Sophia looked very like him as she stood staring down at him, her face heavy with worry. She too was pale and grimy from her day’s work, and her blue linen dress unbecomingly showed her large bones. She was not, in fact, so unhappy as she looked, because her natural expression was severe and a little worried, but if their mother could have seen Sophia and Francis at that moment she would have been very unhappy about them.

Three months of life in the cottage might have been delightful, but they had not been able to put fat on the bones of Sophia and Francis, nor make them look less fierce and tired. It was rather unfortunate (thought Sophia, taking out knives and forks from the cupboard as quietly as she could) that an unusually tiring childhood should be succeeded by an unusually tiring youth. By the time we are about thirty, thought Sophia, to whom that age seemed so remote as to be incredible, we shall all three be very tired indeed.

The fact was, what with the necessity for earning their own livings and for having as much fun as possible in the intervals of so doing, there was no peace.

No peace, she thought, pouring water on to the tea. But that isn’t our fault. In order to have peace you need a stable background and money coming in which doesn’t have to be worked for quite so desperately hard, and you need kind, sensible older people to turn to sometimes. The relatives aren’t kind or sensible, though presumably they mean to be, and that’s very tiring, too. And then I suppose we can’t expect to forget the misery of Father and Mother in three months, even if we have been able to do as we like and enjoy ourselves; you can’t forget twenty years in a quarter of a year.

Everything conspires in fact to make Francis and me tired, and Harry a rackety-pot. I can see it all quite calmly and sensibly but that doesn’t make things any less worrying.

I don’t really think it’s my fault that there isn’t much peace here, she decided, as she put the butter into a little dish of red glass. I like peace but the boys don’t seem to like it, though they may need it. It’s very difficult to make people accept what they need but don’t like. I might stop having so many people here, but then the boys do so enjoy showing the place off, and we could never do that when we lived at home, because things were so awful.

It does seem rough luck if they can’t have a little fun now.

Even if I did stop the parties, we should still have to work for our livings and be likely to be sacked at any moment, all of us. I suppose everyone has to work, or almost everyone, but surely other people whose fathers were doctors don’t have to work quite so hard, when they’re quite so young, without any feeling of security at all?