II
Coming to the vicarage was like coming home.
The front door was hospitably¹ open, and as I stepped inside I was con-scious of a burden slipping from my shoulders.
Mrs. Dane Calthrop came through a door at the back of the hall, carry-ing for some reason unfathomable to me an enormous plastic pail ofbright green.
“Hallo, it’s you,” she said. “I thought it would be.”
She handed me the pail. I had no idea what to do with it and stood look-ing awkward.
“Outside the door, on the step,” said Mrs. Calthrop impatiently, asthough I ought to have known.
I obeyed. Then I followed her into the same dark shabby room we hadsat in before. There was a rather moribund² fire there, but Mrs. Dane Cal-throp poked³ it into flame and dumped a log on it. Then she motioned meto sit down, plumped down herself, and fixed⁴ me with a bright impatienteye.
“Well?” she demanded. “What have you done?”
From the vigour⁵ of her manner we might have had a train to catch.
“You told me to do something. I am doing something.”
“Good. What?”
I told her. I told her everything. In some unspoken way I told her thingsI did not quite know myself.
“Tonight?” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop thoughtfully.
“Yes.”
She was silent for a minute, obviously thinking. Unable to help myself Iblurted out,
“I don’t like it. My God, I don’t like it.”
“Why should you?”
That, of course, was unanswerable.
“I’m so horribly afraid for her.”
She looked at me kindly⁶.
“You don’t know,” I said, “how—how brave she is. If, in some way, theymanage to harm her….”
Mrs. Dane Calthrop said slowly:
“I don’t see—I really don’t see—how they can harm her in the way youmean.”
“But they have harmed—other people.”
“It would seem so, yes…” She sounded dissatisfied.

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