reginald Markham returned blithely from his first day of teaching at St. Hilda's where there was such a bevy of girls as had faintly but guiltily stirred his loins several times. The movements of his buttocks upon the saddle had but excited his vagrant thoughts more-much as he strove to suppress them-and, despite his thirty-five years, it was with a sense of boyish consciousness that he led his horse into the paddock and waited a long moment until the tingling in his thickened tool had subsided.

Upon his entering the house, Mary came to offer to him what she thought of as a proper curtsey-proper that is to her due station in life-which movement caused her cap, as usual, to come askew and her firm young titties to bobble beneath her dress in the same manner that had met the Vicar's searching eyes.

'Mistress is upstairs, sir, she is resting, in a state of grace, he said', Mary uttered all in one breath and priding herself much on remembering the phrase despite her failure to understand what it meant.

'In a what?' replied Reggie comically, but then seeing the girl's crestfallen expression, he added, 'Yes, of course, Mary. I will go up and make my arrival known and meanwhile a pot of tea would do us all good, would it not?'

'Oh yes, sir!' Mary responded enthusiastically, finding herself apparently included in the plural. Hardly twenty minutes had passed since the Vicar had departed and the Master should have met him on the road, she thought, but then gave herself the extra one that the reverend gentleman must have gone the other way.

Reginald was always a quiet walker (and had frequently been reprimanded in his youth for 'stealing up' on people, albeit unconsciously). Vanessa thus did not hear him ascending and was at that moment not so much in a state of 'grace' as of bewildered fervour. Having kicked off her drawers, she had removed her dress also and had cast it similarly upon the floor, thereafter crawling beneath the bedclothes in an effort to blot out from her mind the outrageous events that had passed.