and he had stuck to it with an obstinacy that had at length convinced her that only one uncle and niece were at Baker’s, and their name was Neumann.  He added that there was another young lady there whose name he couldn’t catch, but who sat on the edge of her bed all day crying and refusing sustenance.  Appeased by the postmistress’s apologies for her first unbelief he ended by being anxious to give all the information in his power, and came back quite a long way to tell her that he had forgotten to say that his mother had said that the niece’s Christian name was Maria-Theresa.

“But what, then,” said the vicar’s wife to the vicar when this news had filtered through the vicarage walls to the very sofa where she sat, “has become of the niece called Ethel?”

“I don’t know,” said the vicar, helplessly.

“Perhaps she is the one who cried all day.”

“My dear, we met her in the churchyard.”

“Perhaps they are forgers,” suggested the vicar’s wife.

“My dear?”

“Or anarchists.”

“Kate?”

The vicar’s wife said no more, but silently made up her mind to go the very next day and call at Baker’s.  It would be terrible if a bad influence got into Symford, her parish that she had kept in such good order for so long.  Besides, she had an official position as the wife of the vicar and could and ought to call on everybody.  Her call would not bind her, any more than the call of a district visitor would, to invite the called-upon to her house.  Perhaps they were quite decent, and she could ask the girl up to the Tuesday evenings in the parish-room; hardly to the vicarage, because of her daughter Netta.  On the other hand, if they looked like what she imagined anarchists or forgers look like, she would merely leave leaflets and be out when they returned her call.

Robin, all unaware of his mother’s thoughts, was longing to ask her to go to Baker’s and take him with her as a first step towards the acquaintance after which his soul thirsted, but he refrained for various discreet reasons based on an intimate knowledge of his mother’s character; and he spent the evening perfecting a plan that should introduce him into the interior of Baker’s without her help.  The plan was of a barbarous simplicity:  he was going to choose an umbrella from the collection that years had brought together in the stand in the hall, and go boldly and ask the man Neumann if he had dropped it in the churchyard.  The man Neumann would repudiate the umbrella, perhaps with secret indignation, but he would be forced to pretend he was grateful, and who knew what luck might not do for him after that?