war; indeed, she was among the most popular as far as the staff were concerned

due to the kind appreciation she never shied from showing. It was in those days,

then, prompted by my natural admiration for the lady, that I had first taken to

perusing her volumes in the library whenever I had an odd moment. Indeed, I

recall that shortly after Miss Kenton's departure to Cornwall in 1936, myself

never having been to that part of the country, I would often glance through

Volume III of Mrs Symons's work, the volume which describes to readers the

delights of Devon and Cornwall, complete with photographs and - to my mind even

more evocative - a variety of artists' sketches of that region. It was thus that

I had been able to gain some sense of the sort of place Miss Kenton had gone to

live her married life. But this was, as I say, back in the thirties, when as I

understand, Mrs Symons's books were being admired in houses up and down the

country. I had not looked through those volumes for many years, until these

recent developments led me to get down from the shelf the Devon and Cornwall

volume once more. I studied all over again those marvellous descriptions and

illustrations, and you can perhaps understand my growing excitement at the

notion that I might now actually undertake a motoring trip myself around that

same part of the country.

 

It seemed in the end there was little else to do but actually to raise the

matter again with Mr Farraday. There was always the possibility, of course, that

his suggestion of a fortnight ago may have been a whim of the moment, and he

would no longer be approving of the idea. But from my observation of Mr Farraday

over these months, he is not one of those gentlemen prone to that most

irritating of traits in an employer - inconsistency. There was no reason to