He found Sophia making preparations for a party which was to begin at ten o’clock that night, and also getting the supper. There was rather a lot to do, because neither Francis nor Harry considered a meal was a proper meal unless it included potatoes in some solid form.

Potatoes called ‘crisps’, which were thin as paper and could be conveniently bought ready cooked for twopence a bag, were not recognized by her brothers as potatoes. Nothing was said, but when Sophia served this variety of potato with beef or stew, an air of dignified regret hovered about Francis and Harry, rather as if Sophia had committed some error of taste.

So potatoes had to be peeled and boiled or mashed; and Sophia was now busy with them; for of course she could not ask Miss Tessitt to peel half a dozen potatoes and leave them ready to be boiled by Sophia on the latter’s return from town. Miss Tessitt would have called that Cooking, and she had not been engaged to cook.

The front door was open and Francis walked slowly in, swinging his hat. The little house felt cool and pleasant after the noise and dust of the London he had left in the valley, and there was a good smell of sausages frying. He inhaled the smell with pleasure, for he was not one of those dreary persons who dislike a smell of cooking, and thought that he would have a bath after supper, before the guests came. He lay down on the sofa and, putting his feet up, closed his eyes. He was exceedingly tired. It was surprising how the stamping of letters and the tying up of parcels, the making of tea and going down to the Docks and back could exhaust one. He had to be up every morning at six to be at work by eight o’clock, and the climb up the hill to the tube, and the long journey to the Monument took energy from him. He was still growing very fast and was doing a day’s hard work, in the full pressure of the harsh economic claw, when most boys of his age and class were developing in the sheltered world of school.

‘Is that you, darling?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tired?’

‘Dead.’

‘There’ll be some supper in about twenty minutes. Oh, I do wish there wasn’t this party tonight.’

‘Who’s coming besides us and Celia?’

‘Edward and Emily, and they’re bringing a girl. I don’t know her name. And George and Wiggins and Jane. And probably Celia’s young man, Capel.’

‘Can’t stand him.’

‘He is a bit serious.’

Silence. Sophia was hidden from him, busy with her sausages and potatoes in the kitchen behind the little glass-panelled door; and as she said no more, he fell asleep.

He was still asleep when she came in ten minutes later to set the cloth; and she stopped short at the sight of him, subduing her movements.

She had never seen anything looking so like a white, beaky, exhausted young bird. He was sprawling on the sofa with his head back and his mouth open; he had taken off his spectacles and his childishly thick eyelashes lay closely on his pale cheeks. He was alarmingly thin. The famous suit was beginning to hang on him in folds.