Where was Elizabeth? Had she found a new friend to share the flat?
"You might go and buy me that trimming, some time to-day, darling; it may be all sold out if we wait."
"All right, I'll go when I've tidied the house, Mother; they had plenty of it yesterday."
But Mrs. Ogden persisted: "I have a feeling that it will all be sold out and I'm short by just half a yard. Can't you finish the house when you come back?"
"I'd rather get on and finish it now, Mother; I'm quite sure it'll be all right."
Mrs. Ogden reverted to the subject of the trimming again during lunch, and several times before tea. "We shall never get it," she complained querulously. "I feel sure it'll all be sold out!"
She allowed herself to be a little monotonous these days, clinging to an idea with wearying persistence. In her husband's lifetime she would have been more careful not to irritate, but the restraint of his temper being removed, she no longer felt the necessity for keeping herself in hand.
Joan bought the trimming just before the shop closed, and this done, they settled down to their high tea. Joan cleared the table wearily, answered two advertisements of general servants, and finally took her book to the lamp. It was a new book that Richard had just sent her. Richard did not yet suspect what she had done; he probably thought she was busily making plans for her departure; how furious he would be when he knew. But Richard didn't count; he could think what he liked, for all she cared.
She could not read, the book seemed beyond her comprehension, or was it all nonsense?
Mrs. Ogden's voice broke the silence: "Joan, it's ten o'clock!"