John suffered setbacks at his job. Equally, Frank's business slowed.

[A]s many middle-class women entered the workforce, the live-in servant went the way of the dodo bird, and the maids, servants, and hired girls who had helped with the back-breaking housework preferred jobs in offices.

They all talk, telling of the Dorothies that did so well last year, the delphiniums the slugs ate, and getting advice thrown in with more Dorothies and cans of slugicide—guaranteed free of arsenic—and packets of seed.

A well-built and handsome boat is worth varnishing, and it would be a pity to “spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar”.