And at home it was worse. At home there was a jarring on the girl’s exposed nerves at every turn. Juley’s late nights were telling at last on her health. She was losing her wonderful recuperative power, and she suffered from swollen ankles. The children knew now when she had slept more on her chair than in her bed, by a puffiness that showed round her eyes in the mornings. But nothing they could do or say made any difference, so they were all cutting adrift from her.

Georgie in the autumn was going to London. She returned from Dresden late in June, her dream of emulating Neruda gone, but her enthusiasm intact. A Dresden fellow-student, with a new system of teaching children, was opening a small music-school in Hampstead, and she had asked Georgie to help her. Georgie’s capital – a sum of £400 which she and Joanna alike had by their father’s will – would be involved. But what a chance after only one year’s study abroad! So Georgie got her way.

There remained the boys; and though they were full of their own occupations, their activities brought the curves of their lives nearer to Joanna’s than they had been since nursery days.

Linnet, with a mind to the Law, and a berth promised him in Mr. Boyd’s excellent firm, was preparing for Leaving Certificates. He was studious rather than clever, and often he would come to Joanna begging her to “go over” an English essay, or he would ask her advice on a mathematical problem, the principles of which had first to be explained to her, so far behind had he left his sister in school subjects.

Sholto, on the other hand, dreamed Imperial dreams which wavered constantly between Canada and Australia. He loved open air, the exercise of his muscles, and all handicrafts. As soon as he left the Academy he was going to the Agricultural College, after which, before leaving the country he would apprentice himself to some farmer in the Lowlands. Meanwhile he spent his leisure in a shed in the back-green where he had a carpenter’s bench. He made stools, and medicine-cupboards, and little tables, and afterwards poker-worked them to his immense satisfaction. And though Joanna from her Art School heights despised such a facile mode of decoration, she couldn’t help growing interested when he asked her for designs. At Christmas-time especially, they turned out between them heaps of “blotters” and photograph-frames; and in return for his sister’s help, Sholto would gladly devote a whole Saturday afternoon to her when she was trying to turn the shed stove into a furnace for enamel-work.

But after Bob’s kisses there was no more savour for Joanna in her brothers’ companionship, and she had a miserable summer. She was glad of one thing only, that Mabel had gone back to stay with Aunt Ellen.