Pam and the Countess

by E. E. Cowper

"I daresay they are in love with each other," considered Pamela, reviewing the situation mentally, "they ought to be, they've gone through a lot together, but what has Woodrising to do with it, unless they know somebody who wants to live there!"

This seemed to her a reasonable explanation. She decided that he had friends who wished to take the house, and he had asked Miss Anne to come and look at the rooms for him. He might find difficulty in measuring rooms perhaps.

All the same he'd better not have depended on Miss Anne for that sort of thing. "I'd sooner be nursed by that angel than any living soul," thought Pamela, "but I don't believe she knows about houses, and paint, and carpets. She's perfectly vague and unpractical about prices. He'd better have asked Miss Chance--or Jim Crow--she'd be better than anybody. I wish he'd marry Jim Crow, then we could keep a hero in the family."

Pamela sighed as she decided that there was no hope of this glorious conclusion to friendship. "It's a pity she's too young--but he likes her better than Mollie Shard."

She reached the top of the long hill at the back of the valley, and, mounting, began the easier part of the journey--down and up, down and up, over the loveliest scented moorland road--till presently she came in sight of the miniature railway station, looking like a good-sized hen-coop on its platform, and the shining rails stretching away north and south as far as eye could see, until the hills swallowed them.

Nobody was in the hen-coop. The booking office was locked. The person who did most things had gone off for some meal. There would be a train from Salterne through to Peterock at 6.45, and then the last one at 9.20. No rush of trains let it be said, as of course the up trains from Peterock did not count in this connection.

Pamela sat down on a seat to wait for a human being to appear. She hoped they would not be long, because she was hungry, but she was not in the least dull. She was always looking and thinking--years ago by instinct, nowadays with intention; it was part of the Scout training. She looked once at the shed of the platform opposite, then she shut her eyes and counted mentally how many posts supported it, how many scallops edged the roofing, how advertisements were hung within against the wall behind, and what they were all about. It was good practice. Anything could be used. The great idea, of course, was accuracy, and the power of noticing every detail in the quickest time. Pamela loved doing it, and she did not know yet, of course, that she had a special gift that way.

Time passed. At 6.30 a man sauntered into view wiping his mouth. Pamela went to him, and gave her instructions about the cases from London in a concise and definite manner. Then she hurried off to her bicycle, and made speed on the way home. She calculated that she should be back before seven; the sooner the better, because sun had set, and a veil of dusk was falling over the uplands--faint, sweet twilight.

Just at that moment the front tyre burst. There was a bit of broken glass on the road. As Pamela picked it up and threw it aside into the heather, she thought of Woodrising and that strongly-guarded wall--quite irrelevant, but better than losing one's temper. It was maddening, but there was nothing to do but walk home--about two miles from where she stood.

First, however, she made a try at mending the rent, and it was while she was at work--on what resulted in nothing but a waste of time--that a motor-car passed. It was a large car and strange to Pamela, which was not a surprising thing perhaps, though many cars paid visits in summer to beautiful Bell Bay.