Concluding by Henry Green Page A

the hand. "Tell me, would you like a glass of beer after your long ride?" she asked, for she had not reached the position she now held without learning the ways of this world.
    "Thank you, ma'am," the sergeant accepted. He sat down before the two desks, one of which lay vacant. His face was traditional, the colour of butcher's meat. When she had ordered his ale over the telephone, she asked, "And how is my friend the Inspector?"
    "Ah," the sergeant said. "He was put out, there you are. He asked me to make his excuses, ma'am."
    "Yes, the paper work does not grow less, does it?"
    "There you are," the man repeated, in agreement. Edge bit her lip with impatience to be rid of him, for she felt there was so little time, and then, at that very instant, a scheme began to form in her mind. "It's not often he gets outside," the sergeant ended.
    "Now, this is your beer," Edge announced brightly as one of the juniors on orderly duty carried it in. "Wonders will never cease. They have not forgotten the opener. Time was when a great Place like this brewed its own. You prefer yours in draught, perhaps? But then those days are not missed, not as we are now," she said, with fervour.
    He hastily agreed. Behind his big, blank face he wondered once more. He took a pull at the glass. As might have been expected, the beer was flat.
    "Which way did you come? It looks so beautiful today, I think," she said.
    "By the back," he answered, and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief in such a manner that, for a moment, she wondered if it could be to hide a smile. "I saved a half mile," he said.
    "Oh so you came along by Mr Rock's, then?" she made a sure guess, at her most affable. "What a wonderful man for his age."
    "He is that," the sergeant said.
    "And I dare say you saw some of our dear girls," Miss Edge went on. "At their search," she said, then pulled herself up. "Seeking out our decorations," she explained. "You could not be expected to know, of course, but today is our Anniversary, and we are to hold a little jollification for the children. Oh, no-one will come in from outside," she assured him. "Just a small private gathering and, naturally, we have to dress the premises. So then, because we take pride in what has been entrusted to us, I gave the strictest instructions that they were not to cut the blooms where this could make itself felt, because at the present glorious season, down here, to see is to feel, sergeant."
    He had a vision of six hundred golden legs, bare to the morning, and said, "Yes, ma'am." At the same time he had not forgotten what had been hinted on the way, and saw one pair of dripping legs.
    "Yes," she agreed, "today our routine is disrupted. But that was not why I needed the Inspector."
    The sergeant waited.
    "No," she said. "The fact is, Miss Baker and I are made really anxious by what we have noticed in the Press these last few weeks. Up and down the country, sergeant, there have been such distressful cases, so horrible, so inhuman we think, because we have discussed the thing, naturally, though not outside these four walls, of course. I refer to all this interference with young girls, sergeant."
    Ah, now we are getting somewhere, he thought to himself. Although it was not to be quite what he expected. "Interference madam?" he asked. But she seemed not to know how to proceed.
    "Oh hardly anything really serious," she went on. "Though I always maintain the indictable offence is encouraged, or perhaps provoked would be a better word, by the other party." Here she paused once more.
    "By the complainant?" he prompted.
    "Exactly," she said. "You will realise that it is a little difficult for me to express myself, how delicate . . .," she said, leaning back in her chair, smiling at him defiantly. "But we have noticed so many cases, up and down the land, where girls have been stopped by strangers. And here, it so happens, we are particularly vulnerable. I mean by that, not only our old tumble down Park walls, which are a positive