and taking the flowers and the card from Laurel. "For Mrs. North," he explained. "I must take them up when we go. Did she ring you and ask you to wait for me?" "Yes, and I'm ready now, as soon as I've locked up," said Laurel. "Well, I'm not, and your aunt said there was no hurry." As he spoke he opened the door on to the emptiness of his study. Nothing there now of his personality. Just a bare desk, cleared shelves and two wooden chairs, and to Laurel it said, "This is the end", more bleakly than anything yet. She wondered why Clive wanted her in there, but he ignored the question she looked at him as he stood aside for her and followed her in and faced her.

"Laurel, this I have to ask," he said. "Is it true that you're going to marry Berne? That the thing is settled between you?" She stared back at him. Only once before in her memory had he sounded equally urgent - the day he had suddenly appealed, "Laurel -?" but hadn't gone on because Nicholas had arrived. She echoed, "True? Who told you?" and then, because she knew, answered that herself. "Oh, Blanche," she said. "She came in yesterday while we — " "Then she was right, and it is true?" Laurel shook her head. "No." "But Blanche says Berne told her - !" "I know, and I didn't choose to contradict him. For one thing, either way it was no business of hers." Clive frowned. "You let your hates die hard, don't you? However, true or not, you decided it was equally no concern of mine? You must have known Blanche would tell me, yet you thought that 'either way' too, I shouldn't care?" Laurel said, "Well, need you much?" For all the notice he took she could have saved her breath. He went on, "So it wasn't true? Or shouldn't that matter to me either?" She began to feel cornered. "You seem set on making it matter. If you must know, I refused Nicholas because I'm not in love with him. He says he loves me and I'm grateful to him, but that's not enough."

"Tchah!" Clive's impatient movement brought him a step nearer to her. "You said, 'Love on one side isn't enough,' and he agreed with you and wouldn't risk it?" "He understood. He accepted that I wouldn't risk it." "Without pressing you for your reasons?" Goaded, she retorted, "What do you think? That when I said 'No', he said 'O.K., let's call it a day'? Of course he wanted to know why I felt I couldn't - and I told him as well as I could." "And then offered him the balm of clichés? 'I'll be a sister to you.' 'I'd hate to stop seeing you entirely.' 'One day you'll meet someone nicer, prettier, with money of her own, more your type than I am' Ugh! Bromides, the lot! But Laurel, my girl, don't you dare trot them out to me when you've given me my No - if you must. Just say it and have done, and we'll have no post-mortems. I shan't even promise that I'll wait for you, for I won't. I'm not cut out for dawdling on any woman's sidelines - even yours. I'm asking you now, this day, this hour, this minute, to marry me for love, though heaven knows I've nothing to offer you but the ache I have for you Oh Laurel, little one, my brave thorny one — " Then incredibly and cruelly, because he was going to marry Blanche and couldn't mean any of it, his arms were hard about her and he was murmuring endearments and broken love-phrases, his lips close against her hair. Hurt, feeling cheap beyond measure, she thrust away from him and he let her go. He said thickly, "I'm a fool. As if I didn't know — " at the same moment as she exploded, "You must be mad! Ache with wanting me! Need me! How - how dare you, when I suppose you'll be marrying Blanche Anthony any day now?"

His stare turned hard and cold at that. "Marry Blanche? Where did you get that idea, for pity's sake?" "From her - who else? A long time ago she warned - I mean, told me you were unofficially engaged, and you let her act engaged to you. And you're going back to Las Palmas with her, and taking her to friends of yours while — " He looked as if he had to call on his patience. "For the record, I shall be travelling to Las Palmas with a lot of people other than Blanche," he said. "Notably the aircraft crew, our fellow passengers." "Oh, don't split hairs! You're escorting her!" "I am indeed. And settling her in with a couple I know until she finds an apartment to suit her. She's making her future home there, but I'm not, as I thought you knew very well." "Well, I do," Laurel said. "But I still thought - And you had never said you weren't engaged to her." "Because it never occurred to me that I need, or that anything of the sort could be read into our relationship. Blanche is an exquisite who knows all the feminine tricks and makes full use of them. But so far as I'm concerned, she is the unlucky widow of my friend. And for that, since his death, I've been prepared to be there for her whenever she's needed me. But if she's led you to think she was more to me than that, I couldn't know what her reasons were." From sheer wild hope Laurel was trembling a little. "I think I do," she said. "She - well, she and I always rasped on each other, and when she guessed that I - that it mattered to me that you were in love with her, I - I think she plugged it for all she was worth. Do you see?"

As she watched Clive take in all that she was trying to tell him with that bit of incoherence, she lived through a lovely moment she would never forget. Something lighted up in his face... flamed. As muddle- tongued as she had been, he began, "It mattered? Then you - you do -? You can -? Oh, my dear, my very dear, you don't know what you'll be taking on!" Then she was in his arms again and for a long time they let their straining embrace and their hungry searching kisses say it all for them. Laurel thought, "This is true! It's really happening!" But mostly there wasn't even thought - just the reality of Clive, of loving him as she did and knowing herself loved. All the questions and answers could wait.

Of course the questions had to come. It didn't occur to them to move from the empty room, nor from those two hard chairs, where they sat, knee to knee and holding hands, while they wondered and marvelled and laughed, and perhaps were a little afraid of being so happy, of being one after being two. They both asked why they had struck so many sparks from each other from the beginning. To which Clive offered sagely, "It's because a successful fire can't be lighted with soggy wood and a match without a head. You were the dry tinder and I was the match that meant business." "Except when I was the match and you were the tinder. But we've made a lovely fire," Laurel claimed. Then they had to know why they had kept it all hidden from each other. To which Laurel said, "I was getting no encouragement." But Clive's answer was serious and rather unsure.

He said, "I knew what marriage would ask of you, if you weren't the right woman to take the demands of my work in your stride. I wasn't sure that you could measure up to the only kind of marriage I could offer you - the loneliness when we'd have to be apart, the hardships when we were together, the homesickness you'd have to fight, and having to ride along behind something called duty." "You said there were some wives who could take it all," Laurel reminded him. "The rare few. Later I knew that you could be one of them, with all the courage and the tenacity of the best. But by that time you were seeing far too much of Berne for my hopes of you, and when I saw you kissing him as if neither of you cared who knew what about your affair, I decided I must write you off, and I tried." "Correction," she said. "I wasn't kissing Nicholas. He was kissing me, though I wasn't sure how much you'd seen. But you would have gone away without ever telling me about - all this?" "I don't know, little one. I think it was Blanche's gloat yesterday about your having settled for Berne which put the boot behind me. Today I had to hear the truth from you, and if it had been what I feared, I'd have left it there. My pride wouldn't have stood for your pity and commiseration, and I'd have tried to put on an act of being happy for you over Berne. By the way, how did he take your refusing him?" "He was wonderfully understanding. He'd given me time to think it over, but when I couldn't he told me he was going to join his vet cousin in New Zealand." "Leaving the Longin outfit?" "Yes." There had to be another question to which she dreaded the answer. "Clive - must you still go away the day after tomorrow?"

"I must. I have to see Blanche to Las Palmas." "Even now?" Laurel questioned jealously. "Even now." He took her chin between finger and thumb and made her look straight at him. "I'm afraid that's one of the things you'll be taking on - my obligations to Blanche for Dave Anthony's sake. If she ever crops up again, she must be able to call on my help. Though only on my help, as hitherto. Can you trust me on my having no other interest in her at all, do you think?" Laurel must have been convinced that she could and did, though she didn't do it in words. And presently, a little breathless, they were talking again, making plans. From Las Palmas Clive would air-hop briefly to North Africa. But he would be back for her in three weeks, expecting to find her trousseau'd and free of all her commitments and ready to be married and carried off to begin her probation as a Trans-World Forestry wife. "Meanwhile you'll have Sally's return to look forward to," he said, not knowing the shadow which the thought cast for her until she told him. But when she did, Clive-like, he went straight to the heart of her problem and solved it with a lightning decision which took away her breath. "I'll make over the deeds of this place to you," he said. "You'll be its owner from now on." "You're giving it to me? But why?" "With the idea of your offering Sally and her John a charity which they probably wouldn't accept from me. Supposing you offered it to

them rent-free for as long as it would take to see the business, goodwill and all, on its feet again? Wouldn't that solve a lot for them?" Laurel's eyes shone. "Oh, darling Clive, of course it would! They would have so much the less worry all winter, while they were getting the fumigation done and taking bookings for the spring!" She paused before adding, "Do you realise I've never yet brought a problem to you that was even there any more, once you had passed your hand over it?" "That's handsome of you. I thought I was your Problem with a capital P," he teased, then glanced at his watch. "We ought to be on our way, girl mine, if we're not to try your people's patience too much." "I suppose we ought," Laurel began, then stopped. "Oh dear, what are they going to say?" "They'll congratulate me and wish you 'all happys', let's hope," he said. "But they haven't a clue! And supposing they didn't approve?" "Ah, then you'd have to leave me to pass my hand over that one too," he said, and kissed her again. They went out together, only for Clive to turn about sharply before they reached the car. "I've left your aunt's flowers behind, and when I changed I didn't bring my key," he exclaimed. Laurel turned too and looked back at the house which was to be her own. She took her key from her bag. "Be my guest. Take mine," she

said, wrinkling her nose wickedly as she dropped the key into his palm. He took it and went back. But by his answering grimace she knew he agreed that they were playing a scene twice over. Evening. A murky, too-early dusk. Cloud just above the rooftops. The inevitable rain. Clive using a key that was hers by right. She, waiting for him to take her home in his car, leaving her good Centaur in the garage. Then, an evening in May. Now, one in September. Everything going the same this time as then. Except that summer had happened for them in between.