Arlsfield Post Office does not function after lunch on Tuesdays. Telegrams are telephoned from Henley to Little Arlsfield; and if “Little Arlsfield” (which happens to be a grocery store) is not too busy, the grocer’s boy delivers them sometime or other on a rickety push-bike.

All afternoon—it was a wonderful sunlit day of late March—Patricia, children at her heels, had been pottering about the garden of Sunflowers. Prudence the pig had been duly scratched till she grunted with delight; they had watched Fry sowing his peas; inspected and re-inspected the three broodies lying close under their coops in the paddock; made the round of the outhouses and the orchard; sat under the walnut-tree, and tested the new lawn-mower on the sunk lawn.

“Mummy’s got something on her mind,” observed Evelyn. “She hasn’t said anything for ages.”

Patricia smiled down on the two furry hats. “Time for tea, kids,” she said. “Run along indoors. Mummy wants to be alone.”

She watched them dart into the house; ringlets tossing, bare legs twinkling under their short red skirts. Yes! She had got “something on her mind.” ... And the children were getting altogether too observant: they ought to go to school. ... Supposing Peter had got his own way—supposing “those doctors” had passed him fit for service—how stupid men were—stupid—as if Peter were fit for anything except to be taken care of—in his own house—by his own wife....

She heard the ring of a bicycle-bell; heard the gate creak on its hinges; ran up from the lawn onto the gravel drive. The podgy grocer’s boy plucked at his cap, handed her two telegrams.

“Any answer, mum?”

“No. There’s no answer,” She stood there, opened envelopes in one hand, message-forms in the other; wordless, heart beating quickly. For the fraction of a second, she forgot her anxiety about Peter. Beatrice Cochrane had not failed. Beatrice was in England. Beatrice might be at Sunflowers any moment. The first telegram, “Sailing George Washington,” had been held up by the censor; the second....

“Oh, bother the telegrams,” thought Patricia. “I must get the spare room ready at once—I ought to fetch her from the station—it’s too late now—she’ll probably get a taxi—I hope to goodness Francis doesn’t turn up for tea.”

All the time she was supervising Elizabeth’s bed-making, fire-making, papering of drawers and turning-out of wardrobe, Patricia’s imagination played about Beatrice Cochrane. What on earth was she going to say to her; how explain? What would Beatrice do? Would she go to Francis at once? “Of course she will,” said Patricia. “I should. I wouldn’t wait a moment.”

Neither then, nor for many days, did Patricia stop to consider the miraculousness of Beatrice’s war-time journey. The romance of the girl’s coming sufficed its hour.

Yet the journey’s self was a romance: a romance of one girl’s persistence. There had been so many difficulties—her parents, the U. S. passport office, British Admiralty regulations; but Beatrice, smile in her eyes and fear at her heart, surmounted them one by one. The call came! and she must answer the call. Nothing else mattered....

Beatrice was thinking of these things as the taxi circled away from Henley Station; took the Harpsden road. So much lay behind her; so much she had yet to face. Of the past, nothing remained except the big trunk clumsily roped beside the driver, the suit-case at her feet.

This England amazed her. She had expected to find at least some semblance to her own country; but, except for the language, everything seemed foreign—foreign and rather hostile. Also, nobody cared. Personalities didn’t exist. She was Beatrice Cochrane: she told herself this several times, as though she might forget it—and for all England cared she might have been Sally Smith. England had welcomed her gruffly in the pitch darkness of a choppy sea; pitch darkness out of which men from low decks had shouted to men on high. England had decanted her as an “alien”; fussed over her passport; shoved her into a train; told her to pull down the blinds in case of air-raids—and left her to her own devices.... The rest of her journey seemed to Beatrice’s fantasy a threading of her way through millions of soldiers. She had never seen so many soldiers. And nobody cared!

Even the soldier at her side—the thin careworn man who looked so like Francis—didn’t seem particularly interested. After his first spasm of surprise, he had subsided into Englishness. Apparently, he took it for granted that she was going to stay with him, to marry his cousin. Obviously, he neither knew nor wanted to know what his wife had written to her, or why.

“Jolly, isn’t it?” said Peter. “The country, I mean.”

“Yes. Very—jolly.” She didn’t really think it “jolly”; she thought it rather disappointing. And they were going too fast to see much more than hedges and fields switching by. The fields looked very small; the roadside cottages they passed, very modern.

“Is Sunflowers far from Henley?” she asked.

“About another five miles.”

A golf-course flashed by; more hedges; a tumble-down-looking farm-house. She began to think, shyly, about Francis. What would he say to her, she to him? Had she done right in dashing half across the world at a letter from an unknown Englishwoman? ...

Peter leaned forward, said to the driver: “Take the Arlsfield road when you come to it. Straight on through the village and then up to Tebbits’ Farm.”

The man merely nodded. They came to a village-green; shot across it. More hedges—a red-brick townlet. Now, the road rose straight ahead of them; looking forward over her bobbing trunk, Beatrice saw a tree-crowned ridge.

“Oh,” she said suddenly, “what a lovely house!”

“That’s Sunflowers.” He did not seem particularly proud of the place; but he jumped out of the car politely enough; swung the gate for it to enter; ran to the front door. The door was open; and Beatrice saw a woman standing in the doorway—a tall golden-haired woman.

“Pat,” ejaculated Peter, “there’s a girl—”

“I know,” said Patricia, “I’ve been expecting her.”

The next moment, Beatrice found herself being helped out of the car; shaken hands with; asked if she’d like to wash before tea.

“I must ask Peter one question first; you don’t mind, do you? He’s just been up for his Board, and I want to know what they’ve done to him. Peter!”

“Yes, dear....”

Beatrice tried not to listen; but she couldn’t help hearing the brief colloquy: “What happened?” “Oh, they fired me out. Napoo. Fini.” Then Patricia took her by the arm; rushed her through a brightly furnished hall, up some blue-carpeted stairs to a chintz-curtained room—and there, without any warning at all, her hostess burst into tears.

The American girl put a tentative hand on the English-woman’s arm: “What is it? Oh, do tell me what it is? Has anything happened to Mr. Jameson—anything bad, I mean?”

“No, nothing bad. Just something wonderful”—Patricia smiled through her tears. “Excuse me for welcoming you so stupidly. But it’s been such a strain—nearly three years of it—and now that it’s really over, I”—she dabbed viciously at her eyes—“I’m a little upset, that’s all. Do please forgive me, Miss Cochrane.”

“Forgive?”—Beatrice’s gray eyes smiled up into her new friend’s face. “It’s I who ought to be forgiven. You wanted to talk to each other—and I was in the way. Do go down to him. I’ll be quite all right....”

For answer, Patricia kissed the girl’s cheek. “My dear, I wouldn’t have him see me cry for anything in the world. That was why I ran you up the stairs so quickly.” She stepped to a bell-push by the fireplace; rang. A servant appeared. “Bring up Miss Cochrane’s bag, please, and tell Mr. Jameson we’ll be down for tea in twenty minutes.”

Beatrice, unpinning her hat at the mirror on the oak toilet-table, thought to herself, “Well, some of them care anyway.”

“And now, my dear”—her hostess’ voice interrupted reverie—“let’s talk sensibly....”

When the two women at last came arm-in-arm down the staircase, it seemed to Peter Jameson as though it was Beatrice who had been crying; but she talked happily enough through tea-time—and refused his escort beyond the ricks of Tebbits’ Farm. Peter, watching the slight figure dwindling down the meadow-path into the mist of a March twilight, could not help thinking to himself, “A girl like that is much too good for poor old Francis.” Then, remembering that he had a bone to pick with Patricia, he strode rapidly back to Sunflowers.