‘Can’t be any good at that price,’ said Celia, shaking her head. ‘Never mind, they’ll do for undersheets when you get new ones. I’ve bought some Devonshire splits for tea. Have you had it?’

Tea in the cottage that first afternoon inaugurated the series of giant, leisurely and extravagant meals which were, for months ahead, to exhaust Sophia’s pocket and leisure.

No sooner did one meal finish, with its sausages and fried tomatoes and quarts of tea, than another had to be got, with its boiled potatoes, chops and meat paste and butter and bananas and cream. There was no end to them; they went on endlessly, like the Alps in Pope’s Essay on Criticism.

But the time had not yet come when Sophia was tired of getting meals.

‘Pretty cups. Like the curtains,’ said Celia, looking at the tea set for six, decorated with gaudy red cherries and gold lines on a white ground, which Sophia had bought in Camden Town. Harry pulled out the table and arranged its rickety leg with care, Francis boiled the shiny new kettle on the little gas stove in the kitchen. The curtains were drawn, the door was shut on the dark end of the afternoon. Somebody put ‘Waiting For the Last Round Up’ on Harry’s gramophone, and a delightful mingling of warmth, cosiness, security, noise, bustle, amiability and the smell of toasting buns and fresh tea filled the sitting room.

‘I’m glad Aunt Maxine isn’t here,’ said Francis, just as they sat down to the table. ‘Or Aunt Grace or that beastly little Angela,’ added Harry. ‘To say nothing of Uncle Preston,’ ended Sophia, lifting the teapot: and the telephone bell rang.

Everyone looked alarmed.

‘I bet you it’s one of the old fools; will you go, Celia, lovey, and say we’re all out shopping?’ implored Sophia.

Celia went to the telephone and took off the receiver. A hearty and metallic voice asked her if that was Sophia, and announced that it was Aunt Maxine, and that it was being driven over by a pal that night to look at a flat at Swiss Cottage, and that it proposed to drop in on the children and see how they were getting along.

Celia, covering the receiver, agonizedly repeated this titbit of news to the stricken three.

‘A flat for who – her, or the pal?’ demanded Francis. ‘She isn’t coming to live at Swiss Cottage, is she, god help us?’

‘Tell her she can’t.’

‘Say we’re all out; and we shan’t be back till very late.’

‘Don’t say anything; hang up. She’ll think it’s a wrong number.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Celia in her drowsy voice which always sounded doubly sleepy over the telephone. ‘They’re all out.’

‘What – all of them? I thought they only moved in this afternoon. Isn’t Harry there?’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘What time will they be in? I might look in on my way back.’

‘Oh … not till very late, I’m afraid. They … no, not till quite late.’