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heard it with amazed horror, but had dismissed it as a quickly passing aberration. Milner must have been ordering ginger beer, of which he was inexplicably fond.
    ‘The meaning of that escapes me, Rowles,’ said the Pedant. ‘But there’s an odd example ahead.’
    Rowles looked up. At the top of the hill, near the Music Building, the daughter, Lucretia, was leaning against a tree in dirty blue jeans, holding something white to her front.
    She was starting at a nearby school next week, by the mercy of God. The Doctor thought this and then saw another figure, going across the drive in front of the Head’s House and approaching the girl.
    He half covered his mouth with his cupped hand, so that the Pedant, frowning testily, had to bend his head to catch a word.
    ‘Oh Lord,’ the Doctor whispered. ‘There’s that unfortunate Ashley. I’ll have to say something to him, Milner.’
    Lucretia, who was nursing a white rabbit, saw the peculiar man approaching and knew him for the master who had been in the Study and had interfered with the Fire Practice and angered her mother. (She had sent him to tell her father). He walked with a slight bounce, with his hands in his pockets; his face was sort of screwed up, as if he was going to sniff; and altogether he struck her as what she had come to know from a lifetime spent in Prep Schools as an Absent-Minded Professor. But the funny thing was that he wasn’t so terribly old.
    He stopped abruptly. He really was absent-minded, and had only just seen her! He inclined his head in a little bow, and with his jawbones all tight, said: ‘Good afternoon.’
    ‘ ’Lo,’ she said, confused by all this, and holding the rabbit closer, to protect herself rather than the rabbit.
    ‘I like the rabbit,’ he said. ‘What’s it called?’
    ‘Persephone,’ she replied.
    It was clear he knew nothing about rabbits, because if he did he would have said ‘What’s she called?’ or, better still, ‘What’s he called?’; better, because she could have corrected him. All the same, she didn’t hate him. His blue eyes gave her the idea there was some kind of joke between them, and he made her feel almost the same age.
    ‘You amaze me.’
    ‘It was my mother’s idea. Some . . .’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘Something to do with being let out of the Underworld or a burrow or something.’
    She had never said so much to a strange adult in her life. And it was worth it. His whole face smiled, and he was different.
    ‘Ingenious,’ he said, scratching his hair, and nearly laughing. (She had no idea what that meant). ‘Your mother is a clever woman.’
    If so, why was he laughing? He must be making fun. She began to hate him.
    ‘She’s taught me everything.’
    ‘Everything?’
    She knew exactly what that meant, and did hate him.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, and gave him the straight look that had terrified scores of small boys.
    It didn’t terrify Ashley. It filled him with a sudden revulsion.
    ‘I see. Will she teach you now?’
    ‘She hasn’t time and I’m too old. I’m going to Day School next week.’
    (He still could tempt her to speech).
    ‘I think you’ll like that.’
    He was trying to get round her – but he didn’t do it very well. He merely gave away the fact that he thought it would be better than her mother.
    ‘Why do the boys go in there?’
    Ashley followed her glance, across the drive, towards the Music Building. It was pre-War, and a Memorial to an Old Boy, a gifted musician who had been killed; an expensive donation by his parents, which the Bishop on the Board of Governors had ceremoniously named the Hugheson-Green Building. But nobody could remember that; so the Memorial was called the Music Building.
    ‘To practise the piano, I believe.’
    There were eight rooms off a corridor, just big enough for a piano and chair, and one big room with a piano at the end.
    ‘Two boys went into Number 2 ,’ she said, and then counted along, nodding with her head. ‘And two boys went into