Gale wrote to Mrs Lockwood announcing their arrival and proposing that he should call. He had in truth neglected to fulfil his promise to her in respect of visiting the little girls, estate matters having kept him at home that autumn. But his thoughts now turned again to his poor friend, who would never see his girls grown, nor walk them up the aisle to the side of their eager grooms. Really it was his duty to maintain an avuncular friendship with the little family. Full of good intent, he sent to his bookseller for something suitable for the children and had back Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome. On perusal this latter seemed to him better suited to the taste of boys, for it was all heroics and clashing swords, but it would make a little packet apiece, for them to unwrap.

Mrs Lockwood received him warmly and he found her house more charming in the dingy December afternoon than even it had been in the light of high summer. A fire glowed in the polished grate and the lamps in the first-floor drawing room were lit and shone bright, their wicks neatly trimmed so that the low flames left the glass shining and clear. The trimming of wicks was a special bugbear with William, for the failure to do so caused the glass to blacken and sometimes even to crack. At The Grange he was forever asking for the glass to be taken down and cleaned, the wicks snipped. Alice seemed never to remark this, for all that she daily used a lamp for reading.

Once again Molly and Kitty greeted him without ceremony, but soon clambered on to his knee. They had much to tell: a kitten was now resident in the house and provided them with much amusement, although the animal had scratched when they attempted to dress it in their dolls’ clothes, so that they had had to abandon the attempt. In return, William told them about the kitten which had come to lodge with him in his tent in the Crimea and put its tail in his inkwell when he was writing.

‘Did our Papa know your cat?’ asked Molly.

‘I fear he did not,’ came the reply.

‘Captain Gale is very kind to talk so much of cats and kittens each time we see him,’ said Mrs Lockwood.

William was flattered that she should have retained the memory of their last encounter.

‘It is true that I do not have occasion to speak of them so often at home,’ he said, ‘but it is a subject I am content to discuss at any time.’ And he twinkled at the widow, over the top of her children’s fair heads.