At the Surgery, their places of refuge had been the small nursery, with its green, shiny walls and large cupboard which Sophia, at twelve years old, had decorated with very bad paintings of Egyptian gods, copied from a British Museum catalogue; and the landing halfway up to their attic bedrooms. But in both places they could hear the distant slamming of doors and the shouts which meant that a row was going on. There were sometimes laughter and nice times at the Surgery, because their mother had made them, but never was there that feeling of peace, security, continuity, which children, if they are to be happy, need as they need sleep and pure air.

But here there was peace. The two voices whose rising and falling had lightened and darkened their childhood would never be heard again. Already Sophia was beginning to forget the beloved inflections of her mother’s voice; she tried to hear them with her mind’s ear, and could not. But sometimes, when she was thinking about other things, a sentence, or her own name, would suddenly sound in her inner ear in that very voice; and she would smile and think ‘Mother!’

The new alarm clock ticked loudly on the wooden mantelpiece, and the fire which Francis had lit danced in its cheerful gold; straw from the packing case lay over the floor, there was no food in the house and the beds were not made up, while respectable-looking people kept pattering past the open door and trying not to look in, and failing. Francis made shrill experimental little plucking sounds on the ukulele, and Sophia dreamed with her chin sunk in her hands; Harry was earnestly reading about football in The Star.

At half past four Celia strolled up and stood at the door for a second, smiling in at them with her curling fair hair lying mildly on the shoulders of an old green leather coat like the locks of a visiting angel.

The three looked up at her lazily, in smiling silence, and Harry politely swung his feet off the sofa.

It made her very happy to see her friends in her mother’s little house which she loved; and because it was largely her doing that they were there she felt happier still.

‘How nice it looks! Are you straight already?’

‘Mercy, no. We’re just idling. There’s masses to do. And I’m awfully sorry to bother you, but do you think you could lend us some blankets till next week? Then I can buy some … oh, I forgot! I’ve got fourteen pounds. Would I be justified, do you think, in buying some blankets? We’ve only got four, belonging to me. It isn’t enough.’

‘Of course you must buy some, Sophia, and mind you get good ones; they’re an investment. Have you got any sheets?’

‘Six. I had two pairs that I pinched when I left the Surgery (I thought they were ‘due to me,’ as The Deedle used to say) and I bought another pair at Camden Town for twelve and elevenpence.’