Not very easy to get anything out of it except a plain downright ‘No.’ He went on trying. It was a mood. Women had moods. They were changeable. She had withdrawn before, and then been kind again. Kind… His own word might have warned him, but he was resolute to find what he wanted. She was kind, she was fond of him – what more did she want? She couldn’t just go on refusing one man after another. She had known him all her life. As far as he could tell there wasn’t anyone she liked better. It would be a most suitable marriage. It wasn’t as if she was a girl of twenty. She must be a good eight years older than that. She had had her fling, and he had had his. You had to settle down some time, and if he could bring his mind to it, so could she. He really did find it impossible to believe that her refusal could be final.

He read the letter again.

Katharine Eversley got off the bus at the corner and walked along Ellery Street until she came to Tattlecombe’s Toy Bazaar, which was about halfway down on the right. It had on one side of it a small draper’s, and on the other a rather depressed-looking cleaner’s establishment with an ironically fly-blown legend in the window, ‘We can make your old things new.’

The Bazaar had two windows, one on either side of the entrance. On the left there were paintboxes, chalks, a hoop, and miscellaneous toys, but the right-hand window was entirely given up to William Smith’s wooden animals, the fame of which was beginning to spread to places quite far removed from Ellery Street and its North London suburb. There were Wurzel Dogs, Marks I, II, III and IV – the gay, the jaunty, the pathetic, the rollicking, all with movable heads and tails. They were black, brown, grey, white, and spotted.They were retrievers, bulldogs, hounds, terriers, poodles, and dachshunds. They were of a heart-smiting oddity. Amongst them paraded the Boomalong Bird, with striding feet and swivel eye, gawky, indomitable, booming along – white, grey, brown, black, parrot-green, flamingo-red, orange, and blue, with black and yellow claws and long erratic beaks. Katharine stood looking in at them, as nearly every stranger did stand there and look in. The people who frequented Ellery Street had got used to the creatures, but strangers always stopped to look at them, and very often went in to buy.