Here was some bed linen too fine for the household chest: here, pinned within a towel was the Bannerman christening-robe with its intricate, wonderful embroidery of thistles all down the front. And beside it were a bunch of rare laces tied with tape and an infant’s scarlet slipper.

But the real find was a shawl which Joanna had never seen before. Had she set eyes on it, even in her earliest childhood, she was sure she could not have forgotten it. Folded up, it had taken very little space in the drawer, for it was woven all of silk thread, and its deep fringe was of ivory coloured silk. But the pulses of its finder quickened as she shook the foreign thing out into a great gay square. It more than covered Juley’s double bed with its rich, mellowed whiteness, and there were flowers and leaves all over it – big blotches of scarlet and yellow and blue flowers, and little blue-green leaves that interlaced, and tendrils that were purplish, almost black, between.

When she had looked her fill at it Joanna folded it again and put it on the top of a separate pile which had been growing steadily at one particular corner of the bed.

IX

On Friday, the day before the vans were expected, Joanna told the astonished but grateful Janet that she might sleep till Monday at a sister’s house. She would only be asked to come for some hours to Collessie Street the next day. Linnet had already found a bed with friends, and the Boyds were taking it for granted that Joanna would come to them.

On the Saturday morning she was very early astir. The transcendent assurance of the preceding days still possessed her, and she felt finely strung, alert, complete mistress of herself and of those about her, a perfectly adjusted instrument.

Up and down stairs she followed the burdened, staggering men, carried out many of the things herself, was there ready with a cloth when a few drops of rain fell upon the drawing-room cabinet as it stood on the pavement.

She was hovering on the pavement, inspecting the half-packed vans and thinking how poor and undignified even the most cherished pieces of furniture appeared under the open sky, when Louis came up behind her, and touched her and spoke.