Carl is a favourite of mine to write, so I was glad to se others took to his absentmindedness too. As for matchmaking the children, it's not only Anne and Rosemary who are guilty, I've been doing so for months and interfere far more than either of them could ever be supposed to. I may as well say here, because there doesn't seem a natural place to 'footnote' that Thrush Green and Lulling are not mine, nor is Fairacre. They very much belong to 'Miss Read' (Dora Saint). I have loved Thrush Green especially for years, and like to imagine it somewhere nearby to Crampton Hodnet, not that that matters especially. As ever, many, many thanks for the reviews. I'm always curious to know what you think.

The title, of course, is from that well-known poem of Blake's to which the answer is resoundingly 'No,' but at least I've not made it into a hymn, so he can't revolve too much in his grave over my cribbing it!

'You'd never guess it was nearly June now, would you?' said Persis one evening near midsummer, coming into the nursery and joining Una nearby to Birdie, who had begun to be something of a favourite with her aunt.

'No, you wouldn't. The wind's making a noise to rival the mass setting Maisey was on about when she was last home –the little she sang sounded like wailing and was positively weird.'

'I don't suppose that was the Vaughan Williams piece was it?' Persis asked, equal parts interest and amusement.

'It was –someone sent out to England for it specially and no one at All Saints' can understand why. Though it would seem that they're going back to Merbecke next week in the hope it will prevent a mutiny –whether she means of the congregants, the choristers or both, I couldn't tell you. How do you come to know of it?' asked Una, then getting no answer she reached over her daughter's cot for the spare blanket on John's and handed it to Persis.

'No, you come downstairs, and into the warm' Persis said, draping the spare blanket over John, feeling as she did so the thickness of the cotton he was wearing.

'In a minute,' said Una, and although Birdie had settled easily that evening, she continued to rock the cradle with one hand, smoothing the child's hair with the other; it was growing in thick and brown, and looked even then to become at least as long as her mother's. The minute passed several times over but neither woman made any motion to go downstairs.

'I'm sorry it's always you we seem to be visiting,' said Persis suddenly.

'You know we don't mind having you,' said Una, turning away from Birdie and looking at Persis.

'I think, my dear, that the world could offer you as a martyr at the stake and you would say you didn't mind if it made things easier for the world.'

'As it has never tried, I couldn't hope to tell you.'

Persis looked heavenward. 'You know what I mean; you wouldn't say, would you, if we were interfering,' and so saying she began to fuss gently over the sleeping Birdie, tucking the quilt more snugly round her, if such a thing were possible, trying to brush a persistent curl out of the child's eyes.

'I do sometimes,' said Una, eyes laughing, 'I've never willingly given the kitchen over to you.'

'You've never willingly given run of that kitchen over to anyone. I wasn't thinking of that,' said Persis, taking over the rocking of the cradle from where Una had left off, 'and I rather thought you knew as much.'

Una ignored her, but watched instead the other woman with her favourite –surely Birdie had had her aunt's portion of attention twice over by now?

'I can count without running out of fingers, Persis, the number of people I'm properly close too; you're one of them, Carl's another and more often than not you're off in places so unreachable that even if it didn't cost the earth to call long-distance I wouldn't be able to. You couldn't interfere if you sat down for a fortnight and thought about it.'

Persis said, ostensibly to the sleeping Birdie, 'if I were to have this conversation with the rest of the household, would it be redundant? Would I be having the same conversation over again? You and the cats would take your mother's side, I know.'

Birdie made some inarticulate noise that Persis did not try to interpret.

'Of course you would,' said Una firmly, 'you don't really think we don't talk things like your coming to visit over?'

'I think,' said Persis, almost laughing and certainly teasing, 'Shirley would move heaven and earth for you. No, don't look like that, I realize it's a reciprocal sentiment. But I'll leave it,' she said, abandoning her teasing, 'if you'll come downstairs and have tea.'

'I thought you couldn't bear tea?' said Una, rising and going to see both curtains and sash were drawn, hearing internally as she did so her Aunt Martha's assertion that the wind came in of an evening to snatch a baby's breath.

'You were a long time remembering,' said Persis, coming reluctantly away from the cradle and leaning against the frame of the door.

'I've been offered nothing else since arriving. I was starting to think it was return for landing you with Carl until I remembered how close you always were and you started in with your talk of letters and long-distance.'

'I'm sorry,' said Una apologetically, crossing the room to Persis, pausing herself to look over the children asleep and wish a prayer on them.

'Don't be. Besides, one way or another, I had better get used to tea,' said Persis.

'I don't know how,' said Una, reaching for the candle that rested on the nearby end-table, 'but you've managed to sound cryptic.'

'Then come out of the cold and I'll tell you about it,' said Persis, and in the eerily overcast glow of the candle they took the stairs into the drawing room together.

Tea in the end was not forthcoming as they agreed upon cocoa. Carl, coming into the kitchen said hopefully, 'can I have some?'

'No reason why not,' said Persis merrily.

'I was just telling Una about Oxford.'

'Were you?' said Una, adding extra milk to the pot on the hob.

'I was about to, anyway,' Persis said.

Over cocoa, she and Carl unfolded a plan that they had been shaping for some months, courtesy of a professor Mellor, who had been abroad with Carl in India.

'His college is wanting more dons,' Carl says, almost apologetically, 'and they're interested in science…not a name you'd know of course, Keble, but –'

'I do so know it, Keble wrote hymns,' said Una, almost indignantly.

'Episcopal ones though, how do you know about him?' Carl asked, looking at his sister curiously. 'I begin to think Miss. Cornelia mayn't be wrong about you going over to Rosemary's church.'

'Then you're wrong the pair of you. They had 'Blest are the Pure in Heart' at All Saints' on Sunday'; this from Maisey who had it on her mind because the sopranos were flat and the organ was acting up. She looked in for tea before her train. It is still only Bruce you're due to lose to the Episcopalians, and that's not my fault. How do you come to know the name? Or is it only in connection with the college you've heard about him?'

'Oh, I only know it as a college. I never gave a thought to where the name came from or who it belonged to. We've heard an awful lot about the place, didn't he?' The question was directed at Persis and she nodded.

'You're really thinking of going, then?' said Una.

'Well, for one thing, it would be easier to come home and visit if we were in England,' said Persis.

' To say nothing of the telephone calls you've told me aren't palceable at the moment. For another, it would have nice to have somewhere to call home that is ours, much as I love these visits to you, a proper home's not really a thing we've had=, not really. '

'No,' Carl agreed.

'And we can't stay in college or we might do,' said Persis, 'that is, you could, Carl if it weren't for me; as it is, we'll live out.'

'I see,' said Carl with the distinct air of one who did not see, and who did not mind not seeing, for he showed no sign of contradicting his wife.

'I had it in my head you wanted to see more of the world,' Una said after a minute.

'We wouldn't have to stop –there are more immediate plans to see North Africa, and I could go away on work as it were, take a term out, if I really missed it; we both could. Though I can't help thinking that as it is we haven't done badly have we?' This too, was directed at Persis, who pretended to consider the question before counting off places they have journeyed to on her fingers.

'The Amazon, India, Egypt, we managed London lately and France the last boat trip but one when we came back to Canada, so yes, on balance, I think we've done all right. But you're on your own about North Africa, I feel sure we've have this conversation, about my not coming with you.'

'So we have,' Carl murmured, preoccupied with the cocoa he is drinking.

'It's only that I'm so used to having you with me. It will seem odd.'

'It won't be for very long,' said Persis, 'you're hardly going to be there as it is.'

'If the college is anything like Keble himself, won't it be what Ellen calls 'high church?' Una asked, returning again to the prospect of Oxford.

'They are and they aren't.' said Carl, turning his mug round in his hands. 'The chapel is of course, but I'm not terribly fussed about the chapel, even if it has got 'Light of the World' in it. I like the idea I could keep all of my interests and lecture on them, I think I'd be good at it, don't you?'

'You don't need me to tell you you're clever enough for that,' said Una and Persis grinned at her.

'Well said. I told him much the same thing.'

Una smiled and finished her cocoa.

'I ought to have known you wouldn't be fussed about church. Whatever happened to the little boy with a preoccupation for 'God's creatures' and 'all creeping things that creepeth'?' Carl only shook his head and grinned impishly at his sister.

'He's still preoccupied with them,' said Carl cheerfully, 'but you're forgetting how I horrified the over-ahrbour people teaching the children about Darwin. Also that Presbyterian churches have been few and far between, the places we've travelled to, even before Oxford.' By then Una was laughing.

More seriously she asked, 'when would all of this happen?'

'What month is it now?' Carl wanted to know and Una and Persis shared a look, that for all his cleverness, he cannot read.

'June,' said Una patiently, as though she were explaining something complex to John.

'I see. I don't think it would be for this year, can you remember dear?'

'Just like a man,' Persis murmured to Una. 'I'm not the one that will be teaching.' Then, more audibly, 'It's not for this year, because you have arranged with your Redmond professor to traverse North Africa until October, so we would be missing the Michaelmas term if you were thinking of starting then, which would be awkward for you this year as it would mean finding a house even as you were lecturing. We were talking of being there for next Michaelmas.'

'Are you staying with someone until you can settle at Oxford?'

'No, unless you are thinking of someone,' said Persis

'Not particularly,' said Una, 'it's only that we had family from over that way, not Oxford, Carl help me, where in England was grandmother from?' Carl blinked.

'She died before I ever knew her; I only know what you and the others say. Jerry always said she had a plumy sort of accent, where is that kind from?'

'He's all helpful suggestions this evening,' Persis said gaily and Una looked away before she had time to catch Persis's humour off of her.

'Not somewhere grand, I remember that…Thrush Green I think, because I remember thinking the name was lovely. Yes, it will be Thrush Green, or Lulling, that sort of area, at a pinch it might have been Fairacre, though as I think of it, I only remember Fairacre because grandmother was inclined to be snobbish about it; it was supposed to be quite rural.'

'How do you remember all this?' Carl said, with undisguised curiosity. 'You're not so much older than me.'

'Sorry,' said Persis, still with a glimmer in her eye, 'his manners have obviously gone the way of his helpful suggestions.' She said it more for the sake of it than anything else, because Una was laughing, it would be impossible to think she minded, and besides, Carl had always been a favourite with her.

'Aunt Martha used to talk about her, don't you remember? She grew up with stories of Thrush Green.'

'Ah, well, I never paid Aunt Martha much attention,' said Carl brightly.

'I'd gathered that,' said Una to Persis out of the corner of her mouth. They had commenced the washing-up between them and Persis's sense of humour was catching.

'I think,' said Carl, 'I'll go up and tell the children goodnight. I promise I won't wake them. They won't look to me for helpful suggestions' and so saying, with eyes gleaming, he wandered out of the kitchen and through the drawing room towards the stairs.

'You needn't worry,' said Persis as he went, 'whatever else he may or may not be, he is good with children.'

'I know,' Una said softly, somewhat startled by the implication of the alternative, 'he always has been.' She set her cloth down and looked questioningly at her friend.

'Persis, you'd say wouldn't you, if –'

'Not tonight,' said Persis. 'We've had enough of earnest conversation without that one.'

'Hardly earnest, is it?' asked Una.

''Yes,' said Persis quietly, 'I think it would have to be -it so often has been before.' She spoke ostensibly to the mugh se was drying and before Una could answer or even register Persis's meaning, she went on, 'no, there's no sense worrying that out this evening.'

'Just as long as you know I'll listen,' said Una to the soap and hot water, but she let it drop and they finished the washing-up in eloquent silence, the one saying, you can talk to me, even as the other was indicating I want to tell you, but not yet, not now.