"No," Eleanor said, "he wouldn't. We've been looking at the old wallpapers," she said to Bee. "I'd forgotten how in love with Hereward I used to be. It's just as well that I was removed from him in time or he might have become a fixation or something."
"I never liked that baby stuff on the walls," Ruth said.
" You never read, so you couldn't know anything about them," Eleanor said.
"We gave up using the nursery wing when the twins ceased to have a Nanny," Bee said. "It was too far away from the rest of the house."
"It was a day's march to call the twins in the morning," Eleanor said, "and as Ruth always needed calling several times we had to move them into the normal family orbit."
"Delicate people need more sleep," Ruth said.
"Since when have you been delicate?" asked Eleanor.
"It's not that I'm delicate but that Jane's more robust, aren't you, Jane?" she said, appealing to Jane, who sidled into the room, the hair at her temples still damp from her hasty ablutions.
But Jane's eyes were on Bee.
"Simon is here," she said in a small voice; and crossed the room to stand near Bee as if for reassurance.