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By Root 5804 0

confident people of both sexes were stuck round the mirror. Dickie's room looked north towards the town, and had that physical smell north rooms so soon acquire. It contained boot jacks, boxing gloves, a stack of copies of Esquire, three small silver trophies on ebony stands gleaming underneath framed groups. Doris's room was so palpably Doris's that Portia quickly shut the door again. But she did also discover another room—it was wedge-shaped, like the end of a piece of cheese. Its dormer window looked north. In here were stacks of old cardboard boxes and a dressmaker's bust of quite royal arrogance: the walls were hung with photographs of such tropics as Dr. Heccomb had visited. Here also, promisingly, were a stretcher bed, a square of mirror and a bamboo table. Portia took one more look round, then crept downstairs again. By the time Mrs. Heccomb woke, she was half-way through a letter.

She was writing: "There is a room, and I think you would like everything. There are two directions for us to walk in. I will not broach about this till tomorrow, which will be Sunday—"

Mrs. Heccomb woke with a little snatch at her hair, as though she heard something in it. "Busy, dear?" she said. "We shall have to go out in about an hour. We are going out to tea up the hill—there are two daughters, though both a little older than you." She tucked in her blouse at the back of her belt again, and for some time moved contentedly round the lounge, altering the position of one or two objects, as though she had had some new idea while asleep. A draught creeping through the sun porch rattled the curtain rings: Waikiki gave one of its shiplike creaks, and waves began to thump with greater force on the beach.

As Mrs. Heccomb and Portia, both in chamois gloves, walked sedately up the hill out to tea, the daffodil buds in gardens knocked to and fro. Seale gave one of its spring afternoon dramas of wind and sun, and clouds bowled over the marsh that one saw from here. Down there, the curve of the bay crepitated in changing silver light.

"I expect you often go out to tea with Anna?"

"Well, Anna doesn't often go out to tea."

On the way home, Mrs. Heccomb took Portia to Evensong, which was intoned in the Lady Chapel. Then they went round to the vestry for some surplices, which Mrs. Heccomb took home to mend. She could not aspire to do the altar flowers, as she could not afford beautiful flowers, so this was her labour of love for the church. "The little boys are very rough," she said, "the gathers nearly always go at the neck." It took some time to go through the surplices, and longer still to pin them up in brown paper—Mrs. Heccomb, with other ladies with access to the vestry, kept a hoard of brown paper, for their own uses, behind a semi-sacred cupboard of pitched pine. The Vicar did not know of the existence of this. Whenever Mrs. Heccomb opened a parcel, she saved the paper to take up to the church, so there was never brown paper at Waikiki.... When they did get back to Waikiki with the surplices, Daphne was punting chairs about in the lounge.

Daphne's hair had been re-set, and looked like gilded iron. The door through to the diningroom stood open, so that the heat of the lounge fire might take some of the chill off the diningroom: the breath that came out from there was rather cold, certainly. They all went in there to have a look round, and Daphne blew the dust off a center-piece of Cape gooseberries with an exasperatedly calm air.

"The bell rings beautifully now, dear."

"Yes, the bell's all right, but when I tried ringing it Doris shot out and had a sort of fit."

"Perhaps it's still rather loud."

"But what I mean is, she must learn not to do that. She can't find the potted meat, either."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear; it's hanging up in my basket."

"Well, really, Mumsie... As it is, you see, she hasn't even started the sandwiches. I suppose you've been at that church?" said Daphne, pouncing.

"Well, we just—"

"Well, I do think church might keep. It's Saturday, after all."

Supper was cold that night, and was eaten early in order to give