She became rather silent as tea drew to a close, and the conversation grew more and more jerky and facetious; she stole a glance at the clock. It was five. They would certainly stay until six, because Harry would be home by then, but what was to be done with them until six o’clock?

She had already taken Angela and the aunts over the house on a visit of inspection and she was now apprehensive lest Uncle Preston should demand to see the furnishings of the bedrooms, and discover that the stair had not been mended.

But Uncle Preston did not want to see what had been put into the bedrooms. He knew that they were there, two of them, because he had seen them on his previous visit, and he was satisfied. He now wished to sit by the fire in the most comfortable chair, dry his knees, and digest the prawns. With these intentions in mind he sat down immediately they all rose from the table and looked about him with the peculiarly vacuous yet intent expression which the Garden family wore when it was not thinking about anything.

Auntie Loo helped Sophia to carry out the tea things into the kitchen while the others stood about in bored silence, staring at My Collection, picking up things and putting them down again and making no attempt to conceal the fact that they were in need of entertainment.

‘Where’s your wireless, Sophia?’ asked Angela, who was practising dance steps on the parquet, with one eye on Francis.

‘We haven’t got one.’

‘Haven’t you? Aren’t you absolutely lost without it? Mumsie and I would be, wouldn’t we? Mumsie likes to have it in the kitchen in the morning while she’s talking to the girl about the meals, and then I have it in the bathroom while I’m doing my little daily dozen, and we always have it on at lunchtime and Mumsie likes to listen to the Children’s Hour just after tea. She’s a great big baby, I always tell her, and then there’s the dance music, of course—’

‘You like the wireless, then?’ said Francis, putting coal on the fire with his back to her.

Ripples of laughter from Angela and tossings of the curls.

‘Sarky, aren’t you, of course we do, or we shouldn’t be always listening to it. We’d feel quite lonesome without our little portable, shouldn’t we, Mumsie?’

‘We should indeed, dear. But I expect Sophia prefers something classical. They often have really good music on the wireless, you know, Sophia. You really ought to get one, dear. It’s company when you’re alone.’

‘Yes, I really must think about it,’ said Sophia amiably, who hated the wireless, next to cockroaches, more than anything in the world. She thought, I have company when I am alone, too much. So much that I shall never find time to get it all into words, on to paper, out of my mind, so that my head feels blown clean inside as though a west wind had gone through it.