A cold March wind swept round the corners of the High Street. "Put your fur over your mouth, Mother, this wind is deadly," Joan cautioned.
Mrs. Ogden obeyed, and the homeward walk was continued in silence. Joan opened the door with a latch-key and turned up the gas in the hall.
"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed anxiously, "who left that landing window open?"
Mrs. Ogden disengaged her mouth. "Helen!" she called loudly, "Helen!" She waited and then called again, this time at the kitchen door, but there was no reply. "She's gone out without permission again, Joan; I suppose it's that cinema!"
"Never mind, dearest, you go and sit down, I'll shut the window myself. It seems to me that one's got to put up with all their ways since the war; if you don't, they just walk out."
She shut the window, bolted it, and returning to the hall collected her mother's coat and hat, then she went upstairs.
2
Her head ached badly, as it did pretty often these days. She put away Mrs. Ogden's things and passed on to her own room. Taking off her heavy coat, she hung it up neatly, being careful not to shut the door of the cupboard until she was sure that the coat could not be crushed; then she took off her hat, brushed it, and put it in a cardboard box under the bed.
The room had changed very little since the time when she and Milly had shared it. There was the same white furniture, only more chipped and yellower, the same Brussels carpet, only more patternless and threadbare. The walls had been repapered once and the paint touched up, after Milly's death, but beyond this, all had remained as it was. Joan went to the dressing-table and combed her thick grey hair; she had given up parting it on one side now and wore it brushed straight back from her face.
She looked at her reflection in the glass and laughed quietly. "Poor Mother," she said under her breath. "Does she really think I don't look my age?"