‘And the table here, under the window.’

Francis put it neatly into its place. ‘Did you get the leg mended?’

‘No. I meant to. I’ll see about it when I go to the village to get the supper. And the stair, too.’

‘Doesn’t it sound nice? Harry will be here about four, he said.’

‘And Celia’s coming to supper. I wanted her to be our first guest.’

‘And tomorrow’s Sunday, and on Monday my job starts. We needn’t get up early tomorrow, need we? I want to arrange my books.’

‘You needn’t. I shall, because I shall have lots to do. Oh, Francis, the Collection does look nice! You can add to it as we go on …’

She went upstairs with a pile of curtains.

The bedrooms had originally been one large room and had been made into two by a partition; each room had its own door opening on to a tiny landing. The well of the staircase was whitewashed, and threw clear light into the two little bedrooms, which were panelled in deal, washed over with dark stain. Their floors were of shining parquet, expensive, devilish to keep clean and easy to slip on. This had been Celia’s suggestion to her mother, and was typical of the insane and grandiloquent logic of her housekeeping.

Sophia dumped the curtains, which were of a pale pink cotton striped with green and patterned with bunches of bright pink cherries, on to the bed.

She went to the window and looked out.

Sweet air, sweet spaces of the Heath busy with cheerful Saturday afternoon sounds, sweet sight of the black fruit trees in the neighbouring gardens, starry and dazzling with buds!

She was so happy that she nearly began to cry, and when she thought of her mother and wished that she could have been there with them to see the little house and to enjoy it with them, she had to rub tears from her eyes.

Her room was certainly extremely small.

There was only room for the narrow iron bedstead which Mrs Carmody was lending her, and for Sophia’s battered old white dressing table which had drawers in for her clothes, and for two little hanging bookshelves. Her thicker clothes hung in a recess behind the bed’s head.

But when the curtains were up and filling the room with a rosy glow, and when a spread of the same cheerful material covered the bed, and a curtain of it veiled the recess, and when the wooden boxes which Sophia had (rather badly) painted scarlet were arranged on the dressing table, the tiny room looked gay and fresh.

Sophia gloated over it. She hung out of the window, picked anxiously at minute spots on the dressing table, arranged her worn shoes in a row, refluted the curtain folds and began arranging her necklaces and handkerchiefs in the scarlet boxes, but she was recalled by the voice of Francis from the boys’ room.

‘Sophia! Here a minute.’

She went in, and he said impressively, ‘That chap’s finished and he’s going. What ought I to give him? Five bob?’