‘I do wish you wouldn’t read that miserable paper, Celia,’ said Sophia fretfully. ‘Beastly depressing rag; no wonder you’re always in a ferment about the tariffs and pacifism and Fascism and all the rest of it.’

‘I like to keep abreast. So ought you; I wonder you ever manage to do your job. You never read the papers, and you never know what’s going on anywhere.’

‘When I don’t know, I invent,’ said Sophia superbly, pushing herself deeper into her comfortable chair.

‘I suppose your job is quite safe?’ Harry asked her. ‘I mean, are they likely to sack you at a minute’s notice?’

‘No one is safe in Fleet Street,’ replied his sister, quoting old Mr Burrows, who worked in the news agency where she was employed, ‘Anyone’s likely to be fired at any minute. No one is indispensable. But Mr Piper seems quite to like me. He says I’ve got a real nose for news, and later on he’s going to let me try doing some short articles for Canada – not just re-writing, I mean. I’m to write them entirely.’

‘Will he pay you extra?’

‘I expect so. He’s very kind. He said it would be pocket money for me and I could buy silk stockings with it.’

‘I expect he’s after you,’ Harry said, looking at his sister with interest.

‘Oh, surely not! Oh, I shouldn’t think so for a moment. He likes Miss Candy, his secretary, much better than me; she’s so pretty – rather like a canary, you know; wears a bright yellow jumper and always talking in a high, sweet, birdy sort of voice.’

‘Sophia, you are extraordinary,’ said Celia. ‘You never seem to think anyone admires you.’

‘Well, usually they don’t. Not like that, anyway. I’m far too severe, and I put people off by laughing at them, too.’

‘One day you’ll meet someone who won’t be put off.’

‘Well, that will be very nice. I shall like it,’ she said simply; and then was silent, as were the others.

They were all a little languid, the three young Gardens because they had spent an exciting and exhausting afternoon, and Celia because she had been lazing by the fire for three hours, half-asleep, but rather distressed about the Polish Corridor.

No one felt inclined to rush into a gossip about the will. Harry was now a little embarrassed because his inheritance seemed to cut him off temporarily from his brother and sister; Francis was suffering from a reaction after his dramatic coup earlier in the afternoon, and did not want to talk, Sophia felt saddened and very worried. They had hardly any money, no home except the hated Surgery, no parents. What would become of them?

Celia’s manners were too good even in the presence of her three oldest friends to permit her to ask questions when they obviously did not feel like talking. So the four sat in comfortable silence, with the smoke from Celia and Harry’s cigarettes going straight up into the air, and the quiet ticking of the clock and the fluttering of the fire making a soothing little duet.