Miss Ferris’s aunt was showing Miss Ferris’s letter to her second-in-command.
“Wants a cheap holiday, I suppose,” she said, with a snort. “Spent all her money on foreign tours, and now that it’s too expensive, with the pound and everything going off gold, to go abroad, she wants to know what I can do for her. Best room at the cheapest rate, I suppose! That’s relations all over. Never come to see you, and when they do come, expect the very best of everything! She can have Number Eight at the inclusive, less ten per cent for staying the full six weeks. I couldn’t do more for a permanent.”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t expect more,” said Miss Sooley, who was plump, sentimental and inclined towards hysteria when she became excited. “But, Miss Lincallow, there’s something else.”
“I won’t have a child’s cot put in Number Three as well as a double and a single bed, so you can write and say so,” said Miss Lincallow firmly. “They can put the two little girls in Number Nineteen for an extra half-guinea a week, but that’s as far as I’ll accommodate them! You’d think this was a common lodging-house, the things people expect you to do!”
“It isn’t that. It’s something much more serious,” said Miss Sooley. “It’s that new maid, Susie Cozens.”
“Her with the London manners!” snorted Miss Lincallow. “Too free with the gentlemen! She’ll have to go.”
“It’s really Mr. Helm’s fault. He encourages her. I found her in his room this morning going through his things.”
“Then she can just go through her own and take herself off,” said the head of the establishment decidedly. “Theft, as likely as not! She came here with no character never having been in a regular situation before. I wouldn’t have taken her, even though it
“What about a character?”
“I’ll write her a character. ‘Honest and industrious’ ought to be enough. She can make up her own reason for leaving us. I’ll write it now, at the same time as I write to my niece. Have you found out whether Number Four intends to stop the extra week? Because I’ve had an application for a sitting-room and three bedrooms which I’d like to take up with. But don’t discourage Number Four. He comes here every year, and no complaints.”
On the following morning Miss Ferris received a cordially-worded letter from her aunt, offering her a bed- sitting-room with full board and attendance for six weeks at an inclusive charge for the whole period. The money was even more reasonable than Miss Ferris had anticipated, so she sent off a telegram advising her aunt to expect her on the following Monday afternoon, and went to the Public Library to look up a train.
Sunday passed uneventfully. She went to church three times, including early service, took a short walk between lunch and tea, and retired to bed at half-past nine. She felt contented, and although she had been prepared to feel no particular enthusiasm for her six weeks’ holiday, she found herself now looking forward to a visit to the seaside, and she found also that the warm tone of her aunt’s letter had given her a feeling of cheerfulness and well-being to which, on holidays, she had often been a stranger.
Her trunk was already packed. She went by taxi to the station, caught her train with a quarter of an hour to spare, and arrived at her aunt’s boarding-house in time for afternoon tea. Her aunt received her very cordially, and showed her her room. It was at the back of the house, but as none of the windows overlooked the sea, for her aunt lived in a road which ran parallel with the esplanade, but was separated from it by a row of larger and more imposing private hotels and boarding-houses, a room at the back was as good, or better than one at the front.
This her aunt explained to her at some length and with many repetitions, for, like most seaside landladies, she was loquacious. Miss Ferris pronounced herself delighted with the room, and her aunt, having drawn her attention to the printed notice fixed above the mantelpiece, left her to unpack. Miss Ferris committed the contents of the notice to memory—they dealt exclusively with times of meals and rules concerning the occupation of the bathroom—unpacked, wrote a post card to her landlady at Hillmaston, announcing her safe arrival, and went down to tea.
After tea she went for a stroll along the esplanade, and encountered Hurstwood, of the Sixth Form. He saluted her, and Miss Ferris bowed and smiled nervously. She went in deadly terror of all the upper forms, because she never taught them. Hurstwood was wearing a boater and his school blazer. She was surprised at the boater. Most young men went bareheaded in the summer. She could not know that Hurstwood’s father, a man of peculiar theories, believed that a straw hat protected the brain.
Dinner was at seven. She would have enjoyed it but for the fact that a handsome man of early middle age sat opposite her at table, and every time she looked up she caught his eye. The first time this happened she blushed and looked down at her plate. The second time, the man said:
“Isn’t the fish always so nice here?”
The third time he said:
“Don’t you think the air here makes you hungry?”
After dinner Miss Ferris asked her aunt whether her seat at table could not be changed. Her aunt, humouring her, changed it and put her at a larger table, with a named couple and their three children. Miss Ferris, who had a genuine liking for children, was pleased with this new arrangement, although her aunt began by apologising for it. The middle-aged man, whose name was Helm, did not come into contact with Miss Ferris again for more than three weeks, but towards the middle of the fourth week of her stay they became acquainted under romantic circumstances in the form of an attempted burglary.
She had gone to bed later than usual one night, because she had been to the theatre, where a good repertory company were doing a play which had had a successful run in London, and which she thought she would enjoy. She did enjoy it, and after she had retired to bed she continued to think over the story and to visualise herself in the character of the heroine.
Thus, at a quarter to twelve, she was completely wide awake, and was suddenly conscious of the sound of a cough which seemed to come from the balcony outside her bedroom window. She was not particularly alarmed, for her physical courage was of a reasonably high order, and she raised herself in bed and listened. There was no further sound of coughing, but she thought that she could distinguish a slight scraping noise.
Curiously enough, the thought of burglars did not immediately occur to her, but her sense of duty caused her to get out of bed and proceed cautiously to the window. She peered out, but could see nothing, and the scraping noise continued. She could hear it distinctly. This time she did think of burglars. Like most teachers who take any of the games—and she sometimes coached netball with the junior forms to relieve the Physical Training Mistress—she always carried a whistle in her handbag.
