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fact, he seems a very pleasant young man altogether.”
    “Yes, he does, doesn’t he?” Lucy agreed discreetly, though privately she wondered if her mother would feel the same way about Owen if she knew just how different he could be.
    “Now, if you’ll just wheel the trolley in—oh, fill the milk jug first, will you? The tea won’t be long.”
    It was a surprisingly pleasant little meal. Most of the conversation was provided by Owen and Mr. Darvill, but Owen, Lucy noticed with slightly reluctant approval, took good care to see that neither she nor her mother was entirely left out.
    When he left, after shaking hands with his host and hostess, Owen turned to Lucy.
    “Tomorrow, eleven sharp?” he asked pleasantly.
    “Eleven sharp,” Lucy agreed, and took his extended hand. The contact was brief, but it was long enough for Lucy to note that his was a firm grasp—she detested a flabby handshake, particularly from a man—and that it had an oddly sustaining quality about it.
    Mr. Darvill saw their visitor off. When he came back to rejoin his wife and daughter, he was smiling.
    “Nice young chap, that,” he remarked, absently taking a left-over sandwich from the plate. “Seems to know all about roses, too.”
    “Does he?” Lucy was surprised. She had imagined that Owen’s only interest in his extensive gardens was very secondhand. Certainly she had never seen him so much as snip off a dead flower.
    “If you eat any more of those sandwiches, you’ll be putting on weight again,” Mrs. Darvill remarked, deftly whipping the plate out of her husband’s reach. “Now, off you go out into the garden again while Lucy and I wash up.”
    This was it, Lucy thought wryly. An opportunity for a confidential chat if ever there was one! That was the last thing she wanted, and yet if nothing was said at all, she knew quite well that it would be such an unnatural state of affairs that the past would assume the nature of a barrier between her and her parents. She need not have worried. Mrs. Darvill dealt with the situation promptly and finally.
    As soon as she and Lucy were alone together she took the bull by the horns.
    “Now, Lucy, your father and I think you are absolutely right in feeling that there is nothing to be said over—what happened. We think, too, that you were quite right to go away, so there’s nothing to be said about that, either, is there? And now, tell me about your work. Is it interesting?”
    “Very,” Lucy told her with convincing emphasis. “Much more interesting than working for Mr. Keane, nice though he was.”
    “And you get on well with Mrs. Mayberry?”
    “Yes, I do. I like her very much indeed. And I think she likes me.”
    “Why shouldn’t she, I’d like to know?” Mrs. Darvill was up in arms immediately.
    Lucy laughed.
    “You’re something of a partisan, aren’t you, Mummy? Still, it’s nice to have it that way!” And she gave her mother a hug which both of them knew was really an expression of Lucy’s gratitude for her parent’s understanding. “But the important thing is that when two people get on well they can work together so much more smoothly.”
    “Do you ever do any work for Mr. Vaughan?” Mrs. Darvill asked.
    “No, never,” Lucy replied, wondering whether, after all, her mother had been shrewd enough to guess that Owen might well be a very difficult person for whom to work. “I don’t see very much of him at all, really. Meals and odd times, that’s all. He’s a very busy man and he has a study of his own as well as an office in town.”
    In response to her mother’s obvious interest Lucy explained what Owen’s work was, and that gave her an opportunity of explaining just why she wanted a smart dress.
    “Just fancy, Mummy. I shall be meeting some of the most interesting and famous people in the world,” she went on with deliberate enthusiasm. “It’s an opportunity that few people get. I think it’s very, very kind of them to include me on—well,