‘I’ve no intention of being a wife ever.’ She glanced at Frank, and then quickly to Patrick and John. ‘Having been brought up in close contact with such wonderful specimens as these three, I can’t believe that any woman would marry if she knew what she were doing. I shall know what I’m doing. I shall have a brilliant career, doing something or other, and be a mistress in my spare time.’

Mrs. Manson said dryly: ‘While admittedly lacking in personal experience, I should guess that being a mistress on the scale you have in mind would be even more difficult to combine with a brilliant career than being a wife would.’

‘I shall be a mistress,’ Patricia said, ‘on my terms.’

‘Whichever you are,’ Mrs. Manson said, ‘it looks as though I was right about the emptying nest. Even if you can’t all fly yet, you seem to have your eyes cocked for the weather.’

Patrick said dramatically: ‘We shall never desert you, Mrs. Micawber. Frank in his schoolmastering and me in my wiredrawing – we’ll stay close to home and press your withered hand on cold winter evenings. We shall be a comfort in your declining years.’

‘My years have been declining for some while now, and you’ve been a pest the whole time.’ She glanced at Frank. ‘Will you really be a schoolmaster? I find it difficult to imagine somehow.’

‘I think I should manage fairly well.’ He stared, smiling, at Mrs. Manson; he recognized in her an acuteness above that of the citizens and was the more determined to hold to his secrets. ‘As good a schoolmaster as Pat would be a mistress, at any rate.’