Meanwhile life in La France Quadrant became every day more difficult. The business of housekeeping, even for so small a family, was too much now for Juley. She went weighed down with it, and people in the streets looked askance at her unslept face and dragging gait. She had her being in a cruel trough of muddle, released only when sleep overcame her, or when she could pray aloud with a companion, and so keep sleep at bay while she cried for succour. But she was vigorous still. She could not live in the house and see herself superseded by a daughter. At the utmost she would apportion only certain vague duties to Joanna; and even here she was continually changing and fault-finding. At odd times, exasperating to one with work of her own to consider, she would make desperate appeals for daughterly help. Yet if Joanna tried unobtrusively to take some of the burden off her weary, indomitable shoulders, she was apt to resent it. A “companion” she would not hear of. “Treating me like a child or an idiot in my own house!” she exclaimed at the bare suggestion, and she would repeat the saying common with her “better to wear out, than rust out.”

Both the remaining children knew that a change in their way of living would have to be made, and made soon. But what change? And how bring it about? In the frequent debates between them and their mother each was prompted by a secret, personal desire, and these desires were in conflict. Linnet longed to be in rooms of his own: Joanna was heading for London: Juley did not know what she wanted. Pierced as she was by the knowledge that her children wished to be gone from her, she yet clung to the familiar. She fought against any acknowledgment that it was failing her at every point.

But in March came the tidings that Georgie was engaged to a young man of whom she had made mention continually for two years past – a London doctor named Max Wyler – and at La France Quadrant the announcement was hailed with a special excitement. Apart from its ordinary interest it introduced a new and unexpected element into the family situation. At the least it would bring about an immediate and, as it were, official family conclave. For Georgie was coming home at once to be married (Max, she wrote, strongly disapproved of long engagements); and with her and her beloved (a Eugenist, she said he was) coming fresh to the problem, it was felt that some solution was imminent.

And at about the same time, cousin Mabel proposed a long visit. Mabel had been married for several years now in India, but on this her first visit home, was without her husband; Why should not Mabel also, knowing them all as she had done since childhood, have a voice in the Bannerman council?