‘That Mother ought to have had—’

‘—and having everything his own way. Now he’s dead, everything feels flat, somehow.’

‘That’s because you’re tired out. So am I. I couldn’t feel another thing, not if I was given a hundred pounds. I can’t see properly and I ache all over.’

‘You’d better go off home to bed, dear.’(Francis often called Sophia ‘dear,’ in a sober grandfatherly manner.) ‘I shall ring up Uncle Preston to let him know I’m all right, and then I’ll go back to school.’

‘Won’t you be miserable, darling? I wish you could come back with me, but there’s nowhere you could sleep.’

‘Oh, I shall be all right. Old Squitters is very decent; he won’t let people bother me tonight. And I’ll write to you in Prep time tomorrow, and we’ll see each other on Sunday, and Harry will be there, too.’

And Francis suddenly grinned, his thin sensitive lips parting to show small white teeth. He looked for an instant like a fierce young wolf.

‘What’s the joke?’

‘Oh, nothing. I was thinking about Sunday, that’s all.’

They were wearily putting on their things again, Francis patiently holding Sophia’s coat while she poked ineffectually for the armholes. She was an extraordinarily clumsy girl, and was always bumping into things and bruising her thin skin, turning her ankles over, and nearly falling in front of lorries. She used to defend herself by saying that Shelley fell over things, too, and look what a poet he was, but this scarcely relieved the apprehensions of her friends.

When they got outside they found it had stopped raining, and was a beautiful windy night. Arm in arm they walked slowly up the steep hill to the Turpin Arms, where Francis would catch the little bus to Northgate School, which was halfway to Northgate village.

Sophia had the strange feeling that they were alone in the world. The rain had driven people indoors, many of the shops were already putting up their shutters, and the High Street was almost empty. It was too early for cars to be going past on their way down to the theatres, and the crowds coming back from shops and offices were indoors, and just beginning on their well-earned suppers.

Slowly, slowly, with bent head and lagging feet, she climbed the hill, leaning on her brother’s thin, steady arm. He was a few inches taller than she, and she had the comfortable sensation of leaning on him spiritually as well as physically. She wished that Harry were there to take the other arm, and then there would be the three of them, climbing the long, dark hill slowly but surely together. Her dear, dear brothers! A wave of love for them flowed into her mind, and she pressed Francis’s arm.

‘Tired, my dear?’ asked Francis. They were at the top of the hill. The fresh glimmer of dancing water came to them from the Oval Pond, opposite the bus stop. On either side of the Don’s Mile the dark Heath dropped away in sweet miniature valleys, thinly sewn with may trees and birch, with sleeping swans on its little pools and the grass on its hillsides wet with rain.