Janet broke the seal, for the letter was sealed, and then she called out to her son, who was making for the door:  “Don’t go away, Timmy.  Betty will ring the lunch bell in a moment.”

Unwillingly he turned round and stood watching her while she read the four pages of closely written handwriting.  But, rather to his relief, she made no remark, and the bell rang just as she put the letter back in its envelope.  Then she slipped it in her pocket, for Janet Tosswill was one of the very few women in England who still had a pocket in her dress.

Giving him what he felt to be a condemnatory look, but in that he was wrong, for she was too surprised, relieved, and, yes, disturbed, to think of him at all, she motioned the boy to go before her into the dining-room.

As the Sunday joint was always served cold on Monday, they were all there, even Betty, but owing, as at any rate most of them believed, to the unfortunate discovery made by Dolly that the pre-war pound was now only worth about seven and six, it was rather a mournful meal.

At last Rosamund went out to get the coffee, and then Janet addressed her son:  “Timmy,” she observed, “I have something I wish to say to the others, so will you please go and have your orange with Nanna?”

Timmy obeyed his mother without a word, and then, after the coffee had come in and been poured out, Janet said slowly: 

“I’ve had a letter from Mrs. Crofton, and as she asks me to tell you all what is in it, I think it will be simpler if I read it out now.”

She waited a moment, gathering up her courage, wondering the while whether she was doing the best thing by Jack.  On the whole she thought yes.  There are blows which are far better borne among one’s fellows than in solitude.

She wished to make her reading as colourless as possible, but she could not keep a certain touch of sarcasm out of her voice as she read aloud the first two sentences: 

  “Dearest Mrs. Tosswill,

  “You have always been so kind to me that I feel I must write and tell
  you why I am leaving the dear Trellis House and delightful Beechfield.”

She looked up, but no one spoke; Jack was staring straight before him, and she went on: 

“To my utter surprise a very old friend of my late husband’s and mine has asked me to be his wife.  He is going back to India in a fortnight, and so, much as I shrink from the thought of all the bustle and hurry it will involve, I feel that as it must be now or never, it must be now, and the fact that I have a good offer for The Trellis House seemed to me a kind of sign-post.

  “Though perhaps I ought not to say so, he is a splendid soldier and did
  extremely well in the war.  He won a bar to his M.C., which my husband
  once told me would have won him a V.C. in any other war.