In their Wisdom by C.P. Snow

That same September Jenny was feeling restive and happy, the moods combined and co-existing because she was coming near a point of action. On an afternoon in the week Pemberton heard that last bulletin about Hillmorton, she walked, steps springy as a girl's (in the midst of death we are in life, some supernatural Dr Pemberton, omniscient about all mondial conjunctions, might have commented), up Philbeach Gardens on one of her visits. Nowadays she paid these after lunch, after getting through her work in Swaffield's office in the mornings. This was a visit to a favourite old lady, whom she always called deferentially Miss Smith.

Miss Smith rose to greet her in a bedsitting-room about the size of Jenny's own, but crammed with bric-a-brac, postcards on the mantelpiece, photographs on the walls, on a what-not small replicas of St Mark's, St Peter's, the Taj Mahal, and Cologne Cathedral. Miss Smith, well into her eighties, was straight backed, bright eyed. She had been a schoolmistress, which accounted for most of the photographs and all the postcards. Her tone was high and clear, cultivated (educated rather than upper class, Jenny's ear told her), nice to listen to.