Victoria sat back in the large leather armchair. Her head was not very bad but she felt just enough in her temples a tiny passing twinge to shirk chapel without qualms. She toyed with a broken backed copy of _Charlton on Book-Keeping_ which lay in her lap. It was a curious fate that had landed her into Charlton's epoch making work. Mrs Holt, that prince of good fellows, had a genius for saving pennies and had been trained in the school of a Midland household, but the fortunes of her husband had left her feebly struggling in a backwash of pounds. So much had this been the case that Mr Holt had discovered joyfully that he had at last in his house a woman who could bring herself to passing an account for twenty pounds for stabling. Little by little Victoria had established her position. She was Mrs Holt's necessary companion and factotum. She could apparently do anything and do it well; she could even tackle such intricate tasks as checking washing or understanding Bradshaw. She was always ready and always bright. She had an unerring eye for a good quality of velvet; she could time the carriage to a nicety for the Albert Hall concert. Mrs Holt felt that without this pleasant and competent young woman she would be quite lost. Mr Holt, too, after inspecting Victoria grimly every day for an entire month, had decided that she would do and had lent her the work on book-keeping, hoping that she would be able to keep the house accounts. In three months he had not addressed her twenty times beyond wishing her good morning and good night. He had but reluctantly left Rawsley and his beloved cement works to superintend his ever growing London business. He was a little suspicious of Victoria's easy manners; suspicious of her intentions, too, as the northerner is wont to be. Yet he grudgingly admitted that she was level headed, which was 'more than Maria or his fool of a son would ever be.' Victoria thought for a moment of Holt, the book-keeping, the falling due of insurance premiums; then of Mrs Holt who had just stepped into her carriage which was slowly proceeding down the drive, crunching into the hard gravel. A gleam of sunshine fitfully lit up the polished panels of the clumsy barouche as it vanished through the gate. This then was her life. It might well have been worse. Mr Holt sometimes let a rough kindness appear through an exterior as hard as his own cement. Mrs Holt, stout, comfortable and good-tempered, quite incompetent when it came to controlling a house in the Finchley Road, was not of the termagant type that Victoria had expected when she became a companion. Her nature, peaceful as that of a mollusc, was kind and had but one outstanding feature; her passionate devotion to her son Jack.