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kitchen sink is under the window.’
    Mrs Steggles nodded. ‘And you say they promised to get the ceilings done by the end of this week. Are the rooms much smaller than these?’
    ‘They said they’d try. No, about the same size. Mrs Wilson was awfully kind, Mother; she promised to go round every day and see how the men are getting on.’
    ‘Yes, that was kind of her. How is she? Is Hilda any nearer being engaged yet?’
    ‘She’s very well. No, I don’t think so; she never said anything about it.’
    ‘If she’s not careful she’ll miss her market; those very popular girls with crowds of boys so often don’t marry; I’ve noticed it.’
    ‘Mother, she’s only twenty-two!’ exclaimed Margaret, colouring.
    ‘Oh, yes; I know you think there’s all the time in the world to get married, and Hilda’s the same; but time goes quicker than you girls realize, and you’ll both be twenty-seven before you can turn round. Is it a light house, should you say?’
    ‘Not quite so light as this because the road isn’t so wide, but it is light. I think you’ll like it, Mother. It’s in a nice road, and the shops are only just round the corner.’
    ‘Well, that’s something. Is it near the bus for your father?’
    ‘About five minutes’ walk from a new Underground station.’
    ‘And how long does it take to get into London?’
    ‘I found it took me nearly three-quarters of an hour; everything was so crowded.’
    ‘How did you get on? Did you like the look of your new school? I don’t expect so!’ Mrs Steggles vigorously helped herself to jam.
    ‘It’s in a neighbourhood that’s gone down a lot, and the school itself is very knocked about; they’ve been evacuated, as I told you, and the school has been used as a British Restaurant. The headmistress, Miss Lathom, seemed quite nice.’
    ‘Is it far from Stanley Gardens?’
    ‘About twenty minutes by bus.’
    ‘Well, it all sounds very convenient; we’ll hope it’s as nice as it sounds. Another cup, Margaret?’
    ‘Yes, please, Mother. How – is Dad all right?’
    ‘Yes, of course. Why shouldn’t he be?’
    Margaret did not answer, and they went on to talk about the house again and to discuss plans for the move in three weeks’ time.
    Mrs Steggles was not daunted by the prospect of a move in war-time, for her restless unhappiness found relief in a domestic upheaval, and she enjoyed moves. The Steggleses had had six homes in their twenty-eight years of married life, and each one a solid little provincial house filled with good plain furniture from attic to kitchen; not a series of three-roomed flats sketchily equipped with a few sticks. Mr Steggles earned a comfortable income as Chief Sub-Editor on the North Bedfordshire Record , an old-established weekly newspaper, and his particular weakness was not improvidence with money. He indulged his wife’s liking for movement and change. She was an excellent manager and a superlative housewife. There had always been every amenity in those six little houses during the past twenty-eight years except laughter and love. There was not much laughter left in Jack Steggles at the age of fifty-six, and as he went to other women for love, he felt vaguely that Mabel must be allowed her fits of discontent with a perfectly satisfactoryhouse and her feverish search for a better one, and her purchase of new rugs and curtains to equip it when she found it. She was neither socially nor financially ambitious; he granted her that. She did not nag at him to earn more money or get a more important job. She was only driven by some inward passion for perfection; some deep dissatisfaction that made her scrub and polish and rub and dust and clean until their home, wherever it was, glittered and shone like a museum.
    After tea, Margaret unpacked and put her clothes away. She sighed as she looked at her untidy curls in the mirror, and decided that a neater way of wearing them must be found before she joined the staff of the school in