Uncle Preston, as it happened, did chance to notice what became of that little painting. Er … Mrs North … she was there … she bought it, quite cheaply, with one or two other small things.

‘Oh … thanks. I just wanted to know, that’s all. Thanks awfully, Uncle Preston. Goodbye.’

She hung up the receiver.

A hundred pounds; that was quite a lot of money. But Nydia the gentle and dark-eyed, holding out her sweet apple of tranquil wisdom for the tired world to taste – Nydia had been sold to a stupid and malignant woman. I’m a coward, thought Sophia. I ought to have gone, and bought her myself.

But when she got back to her room, prepared to spend the evening in bed with a book, she found a letter with an Italian stamp and she forgot Nydia and everything else in the world as she tore it open.

Like the flap of most painfully important letters, the flap of this letter was sealed down too tightly and too close to the top, so that it took the wildly impatient Sophia much longer than it should have done to get it open.

Yes, it was from Mrs Carmody. Yes, they could have the Cottage unfurnished or semi-furnished for thirty-five shillings a week, and Celia could be their landlady, receiving the rent in trust for her mother every Saturday. They could have it for a year, to see how the plan worked, and then, if it worked well (and we don’t get behind with the rent or bust things, thought Sophia), the lease could be renewed, possibly at a slightly higher rent.

Mrs Carmody was an old friend and an extremely kind one, but she did not buy expensive cottages on Enbury Heath for fun: sooner or later, they must begin to be profitable. Sophia knew enough about rents in Enbury Village to know that, just for the first year, they would be getting the Cottage at a bargain rent. She felt solemn with gratitude. She could have sung with joy and relief … and at the end of a year, they might have the three thousand pounds and be able to afford the slightly higher rent.

Now she had to telephone two or three people, and write a letter.

This must be done at once – before supper – before something awful had time to happen and spoil everything – the ground that had been seized must be consolidated and mapped.

She slapped her pockets to be sure that her keys were there, grabbed her handbag, and ran out again into the foggy blue night. She stopped at a shop on the way down to the telephone, bought a penny stick of chocolate and got eleven pennyworth of coppers with which to feed the telephone. She would probably need all these and more, for she was going to tell Uncle Preston about the cottage.

CHAPTER VIII

The nearest telephone box stood just inside the dreary, grimy, badly lit and romantic entrance to Enbury Heath Station on the L.M.S., and as she went into it she hoped that one of those seedy but pugnacious little men who always seem to want to use telephone boxes would not come and grimly plant himself outside, taking out his watch, tapping with his pennies on the window, mouthing at her, and otherwise urging her to hurry and finish her conversation, for she intended to be in the telephone box for some time.