In many ways, the key story in this moral maze of a book is perhaps the fate of the pet duck – the curiously named Elfrida Beetle – belonging to the Nettlebys’ younger son, Osbert. Colegate takes some pleasure in demonstrating the illogical priorities of the country dweller by means of the desperate search for the duck to save it from the duck drive that all the men are looking forward to. They want nothing more than to shoot as many wild duck as they can manage, despite hoping fervently that Osbert’s beloved duck should not be among them. That morning, the boy upsets the cage where he meant to keep the duck safe until the shooting was over, the bird flies away and as the day draws on, the danger grows until action is imperative. His ally in his rescue mission is the young housemaid, Ellen, probably the most uncomplicatedly sympathetic character in the book. She is decent, hard-working and entirely generous in her responses, to her fellow workers, to the daughter of the house, Cecily, whom she ‘maids’ and of course to the child.

The tears which momentarily filled her eyes were tears of tremendous rage. How dared they? What right had they? All those men with guns after one poor little duck. She wrenched off her boots one by one, slipped down her stockings and stuffed them into the boots, threw her coat over them on the river bank, gathered up her skirt and stuffed it anyhow into her belt, and slid down the bank into the river. The water came over her white knees. She hitched her skirt over one arm and began to wade downstream. Osbert followed.

It is through Ellen that Colegate conveys one of her most powerful messages, that of the simple importance of truth. John, the footman who is Ellen’s young man, has taken a love letter discarded by Lionel out of the waste paper and he copies its phrases in a letter of his own. This is delivered to Ellen. To Cecily and Olivia, when they hear of it, John’s letter gives them the pleasure of laughing at the servant’s pretentious absurdity. Their humour is self-interested, coming from the same strain of thought that proclaims people to be perfectly acceptable as long as they ‘aren’t trying to be something they’re not.’ Even in our own time, this attitude masquerades as no-nonsense, good taste but it is of course an ungenerous rejection of social mobility and a determination to keep the lower and middle classes in their place. Here, Colegate at first suggests that this is why we are to be allowed to find the footman’s letter funny. The language is funny because he’s a footman. The snobbish pseudo-humour in this is almost disappointing to the reader but then we realize we should have had more faith as Colegate makes it clear, through Ellen’s reaction to it, that this is not the problem with the letter. The problem is simpler: The language and the thoughts it conveys have no value because they are false.