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way sons meddle in matters they didn’tunderstand and assured her that in future he and only he would deal with her order. She came out again into the street, having left with him a full description of all the meat she needed until the end of the week, well satisfied.
    Outside the street was beginning to thin of passers-by and she glanced at the clock set over the jeweller’s on the corner and lifted her brows. A quarter before noon. Close to time for luncheon. She must hurry home and see how Duff was, now he was up, as surely he must be at this hour of the morning. And, she thought fondly, ravenously hungry I’ll be bound. We must see what is available in Eliza’s larder for a special luncheon for him. The ham, perhaps.
    She saw him before he saw her: on the other side of the road, with another young man who looked much the same age as he was. Standing taller than his companion, Duff was wearing a glossy top hat tilted at a somewhat rakish angle over his eyes, so that his long side-whiskers, curled and very elegantly trimmed, were clearly visible. They were the first thing she had noticed yesterday afternoon when he had stepped out of his cab in Brompton Grove and it had made her heart contract then as it did now. The length of the side-whiskers, which reached almost to the point of his jaw, made him look so very adult and elegant, and now, seeing him in a high-buttoned fine worsted frock-coat in a deep blue with the most elegantly tied of octagons, and narrow trousers in silver-grey checks over spatted patent-leather shoes, she was amazed. He was exceedingly good to look at; and again she could have burst with pride.
    She stood at the side of the road, impatiently waiting for a gap in the traffic as great lumbering carthorses plodded by dragging their loads, and faster stepping cabhorses tried to overtake them, her skirts held high above the dust, hoping to catch his eye before he moved away. It would never do to shout across at him, for that would be the height of vulgarity, but she could hold her head high in the hope he would glance her way and see her; and she did, craning above the traffic towards him.
    And he did see her. He had half turned to speak to the young man at his side who had stopped to look into the jeweller’s window, and he glanced across the road and saw her. She was certain he had;she could tell by the way his eyes widened and his face half froze. Automatically she lifted one hand in a half wave, but he seemed not to see it. He turned his head away, his face still blank, and spoke to the young man at his side, who at once turned towards him, looked up at the clock above their heads and moved away with him at a sharp pace.
    She had not imagined it, she told herself as she stood there at the side of the new Brompton Road, staring across at the space where he and his friend had been. He had seen her and cut her dead. She, his own mother, had been totally snubbed.

Chapter Three

    BY THE TIME she reached home, walking as quickly as she could through the dust of the summer-dried streets, she had almost convinced herself that she had, once again, misread the signs. He hadn’t seen her; he could not have snubbed her – not her Duff. And with that thought firmly in her mind she let herself into the coolness of her entrance hall and stood there for a moment as she removed her gloves and her wrap, glad to be out of the glare of the sun, and made one last effort to compose herself before going to speak to Eliza.
    Around her the house was quiet and yet had an air of being occupied with purposeful people. The hall stand was draped in coats, hats and umbrellas which were reflected in the high gloss of the black and white squares of the tiled floor, and the mahogany table at the foot of the stairs bore a few letters awaiting collection. The arrangement of dried grasses and flowers in the tall floor vase which stood beside it had a slightly rumpled look, as if someone had brushed past it in a hurry. Above stairs