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‘We were friends.’
    ‘Were you sort of in love with him?’ demanded Hilda.
    ‘I don’t know. I just liked going about with him and having a friend who liked the things I did. It was all – kind of quiet and happy. And then Mother started.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Oh, worrying me about getting married. She’s always been crazy about that; you won’t believe it, but she started dinning it into me how a girl must get married when I was a kid of twelve. I don’t know why, because she doesn’t think much of men really, or being married, but she’s very down on old maids.’
    ‘No pleasing some people, is there? You should worry.’
    ‘I don’t expect you would have, but she kept on moan, moan, moan, about it until she absolutely got under my skin. I got so embarrassed about it that I made excuses to keep Frank from coming to the house. I think Mother must have spoken to Dad about it, too, because he said something to me once about young Kennett having a good job.’
    ‘Did she ask you if he’d proposed?’
    ‘Not so much that. She took it for granted I should tell her if he did. But asking me every time I came in after I’d been out with him if he seemed to be cooling off and giving me hints on how to bring him up to the scratch … it was simply disgusting!’ she burst out again, writhing at the memory.
    ‘Silly, too,’ said Hilda. ‘And I think all that sort of thing’s so common, don’t you? Besides, it never gets you anywhere. Mother doesn’t know what she feels about me getting married. One minute she’s dying to see me sailing down the aisle in white satin, and the next minute she says she doesn’t know how she’ll ever get on without me. Well, I laugh at her. Go on, sorry.’
    ‘I felt worse and worse about it. She never gave me a minute’s peace. It was almost as if’ – she hesitated – ‘she wanted to drag me into the worry and sordidness and pettiness of being married.’
    Far away, in the silence that had followed the barrage, the All Clear began.
    ‘Goody!’ cried Hilda, springing up. ‘Come on, you can finish telling me on the way home.’ She opened the front door. The moon was shining brilliantly but a cold, still mist crept among the leafless trees and lightless houses. Hilda thrust her arm through Margaret’s and with the other hand slammed the door of the little house.
    ‘If I were you I’d decide on that one, Margaret,’ she said, as they hurried down the path.
    ‘It’s certainly the most suitable one I’ve seen yet.’
    ‘And it’s so nice and near us!’ cried Hilda with a skip, already planning to introduce Margaret to the most bookish among a multitude of decidedly non-bookish boys who frequented the small house where she lived with her parents.
    ‘Oh, you must have that one! Go on about Frank, we’ll be home in a minute and I shall be too busy eating to give you my full attention.’ She pressed Margaret’s arm and lifted her small face, with its delicate aquiline features, to the moon whose light sparkled in her blue eyes. ‘Gorgeous night.’
    ‘So, at last,’ said Margaret heavily, her face and voice unlightened by the haste of her footsteps and the refreshing night air, her whole personality sunk in unhappy memories, ‘I – I asked him outright.’
    ‘Gosh!’ muttered Hilda. Then, recovering herself, ‘Well, why not? If he was really your friend, he’d have understood.’
    ‘That was what I thought, you see. I told him how Mother had been worrying me, and how awful it made me feel, and I said I was only asking him about – about how he felt – so that I could have something definite, one way or another, to tell her and shut her up. I – I made a kind of joke of it, you see, really.’
    Hilda squeezed her arm again, in silence. Margaret was silent for so long that Hilda at last peeped round at her dark brooding face and said more quietly than usual:
    ‘And what did he say?’
    ‘He was very quiet and – and nice, really,’ said