CHAPTER SEVENTEENHilary gave it up. She felt as small and mean as one of the little scuttling things that you turn up under a stone in the garden, but she gave it up. The urge to follow Mrs. Mercer and find out whether she was out of her mind or not failed and faded away before the prospect of a fourteen mile walk in the dark along a country road which she did not know in search of a cottage which might not even exist and a woman who might be anywhere else in England. She had lunched on milk and a bun, and she wanted her tea. You can’t buy much tea with sevenpence halfpenny of which twopence has to be reserved for a bus fare at the other end, but she did her best with it.
Sitting in the train which was taking her back to London, she found that her opinion of herself was rising. Perhaps it
