“There’s no need to be cross. I was just being friendly. It isn’t a sin to be interested in what your sister earns and all that, is it?”

Janet saw the wriggle, and being used to Sheila, knew that she felt cornered. She also knew that they had come to the crux of the conversation on the word ‘earn’. It was so true to Sheila’s method to produce casually the object of a talk, as if it had been under discussion for quite a while. Often, when Sheila had tried to screw information out of her in this way in the past, she had teased her by holding it back. This time she did not feel like teasing. The word ‘earn’ was like a clumsy finger prodding her hurt. She could not conceive why Sheila should care what her money was to be, and she certainly was not going to tell her. To avoid an angry answer, she took a grip on herself, and said lightly, “I’ve fixed everything,” and went out of the room.

Janet would have been startled if she could have seen Sheila’s reaction to this remark. She looked after Janet, a flush spreading over her face. “She is mean,” she muttered. “I believe he’s told her, that’s why she’s cross, and she just isn’t telling me because she wants me to go on worrying.”

Janet gave a lot of care to her appearance the next morning. The rain had gone and it looked like being a fine day. She had some pretty, short-sleeved summer frocks, one of which she would have liked to have worn, but she rejected them and put on a long-sleeved, navy-blue dress, made of light woollen material that she had worn in the office. It had a neat white pique collar, and gave her a tidy, trim look. She wore her hair cut rather short, but long enough at the sides to curl back over her ears. This morning she put pins in these curls to hold them severely in place. When she was dressed she examined herself in the glass. There was no long mirror in her bedroom, so she tilted the dressing-table mirror backwards and forwards and saw herself in bits. “I’ll do,” she told herself. “Lisle stockings, flat-heeled country shoes, quiet dress, up to the throat and down to the wrists. Mouse-coloured hair, neat enough to be unbecoming; I shouldn’t think anybody could look more like a governess than I do. He shan’t say that he doesn’t get something that looks right for his two guineas.”