She did not answer. He continued in a spurt: “You know there’s a sort of way in which you miss anybody you’ve been used to seeing about the place for years an’ years. Without any ... er ... what people call love, you know, or anything of that sort.... Well, I miss your mother in that way. Quite apart from any other way, I mean.... If she was here now she’d nag at me for not taking my dirty boots off downstairs. It’s funny, but I shall miss all that nagging. I got used to it. I didn’t particularly like it, but things’ll seem pretty dull for a time without it....” Pause. “For twenty years I’ve chucked my dirty boots under the sofa downstairs, and wouldn’t have dreamt of bringing them up here.... And now the first night she’s laid to rest I come up here with ’em on without thinkin’ about it....” He kept on making vague remarks. “Life’s passing, Cathie ... one thing an’ then another.... Time waits for no man--or woman.... We’re like those clocks at the railway stations.... We seem not to be moving and then we fall forward with a jerk at the end of the minute.... It’s easy to notice the jerks ... but time goes steadily on whether we notice it or not....” Then he changed the subject. “It’s lucky for you it wasn’t an ordinary night last Monday, or you’d have got in a fine row, I can tell you. Playing truant and going out with young fellers.... A girl of your age ought not to bother her head with fellers.... I never knew your mother till she was twenty-two.... This sort of free-and-easy-carrying-on won’t do, Catherine. For one thing it’s not respectable. And for another thing it’s not right.... Find some girl friends to go out with, and leave the fellers alone....” “Fellers,” he called them. The word jarred on her. CHAPTER III THE FIRST TRANT EPISODE § 1 JUNE sunlight was scorching the tarred asphalt of the Ridgeway, and Catherine and Helen were sauntering homewards beneath the heavy trees. Their conversation savoured of “shop.” “Two hours the last map took me,” said Catherine, indignantly, “and we’ve got another in less than a fortnight.... Rivers and mountains as well.... And it isn’t as if North America was easy, either ... there’s all those lakes....” “I shan’t put in those islands at the top, anyway,” observed Helen. “I shall leave mine till to-morrow morning,” continued Catherine. “That is, if I do it at all.... And I shall do it on typewriting paper so I can trace it.” “She won’t take it if you do.” “She’ll have to....” At the corner of the Post Office the conversation took a personal turn. “We’re having a social at the Baptist Church next Saturday. Will you come?” asked Helen (Helen attended a rather prosperous Baptist establishment in Upton Rising). Catherine walked on for some moments before answering. She seemed to be weighing things up. “I might,” she answered. Then, as an after-thought, she added: “I suppose you’ll all be there?”