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When Mrs Sarah was not busy in the shop, her favourite place was a chair by one of the sitting-room windows, and from this window she could see the blackened redness of St. James’s church, and the grey spire rising above the plane-trees. Across the way the windows of Fream’s Hotel confronted her, lavish with white paint and old-rose curtains, and shadowy comings and goings. The window-sill being a low one Mrs Sarah had a good view of Vernor Street, and the passing of the khaki caps, bowlers, “Trilbys” and cloth caps. Vernor Street was a male thoroughfare, and Mrs Sarah had discovered the essential sameness of the male. They were calculable creatures. To a gossip who had exclaimed—“Oh, all men are awful!” she had replied—“All men are—just—men, only some of them are more so.”

She was a comfortable woman. She did not expect a man to be a hero, or a little St. Paul, or a devoted husband and father, or an infallible fool. She knew man to be a creature of patches, and she preferred him not to be a humbug. She liked a good dinner, and did not deny it, and a well-grilled chop, and asparagus, and chocolates, and a good-looking boy or girl, and fine manners that are fine because they are gracious and kind, and a well-brushed top-hat, and clothes that come out of Savile Row. If the Prince of Wales was to be seen anywhere, she made a point of seeing him. “The dear!” She had liked young Alex St. George. He, too, was a boy who could blush.

But Alex was in France,—Kitty had had two letters from him, and Mrs Sarah was waiting for Cardigan Square to send up some signal, though it might be a storm-cone that would be hoisted. Yes, that was quite probable. But if Mrs St. George was a woman of good temper as well as of good family, Vernor Street and Cardigan Square might avoid vulgarity, though warmth was hardly to be expected. So Mrs Sarah sat and waited. Mrs St. George should be allowed the first move; it was her privilege; it might be a gracious one.

“Well, my dear, I think it will be up to her. And she’s a gentlewoman.”

Kitty, being younger and more concerned than her mother, was a little less patient. It was given her to wonder about Alex’s mother, and her attitude towards the shadowy Mrs St. George was human and practical. She was quite ready to be friends with Alex’s mother; in fact—she was ready to respond to a mere formal gesture, for Alex’s sake, for her own sake, for everybody’s sake. Rows are destructive and unbusinesslike, and Kitty was a businesslike little person. But condescension would not be welcomed. She would allow Mrs St. George a mother’s reluctance, but if there was any magnanimity in Alex’s mother, Kitty would make the most of that magnanimity. She had seen a photo of Mrs St. George,—Alex had shown it to her,—and the portrait had left Kitty with an impression of compact, firm-lipped strong-mindedness. Still,—strong-mindedness had its virtues; you should know where you stood with a woman who knew her own mind. But would any woman know her own mind—or know it impartially—on such an occasion?

It so happened that Kitty did get a glimpse of Mrs St. George in the flesh before there had been any parley between Vernor Street and Cardigan Square. Kitty, the young wife, going to look at the house where her young husband had lived, saw Mrs St. George come out and descend the steps of No. 77. And Kitty stood and watched her walk away, and found in Mrs St. George’s method of progression no promise of Mrs St. George’s being a “Stooping Lady”. Not at all. Kitty described it to herself as the progress of a very dignified woman walking in a procession. Yes, and at the head of it. The upper part of the figure moved with a kind of rigid gliding motion, as though carried along on invisible wheels. She held herself stiff as a post.

Kitty mentioned the coincidence to Mrs Sarah.

“There doesn’t look much bend about her.”

“Sure it—was—the lady, poppet?”

“O,—yes,—I saw her face. Just like her photo. She makes a good picture.”

If Mrs Sarah loved that room above the shop, Kitty loved it also. It might contain a lot of shabby furniture, but its associations were by no means shabby. It associated itself with comings back from school, and buttered toast and muffins, and a tuffet on the hearthrug in front of a blazing fire, and Mrs Sarah’s happy way with people. There was not a piece of furniture in the room that was not an old friend, from the mahogany sideboard, with its two cupboards, to the immense old sofa covered in green cretonne. The room had a white and woolly hearthrug that was shaken out of the window at an hour when Vernor Street was empty of headgear. The carpet was a rose-coloured Axminster, somewhat worn in the doorway. The sofa held a number of cushions, red, blue, and black. There were two upholstered basket-chairs that creaked when Mrs Sarah sat down in them. The girls preferred the sofa or the hearthrug, and Kitty’s favourite perch in winter was the plum-coloured tuffet in front of the fire. Her sturdy little back did not appear to need adventitious proppings. Corah, taller by seven inches, and dark and willowy, liked to curl up in a corner.

This room was home, detached from the shop and the divan, and very rarely did a man ascend to it. The Greenwoods were clannish, and this sitting-room was their castle in the highlands. The three women of the sitting-room were not the women of the divan and the shop; there was the downstairs face and the upstairs face. Men have to be both humoured and kept in order.

In a black and gold cash-box kept in the top right-hand drawer of her chest of drawers, and concealed under a green scarf and a handkerchief sachet, Kitty had locked away five letters from her husband. Five letters in six days, addressed to Mrs Alex St. George, c/o Mrs Greenwood, 7 Vernor Street, S.W. And such letters! She was not a sentimental young woman; she asked for more than sentiment, and Alex’s letters gave her the realities. He wrote to her as he had talked, as though they were sitting on a seat in Queen’s Walk or lying on the turf of Leith Hill. He was in love with her as she wanted to be loved. He depended on her. Standing no higher than his shoulder, she was yet a compact, human buttress.

He wrote fairly cheerfully, and the first two letters came from a base camp. Later he wrote that he had been posted to a battalion of the — Division. He was going up to join his unit; they were in the line somewhere.

He told her that she had given him back his self-respect and his courage. He called her his “Beloved”, and she bent a grave little head over his letters, reading them over again before she switched off the light at night. They reposed under her pillow, to be locked away in the morning. She took her gold ring very seriously.

To the crowd of officer boys she was Kitty no longer, but Mrs Alex St. George. She had no snobbery. She was mated.

The third letter had contained a significant piece of news.

“I wrote to my mother yesterday. I told her everything, how fine you have been to me. I asked her to go and see you at once, or to ask you to see her—.”

He sounded so confident. He was realizing the nearness of death, and seemed to think that the people at home would realize as he did, and be uplifted. But did he realize how shocked Cardigan Square might be? Kitty realized it; she was neither anxious nor eager; she remained upon the alert.

Mrs St. George might find herself in a difficult situation, but Kitty was ready to give her a fair field. Mrs St. George had only to behave like a gentlewoman. And she should have no cause to regret it.

Kitty felt that she owed something to Alex’s mother. She did owe something. She was the young and the unexpected wife in possession.