“Where, as you say, nobody but the cows see you,” Maggie added.

Sheila looked from Janet to her mother with a hunted expression.

“Of course I don’t. But it won’t go on. I mean the war might finish, or—or anything.”

“Even if it did, which at the moment doesn’t seem very likely, I shouldn’t think Worsingfold would be a riot of gaiety.”

“The quickest way to finish the war is for everybody to get down to working,” Maggie pointed out.

Sheila looked more hunted than ever.

“Of course, if you’re going to drive me out.”

Maggie laid aside her egg-cup, and helped herself to some jam.

“Don’t talk nonsense, dear. You always understood that you had to work for your living.”

“Only for six months, and then I was going into pictures.”

“Yes, if there hadn’t been a war,” Maggie agreed.

“If you hadn’t made that idiotic fuss and made me learn to type, I’d have been in pictures before the war started.”

“Don’t let’s have all that again,” Maggie pleaded. “The point is the war did come. I don’t know what the position of actresses is, but I feel sure only the very high-ups are allowed to go on working; the rest, together with all you other girls, will sooner or later be called up like the men, and only fair too, if you ask me.”

“Then Jan will have to go too. She won’t be able to stop round in the country teaching one kid.”

Janet, her eyes on Sheila’s resentful face, struggled to get at what was at the back of Sheila’s mind. “I’m sure she wants to stop here for some reason,” she thought. “A reason with Sheila is a man. It can’t be Mr. Sheldon or, of course, she’d have taken on teaching Iris. I wonder what other men there are round here. I must ask Mum.”

“Janet won’t mind,” said Maggie. “If it’s her duty.”

Sheila gave Janet a malicious look.

“She pretended she was going to join up. She told Old Tom she was going in the W.R.N.S. Swankpot. You won’t half look a fool in Worsingfold when they find that all you’ve done is to take on the job I didn’t want.”

“The W.R.N.S.!” Maggie looked at Janet. “It’s the first I’d heard of that.”

Janet bent her head to hide a flush.

“It was only an idea.”

“We’ll have a talk later on.” Maggie turned back to Sheila. “I think you should give yourself a week to make up your mind, dear, then you must register at a Labour Exchange.”

“Labour Exchange! Me!”

Janet sighed.

“Yes, even you.”

Sheila was scratching a pattern on the cloth with her nail.