The instant they were in the cosy dark cavern of the taxi and travelling away from the Surgery, Francis burst out, ‘Look here, I’m frightfully sorry about today. I never thought it would be split up between us three, you know; I thought the relations would probably get a lot, even if Father had died intestate. That’s why I didn’t tell anyone. I wanted to see their faces when I popped up with the will, and did them out of their little legacies. It’s rather rotten for you, Sophia; you don’t get a bit.’

‘Well, neither do you,’ retorted Sophia. ‘And I don’t see what else you could have done, really; except that I rather wish you hadn’t put old Marriot’s back up; he was furious. As far as the relations were concerned, it fell a bit flat.’

‘It was jolly good,’ said Francis, beginning to laugh. ‘Uncle Preston’s face was a sight.’

‘Are you awfully fed up, Sophia?’ asked Harry, anxiously, ‘It won’t make any difference, you know. If we do manage to sell the practice, I shall split it up between us. Of course, if we don’t, there won’t be anything.’

Sophia considered for a few seconds, staring out of the window at the dingy little houses which they were passing.

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Not really fed up. I’ve never had any money that I haven’t earned, and it would have been nice to have had a little bit that was really my own and hadn’t had to be worked for. To buy things, I mean, and really have some in the bank. That’s what I should have liked; something saved, in case anything awful happened. But it can’t be helped. Besides, I can always earn money. Not lots, but enough to keep me going.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Francis; this boast seemed to him, as such remarks do seem to people who have never earned a halfpenny by their own work, an amazing piece of self-confidence.

She shook her head.

‘I just know it, in the same way that I know my eyes are green and I like walking. I bet you I’m right. You see.’

‘Well,’ said Harry. ‘If we don’t sell the practice, we shall be in a ruddy mess, because the old Deedle and I don’t feel we can always earn money, and bloody Budgy’s tour looks like going bust any minute. He’s made a second cut in salaries. I’m getting two pounds now. I ought to be home for good in another week, I should think.’

‘I think I can earn money,’ announced Francis. ‘Not always, like Sophia says she feels she can, but I do feel I can earn. I’m going to leave school and get a job.’

‘Angel!’ said Sophia, suddenly kissing his nose and knocking his spectacles on one side. He accepted the kiss graciously.

‘Do you know why Father left it all to Harry?’ asked Sophia.

‘Oh, it was after he’d had a row with me,’ said Francis. ‘He said I was always trying to run him, one night when we were at Frascati’s. He didn’t say anything about you at all. I think he was too fed up even to talk about it – your never coming to see him after Mother died, I mean. I didn’t take any notice; he was drunk, anyway, and didn’t know what he was saying. But next time, when North came in, he told her she was just in time to witness his new will, and he wrote it there and then.’