Crampton Hodnet - Barbara Pym

The action takes place over the course of a year in North Oxford, some time before World War II. Miss Doggett likes to entertain students to tea at her gloomy Victorian home in Banbury Road. When a new and unmarried curate, Stephen Latimer, comes to lodge at her house, he strikes up a friendship with her paid companion, Jessie Morrow, through whose eyes much of the action is seen. He begins to see Jessie as a potential wife and proposes to her, but she rejects him, knowing that his interest in her is practical rather than romantic.