There was no awkwardness about the conversation. Mrs Kellett was never embarrassed.

‘Please sit down, Sophia. You don’t mind me calling you Sophia, do you’ (she announced it; she did not enquire). ‘You see, me and Dad have heard such a lot about you from Maysie here. Is this the first time you’ve ever been over a fire station?’

It was not likely to be anything else, but Sophia supposed that most of Mrs Kellett’s friends (if the goddess had any) were always hopping about from one fire station to another as their husbands moved from district to district.

‘Yes. It’s very interesting. I’d no idea people lived up here.’

‘It’s very small. Only two rooms and a kitchen, but we make do,’ said Mrs Kellett, looking round the bright, gay little place with serious pride. ‘Dad and me are in the next room, and Maysie and Babs in here. That couch you’re sitting on pulls down and makes a nice bed for them, doesn’t it, girls.’

‘I don’t like sleepin’ with our Maysie,’ said a dispassionate voice from a corner. Sophia started and stared. A tiny sallow little girl, with two brown pigtails and a cotton overall over a drill tunic, was sitting there, a book on her knees. She was exactly like a mouse. Toby put out her tongue at her.

‘Girls!’ said Mrs Kellett, but placidly. ‘Always on at each other, they are,’ she explained. ‘I hope you like a fire, Sophia. Myself, I always like to begin fires about the middle of September. It’s our first today, you see.’

Her guest was indeed grateful for the little fire on which the black kettle steamed. Her hands were cold with apprehension, for she had just seen, on the high old-fashioned mantelpiece, an envelope addressed in a writing which she knew.

It was the letter.

Oh, if Mrs Kellett would only get it over.

But Mrs Kellett seemed to have a sense of the importance of ritual which was Japanese in its meticulousness. For half an hour exactly conversation was made about fire engines, the weather, home-made dresses, the pictures, and young girls going out to work. The topic of brothers was avoided by all. Then, as four o’clock struck, Mrs Kellett announced, ‘We’ll have our tea now,’ and Toby went into the kitchen and came back with a tray of cups and a large brown teapot and other things, among them a glass dish in which were a lettuce and some tomatoes, looking very bright because there were so many other green and red objects in the room.

‘Maysie said you liked green food, and I remembered and got these for you,’ said Mrs Kellett, lightening her awfulness by a kind and friendly smile.

Sophia was touched; but this little attention was going to make her task more difficult than ever, she felt. She tried hard not to look at the letter. No one looked at it. Even the mouse, who must have been well drilled for she seemed the sort of child who would take a relish in embarrassing people, did not look at it; and tea was taken with dignity and more conversation.