'How do you know?'

He didn't answer but went on, 'And they've got that girl of theirs …'

'Jenny.'

'Yes, Jenny, at college. He must have been caught young. Very young. She's a pretty little thing, now.'

'Don't you want any tea, Dave?'

Fernie's brawny arm held his wife in a clamp-like grip round the waist. He looked thoughtfully into her face, then pressed gently with his free hand where it rested on her leg just above the knee.

'No,' he said, 'I think I've changed my mind again.'

Jenny Connon hadn't quite made up her mind what to do about the hand on her knee. Adaptability was an important quality in a teacher, her education tutor had told the class that morning. How to cope with the unexpected. Though, as she herself had arranged that her roommate should go out and she herself had turned the key in the door to prevent interruption, the situation was not all that unexpected.

'Do you really want to be a teacher?' she asked brightly.

Antony (he insisted on the full name) pushed the hair back from his brow with a gesture almost girlish (but he used the hand not on her knee) and smiled. 'If you mean, have I got a sense of vocation, no. If you mean, are my natural inclinations to be something else being repressed, the answer is equally no. Being at college is less distasteful than most of the alternatives, and it pleased my parents. Anyway, think of the holidays. I have a sense of vacation very strongly developed.' Antony Wilkes was without doubt the smoothest man in the South Warwickshire College of Education at the moment. As he was in his third year and Jenny was in her first, the opportunities for the relationship to develop were limited. As it was, Jenny had decided to feel flattered that she was the second girl he had chosen from the year's new supply.