Mrs Jolley got off the bus at the post-office corner at Sarsa-parilla. It could only have been Mrs Jolley, her black coat composed of innumerable panels-it appeared to be almost all seams-over what would reveal itself as the navy costume anticipated by Miss Hare. The hat was brighter, even daring, a blue blue, in spite of the mourning of which her future employer had been forewarned. From the brim was suspended, more daring, if not actually reckless, a brief mauve eye-veil. She remained, however, the very picture of a lady, waiting for identification at the bus stop, but discreetly, but brightly, and grasping her brown port. Oh dear, then it must be done, Miss Hare admitted, and sighed. Mrs Jolley was all the time looking and smiling, at some person in the abstract, in the rather stony street. At one corner of her mouth she had a dimple, and her teeth were modelled perfectly. "Excuse me," began Miss Hare at last, "are you the person? Excuse me"-and cleared her throat-"are you expected at Xanadu?" Mrs Jolley suppressed what could have been a slight upsurge of wind. "Yes," she said, very slowly, feeling the way with her teeth. "It was some such name, I think. A lady called Miss Hare." The latter felt tremendously presumptuous under Mrs Jolley's glance, and would have chosen to postpone her revelation. But Mrs Jolley's white teeth-certainly no whiter had ever been seen-were growing visibly impatient. Her dimple came and went in flickers. Her expression, which might have been described as motherly by some, became suspect under the weight of its suspicion. "I am Miss Hare," said Miss Hare. "Oh, yes," replied the disbelieving Mrs Jolley. And tried to fetch her teeth to the rescue. But the brutal wind of a cold afternoon was not prepared to allow any nonsense. It flung the mauve eye-veil into Mrs Jolley's eyes, and even bashed her black coat. "Yes," confirmed Miss Hare. "I am she." Mrs Jolley scarcely believed what she was hearing. "I hope you will be happy," continued the object, "at Xanadu. It is a large house. But we need only live in bits of it. Move around as we choose, for variety's sake." Mrs Jolley began to accompany her mentor, over the stones, in shoes which she had purchased for the journey. Black. With a sensible strap. But, even so, she thought her ankles might not stand the walk, and the fangs of the road metal were eating through her soles. "You haven't a car, then?" she asked. "No," said Miss Hare. "No cars." Level with the Godbolds' shed, the blackberry canes snatched at Mrs Jolley's coat. "We never owned a car," Miss Hare was saying. "Even in the days of my father. Naturally cars were only beginning. But horses. My father fancied horses; he was quite splendid when he drove his greys four-in-hand." Mrs Jolley could not believe any of this. Remembering the trams, she could have cried. "In our family," she said, "everybody has their own car." "Oh," said Miss Hare. "No. No cars." The sound of the two women's breathing would intermingle distressingly at times. Each wished she could have repudiated the connection. "It is a satisfaction to a mother," said Mrs Jolley, on twisting ankles, "to know that each one of them-three girls-is each settled comfortable." "Of course," agreed Miss Hare. She could not believe, though. Not a bit. Then they walked down the track which the Council had begun to call an avenue, and which led to Xanadu. Arriving at the end, the employer guided her companion through the fence, and they began the less tortuous, the longer of the short cuts. As her responsibilities loomed, Miss Hare drew ahead. Mrs Jolley followed, occasionally hearing something tear. The silence was shocking in the undergrowth. In the circumstances, the nascent green of oaks and elms, massed to overwhelm the scrub, issued too shrill, the grace-notes of crab and plum blossom, sprinkled at intervals on black nets of twigs, too sickeningly poignant. Mrs Jolley remarked, "A good thing I put me lisle stockings on." Her mauve eye-veil was less gay. "The burrs do prick a little, but they pick off quite easily," Miss Hare thought to offer over her shoulder. She had grown nervous, as if, at the back of her mind, there was something dreadful she could not remember. They went on. "We shall arrive soon now," she encouraged. They went on. "There!" her voice revealed. Mrs Jolley did not answer, almost failed to look up. They climbed the approach. Under the stranger's feet the tessellated floor of the veranda sounded hollow as never before. But the house was hollowest. Miss Hare had opened the front door. They had gone in. They had stood for ages. "Well," Mrs Jolley said at last, "it is easy to see it's a long time since you had a lady here." Nor did the voices of Xanadu protest. They agreed in all coldness of stone. "A house is not the less for what you make it," said Miss Hare. "Nor any more," added the darker voice of Mrs Jolley. Neither could have offered adequate explanation of what she had just said. Each saw what she saw, or rather, Miss Hare was beginning to remember what she had forgotten. The veins in her temples were writhing. It was as if some stranger with sly eyelids had touched the real door, with a finger, and there stood the interior. "That was the drawing-room," she said, the tense forced upon her. "And the dining-room through the folding doors." But forced most brutally. They were standing in the present, in the late hours of an afternoon in spring, when the light can be merciless. The white light fell amongst the furniture, where a bandaged memory awaited diagnosis. "I have never seen anything like it," confessed Mrs Jolley, withdrawing as far as possible into her clothes. Where time had not slashed, the light was finishing the job. Cabinets and little frivolous tables seemed to splinter at a blow. Even solid pieces in marquetry, and the buhl octopus, were stunned. Catching on to the thread of their original intention, the two women strayed here and there, but always retreating. Now a shutter had begun to bang. Old birds' nests, lying on the Aubusson, or what had become, rather, a carpet of twigs, dust, mildew and the chrysalides of insects, trapped guilty feet with soft reminders. On one side of the dining room, where weather had torn the slates from an embrasure in the course of some historic storm, an elm had entered in. The black branches of the elm sawed. The early leaves pierced the more passive colours of human refinement like a knife. The little rags of blue sky flickered and flapped drunkenly. In places rain had gushed, in others trickled, down the walls, and over marble, now the colour of rotten teeth. "Or places where dogs have pissed," Miss Hare noticed, and sighed. "I beg yours?" asked Mrs Jolley, wondering. But her employer did not answer-her thoughts were her own, whether she cared to utter them or not-so the housekeeper saved up what she believed she had heard, to let it ripen on the shelves of her mind before she took it down for use. At last Miss Hare cleared her throat, and that, too, sounded dusty-she was really quite exhausted. She said, "I think I shall take you to your room now." As the stair wound upward, by slow convolutions, through the well of light, its loveliness tortured the throat of the owner. "I would sit here sometimes," she said, "and listen to the music, and watch the dancers. Oh, it was splendid down there." As the stair wound upward, past the closed doors, passages tunnelled off, into distance and a squeaking of mice. "Of course, a great many of these rooms," she said, and waved, practical again, "have not been opened for years. There was no reason why they should have been. Not after the death of my mother. She died at the beginning of the war. The second, yes, it was the Second War. It was Father who went during the first. And Mother, I found her sitting in her chair. But this is not the time to tell family history. And on the stairs." "I am a mother," said Mrs Jolley, "and am always glad to hear of anybody in like circumstances." Her ring chinked on the wrought iron. Despite shortness of breath, she did, and would act firmly. Her corset could not assure enough as she followed up the stairs. She would act as befitted a mother and a lady; it was only to be hoped the two duties would not clash. "Here," said Miss Hare, "is the room I have prepared. I have made the bed. Although people have different ideas on the making of a bed. There," she said. Would the door open? Mrs Jolley wished it would not, and that they might be left, instead, looking at each other on the landing, however unsatisfactory that solution might be. But the door did open, easily, even, one would have said, eagerly. "Well," said Mrs Jolley, "we shall see." And smiled. She had a blue eye that would see just so far and no farther, which was perhaps why she could recover while still professing shock. Miss Hare hoped that her housekeeper's face was kind, but suspected that the dimple had not bewitched more than the one man.