At last Harry said: ‘Celia, would you mind awfully if I had a bath? It takes fourpence to have a proper bath in my digs and a chap must have a bath every day, and so it comes rather expensive. Would you mind?’

‘Of course not. The geyser’s just been mended again. Do you know how to work it?’

‘Not if it’s an electric one. It is, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. I’ll come and show you.’

‘And I’ll sit with you while you’re having it,’ said Francis, who liked Celia but thought that she was too bossy for a girl, and was rather afraid that Harry might fall in love with her while they wrestled together with the electric geyser.

He and Harry were very fond of sitting with each other and gossiping while they had baths; the custom dated from the days when they were so small that Harry had been told to watch Francis wash himself, and see that he did not drown while their mother or nurse went out of the room. Then they floated celluloid swans or played rafts with the soap; now they talked about girls and Edward Sweeting or boxing; but gossiping in the bathroom was still one of their favourite pastimes.

‘I’ll get some supper and it will be all ready for you when you come out. We’ll have it by the fire; only don’t be too long, because if you’ve got to catch that train you must leave here by nine, and it’s nearly half past five now, and you mustn’t go out just after a bath, you’ll catch cold,’ said Celia leading the way to the bathroom.

The boys shut themselves in, and the room soon became full of steam and the steady murmur of their voices, while Sophia and Celia went down into the old basement kitchen, where there were deep cupboards and a stone floor, but an elaborate and terrifying electric stove.

Sophia, having asked if she could help and been told no, sat on the kitchen table and stared down at her slender ankles and rather large muddy brogues, swinging them slowly to and fro, while she told Celia about the will.

‘I do think your father was a swine, darling, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ observed Celia gently, at the end of the tale; the ugly word came with odd effect out of her beautifully shaped lips. ‘Fancy not leaving you a thing.’

‘It isn’t that – so much,’ said Sophia, still staring down at her shoes, ‘I don’t mind Harry having it a bit, really. It’s just that … well, Celia, I don’t want to be a beast about Harry, and disloyal, only I do rather wonder if he was the most sensible one of the three of us to leave it to? You see, if we sell the practice and get all that for it, we shall be really quite rich, for a bit at any rate.’

‘You’ll be able to have a lovely time,’ said Celia, who had as much money sense as a caterpillar.