SUMMARY. — Laura Marshall and her husband Stephen live in the country near the tiny Fnglish village of Wealding. Stephen has returned from the war to find the train to London as stuffy as ever, his garden choked with weeds, his daughter Victoria growing up fast, and Laura dead weary from the daily battle of rationed shopping and unceasing housework. “So far as I can see,” says Laura’s mother, Mrs. Herriot, reproachfully, “you spend the day doing the work of an unpaid domestic servant. When I think how you were brought up —” And indeed Laura, as she tries to keep their home alive, does think back to those lazy, hot summers before the war when several maids and a cook ran the house so smoothly. As she listens to her part-time charwoman, Mrs. Prout, and watches their gardener for a day, frail, deaf old Voller, in his hopeless struggle with the weeds, Laura remembers the clipped turf, the roses, and their friends chatting through the long June dusks. Now she tends the ducks and chickens herself, and as this installment opens, is riding alone on her old bicycle to find her runaway dog Stuffy among the Roman stones of Barrow Down.
SUMMARY. — Laura Marshall and her husband Stephen live in the country near the tiny village of Weakling. Stephen has returned from the war to find the train to London as stuffy as ever, his garden choked with weeds, his daughter Victoria growing up fast, and Laura dead weary from the daily battle of rationed shopping and uni easing housework. “So far as I can see,” says Mrs. Herriot, Laura’s mother, reproachfully, “you spend the entire day doing the work of an unpaid domestic servant. When I think how you were brought up —”