All his fears had been realized. She occasionally did go out with men of twenty-three. One, who owned a small sports car, wanted to marry her. She was pursued by boys of all shapes and sizes, at all hours and wherever she went.

But Mum, like a blessed tower of propriety and strength, stood in the way of all these suitors and fobbed them off. Toby had been brought up on the most severe Victorian rules; and this training had combined with her natural dancing gaiety and vitality, instead of fighting with it, and the result was such a combination of common sense and sweet warmth as intoxicated Francis.

One reads sometimes of women who manage their lives and their love with what can only be called sweet reasonableness; and more rarely one meets them. They will yield naturally to a lover, yet keep the relationship orderly and full of happiness. The lucky lover usually has the sense to marry his love.

Sophia suspected that Toby belonged in this rare class, though Francis never spoke of his relationship with her and she knew nothing definite about their feelings for one another. Sophia knew that, on the face of it, it was most unlikely that Toby should belong to this type. Her class and upbringing made it unlikely. Yet such charmers flourish calmly, and get what they want and give what they desire to give, in the most unfavourable circumstances. Sophia believed that Toby had simply absorbed her mother’s warnings about Keeping Oneself to Oneself, Having Everything Nice, and Not Being Rough or Fast, and Respecting Your Elders, and quietly arranged her secret life as she pleased.

All these imaginings upon Sophia’s part were vague, and she asked no questions to test their truth. She saw that Francis and Toby were cheerfully happy; she told herself that her brother’s life was his own to manage. His relations with Toby, like most other circumstances at the cottage, appeared to be unconventional, but they only worried Sophia as a part of the general lack of plan and order.

The increasing disorderliness of life at the cottage troubled her deeply.

‘You’ll go to parties, yes, lots of parties,’ prophesies the song and adds defiantly, ‘So will I, so will I.’ The singer appears to derive some comfort from the prospect; Sophia did not. There was a party at the cottage every weekend, with much port and sherry and noise. The port and sherry made the party more expensive; people seemed to enjoy it more, too.

And every Friday morning Harry had to borrow half-a-crown from Sophia to pay his fare down to the theatre. Only Providence and the bars round Leicester Square knew what he spent his money on. Sophia took two pounds of it, feeling unkind, but justified, and the rest melted.

Much of it seemed to go on what was vaguely known as a cheery evening with old Edward. From this exercise Sophia, who liked results, saw none.

She could not blame Harry for not knowing where his money went, for her own melted in the same mysterious manner.