‘Let’s each have one piece and sell the rest. There’s so many things, we need, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. At least, alive she would, but she knows better now. What do you fancy, Deb?’

Miss Mayfield knew that diamonds were colourless, and sparkled with all the colours of the rainbow, rubies were red, emeralds green and sapphires blue. There was a ring which was certainly none of these precious things, which looked, indeed, beside the other stones rather like a piece of costume jewellery, or something to wear on the stage. It was large and square, made of pink glass. Not valuable, she thought. So she had said, ‘I’ll have that.’ And Rose had laughed and said, ‘That’s a choice to interest a psychologist; you must have all sorts of repressions, Deb. It’s quite unlike you. You’ll never wear it. Have the pearls.’ Miss Mayfield had said, ‘I should never see them, except when I looked in the glass. Why shouldn’t I have something showy for once? I like that pink ring and I shall wear it every day. Always.’ Rose had said, ‘All right. Then I shall take the next most flaunting thing, this garnet brooch.’

Now, studying her assets, Miss Mayfield wondered whether, in a pawnbroker’s, the pink ring would fetch a pound.

Next morning she abandoned all thought of going into Blundell’s and challenging the salesgirl. That was all a mere side issue now. Wearing a meek and chastened air, she offered to gather the last of the peas and went into the kitchen garden. Washbrook, every morning, walked his dog, a fat old fox terrier, round the kitchen garden. She had, if he passed near her, spoken to him and his dog; and at first his attitude had been surly, as though he suspected her of wanting something of him; lately, that suspicion quietened, he had, on occasions, paused and exchanged views on the weather.

This morning, patting the dog, she said, ‘Mr Washbrook, there’s something I want to know. I wonder if you can help me. Is there a pawnbroker’s in Hove?’

He blinked at her.

‘There is in Brighton, which is more or less the same fing.’

‘Do you know where it is?’

‘You want to ’ock somefing?’

‘I’m afraid I do. It isn’t of much value, I know. But a pound would be very useful.’ She pulled the ring from her finger and handed it to him.

‘It ain’t glass, I shouldn’t fink,’ he said, placing it on the top joint of his smallest finger and twisting it round. ‘Too well set. Don’t want to raise your ’opes unduly, but it could be a pink sapphire.’

‘Sapphires are blue, Mr Washbrook,’ she said gently.

‘So they are pink. And white. Din’t you know that?’

‘No.’ And she still didn’t know it, because she did not believe him. How could he know?