To Journey Together

GLADYS SMITH, who was certainly the prettiest and most enterprising of the half-dozen girls in the office of Connelton Tours Limited, twiddled the fingers of her left hand and complacently watched the light glinting on the diamond which had so recently been placed there.

"And to think," she remarked to her admiring colleagues, "that none of it would ever have happened if I hadn't altered my name just a little and gone on that cruise!"

"Oh, I don't know that I'd say that," objected Sally Pascoe, the senior shorthand-typist, who preferred to be called a secretary. "I believe your fate will find you wherever you are."

"Mine wouldn't have found me in an English seaside resort," retorted Miss Smith, which was rather unkind of her and showed that she was getting a bit above herself in the excitement of her engagement, because everyone knew that Sally Pascoe went every year to Clacton for her holiday and, as a matter of fact, appeared to have a wonderful time there.

"There's quite as much drama and romance in a seaside town as on a boat," Miss Pascoe asserted, bridling slightly. "And I'm sure there are ten engagements made on land for
everyone
at sea."

No one felt able to
dispute these arbitrary statis
tics, so there was a short silence, until Elinor Shearn said tactfully, "I think Gladys's engagement is thrilling wherever it started. I'd never have had the nerve to do what she did, but it certainly seems to have turned out well."

Gladys Smith laughed, her usual good-humour completely restored, because she thought it really had been rather clever of her to book one of the firm's cruises for herself, in the name of Miss G. Dereham
Smith. And, if she had recklessly spent the whole of her Aunt Miriam's small legacy in fitting herself

out lavishly for the occasion, who could now say that the extravagance had not been justified, since on that cruise she had met the rich and eligible Bernard Holman, to whom she was now engaged?

"It will be your turn next," she said kindly to Elinor, though without conviction, and then turned back to her work. For such a remark was merely a piece of good-nature and not a statement of opinion when made to
anyone as quiet and self-effacin
g as Elinor Shearn. She was a nice kid, Gladys Smith considered, with her big grey eyes and that pretty, shy smile, but she definitely lacked what Gladys characterized to herself as "oomph".

In this opinion Elinor would without rancour have concurred. She knew that if—inconceivably
she had ever brought herself to go off on a cruise like Gladys, no brilliant Bernard Holman would have crossed her path. Or, even if he had, she would have been too shy and uncertain to have known what to make of him.

Not that she was without her dreams. Sometimes when she typed what were known as the "itinerary sheets" of clients who were to spend their holidays in magical-sounding places, she thought she could visualize the scenes down to their smallest detail; the sparkle of sunlight on the snow in winter sports centres, the heart-searching blue of Mediterranean waters, the fairy-tale quality of ruined castles clinging to cliffs above the Rhine. She could almost see herself there.

But there was never anyone else there with her. Her imagination stopped short, or else her shyness and inexperience curbed it, at the idea of peopling the scene with any disturbing, unpredictable strangers.

Product, as she was, of a large, uninhibited, cheerful family, Elinor was curiously quiet and withdrawn in temperament. She loved her family and was exceedingly happy at home, but even there she preferred the role of observer, adviser and—on occasion —comforter, rather than that of the central figure in any situation.

Occasionally this worried her busy, but loving and observant mother, who said once to her husband, "I don't know quite what to do about Elinor."

"What should you do about her?" enquired Elinor's father with cheerful obtuseness. "She isn't sickening for something, is she?"

"No, of course not. I should know what to do if she were. But she's so quiet and shy, and sometimes I think—"

"A good thing too," Mr. Shearn interrupted with emphasis. "If they were all like Deborah—" Deborah being his lastborn and of an energy, self-confidence and loquacity proper to her twelve years—"this place would be a mad-house."

"Yes, yes," agreed his wife soothingly, aware that Deborah was passing through a stage very hard to defend in one sentence. "But Elinor is twenty-one, you know. Three years older than Anne, who is already enjoying quite a lot of social life. Elinor should be going out to dances and tennis-par
ties, and bringing home her boy
friends."

Mr. Shearn thought otherwise, however.

"Haven't we enough with our own brood?" he wanted to know. "Not to mention that superior and disagreeable young woman Edward brought home the other evening. If he had no more sense at twenty-three than to pick her for a friend, I am thankful Elinor is twenty-one and content to stay at home. What induced him to bring the girl here, anyway?"

"I suggested that he should."

"You did? Was that necessary?"

"Yes, dear, of course," Mrs. Shearn said. "It was only in his home circle that he was likely to see how unreal and pretentious she was. He thought her glamorous and knowledgeable outside, but he didn't really like the way she snubbed Elinor, you know, nor the way she looked at you when you asked if Murder in the Cathedral was a thriller."

"Dear me, did she 'look at me'?" Mr. Shearn showed mild interest. "Isn't it a thriller, then?"

"No. But that doesn't matter. We were talking about Elinor. I wish the child were not so shy."

"Nonsense. Be thankful she has good manners and a proper regard for other people's likes and dislikes. None of your other children suffers from shyness, anyway."

"That's true," murmured Mrs. Shearn, and wisely let the subject lapse. For she knew that when fathers begin to refer to their offspring as "your children" it is best to retreat for the moment.

It was certainly true that none of the other young Shearns was shy. Edward might make an occasional error of judgement in his girl friends, but he was a pleasant, sensible, likeable fellow, who was already doing well in one of the City banks.

Next to him in family order came Elinor, and then the eighteen-year-old Anne, who, after a long and insufferable period of being stage-struck, had now developed into a remarkably efficient assistant in the "model" department of a West End store.

Between Anne and the vociferous Deborah, who brought up the tail of the family, came Henry—regarded variously as a genius or a pest, according to the success or failure of the scientific experiments to which he was much addicted.

He had already blown the scullery window into the next-door garden (along with most of his own eyebrows) on one never-to-be-forgotten Saturday afternoon. But, on the other hand, he was undoubtedly the star of the school laboratory, and, as everyone knows, one cannot have a genius in one's midst without sacrificing some minor conveniences of living.

In these typical British-family surroundings Elinor played a quiet but vital role. To her went Edward for sympathy and understanding in his affairs of the heart, Anne for assistance in altering the occasional "model" she was able to buy from stock, Henry for consolation when great plans foundered on cruelly minor details, and Deborah for almost anything from help with irregular French verbs to a kindly ear into which to pour eloquent complaints about the extraordinary lack of understanding to be found in all teachers, but particularly in Deborah's maths teacher of the moment.

"You always have time for people," Deborah said, having unburdened herself of a long and boring tale about herself and Miss Cox and square roots, on the evening after Gladys Smith's engagement announcement.

"Well, I remember I used to feel badly about square roots sometimes," Elinor replied kindly, as she tacked lace on to the hem of a petticoat, ready for applique work.

"That's awfully pretty." Deborah leaned over and breathed down the back of her sister's neck. "Is it for you or Anne?"

"For me, I think. But Anne did admire it—and I haven't got anything for her birthday yet, of course."

"You keep it for yourself," Deborah advised. "Anne's got plenty of glamorous undies and you haven't. Why, the only glamorous dress you have is that smoky-blue, pleated chiffon thing. You could wear that petticoat under that. It'd look awfully glamorous."

"I'll see," said Elinor, who knew from maddening repetition that "glamorous" was the word of the moment in Deborah's class. "I haven't really any special occasion for wearing either."

"You never know. Things happen," Deborah declared. "And then you want to look glamorous."

Elinor laughed. But then she sighed a little, because in her heart she thought that perhaps she was not the kind of person to whom things "happened".

When she thought how pleasant it was sitting by the fire sewing, however, she felt ungrateful. And presently Anne came in and gave a most entertaining account of the film she had just seen, and a lively description of what had happened at her work that day.

"By the way—" she turned to Elinor—"your boss's wife came in for a couple of dresses. She's pretty nice, isn't she?"

"I didn't know Mr. Prynne was married," exclaimed Elinor, reflecting that the General Manager

looked a dried up, confirmed bachelor, if ever there was one.

"I don't mean his wife—if he has one. I mean Lady Connelton," Anne explained. "She's Sir Daniel's wife, isn't she?"

"Of—of course. I hadn't thought of him. We hardly ever see him, you know. He's been ill for ages, but I believe he is getting better now."

"Yes, he is." Anne seemed well informed. "He's reached the recuperation stage, Lady Connelton said, and they're going away to Europe. What fun! And it's still almost the middle of winter!" And she sighed enviously.

"I don't expect they'll be having fun, exactly," Elinor said. "He has been very ill indeed." But she decided that she must ask Miss Pascoe in the morning if she knew where Sir Daniel and Lady Connelton were going for the recuperation trip.