VMark Tietjens’ announcement that his father had after all carried out his long–standing promise to provide for Mrs Wannop in such a way as to allow her to write for the rest of her life only the more lasting kind of work, delivered Valentine Wannop of all her problems except one. That one loomed, naturally and immediately, immensely large.
She had passed a queer, unnatural week, the feeling dominating its numbness having been, oddly, that she would have nothing to do on Friday! The feeling recurred to her whilst she was casting her eyes over a hundred girls all in their cloth jumpers and men’s black ties, aligned upon asphalt; whilst she was jumping on trams; whilst she was purchasing the tinned or dried fish that formed the staple diet of herself and her mother; whilst she was washing–u
