“... And what perfectly-appointed country residences do we inspect today, Pat?” asked “poor Master Francis” as they threaded the traffic of Tottenham Court Road.

“Look at them if you like. They’re in that pocket.”

Francis lifted the leather flap in the door, which she indicated; pulled out and opened a long envelope; began to study the house-agent’s slips.

“Berkshire,” he read out. “Berkshire again. Oxfordshire, border of Berkshire. Berkshire, border of Oxfordshire. ... None of them sound very promising, Pat.”

“No,” she admitted, “but I like the idea of living in that part of the world. My mother was Oxfordshire, you know. Besides, we might find something.”

“I don’t know why you’re so keen about the country all of a sudden, Pat,” went on Francis. “What about your lonely leave-men. Who’ll motor them home to their wives?”

Patricia drove on in silence for a few minutes; then she said: “A woman with six hundred a year and two children to educate, can’t indulge in the luxury of unpaid war-work, Francis. And besides there are heaps of people meeting the leave-trains now: it’s become quite fashionable.”

“Then why not take a paid job?” he suggested.

“Because other women”—she thought of Miss Macpherson—“not only need the money more than I, but can do the work a great deal better.”

By now they had cleared the heat-haze which brooded over inner London. Up and out from his cloud-veils, clambered the sun. The laburnum trees in the little suburban gardens were all a-bloom with yellow. It promised a glorious day.

And promise fulfilled itself. They left the last tram-lines of Brentford astern; emerged mile by mile into the full splendour of England’s Maying. The home-counties unrolled beneath their questing wheels in vista upon vista of young green fields, of pink and white hedgerows, of orchards all alight with blossoms, of silver river-reaches, of pleasant homes where pigeons fluttered dazzingly to age-reddened roofs and the lilac bloomed palest amethyst over the glowing emerald of close-clipped lawns.

But there was never a pleasant home among those which Patricia’s house-agents had persuaded her to visit!