You see now perhaps a selection of the reasons for which I so opposed the idea of going to Hereford. I thought them over to myself as I waited for David to come back. He never walked out for long, though he was quick to go. My strongest reason, I must admit, was that I could not bear to relinquish the idea of this television job that I had acquired: it seemed such a perfect answer to everything, as it involved a good, steady wage and only three afternoons and evenings out of seven. It would have kept me happy, and I would not have had to leave the babies for more than fifteen hours a week of their waking lives; this seemed to me to be so nearly fair a bargain that I was in despair at the thought of losing it. I knew that I would never again have so adequate a chance of satisfying my conflicting responsibilities, for jobs like that are naturally rare and heavily oversupplied. My needs are common needs. I had been looking forward to it for months: the thought of those three evenings at work, in a large impersonal building where no cries could reach me had kept me going through the exhausting business of pregnancy, birth, and sleepless nights. Joseph was a frightful baby: I did not sleep one night through until he was fifteen months old. Even David had been glad for my sake about the job, and had managed to contain his indignation at the way it had been got. He really hates Bob, the man who arranged it for me. Bob is a big fat, wealthy dilettante, who sees himself for some reason as my patron, and me in consequence as a saleable commodity; I like him, and am grateful for his interest, but David thinks he is the lowest of the low. He hates anything devious and well connected with almost suspicious passion. Whenever I am with the two of them, or talking about one to the other, I always find myself in the embarrassing position of liking in one man what I love the other man for condemning. Once, in the very early days of our acquaintance, David threw one of Bob’s cameras through a pub window because he objected to Bob’s taking photographs of a seedy old drunkard. But in this instance, with reference to this job, even he admitted that Bob had been of use.