Here is the sequel to Penny Plain and the continuation of Jean’s story – ‘an ordinary girl in Priorsford till the ‘baron’s heir’ appeared and carried her away to reign amid unimagined splendour. And here she is walking out of her fairy tale and back to the little house in the little town, bereft (for the time) of her husband and accompanied by three (probably very ordinary) children. She may even have grown stout ... perhaps a little pompous.’

The world outside Priorsford is changing and challenging; there’s the Great Depression, mass unemployment, young women now have the vote and there’s a thief at work in the town. Here too are friends and acquaintances from Penny Plain. There is Jean’s Scottish housekeeper Mrs McCosh; the author Mirren Strang (with her two handsome cats Crian and Kitty) and her dull companion Rebecca Brand who thinks most people in books are fools. Through Hopetoun Woods is Mrs Hope and her daughter Miss Augusta and in Priorsford itself the endearing Miss Watsons at their villa Balmoral. Pamela is still very happily Mrs Lewis Elliot with a husband who ‘adores his wife, and he is a darling – very bookish, very shy, very kind.’ Then there is gentle Mrs Jowett who apologises for being ‘a mid-Victorian. It was the fashion to spoil husbands in my young days.’

And of course there’s Jean’s nemesis (and not surprisingly a Daily Mail reader) Mrs Duff-Whalley and her unmarried daughter Muriel. ‘It’s a pity I can’t settle down to be a perfectly contented and happy Priorsford spinster, but I can’t.’ Her great contrast is Miss Janet Hutton, ‘the ideal spinster’. ‘When you meet her you feel, Here is what every unmarried woman would wish to be. There is nothing pathetic about her, no least appearance of having been cheated by life, rather she radiates a sort of serene contentment.’

Mrs Strang’s books are described as ‘very nice: the sort of books you’d leave on the table if you expected the vicar to call.’ Well, I am sure she would enjoy them as much as O. Douglas’s many devoted readers.