Philip, who had never looked upon Octavia as anything but so dull that she practically didn’t exist, was interested.
“It is much the same with the W.V.S.,” said Lady Waring. “Our nearest is at Shearings, just about as far away as Winter Overcotes, only in the opposite direction. We have an excellent head there, but as she has an old invalid mother and the Labour Exchange won’t allow her to have help more than three days in the week, she is having to give it up.”
Philip sympathized very much with his hostess. If he had known her better, he would have noticed that any complaints she made were never for herself, though her way of living was doomed through enemies abroad and a spirit of change and meddling bureaucracy at home, but for the village, so patient and cheerful under rules and rest
