He was boasting to hide his discomfort at the sight of her stricken face. She said nothing. She got up, and took a dirty glass off the flap and began to wash it carefully.

‘It’s all right, Sophia. For god’s sake don’t take it so seriously. You’re as bad as Uncle Preston. It’s only natural that we should want a bit of a burst now we’ve got the money. Harry was afraid you’d mind. He’s bought you a lovely bottle of scent. It’s upstairs on your dressing table. Would you like me to get it?’

She began to cry.

The thought of Harry buying scent for her was too much. She was wretched because he thought of her as a person who must be soothed by bottles of scent, and touched by his thought for her in the midst of his junketings, and dreadfully reminded by his kindness of the early days at the cottage when they were all peaceful and happy and hopeful together.

‘Shall I get it, dear?’

‘Oh, no – I’ll look at it myself later. Please leave me alone. I’m all right.’

‘And will you see Toby’s mother, darling?’

‘Oh, I suppose so. Do go away. Do leave me alone, can’t you?’

He retired into the bathroom with the ukulele; whence he came out half an hour later to meet Toby.

The evening was passed pleasantly by Sophia between Mr Pell and Uncle Preston.

After Francis had gone she cried herself sick; then she made some tea and got into a temper.

The boys might behave badly, but she was not going to rush into the bosoms of Uncle Preston and Mr Pell and admit that they had.

She would stand up for them to these old gentlemen, whose business it was not, however she and her brothers chose to behave.

She found a telephone number on Mr Pell’s notepaper, rang him up and told a female voice that she would see Mr Pell at half past eight that evening. At the cottage. Her cottage. The female voice went away and came back and said reprovingly that Mr Pell had a cold, and did not wish to venture out, and would prefer that Miss Garden came to Myrtle Cottage.

Sophia said politely that she had one, too, and that she did not want to venture out either, and so would Mr Pell come to her. The voice came back and said, outraged, that Mr Pell would.

As soon as Sophia had hung up the receiver the muffled bell rang; and there was Uncle Preston.

With a voluptuous inhalation of the breath he hailed his niece’s return. At last – at last – he could have a long, detailed, deliciously chewy discussion about the unspeakably frightful behaviour of Francis and Harry.

It appeared that the whole family was seething like a rookery.

No one had been able to get in touch with the boys for the past three days.

Some twenty-first birthday presents and messages for Harry (including a silk muffler crocheted by Auntie Loo with some difficulty and pain because of the stye on her eye) had not been acknowledged; and when Aunt Maxine was motored over by a friend on the afternoon of the birthday itself, she found the cottage shut up and all the curtains drawn, and though she suspected that somebody was at home (for she swore that she heard sounds within) no one would answer her knocks and whistles.