give them jobs in the same way. Young men possessed the earth; young
women had to wrest what they wanted out of it piecemeal. Johnny might end
a cabinet minister, a notorious journalist, a Labour leader, anything....
Women's jobs were, as a rule, so dowdy and unimportant. Jane was bored to
death with this sex business; it wasn't fair. But Jane was determined to
live it down. She wouldn't be put off with second-rate jobs; she wouldn't
be dowdy and unimportant, like her mother and the other fools; she would
have the best that was going.


3

The family dined. At one end of the table was Mr. Potter; a small,
bird-like person, of no presence; you had not thought he was so great
a man as Potter of the Potter Press. For it was a great press; though
not so great as the Northcliffe Press, for it did not produce anything
so good as the _Times_ or so bad as the _Weekly Dispatch_; it was more
of a piece.

Both commonplace and common was Mr. Percy Potter (according to some
standards), but clever, with immense patience, a saving sense of humour,
and that imaginative vision without which no newspaper owner, financier,
general, politician, poet, or criminal can be great. He was, in fact,
greater than the twins would ever be, because he was not at odds with his
material: he found such stuff as his dreams were made of ready to his
hand, in the great heart of the public--the last place where the twins
would have thought of looking.

So did his wife. She was pink-faced and not ill-looking, with the cold
blue eyes and rather set mouth possessed (inexplicably) by many writers