And Francis had made up his mind that the next event for him would be a girl. It was jolly humiliating to be sixteen and have no girl; all his friends had girls. He did not yearn over the vision of this mythical girl, nor prostrate himself before it. She was going to do the prostrating, not he. With that quiet determination to be cock of the flirtatious walk which was to serve him so well in later years, and which was to please so many young women who were tired of being allowed to do just as they liked, the precocious Francis sat in front of Celia’s fire, sunning himself in the imaginary but lovely eyes of a cheerfully submissive Girl.

Not one of the three said a word about the events which they were anticipating. Even so united a family had its natural and stubborn reticences; and it may be that in pondering over their plans for the next few months, Sophia, Harry and Francis felt a tremor, a murmur of ancestral voices prophesying war, for their dreams of the kind of life they meant to lead were certainly rather different.

Of course the position of the three was not so friendless and unfortunate as Sophia chose to think.

If she had put herself frankly under the protection of her uncle and aunts, confessing that she felt lonely, miserable and frightened of the future, they would most certainly have comforted her and confided to her the plans which they had discussed for the children’s welfare. They might not have understood precisely how she felt, and they might have been patronizing and fussy, but kind they would certainly have been; they were not monsters, despite their love of melodrama and their lack of humour. They only awaited confidence and signs of youthful desire for guidance from the children.

But this was just what Sophia would not make, and the boys never even thought of making signs. They stood as firm and reserved as three annoying Japanese images, and all the plans for their good had to go on behind their backs.

In the course of Talking It Over that same evening Uncle Preston, who was the senior partner in a small but prosperous firm which imported French chalk and minerals, suggested that he might be able to find employment for Francis in the offices of a larger and more prosperous firm which also imported French chalk and minerals.

‘What a life for a boy!’ said Aunt Maxine, lighting her eleventh cigarette since supper. ‘Shut up in an office all day, never seeing a girl from week’s end to week’s end, no fun! Much better let me find him a job on the stage, like Harry. That’s the life for a boy! No money in it, of course, nowadays; everything’s gone phut since the War, but it doesn’t do youngsters any harm to rough it a bit.’

‘Surely Francis has roughed it enough for the time being,’ quietly said Auntie Loo, who was knitting in a corner, as far away from Aunt Maxine’s cigarette smoke as she could put herself. ‘He looks very thin and pale, I thought. So does Sophia. Poor little things! I should say they wanted time to look round a bit and lots of fresh air and sleep, not “roughing” it. Couldn’t you find a place for Francis with Pettitt & Sons, Preston? It would be so much better for him to be under your eye.’