having taken a first-class in
Economics.

As Anthony came home early one evening in October, he found a group of
six strange women in the lane, waiting outside his garden door in
attitudes of conspiracy.

Four of them, older women, stood together in a close ring. The two
others, young girls, hung about near, but a little apart from the ring,
as if they desired not to identify themselves with any state of mind
outside their own. By their low sibilant voices, the daring sidelong
sortie of their bright eyes, their gestures, furtive and irrepressible,
you gathered that there was unanimity on one point. All six considered
themselves to have been discovered.

At Anthony's approach they moved away, with slow, casual steps, passed
through the posts at the bottom of the lane and plunged down the steep
path, as if under the impression that the nature of the ground covered
their retreat. They bobbed up again, one after the other, when the lane
was clear.

The first to appear was a tall, handsome, bad-tempered-looking girl. She
spoke first.

"It's a damned shame of them to keep us waiting like this."

She propped herself up against Anthony's wall and smouldered there in
her dark, sullen beauty.

"We were here at six sharp."

"When they know we were told not to let on where we meet."

"We're led into a trap," said a grey-haired woman.

"I say, who is Dorothea Harrison?"

"She's the girl who roped Rosalind in. She's all right."

"Yes, but are her people all right?"

"Rosalind knows them."

The grey-haired woman spoke again.

"Well, if you think this lane is a good place for a secret meeting, I
don't. Are you aware that the yard of `Jack Straw's Castle' is behind
that wall? What's to prevent them bringing up five or six coppers and
planting them there? Why, they've only got to post one 'tee at the top
of the lane, and another at the bottom, and we're done. Trapped. I call
it rotten."

"It's all right. Here they are."

Dorothea Harrison and Rosalind Jervis came down the lane at a leisured
stride, their long coats buttoned up to their chins and their hands in
their pockets. Their I gestures were devoid of secrecy or any guile.
Each had a joyous air of being in command, of being able to hold up the
whole adventure at her will, or let it rip.

Rosalind Jervis was no longer a bouncing, fluffy flapper. In three years
she had shot up into the stature of command. She slouched, stooping a
little from the shoulders, and