Miss Goldthorpe saw Max Lindblom one evening. He was giving a lesson when she reached the rink, but she waited until he had finished, then asked him if he could spare a moment.

“This is nothing to do with me, and I don’t know what Mrs. King would say if she knew I was seeing you, but Lalla isn’t herself at all. She’s quiet at her lessons, which is quite unlike her, and she gets cross easily, and that’s unlike her too. She always was a child who liked to have her own way and order people about, but she never does that now. I almost wish she would. You know, I think this examination is worrying her.”

Max did not answer at once. He led Miss Goldthorpe to a seat where nobody could hear what they were saying.

“I do not wish her to try for this inter-gold test,” Max began. “There is no need; she is still very young. Why should there be this rush?”

“I think she wants to get it over and done with. You know what great plans there are for her when she has finished with these tests.”

Max made an angry, growling noise. “It has been wrong from the beginning. The child has talent, yes. She has a good personality, yes. But these things do not necessarily make the great skater.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more. I think it wretched that she feels that she must be a skater and nothing else. But she has been brought up to believe in a great future ever since she was a baby, and except of course for that one time when she failed a test, it’s all been coming true. But now I gather there is something she can’t do. I learn from Harriet she’s working terribly hard, and still she can’t do whatever it is.”

“She will do it, but not yet. The aunt should forbid skating for many months. ‘Let us forget it,’ she should say, ‘let us go away.’ You, I think, should tell the aunt to say these things.”

Miss Goldthorpe sighed. What a foolish young man he was!

“Mr. Lindblom, I’ve told you before it’s quite impossible for me to say anything like that to Mrs. King. Last time when you asked me to say something to her I explained that if I did it would mean that I would be given notice, and I have no intention of being given notice. I’m not a vain woman, but I do think that I’m useful to Lalla, and I therefore would do nothing to risk offending Mrs. King.”

Max shrugged his shoulders. “Then nothing can be done. I have told Lalla she should not attempt her inter-gold this spring.”

“Have you told Mrs. King?”

Max lit a cigarette. “The trouble is Harriet.”

Miss Goldthorpe’s eyes opened very wide.

“Harriet! What has Harriet got to do with it?”

“Skating is a very expensive thing. To work properly you must have what Lalla gives Harriet: the good governess like yourself, the outside classes, everything specially arranged to fit in with the training. It is impossible to train properly and to attend a school. If I say to Mrs. King give Lalla six months, and no skating, that will mean six months without lessons for Harriet.”

Miss Goldthorpe switched her mind from Lalla to Harriet. Harriet was stronger now; in spite of influenza and the cold winter she seemed well. She was always frail looking compared to Lalla, but that did not mean she was delicate.

“I don’t think you need worry about Harriet. Of course skating has done wonders for her, poor child, but she’s much stronger now and she could practice if she wanted to. Mr. Matthews, you know, very kindly lets her come here free of charge.”

Max looked pityingly at Miss Goldthorpe, as if he were thinking: “How can I make this poor, ignorant woman see what is so clear to me?” Then he saw that his next pupil was waiting. He got up, said good night, and went back on the ice.

It was a nasty night, with driving rain. Outside the rink Miss Goldthorpe put up her umbrella and walked towards her bus stop, but before she reached it a gust of wind caught the umbrella and turned it inside out. While she was struggling with it she felt it being taken from her hands, and when she blinked away the rain which was in her eyes, she saw that her rescuer was Alec. Alec had the bag which had held papers over his arm, for he had just finished his evening round.

“Hullo, Miss Goldthorpe, were you coming to see us?”

Miss Goldthorpe had been thinking of nothing but how nice it would be to sit in front of a fire and read a book, but now that Alec suggested it, she saw that this was the obvious moment to call on Mrs. Johnson.

Miss Goldthorpe got a lovely welcome from the Johnsons, especially from Harriet, but Olivia guessed she would not have come to see them on a nasty wet night without some reason. She told Toby to take Miss Goldthorpe’s wet coat and umbrella and put them in the bathroom, and when she saw George pushing a chair up to the living room fire she stopped him.

“Miss Goldthorpe is staying to supper with us and I’m going to ask her to help me cook it. I’m afraid it’s a poor feeding night. March never seems a lucky month for William.”

George was not going to stand for hearing his brother William run down. “You can’t say that,” he protested. “There were five duck’s eggs yesterday as well as all those splendid winter greens.”

Toby looked up from his homework. “People don’t come to us for duck’s eggs, and the greens weren’t splendid—the Brussels sprouts had gone bad.”

Harriet was playing Casino with Edward. “There were some turnips as well. I saw Mummy washing them.”

Edward looked reproachfully at his father. “You can say what you like about Uncle William, but nobody can’t say that soup, soup, soup every evening is nice—and that’s what we have to eat—made with his old vegetables. A lady said to me today I was looking pale, and I told her that was because I ate too much soup.”

Olivia laughed. “What nonsense! You don’t look pale and you don’t have soup every evening, and you know it. As a matter of fact tonight it’s curried duck’s eggs and vegetables, and you know you’ll like that. Come along, Miss Goldthorpe, don’t listen to these grumblers.”

In the kitchen Olivia shut the door and gave Miss Goldthorpe a chair while she went about her work. The kitchen-dining-room was so cozy that in no time Miss Goldthorpe had told Olivia all about Lalla; how worried she and Nana were, of how she had seen Max, and what he had said.

Olivia had by this time boiled the duck’s eggs hard; she gave them to Miss Goldthorpe and asked her to take off their shells.

“It seems to me a lot of fuss about nothing. If it were one of my children I wouldn’t let them go near a rink again if I thought it was worrying them. But I suppose Lalla is different. As they are determined to make a skater of her, I suppose she has got to pass these wretched tests. Is there no one who can make the child see it’s silly to go in for it now, as her instructor thinks she shouldn’t?”

Miss Goldthorpe carefully shelled an egg, then said:

“Having to tell her aunt that would seem to Lalla as good as admitting that she is not the success she’s expected to be.”

Olivia gave her curry sauce a savage stir.

“If only I could speak my mind just once to Mrs. King. I’m a mild woman, but you’d be surprised what I would say.”

“I wouldn’t. I’ve never really lost my temper; it has never seemed worthwhile. But, do you know, sometimes when I think of the way Mrs. King has brought up poor Lalla I wish I could whip her. Extraordinary, for I don’t hold with corporal punishment.”

“What about Mr. King? George says he’s nice; can’t he do anything?”

Miss Goldthorpe explained that Nana was seeing him, but how difficult it was for him to interfere. Then she said:

“I wondered if you would see Lalla. I’ve been planning a treat for her on Saturday. I’ve taken seats for a musical entertainment; the advertisements say it’s funny. I was not inviting Harriet as I know you like to have her on Saturday afternoons, and from what I read this comedy couldn’t do her any good educationally….I wonder, would you use my seat and take Lalla, and have a talk with her? It would be a great kindness.”

“Bless you, of course I will. I shall enjoy it. I love musical comedies, and hardly ever get a chance to see one. And of course I’ll talk to Lalla, but I don’t know if I can help. I haven’t seen her for weeks, what with influenza and the foul weather, and last time I saw her she was on top of the world. I can’t imagine that child except on top of the world.”

“That, I think, may be the trouble; she can’t imagine herself in any other place.”

Miss Goldthorpe was a poor liar. On Saturday, in the car driving to the theater, she told Lalla a halting story of a book she had to return, and of how, as Mrs. Johnson was in the West End, she was using Miss Goldthorpe’s seat. Lalla laughed at her.

“It’s no good telling me that, Goldie. Harriet’s mother never would be in this end of London on a Saturday with all of them home, and you know it. I bet it’s just you so hated to see a musical comedy you gave your seat away. Isn’t that it?”

Miss Goldthorpe was glad Lalla had hit on something near the truth.

“Well, dear, I don’t like musical plays.”

Lalla put her arm through Miss Goldthorpe’s and rubbed her cheek on her shoulder.

“And you paid for the seats. You didn’t dare tell Aunt Claudia this was educational, did you?”

“It was a little present for you.”

Lalla hugged Miss Goldthorpe’s arm closer.

“Dear Goldie, you’re an angel, and however much a beast I seem, I truly love you.”

Olivia was shocked at Lalla’s appearance. The round, gay, bouncing Lalla she knew had disappeared, and in her place was a thinner, almost serious Lalla, with most of the bounce gone out of her. Olivia was thankful to find that the gayness was not quite gone, for the play was very funny and Lalla not only got bouncing and gay from laughing, but in the intervals made Olivia laugh by her imitations of the actors. Miss Goldthorpe had arranged that Olivia should take Lalla home in a taxi, but Olivia thought a taxi would be too quick a journey for her and Lalla to have a proper talk.

“How about our going home on the top of a bus?”

Lalla was charmed. “Could we? Do you know, I’ve hardly ever been on a bus. Aunt Claudia is afraid of germs.”

Olivia looked pityingly at Lalla. Poor lamb! Even a bus was a treat. If only she could steal Lalla and take her home with her.

Olivia was not a mother who asked her children to tell her things. She tried to make them feel she was always interested in anything they would like to tell her, but if they did not want to talk about something, that was their own affair. Because of this, it was difficult for her to make Lalla talk, but in the theater she had planned a way to do it. She started by telling her she was thinner, and asking if it was her diet. When Lalla explained that the dieting had finished, Olivia said she wondered if Lalla was outgrowing her strength, which was something which easily happened at her age. “It happened to me,” she went on. “Do you know, I was nearly as tall as I am now when I was not much older than you are.”

“But I’m not much taller, only thinner.”

“It’s the same thing. It means using a lot of energy in growing up, and then there isn’t as much energy for other things. I was brought up in South Africa, you know, and riding was my delight. I loved horses more than anything else in the world, and was supposed to be a marvelous horsewoman, but outgrowing my strength affected my riding. I suppose my horses could feel I wasn’t as full of pep as usual.”

Lalla looked suspiciously at Olivia out of the corners of her eyes. Had Harriet told her about how she could not do loops? Olivia did not look like somebody saying something on purpose. In fact she had stopped talking about outgrowing your strength and was talking about the funny man in the play. Lalla joined in and soon was acting for Olivia most of the parts, and they were both laughing again at the jokes. But underneath what she was saying, and underneath her laughing, Lalla knew something nice had happened. It was as if there had been a tight, hard hand round her middle, and somehow Olivia had loosened it and made her feel better. Presently she asked a question.

“What did you do for outgrowing your strength?”

“Saw a doctor. He cured me.”

At Lalla’s gate Olivia kissed her good-bye. “I have enjoyed my afternoon. I wish sometimes you could arrange for Miss Goldthorpe to give us another afternoon out.”

That night Lalla slept really well. As she was slipping into sleep she thought “How silly I’ve been. It isn’t that I can’t do those loops. It’s merely that I need a tonic. I’ll tell Nana to buy me a bottle.” And then, cozily, “And if she won’t, Harriet’s mother will. It’s nice going out with Harriet’s mother. I hope I’ll be allowed to do it again.”

There were no secrets between Miss Goldthorpe and Nana, so Lalla had told Nana about the matinee. At breakfast the next morning she told her what Olivia had said about outgrowing her strength. Nana tried not to look ruffled, but inside she felt it. She might tell Miss Goldthorpe something ought to be done about Lalla, but that did not mean she wanted Lalla asking for a bottle of tonic. Children should not think about their health; that was for grown-ups to do for them. Then she looked at Lalla and her heart softened. Harriet’s mother had done her good. She seemed much more herself this morning, and was eating a good breakfast without being told.

“That tonic was for the influenza and wouldn’t do good for anything else. You’ll have to see the doctor.”

Lalla helped herself to honey.

“I wish I could see Harriet’s doctor. Ours is so old and grumpy. Harriet’s said she would get well if she skated. I should think a doctor who said that would know something gorgeous to make you stop outgrowing your strength.”

After breakfast Nana saw Uncle David walking up and down the lawn smoking. Nana was not fond of gardens in early March, but it was a lovely morning and a good moment to catch Uncle David alone, for Lalla was working in her garden, and Aunt Claudia was still in bed. Nana dressed as warmly as if it were a cold day in midwinter, and went out.

Uncle David was glad to see Nana because he had just been talking to Lalla, and was thinking about her. He said:

“That child of yours has been looking under the weather lately. What are you doing to her?”

Nana glanced up at Aunt Claudia’s windows to be sure they were shut.

“That’s what I’ve come out about, sir. She’s got another of those examinations coming on for the skating. Mr. Lindblom doesn’t want her to take it, but Lalla won’t be put off.”

Uncle David made a despairing gesture with his shoulders. “Blast that skating! But I can’t do a thing unless Lalla asks me to. If I interfere on my own I shall be eaten alive, not only by Mrs. King but by Lalla, and I’d lose the child’s trust as well.”

“I know, sir. But it seems Mrs. Johnson has told Lalla she might be outgrowing her strength. Not that she is, but thinking it might be that seems to have cheered her up. Childlike, she fancies a bottle of medicine would put her right, and she’s taken to the idea that she would like to be given it by the doctor who looks after Harriet.”

“You think it would be a good idea?”

Nana did not think it a good idea that Lalla should want to see a doctor. If Nana had her way she would have suggested a fortnight by the sea at Easter.

“I don’t know what to say, sir, I’m sure. I try to treat her as I’d treat any child, which is what her mother would have wished, but with the skating and all I can’t. Maybe if she’s taken a fancy to Harriet’s doctor it can’t do any harm, though I doubt it does any good.”

Uncle David smiled sympathetically.

“Don’t worry too much. I’ll have a talk with her and try and find out what’s on her mind.”

Lalla, as instructed by Alec, was raking between the rows of strawberries. The March wind had put color into her cheeks and the good smell of growing things coming out of the earth made her eyes shine, but she still did not look as she ought to look. Uncle David’s eyes twinkled when he saw what she was doing.

“You know, poppet, I’ll never believe you planted those strawberries. I bet Simpson put them in.”

Lalla leaned on her rake. “You’re wrong. He didn’t.”

“But neither did you.”

Lalla gave an imitation of Nana. “ ‘Those who ask no questions won’t be told no lies.’ ”

Uncle David laughed. “I’ve just seen Nana. I told her you looked as if she was starving and beating you, and she tells me you think Harriet’s doctor would be the one to cure you. Is that right?”

Lalla laid down her rake and joined Uncle David. “Yes.”

Uncle David took her hand. They walked down the path. “What’s the matter with you?” Uncle David asked.

Before yesterday afternoon Lalla would not have answered that, but now, certain a bottle of tonic from the right doctor was all she needed, she explained about the loops that would not come right; how she even tried to do them in her sleep; how fussed she had been. Now that she knew that nothing had gone wrong with her skating, but that it was only outgrown strength, she was not worrying any more.

Uncle David watched Lalla while she talked. She was not big for somebody of eleven; in fact she was short for her age. He doubted if any doctor would think outgrown strength was the trouble.

“I expect you’ve been overworking. Isn’t the child wonder taking another skating test?”

“Yes. The inter-gold in May.”

“I dare say the doctor will suggest less tests. It’s a way they have.”

Lalla stood still, all the pink made by the wind leaving her face, and the gayness disappearing from her eyes.

“Then I won’t see him. I’ve got to pass that test, absolutely got to.”

“Why this May? Wouldn’t next year do?”

Lalla tried hard to explain.

“No. It must be now, so I know I can do it. If I have to wait I’ll think and think I can’t. And I simply couldn’t bear that.”

Uncle David gave her a friendly pat on the back.

“What rot! You know you and your aunt between you are making martyrs of yourselves for this skating; simply couldn’t bear it because you might be told not to take a test for a month or two. Really, Lalla!”

Lalla kicked a stone off the path.

“Silly Uncle David, you don’t understand.” Lalla’s voice wobbled. “It was awful that time I failed my silver, more awfuller than anybody knew. People looked sorry; nobody had ever looked sorry for me before and I hated it. When people look at me without looking proud of me I feel I’m not Lalla Moore any more.”

Uncle David lit another cigarette. He lit it very slowly to give him time to think of what he had better say.

“It sounds as though we must try and fix it for this doctor of Harriet’s to give you a bottle of champion-skater mixture, if that’s what you want. But you’ve got your ideas all upside down. The Lalla I know is an amusing child, and I believe could make her mark in the world without ever putting skates on again. There’s a saying, ‘There are more ways than one of killing a cat,’ and I think there are more talents than one belonging to Lalla Moore, but I know neither you nor your aunt will believe it.”

Uncle David knew it was impossible to get Aunt Claudia to agree to Lalla’s seeing a new doctor; he would be asked what Lalla’s doctor had to do with him. Aunt Claudia usually left Lalla’s health to Nana, and sent for the doctor only when Nana asked her to. She might have noticed Lalla was looking peaky and be thinking of her seeing the doctor, but she certainly would not want Uncle David to suggest it. The only thing to do was to ring up Olivia and ask her to arrange it.

Olivia did arrange it. She saw Doctor Phillipson and told him all about Lalla, and he and she made a plan. It was arranged that the next Saturday Miss Goldthorpe, instead of taking Lalla to a theater, should take her to see a local film, and afterwards they would have tea at the doctor’s house.

That next Saturday Miss Goldthorpe talked to Mrs. Phillipson in the drawing room while Dr. Phillipson talked to Lalla in his office. He explained it could be only talking; Lalla was not his patient, but he might find out what sort of medicine she needed just by talking. He was, Lalla found, easy to talk to and enormously interested in skating. He wanted to know all about her training from the very beginning, all about tests and what you had to do at them. To make figures clear to him Lalla drew them for him. The last figure she drew was loops.

“These are what I have to do in May and they’ve been going wrong. So that’s why Goldie brought me to tea, because I was sure a man like you who thought of skating to cure Harriet’s legs being wobbly would know what to give me for outgrown strength which makes my loops go wrong.”

Doctor Phillipson seemed to be studying Lalla’s drawings. Inside his head he was wondering how best to help her. After a bit he sat down, took a piece of notepaper and began writing.

“I can’t guarantee this, but have it made up, take it regularly, and it might do the trick!’

Lalla looked at the sheet of paper. Most of it she couldn’t understand for it was written in doctor-writing, but at the top was printed in big letters, “SKATING MIXTURE FOR LALLA MOORE. ONE TABLESPOON TO BE TAKEN DAILY BEFORE VISITING RINK.”

The medicine worked. Lalla felt better and worried less, and so her loops were better. Then, so slowly she scarcely noticed it, the effect of the medicine began to wear off. Max Lindblom could have explained that if she was judging the medicine by her loop tracings it was bound to stop helping her, for her loops were as good as she was going to get them for the present, and no medicine would make them any better. But Lalla had not told Max about the medicine. She wanted him to think she did her loops marvelously without help, so when they stopped getting better she could not talk to him or anybody about it, but just felt more fussed and bothered than ever all by herself. Everybody was sorry for her, but nobody knew how to help her.

“She’s like a reel of cotton come unfixed in a work basket,” Nana said. “Tied into knots round everything. You don’t know where to start to look for an end to start rewinding.”

Aunt Claudia was as bothered about Lalla as everybody else, but her bothering over her got Lalla into a worse state. Aunt Claudia thought Lalla was suffering from quite unnecessary nerves.

“Cheer up, dear, it’s not like the Lalla Moore I know to worry. Where’s that champion grim got to, I wonder?”

Lalla usually refused to answer, but sometimes she would be rude. “Don’t talk like that! I’m not a baby.”

That would make Aunt Claudia try to be especially understanding. “Of course you aren’t. Eleven and a half is a big girl. Don’t think I mind for myself if you’re a little rude—I know that’s just a sign that you have temperament, and a skater must have that—but my Lalla mustn’t forget a great skater has also to be her country’s ambassadress.”

Once Aunt Claudia suggested that perhaps Lalla should see the doctor. “You’re getting thin, darling. Perhaps the doctor would give you something to make you fatter.”

“My goodness! I thought you wanted me thinner. All those months no potatoes, no cakes, no nothing nice. Now you want me to see a doctor because I’ve got thinner. Well, I won’t see him, so there. I’m not Alice in Wonderland eating things all the time to make me grow littler and bigger.”

Aunt Claudia did not mention a doctor again to Lalla; but she did to Nana. “I think Lalla ought to see a doctor. She seems a little nervous, but I won’t worry her until after her test.”

Nana said politely “Just as you say, ma’am,” but her tone showed that she did not think much of what Aunt Claudia had said.

Aunt Claudia was not particularly worried about the test, because she did not know how Lalla was doing. The moment the effect of the medicine began to wear off, as Lalla thought, she told Aunt Claudia she was not to come to the rink. Nana heard Lalla tell Aunt Claudia this and was terribly shocked.

“A child your age speaking that way to your aunt! You won’t have her coming, indeed! The nursery is now the schoolroom, but from the sound of you it ought to be in my nursery again. I’d teach you how a little lady ought to behave.”

Aunt Claudia was shocked too, and also hurt.

“Not come! But you know how I love watching you skate. And now that we are nearing the time when you can enter for amateur championships you must get used to me watching you. Just think, Lalla! If you get your inter-gold this time, there is only the gold left, and then our fun starts. But it’s our fun; we’re going to share your triumphs, aren’t we?”

Lalla’s inside felt as if it were rolling over. Inter-gold this time! Only the gold left! Share our triumphs! If only it was happening. It had got to happen. Somehow she would pass her inter-gold, and then Aunt Claudia would never know she nearly had not been able to do loops.

“I don’t want you to come until I ask you.”

“But why not, dear?”

“Because I don’t.” Lalla remembered how she had made Aunt Claudia let Harriet go on sharing classes. “If you come, I won’t skate—I’ll go home.”

That settled that. Nana opened the door for Aunt Claudia and saw her downstairs. When she came back her face was red.

“That I should hear a child of mine speak that way. It’s not altogether your fault; you’ve been brought up very foolishly in many ways, and so I’ve always said. Through it you’ve become a shocking little madam, but you’ll suffer for it. Pride comes before a fall, you’ll see.”

Lalla swallowed a lump in her throat. If only Nana would understand it was not that she was being a madam! But Nana could not, it was no good trying to explain. She turned away to the window, blinking to keep back tears which wanted to run down her cheeks. It made things more awful than ever if Nana was turning against her.

It was not only Nana who seemed to Lalla to be turning against her, it was everybody, and the worst turner-against was Harriet. Harriet had done her best. It was not easy being friendly with Lalla when she was in a state. If she talked about skating Lalla would say something like “What do you know about it anyway?” and if she did not talk about skating Lalla got suspicious. “Why do you try and not talk about my test? I suppose Max has told you not to. You two are always talking to each other, jabber, jabber, jabber. I guessed you were talking about me.”

In the few weeks Lalla thought her medicine was working it had been all right. Harriet had her usual fun with Lalla. They talked all the time when they were not at lessons, and rushed out every day to look at Alec’s strawberries. But when the effect of the medicine wore off Harriet found the only thing to do was to keep out of Lalla’s way as much as possible, and talk to her as little as possible. She did not want to have a row with her, and she knew she would in the end. Nobody could go on giving soft answers that were supposed to turn away wrath, when the wrath went on coming at you just the same.

As it happened, Harriet did not feel talkish as her inter-silver test day came nearer. During the last six months the little-girl Harriet, without her noticing it, had disappeared and a new Harriet had taken her place. A Harriet who looked much the same outside, but was more of a person inside.

Everybody noticed it. Miss Goldthorpe told Nana it was a pleasure having Harriet about, she was becoming interesting to talk to. Nana said she didn’t know about talking, but it was more worthwhile to dress Harriet, she looked really nice now at the rink in the new things Nana had knitted for her. Alonso Vittori, watching Harriet, murmured, “It’s a funny little personality but she’s got something, that child.” Monsieur Cordon said of Harriet to Miss Goldthorpe, “Un type curieux!” At the rink she stopped being just the little girl Mr. Matthews allowed to skate free, or the child Lalla Moore’s aunt had taken up, and became Harriet Johnson, one of Max Lindblom’s promising pupils.

As the day of the test came nearer, Harriet was more and more wrapped up in skating, and noticed less and less what people were thinking or saying. She had private plans. If she passed the inter-silver—and she knew it was a big “if”—she would tell the family. How surprised they would be! But telling them would be just the beginning of her idea.

If she passed—she held her thumbs when she thought of it—perhaps this autumn she could try for the silver, and if she passed that, the next spring attempt the inter-gold, and have a try for the gold six months later. That would mean, if she got on as fast as that, she would have her first try for the gold the autumn she was thirteen; and allowing for lots of failures, she might have passed everything by the time she was fifteen. Even if she didn’t pass them all she would have a lovely career when she was old enough. She would be a professional skater, like that girl skating on one foot in the poster she had seen just before it was first planned she should go to the rink. Nobody must know what she was planning or they would laugh at her (which was natural, while she was no better than she was now), but she was sure if she worked she would get better. Then she would surprise the boys by earning money much sooner than they could.

Harriet’s was a very full day. Every morning she caught the bus in time to reach Lalla’s house by a quarter to nine. The moment Wilson let her in she rushed up to Nana to change and was in the schoolroom by nine. After lessons there was ballet, fencing, a walk sometimes, gardening or shopping for Lalla. Then lunch. Then the rink, Max’s lessons, and hard practice. Then home and homework, for now that she and Lalla were eleven and a half, more lessons had to be squeezed in, so having tea with each other had to come to an end. After lessons came supper and bed. When there was thinking and planning a future as well, there was not much room for other people’s troubles, and that was how the quarrel with Lalla started.

Rinks draw press photographers. Lalla was so used to being photographed that she broke off whatever she was doing, posed charmingly, and skated off as casually as if she had only stopped to sneeze. But one day a photographer noticed Harriet.

“Who’s the little ginger-haired girl?”

Somebody explained. “A pupil of Max Lindblom’s. Only been skating about eighteen months. He thinks a lot of her.”

The photographer took an action photograph of Harriet practicing a back change. It was a lucky photograph, for Harriet looked charmingly serious. The photographer’s paper published it over the caption “Little Harriet Johnson, for whom a great future is predicted.” It was an evening paper, and of course somebody saw the photograph. Harriet was having a lesson at the time, so the picture was shown to Lalla. Lalla said how nice it was, and she must buy a copy for Harriet, but inside she was furious. Harriet! Poor little Harriet who wore Lalla’s clothes, and had her lessons paid for to keep Lalla company, sneaking around and getting her photograph taken! The bit about her future was idiotic, of course, for Harriet had no future. It was the meanness of it she minded. Now that she came to think of it, Harriet was being mean all round. As the angry thoughts flew round in Lalla’s head, she skated faster and faster as if she were in a relay race. “Mean! Mean! Mean!” But if Harriet was going to treat her like that, she would show her.

When Harriet, knowing nothing about the photograph, skated back on to the private rink, Lalla, her face scarlet, dragged her into a corner.

“Look at that!”

Harriet stared at the photograph. Her! Her in a paper! Then she saw what the paper had written.

“Oh, bother! I never knew it was being taken, or I wouldn’t have let them.”

“Why not?”

“Because the family might see it, and I don’t want to tell them I’m taking tests or anything. I want to surprise them.”

Lalla looked at Harriet, and a stab shot through her. Surprise them! Suppose she did! Suppose she could! Suppose…but she would not think of that. She was frightened at her half thought, and so worried and miserable she could have cried. But she was too proud to do that in public, and anyway she knew of something better to make Harriet feel as awful as she herself was feeling.

“You’d better keep this photograph, for it’s most likely the only one they’ll ever take of you. If you pass your inter-silver, I’ll tell Aunt Claudia I don’t want you to work with me any more.”