‘I must ask the boys first,’ said Sophia, suddenly grave, ‘I can’t go behind their backs, and they might not like the idea at all; I’m not sure whether they want to live orderly lives. But it would be wonderful if we could; we’ve never had anything but disorder and rows and misery. I love peace and quiet. I feel I want years and years of peacefully going to work every day and coming home to a cool quiet house smelling of flowers, and writing poetry … The Cottage is on the Heath, too! Could we have a dog, do you think? And I could go for walks with no shoes on before breakfast. But we must wait. Everything’s in too much of a muddle now; it wouldn’t be fair to ask your mother to let us have the cottage and then find we couldn’t afford it after all … But it would be marvellous, wouldn’t it? And then, even if the boys didn’t like the idea of an orderly life, just at first, perhaps I could persuade them to – without getting too much like Uncle Preston, I mean.’

‘I’m sure you could, darling,’ said Celia. ‘Will you carry the Lyons cake?’ and she added rather severely, ‘Those boys ought to appreciate you more, Sophia. You do a lot for them, you know. They don’t appreciate you half enough.’

Meanwhile, Harry was lying luxuriously in a very deep bath, with his beautiful face crimsoned by the steam and his dark hair curling with the damp, and saying in a lordly voice to the admiring Francis, while he tried to turn off the cold tap with his toes – ‘My dear man, I shan’t save a farthing of it. Not a farthing. I shall give you five hundred, and perhaps Sophia five hundred (she’s got a job, so she’s not so badly off) and I shall just blue the rest. We’ll blue it together. I hate the beastly money. It was all earned from diseases and people dying, and who wants it, anyway? You wait. We’ll have a good time. We’ll have some marvellous parties …’

It would seem that there were grounds for Sophia’s doubts about her brothers’ wish to lead an orderly and peaceful life.

The rest of the evening passed away very pleasantly, for everybody was soon full of fried potatoes, hot tea, and egg, and warmed by Celia’s big fire. The girls said nothing about the cottage scheme, and the boys did not mention Harry’s regal plans for disposing of the three thousand pounds, so no arguments or boring discussions about money took place. They talked a little about the will, but soon the subject lost its freshness, and they did not want to discuss it any more.

Perhaps this is one of the major differences between the young and the old; the young so quickly accept a strange event, assimilate it and cease to wonder at it, while the old, intent on chewing the last drop of savour out of that endlessly savoury bone, life, go on discussing an event for weeks and weeks. At nine o’clock that night the red sitting room at the Surgery was still steadily humming with the voices of Uncle Preston, Aunt Maxine and the rest, Talking It Over, but the three children and Celia were already, in their minds, eagerly pressing on towards the next event.