It was only a short walk to Bedford Street and Jean felt her spirits lift at the first glimpse of the bottle-green shop front and the gold painted sign. A Silver Cross pram was parked on the pavement outside; a baby in a blue knitted romper was kicking vigorously at his blankets and chewing on his fist. One cheek was fiery red with toothache. Jean and Margaret stopped to chatter to him until the mother emerged from the shop next door and bore him away.

Howard was in conversation with a man by the till and didn’t notice the visitors peering through the window. Even when they opened the door, setting the bell jangling, it was a second or two before he recognized his own daughter, and then his face broke into a smile of surprise and pleasure.

“I don’t know what she’d like,” the customer was saying, peering helplessly at the velvet trays of necklaces and bracelets laid out on the display case. “They all look much the same to me.”

“Perhaps this lady can advise you,” said Howard, indicating Jean. “She can bring a feminine perspective.”

The man, who was in his late twenties, perhaps, with a haircut of military severity, looked at her with helpless gratitude.

“But be warned, she has very expensive taste,” he added.

“That is quite untrue,” Jean assured the customer, who was now looking rather confused. “I know next to nothing about jewelry. But I can tell you which one I think is the prettiest.”

She indicated a delicate silver bracelet, dotted with moonstones—the cheapest of all the exhibits, though this was not, for once, a consideration.

“I like this one,” said Margaret, pointing a nibbled finger at a more ostentatious and costly ruby pendant.

“That’s lovely too,” Jean agreed, realizing that she had hardly done Howard a favor by recommending the one with the modest price tag.

“Yes. Perhaps a ruby,” the young man said. “I think it sends the right signals.”

Howard’s lips twitched and Jean looked away, feigning sudden interest in a display of gentlemen’s wristwatches.

“There are actually matching earrings,” said Margaret. “You could get those, too.”

“Good heavens, Margaret,” said Howard. “I’m afraid this young lady is my daughter,” he explained. “And therefore not an entirely disinterested party.”

“Quite the saleswoman already!” said the man, and almost seemed persuaded to take them until it occurred to him that he couldn’t now be sure whether his fiancée had pierced earlobes. The fact that he couldn’t remember this detail troubled him. “You’d think I’d have noticed a thing like that,” he said, shaking his head as Howard polished the ruby pendant and put it in a velvet box.

The box went inside an elegant green bag with handles of satin ribbon. Jean felt a surge of envy for this unknown young woman, soon to be the recipient of such a lavish gift. Although she could not imagine any circumstance in which she would be able to wear a ruby pendant, it would be an exciting addition to her drawer of treasures.