No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice. Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil. This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

I should have turned back at the gate, Eleanor thought. The house had caught her with an atavistic turn in the pit of the stomach, and she looked along the lines of its roofs, fruitlessly endeavouring to locate the badness, whatever dwelt there; her hands turned nervously cold so that she fumbled, trying to take out a cigarette, and beyond everything else she was afraid, listening to the sick voice inside her which whispered, Get away from here, get away.

But this is what I came so far to find, she told herself; I can’t go back. Besides, he would laugh at me if I tried to get back out through that gate.

Trying not to look up at the house—and she could not even have told its colour, or its style, or its size, except that it was enormous and dark, looking down over her—she started the car again, and drove up the last bit of driveway directly to the steps, which led in a forthright, no-escape manner on to the verandah and aimed at the front door. The drive turned off on either side, to encircle the house, and probably later she could take her car around and find a building of some kind to put it in; now she felt uneasily that she did not care to cut off her means of departure too completely. She turned the car just enough to move it off to one side, out of the way of later arrivals—it would be a pity, she thought grimly, for anyone to get a first look at this house with anything so comforting as a human automobile parked in front of it—and got out, taking her suitcase and her coat. Well, she thought inadequately, here I am.

It was an act of moral strength to lift her foot and set it on the bottom step, and she thought that her deep unwillingness to touch Hill House for the first time came directly from the vivid feeling that it was waiting for her, evil, but patient. Journeys end in lovers meeting, she thought, remembering her song at last, and laughed, standing on the steps of Hill House, journeys end in lovers meeting, and she put her feet down firmly and went up to the verandah and the door. Hill House came around her in a rush; she was enshadowed, and the sound of her feet on the wood of the verandah was an outrage in the utter silence, as though it had been a very long time since feet stamped across the boards of Hill House. She brought her hand up to the heavy iron knocker that had a child’s face, determined to make more noise and yet more, so that Hill House might be very sure she was there, and then the door opened without warning and she was looking at a woman who, if like ever merited like, could only be the wife of the man at the gate.

‘Mrs Dudley?’ she said, catching her breath. ‘I’m Eleanor Vance. I’m expected.’

Silently the woman stood aside. Her apron was clean, her hair was neat, and yet she gave an indefinable air of dirtiness, quite in keeping with her husband, and the suspicious sullenness of her face was a match for the malicious petulance of his. No, Eleanor told herself; it’s partly because everything seems so dark around here, and partly because I expected that man’s wife to be ugly. If I hadn’t seen Hill House, would I be so unfair to these people? They only take care of it, after all.

The hall in which they stood was overfull of dark wood and weighty carving, dim under the heaviness of the staircase, which lay back from the farther end. Above there seemed to be another hallway, going the width of the house; she could see a wide landing and then, across the staircase well, doors closed along the upper hall. On either side of her now were great double doors, carved with fruit and grain and living things; all the doors she could see in this house were closed.

When she tried to speak, her voice was drowned in the dim stillness, and she had to try again to make a sound. ‘Can you take me to my room?’ she asked at last, gesturing towards her suitcase on the floor and watching the wavering reflection of her hand going down and down into the deep shadows of the polished floor, ‘I gather I’m the first one here. You—you did say you were Mrs Dudley?’ I think I’m going to cry, she thought, like a child sobbing and wailing, I don’t like it here. . . .

Mrs Dudley turned and started up the stairs, and Eleanor took up her suitcase and followed, hurrying after anything else alive in this house. No, she thought, I don’t like it here. Mrs Dudley came to the top of the stairs and turned right, and Eleanor saw that with some rare perception the builders of the house had given up any attempt at style—probably after realising what the house was going to be, whether they chose it or not—and had, on this second floor, set in a long, straight hall to accommodate the doors to the bedrooms; she had a quick impression of the builders finishing off the second and third storeys of the house with a kind of indecent haste, eager to finish their work without embellishment and get out of there, following the simplest possible pattern for the rooms. At the left end of the hall was a second staircase, probably going from servants’ rooms on the third floor down past the second to the service rooms below; at the right end of the hall another room had been set in, perhaps, since it was on the end, to get the maximum amount of sun and light. Except for a continuation of the dark woodwork, and what looked like a series of poorly executed engravings arranged with unlovely exactness along the hall in either direction, nothing broke the straightness of the hall except the series of doors, all closed.

Mrs Dudley crossed the hall and opened a door, perhaps at random. ‘This is the blue room,’ she said.

From the turn in the staircase Eleanor assumed that the room would be at the front of the house; sister Anne, sister Anne, she thought, and moved gratefully towards the light from the room. ‘How nice,’ she said, standing in the doorway, but only from the sense that she must say something; it was not nice at all, and only barely tolerable; it held enclosed the same clashing disharmony that marked Hill House throughout.

Mrs Dudley turned aside to let Eleanor come in, and spoke, apparently to the wall. ‘I set dinner on the dining-room sideboard at six sharp,’ she said. ‘You can serve yourselves. I clear up in the morning. I have breakfast ready for you at nine. That’s the way I agreed to do. I can’t keep the rooms up the way you’d like; but there’s no one else you could get that would help me. I don’t wait on people. What I agreed to, it doesn’t mean I wait on people.’

Eleanor nodded, standing uncertainly in the doorway.

‘I don’t stay after I set out dinner,’ Mrs Dudley went on. ‘Not after it begins to get dark. I leave before dark comes.’

‘I know,’ Eleanor said.

‘We live over in the town, six miles away.’

‘Yes,’ Eleanor said, remembering Hillsdale.

‘So there won’t be anyone around if you need help.’

‘I understand.’

‘We couldn’t even hear you, in the night.’

‘I don’t suppose——’

‘No one could. No one lives any nearer than the town. No one else will come any nearer than that.’

‘I know,’ Eleanor said tiredly.

‘In the night,’ Mrs Dudley said, and smiled outright. ‘In the dark,’ she said, and closed the door behind her.

Eleanor almost giggled, thinking of herself calling, ‘Oh, Mrs Dudley, I need your help in the dark,’ and then she shivered.

She stood alone beside her suitcase, her coat still hanging over her arm, thoroughly miserable, telling herself helplessly, Journeys end in lovers meeting, and wishing she could go home. Behind her lay the dark staircase and the polished hallway and the great front door and Mrs Dudley and Dudley laughing at the gate and the padlocks and Hillsdale and the cottage of flowers and the family at the inn and the oleander garden and the house with the stone lions in front, and they had brought her, under Dr Montague’s unerring eye, to the blue room at Hill House. It’s awful, she thought, unwilling to move, since motion might imply acceptance, a gesture of moving in, it’s awful and I don’t want to stay; but there was nowhere else to go; Dr Montague’s letter had brought her this far and could take her no farther. After a minute she sighed and shook her head and walked across to set her suitcase down on the bed.

Here I am in the blue room of Hill House, she said half aloud, although it was real enough, and beyond all question a blue room. There were blue dimity curtains over the two windows, which looked out over the roof of the verandah on to the lawn, and a blue-figured rug on the floor, and a blue spread on the bed and a blue quilt at the foot. The walls, dark woodwork to shoulder height, were blue-figured paper above, with a design of tiny blue flowers, wreathed and gathered and delicate. Perhaps someone had once hoped to lighten the air of the blue room in Hill House with a dainty wallpaper, not seeing how such a hope would evaporate in Hill House, leaving only the faintest hint of its existence, like an almost inaudible echo of sobbing far away. . . . Eleanor shook herself, turning to see the room complete. It had an unbelievably faulty design which left it chillingly wrong in all its dimensions, so that the walls seemed always in one direction a fraction longer than the eye could endure, and in another direction a fraction less than the barest possible tolerable length; this is where they want me to sleep, Eleanor thought incredulously; what nightmares are waiting, shadowed, in those high corners—what breath of mindless fear will drift across my mouth . . . and shook herself again. Really, she told herself, really, Eleanor.

She opened her suitcase on the high bed and, slipping off her stiff city shoes with grateful relief, began to unpack, at the back of her mind the thoroughly female conviction that the best way to soothe a troubled mind is to put on comfortable shoes. Yesterday, packing her suitcase in the city, she had chosen clothes which she assumed would be suitable for wearing in an isolated country house; she had even run out at the last minute and bought—excited at her own daring—two pairs of slacks, something she had not worn in more years than she could remember. Mother would be furious, she had thought, packing the slacks down at the bottom of her suitcase so that she need not take them out, need never let anyone know she had them, in case she lost her courage. Now, in Hill House, they no longer seemed so new; she unpacked carelessly, setting dresses crookedly on hangers, tossing the slacks into the bottom drawer of the high marble-topped dresser, throwing her city shoes into a corner of the great wardrobe. She was bored already with the books she had brought; I am probably not going to stay anyway, she thought, and closed her empty suitcase and set it in the wardrobe corner; it won’t take me five minutes to pack again. She discovered that she had been trying to put her suitcase down without making a sound and then realised that while she unpacked she had been in her stockinged feet, trying to move as silently as possible, as though stillness were vital in Hill House; she remembered that Mrs Dudley had also walked without sound. When she stood still in the middle of the room the pressing silence of Hill House came back all around her. I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside. ‘No,’ she said aloud, and the one word echoed. She went quickly across the room and pushed aside the blue dimity curtains, but the sunlight came only palely through the thick glass of the windows, and she could see only the roof of the verandah and a stretch of the lawn beyond. Somewhere down there was her little car, which could take her away again. Journeys end in lovers meeting, she thought; it was my own choice to come. Then she realised that she was afraid to go back across the room.

She was standing with her back to the window, looking from the door to the wardrobe to the dresser to the bed, telling herself that she was not afraid at all, when she heard, far below, the sounds of a car door slamming and then quick footsteps, almost dancing, up the steps and across the verandah, and then, shockingly, the crash of the great iron knocker coming down. Why, she thought, there are other people coming; I am not going to be here all alone. Almost laughing, she ran across the room and into the hall, to look down the staircase into the hallway below.

‘Thank heaven you’re here,’ she said, peering through the dimness, ‘thank heaven somebody’s here.’ She realised without surprise that she was speaking as though Mrs Dudley could not hear her, although Mrs Dudley stood, straight and pale, in the hall. ‘Come on up,’ Eleanor said, ‘you’ll have to carry your own suitcase.’ She was breathless and seemed unable to stop talking, her usual shyness melted away by relief. ‘My name’s Eleanor Vance,’ she said, ‘and ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’

‘I’m Theodora. Just Theodora. This bloody house——’

‘It’s just as bad up here. Come on up. Make her give you the room next to mine.’

Theodora came up the heavy stairway after Mrs Dudley, looking incredulously at the stained-glass window on the landing, the marble urn in a niche, the patterned carpet. Her suitcase was considerably larger than Eleanor’s, and considerably more luxurious, and Eleanor came forward to help her, glad that her own things were safely put away out of sight. ‘Wait till you see the bedrooms,’ Eleanor said. ‘Mine used to be the embalming room, I think.’

‘It’s the home I’ve always dreamed of,’ Theodora said. ‘A little hideaway where I can be alone with my thoughts. Particularly if my thoughts happened to be about murder or suicide or——’

‘Green room,’ Mrs Dudley said coldly, and Eleanor sensed, with a quick turn of apprehension, that flippant or critical talk about the house bothered Mrs Dudley in some manner; maybe she thinks it can hear us, Eleanor thought, and then was sorry she had thought it. Perhaps she shivered, because Theodora turned with a quick smile and touched her shoulder gently, reassuringly; she is charming, Eleanor thought, smiling back, not at all the sort of person who belongs in this dreary, dark place, but then, probably, I don’t belong here either; I am not the sort of person for Hill House but I can’t think of anybody who would be. She laughed then, watching Theodora’s expression as she stood in the doorway of the green room.

‘Good Lord,’ Theodora said, looking sideways at Eleanor. ‘How perfectly enchanting. A positive bower.’

‘I set dinner on the dining-room sideboard at six sharp,’ Mrs Dudley said. ‘You can serve yourselves. I clear up in the morning. I have breakfast ready for you at nine. That’s the way I agreed to do.’

‘You’re frightened,’ Theodora said, watching Eleanor.

‘I can’t keep the rooms up the way you’d like, but there’s no one else you could get that would help me. I don’t wait on people. What I agreed to, it doesn’t mean I wait on people.’

‘It was just when I thought I was all alone,’ Eleanor said.

‘I don’t stay after six. Not after it begins to get dark.’

‘I’m here now,’ Theodora said, ‘so it’s all right.’

‘We have a connecting bathroom,’ Eleanor said absurdly. ‘The rooms are exactly alike.’

Green dimity curtains hung over the windows in Theodora’s room, the wallpaper was decked with green garlands, the bedspread and quilt were green, the marble-topped dresser and the huge wardrobe were the same. ‘I’ve never seen such awful places in my life,’ Eleanor said, her voice rising.

‘Like the very best hotels,’ Theodora said, ‘or any good girls’ camp.’

‘I leave before dark comes,’ Mrs Dudley went on.

‘No one can hear you if you scream in the night,’ Eleanor told Theodora. She realised that she was clutching at the door-knob and, under Theodora’s quizzical eye, unclenched her fingers and walked steadily across the room. ‘We’ll have to find some way of opening these windows,’ she said.

‘So there won’t be anyone around if you need help,’ Mrs Dudley said. ‘We couldn’t hear you, even in the night. No one could.’

‘All right now?’ Theodora asked, and Eleanor nodded.

‘No one lives any nearer than the town. No one else will come any nearer than that.’

‘You’re probably just hungry,’ Theodora said. ‘And I’m starved myself.’ She set her suitcase on the bed and slipped off her shoes. ‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘upsets me more than being hungry; I snarl and snap and burst into tears.’ She lifted a pair of softly tailored slacks out of the suitcase.

‘In the night,’ Mrs Dudley said. She smiled. ‘In the dark,’ she said, and closed the door behind her.

After a minute Eleanor said, ‘She also walks without making a sound.’

‘Delightful old body.’ Theodora turned, regarding her room. ‘I take it back, that about the best hotels,’ she said. ‘It’s a little bit like a boarding school I went to for a while.’

‘Come and see mine,’ Eleanor said. She opened the bathroom door and led the way into her blue room. ‘I was all unpacked and thinking about packing again when you came.’

‘Poor baby. You’re certainly starving. All I could think of when I got a look at the place from outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down. Maybe before we leave . . .’

‘It was terrible, being here alone.’

‘You should have seen that boarding school of mine during vacations.’ Theodora went back into her own room and, with the sense of movement and sound in the two rooms, Eleanor felt more cheerful. She straightened her clothes on the hangers in the wardrobe and set her books evenly on the bed-table. ‘You know,’ Theodora called from the other room, ‘it is kind of like the first day at school; everything’s ugly and strange, and you don’t know anybody, and you’re afraid everyone’s going to laugh at your clothes.’

Eleanor, who had opened the dresser drawer to take out a pair of slacks, stopped and then laughed and threw the slacks on the bed.

‘Did I understand correctly,’ Theodora went on, ‘that Mrs Dudley is not going to come if we scream in the night?’

‘It was not what she agreed to. Did you meet the amiable old retainer at the gate?’

‘We had a lovely chat. He said I couldn’t come in and I said I could and then I tried to run him down with my car but he jumped. Look, do you think we have to sit around here in our rooms and wait? I’d like to change into something comfortable—unless we dress for dinner, do you think?’

‘I won’t if you won’t.’

‘I won’t if you won’t. They can’t fight both of us. Anyway, let’s get out of here and go exploring; I would very much like to get this roof off from over my head.’

‘It gets dark so early, in these hills, with all the trees . . .’ Eleanor went to the window again, but there was still sunlight slanting across the lawn.

‘It won’t be really dark for nearly an hour. I want to go outside and roll on the grass.’

Eleanor chose a red sweater, thinking that in this room in this house the red of the sweater and the red of the sandals bought to match it would almost certainly be utterly at war with each other, although they had been close enough yesterday in the city. Serves me right anyway, she thought, for wanting to wear such things; I never did before. But she looked oddly well, it seemed to her as she stood by the long mirror on the wardrobe door, almost comfortable. ‘Do you have any idea who else is coming?’ she asked. ‘Or when?’

‘Doctor Montague.’ Theodora said. ‘I thought he’d be here before anyone else.’

‘Have you known Doctor Montague long?’

‘Never met him,’ Theodora said. ‘Have you?’

‘Never. You almost ready?’

‘All ready.’ Theodora came through the bathroom door into Eleanor’s room; she is lovely, Eleanor thought, turning to look; I wish I were lovely. Theodora was wearing a vivid yellow shirt, and Eleanor laughed and said, ‘You bring more light into this room than the window.’

Theodora came over and regarded herself approvingly in Eleanor’s mirror. ‘I feel,’ she said, ‘that in this dreary place it is our duty to look as bright as possible. I approve of your red sweater; the two of us will be visible from one end of Hill House to the other.’ Still looking into the mirror, she asked, ‘I suppose Doctor Montague wrote to you?’

‘Yes.’ Eleanor was embarrassed. ‘I didn’t know, at first, whether it was a joke or not. But my brother-in-law checked up on him.’

‘You know,’ Theodora said slowly, ‘up until the last minute—when I got to the gates, I guess—I never really thought there would be a Hill House. You don’t go around expecting things like this to happen.’

‘But some of us go around hoping,’ Eleanor said.

Theodora laughed and swung around before the mirror and caught Eleanor’s hand. ‘Fellow babe in the woods,’ she said, ‘let’s go exploring.’

‘We can’t go far away from the house——’

‘I promise not to go one step farther than you say. Do you think we have to check in and out with Mrs Dudley?’

‘She probably watches every move we make, anyway; it’s probably part of what she agreed to.’

‘Agreed to with whom, I wonder? Count Dracula?’

‘You think he lives in Hill House?’

‘I think he spends all his week-ends here; I swear I saw bats in the woodwork downstairs. Follow, follow.’

They ran downstairs, moving with colour and life against the dark woodwork and the clouded light of the stairs, their feet clattering, and Mrs Dudley stood below and watched them in silence.

‘We’re going exploring, Mrs Dudley,’ Theodora said lightly. ‘We’ll be outside somewhere.’

‘But we’ll be back soon,’ Eleanor added.

‘I set dinner on the sideboard at six o’clock,’ Mrs Dudley explained.

Eleanor, tugging, got the great front door open; it was just as heavy as it looked, and she thought, We will really have to find some easier way to get back in. ‘Leave this open,’ she said over her shoulder to Theodora. ‘It’s terribly heavy. Get one of those big vases and prop it open.’

Theodora wheeled one of the big stone vases from the corner of the hall, and they stood it in the doorway and rested the door against it. The fading sunlight outside was bright after the darkness of the house, and the air was fresh and sweet. Behind them Mrs Dudley moved the vase again, and the big door slammed shut.

‘Lovable old thing,’ Theodora said to the closed door. For a moment her face was thin with anger, and Eleanor thought, I hope she never looks at me like that, and was surprised, remembering that she was always shy with strangers, awkward and timid, and yet had come in no more than half an hour to think of Theodora as close and vital, someone whose anger would be frightening. ‘I think,’ Eleanor said hesitantly, and relaxed, because when she spoke Theodora turned and smiled again, ‘I think that during the daylight hours when Mrs Dudley is around I shall find myself some absorbing occupation far, far from the house. Rolling the tennis court, perhaps. Or tending the grapes in the hothouse.’

‘Perhaps you could help Dudley with the gates.’

‘Or look for nameless graves in the nettle-patch.’

They were standing by the rail of the verandah; from there they could see down the drive to the point where it turned among the trees again, and down over the soft curve of the hills to the distant small line which might have been the main highway, the road back to the cities from which they had come. Except for the wires which ran to the house from a spot among the trees, there was no evidence that Hill House belonged in any way to the rest of the world. Eleanor turned and followed the verandah; it went, apparently, all around the house. ‘Oh, look,’ she said, turning the corner.

Behind the house the hills were piled in great pressing masses, flooded with summer green now, rich, and still. ‘It’s why they called it Hill House,’ Eleanor said inadequately.

‘It’s altogether Victorian,’ Theodora said. ‘They simply wallowed in this kind of great billowing overdone sort of thing and buried themselves in folds of velvet and tassels and purple plush. Anyone before them or after would have put this house right up there on top of those hills where it belongs, instead of snuggling it down here.’

‘If it were on top of the hill everyone could see it. I vote for keeping it well hidden where it is.’

‘All the time I’m here I’m going to be terrified,’ Theodora said, ‘thinking one of those hills will fall on us.’

‘They don’t fall on you. They just slide down, silently and secretly, rolling over you while you try to run away.’

‘Thank you,’ Theodora said in a small voice. ‘What Mrs Dudley has started you have completed nicely. I shall pack and go home at once.’

Believing her for a minute, Eleanor turned and stared, and then saw the amusement on her face and thought, She’s much braver than I am. Unexpectedly—although it was later to become a familiar note, a recognisable attribute of what was to mean ‘Theodora’ in Eleanor’s mind—Theodora caught at Eleanor’s thought, and answered her. ‘Don’t be so afraid all the time,’ she said and reached out to touch Eleanor’s cheek with one finger. ‘We never know where our courage is coming from.’ Then, quickly, she ran down the steps and out on to the lawn between the tall grouped trees. ‘Hurry,’ she called back, ‘I want to see if there’s a brook somewhere.’

‘We can’t go too far,’ Eleanor said, following. Like two children they ran across the grass, both welcoming the sudden openness of clear spaces after even a little time in Hill House, their feet grateful for the grass after the solid floors; with an instinct almost animal, they followed the sound and smell of water. ‘Over here,’ Theodora said, ‘a little path.’

It led them tantalisingly closer to the sound of the water, doubling back and forth through the trees, giving them occasional glimpses down the hill to the driveway, leading them around out of sight of the house across a rocky meadow, and always downhill. As they came away from the house and out of the trees to places where the sunlight could still find them Eleanor was easier, although she could see that the sun was dropping disturbingly closer to the heaped hills. She called to Theodora, but Theodora only called back, ‘Follow, follow,’ and ran down the path. Suddenly she stopped, breathless and tottering, on the very edge of the brook, which had leaped up before her almost without warning; Eleanor, coming more slowly behind, caught at her hand and held her back and then, laughing, they fell together against the bank which sloped sharply down to the brook.

‘They like to surprise you around here,’ Theodora said, gasping.

‘Serve you right if you went diving in,’ Eleanor said. ‘Running like that.’

‘It’s pretty, isn’t it?’ The water of the brook moved quickly in little lighted ripples; on the other side the grass grew down to the edge of the water and yellow and blue flowers leaned their heads over; there was a rounded soft hill there, and perhaps more meadow beyond, and, far away, the great hills, still catching the light of the sun. ‘It’s pretty,’ Theodora said with finality.

‘I’m sure I’ve been here before,’ Eleanor said. ‘In a book of fairy tales, perhaps.’

‘I’m sure of it. Can you skip rocks?’

‘This is where the princess comes to meet the magic golden fish who is really a prince in disguise——’

‘He couldn’t draw much water, that golden fish of yours; it can’t be more than three inches deep.’

‘There are stepping-stones to go across, and little fish swimming, tiny ones—minnows?’

‘Princes in disguise, all of them.’ Theodora stretched in the sun on the bank, and yawned. ‘Tadpoles?’ she suggested.

‘Minnows. It’s too late for tadpoles, silly, but I bet we can find frogs’ eggs. I used to catch minnows in my hands and let them go.’

‘What a farmer’s wife you might have made.’

‘This is a place for picnics, with lunch beside the brook and hard-boiled eggs.’

Theodora laughed. ‘Chicken salad and chocolate cake.’

‘Lemonade in a Thermos bottle. Spilled salt.’

Theodora rolled over luxuriously. ‘They’re wrong about ants, you know. There were almost never ants. Cows, maybe, but I don’t think I ever did see an ant on a picnic.’

‘Was there always a bull in a field? Did someone always say, “But we can’t go through that field; that’s where the bull is”?’

Theodora opened one eye. ‘Did you use to have a comic uncle? Everyone always laughed, whatever he said? And he used to tell you not to be afraid of the bull—if the bull came after you all you had to do was grab the ring through his nose and swing him around your head?’

Eleanor tossed a pebble into the brook and watched it sink clearly to the bottom. ‘Did you have a lot of uncles?’

‘Thousands. Do you?’

After a minute Eleanor said, ‘Oh, yes. Big ones and little ones and fat ones and thin ones——’

‘Do you have an Aunt Edna?’

‘Aunt Muriel.’

‘Kind of thin? Rimless glasses?’

‘A garnet brooch,’ Eleanor said.

‘Does she wear a kind of dark red dress to family parties?’

‘Lace cuffs——’

‘Then I think we must really be related,’ Theodora said. ‘Did you use to have braces on your teeth?’

‘No. Freckles.’

‘I went to that private school where they made me learn to curtsy.’

‘I always had colds all winter long. My mother made me wear woollen stockings.’

‘My mother made my brother take me to dances, and I used to curtsy like mad. My brother still hates me.’

‘I fell down during the graduation procession.’

‘I forgot my lines in the operetta.’

‘I used to write poetry.’

‘Yes,’ Theodora said, I’m positive we’re cousins.’

She sat up, laughing, and then Eleanor said, ‘Be quiet; there’s something moving over there.’ Frozen, shoulders pressed together, they stared, watching the spot of hillside across the brook where the grass moved, watching something unseen move slowly across the bright green hill, chilling the sunlight and the dancing little brook. ‘What is it?’ Eleanor said in a breath, and Theodora put a strong hand on her wrist.

‘It’s gone,’ Theodora said clearly, and the sun came back and it was warm again. ‘It was a rabbit,’ Theodora said.

‘I couldn’t see it,’ Eleanor said.

‘I saw it the minute you spoke,’ Theodora said firmly. ‘It was a rabbit; it went over the hill and out of sight.’

‘We’ve been away too long,’ Eleanor said and looked up anxiously at the sun touching the hilltops. She got up quickly and found that her legs were stiff from kneeling on the damp grass.

‘Imagine two splendid old picnic-going girls like us,’ Theodora said, ‘afraid of a rabbit.’

Eleanor leaned down and held out a hand to help her up. ‘We’d really better hurry back,’ she said and, because she did not herself understand her compelling anxiety, added, ‘The others might be there by now.’

‘We’ll have to come back here for a picnic soon,’ Theodora said, following carefully up the path, which went steadily uphill. ‘We really must have a good old-fashioned picnic down by the brook.’

‘We can ask Mrs Dudley to hard-boil some eggs.’ Eleanor stopped on the path, not turning. ‘Theodora,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I can, you know. I don’t think I really will be able to do it.’

‘Eleanor.’ Theodora put an arm across her shoulders. ‘Would you let them separate us now? Now that we’ve found out we’re cousins?’