Aileen was smiling, too, at what she found on her plate: books and music, a very new aluminium saucepan, a soap-saver for the kitchen, and, tucked away under the rest, a little brooch within which a black opal gleamed mysteriously, full of dark fire. Aileen loved black opals: but she regarded them as belonging to the old times when evening dress and balls and theatres were as common as working overalls and fowl-rearing and hoeing now.  She shook her head at Tom.