Ruth heard the gate click. She was surprised to see Mum-Tring, who seldom called in the morning. She ran to open the front door.
    “Why, Mum, whatever has brought you out on a morning like this? Come right in and sit by the fire. I’ll have a cup of coffee ready for us in two minutes. You must need it. I do despise this weather, don’t you?”
    Emma sat by the fire. She looked admiringly at Ruth. How neat and shining her hair was! That short cut suited her, though when it was first cut she had thought it was a pity to clip off any of her red-brown curls. She watched Ruth tie an apron over her blue dress. She herself always wore a serviceable overall when she was working, but she thought Ruth’s aprons charming. Ruth had made her several for birthdays and Christmas, but though she pretended to wear them, hanging each in turn on her
kitchen door, she never did. She felt silly in the dainty frilled things; whatever would people think who saw her got up in one? They would very likely say she fancied herself, and would talk about it and she would be laughed at.  [ . . . ]
    Emma took the packet of breakfast food from her string bag, her eyes twinkled.
    “You mustn’t tell Peter or Dad, but I bought it at Johnson’s. You can often get things there which you can’t get at Tring’s. Dad doesn’t know I ever go inside the shop.”
    Ruth laughed.
    “Are you sly! It was good of you to trouble, especially on a day like this, but I certainly am pleased. Little Paul gets tired of the same breakfast every day, and I think that it is so important for a child to start the day right, don’t you? When Paul has eaten a good plate of cereal I know he is going out protected. There are a wonderful lot of vitamins in those foods. But if I feed him on one food too long he gets tired of it and just won’t eat it; you know the way children are.”
    Emma thought of George, Peter and Andrew, at Paul’s age, sitting around the table eating large plates of porridge. Neither she nor Dad would have thought it possible they could refuse their porridge unless they were ill. You gave children food and they ate it. Of course some were harder than others to feed, but in the end they ate, or they were punished. However, nobody but a fool would be so tactless as to say those sort of things to a daughter-in-law. She nodded as if in agreement.
    “Does he still like school? He must have been there about six weeks, hasn’t he? Has the excitement died down?”
    “Why no, he just loves that place. I don’t think he learns anything; but, then, at four that’s right. I don’t think you want to force little children.”  [ . . . ]
    “I suppose he doesn’t see much of Geoffrey, Wendy or Jimmie?”
    “I guess not. He doesn’t say much about them. Geoffrey is way up above him . . .”
    “I should hope so,” Emma interrupted; “he’s seven.”
    “And Wendy’s five and a half, so she is with older children.”
    “I should think you’ll find Paul will soon catch Wendy up; she’s slow at her lessons, George thinks. He was the clever one, you know.”
    “I guess, if you are as pretty as little Wendy, there’s no need to trouble with school. That child ought to be in pictures.”
    “I think that’s what Anna feels.”
    “Of course Jimmie’s only older than Paul by a few months, but I guess Paul will never catch up with that streak of lightning. My, is that boy clever!”
    “Doris has decided he’s to win every type of scholarship.” Without knowing it, a note of pity crept into Emma’s voice. “Poor Jimmie! already he’s sent to school to work; Doris doesn’t approve of even little children playing at lessons. She was brilliant herself, you know. She only went to the ordinary local school, but from there she got a scholarship for a grammar school, and from there one to the London School of Economics, and then she had a wonderful job, I believe.”
    Ruth did not answer that; she too had done well, she too had left a wonderful job, but it was an accepted thing in the Tring family that it was Doris who was the clever one, and certainly she was clever to talk to. She knew the answers to everything and did not expect to be argued with. Ruth did not approve of a child of not yet five being able to read quite difficult headlines in the newspaper, but there was no doubt about it, Doris’s child did make other mothers wonder if they were raising their children right. She got up and put her empty cup on the tray.
    “Well, I surely don’t want little Paul to be forced, for he finds school fun, and that’s the way it ought to be.”
    Ruth had spoken more firmly than she knew. Emma looked at her. It was impossible that Peter could want to force Paul; he had never shone at school himself, and had not cared, when school for Paul was first discussed, whether he was sent or not. He had left the decision to Ruth. All the same, Emma was sure that in some way Paul was the centre of the trouble that she had sensed yesterday. Ruth was inclined to look upon Paul as her property; it could easily be that Peter had interfered in some way; that would account for Ruth not being herself and Peter totally unaware that anything was wrong. Peter, like all the Trings, would order his child about if he thought fit, but having done so would let the matter pass out of his mind. How much tact she had used when her boys were growing up, when she thought it necessary to get her own way without Dad knowing she was getting her own way. She felt for words which would sound natural but which would hint at this.
    “They’re a funny lot, the Trings. Talking of Jimmie working, and you not wanting Paul forced, puts me in mind of when my boys were growing up. Dad, you know, and his sisters went to the local school, as their father had done. Dad reckoned in their line of business they had to be able to read, write and do arithmetic, but nothing in the way of what he calls ‘fancy education’. He believed that the great thing was to put a boy into his business young. Then, of course, George got that scholar­ship for the grammar school. Dad didn’t want him to take it at first, said he’d get above himself and think himself too good for the shop. Well, dear, you must have found out a long time ago that you can’t force a Tring, but you can work them round to thinking something is their own idea. That’s what I did: I kept working at Dad until one day I heard him say to one of his old customers in ever so proud a voice, ‘My boy George is going to the grammar school. I’ve got three boys, so two will be enough for the shop. I reckon George will do something different; he’s got brains.’ ”
    “It was wonderfully fortunate that Peter and Andrew did not win scholarships.”
    “Peter never would have, you know that, dear. He never was a boy for his books; but Andrew might have, only the war came and Peter was called up, so Andrew left school at fourteen to help his Dad.” Emma gave a chuckle. “The funny thing was, George having got his scholarship and Dad having agreed that he should take it, Dad came to think it had been his idea that the other boys should have scholarships too. Then I had to work on Dad again. I had to make him think he hadn’t wanted Peter to have a scholarship. I made him see about Peter at the time, but if you ask Dad now he’ll tell you he always meant both boys to have a posh edu­cation the same as George had done, only Peter hadn’t the brains and the war spoiled Andrew’s chance.”
    “Was Andrew sour because he had to miss that good education?”
    Emma sighed.
    “To tell the you truth, dear, I’ve never been quite happy about Andrew; you see, he would have had a scholarship if it hadn’t been for Peter being called up. He’s clever, you know—thinks a lot and goes to lectures. It was at something called a summer school, whatever that may be, that he met Doris. It was to do with politics, I think, for some day he’ll be standing for the Council and all that, same as Dad did.” She lowered her voice. “But what I’m afraid of is that, with Doris to push him, he’ll have different politics. Of course it’s never spoken of, but I believe she’s Labour. There’ll be a lot of trouble with Dad if that crops up; the Trings have always been Conservative, and they’d lose a lot of custom if that was to happen. Still, I shall manage; I won’t stand for quarrels; there is enough in the world as it is, I say, so let’s keep them out of the family.” Emma had, she thought, dropped her hint about the Trings into Ruth’s ear. She got up and kissed her. “Well, I must be going; I interrupted you writing a letter, and it will soon be time for you to fetch Paul from school.”
    Anna and Doris, with their babies in their peram­bulators, were standing outside the school. They had nothing in common, but were drawn together as two seasick passengers might be drawn together, by mutual suffering. Both girls felt they had made sacrifices in marrying their husbands, and both felt their sacrifices were unappreciated, not only by their husbands, but by the family of their husbands.