So, evidently, did Mr. Period. “My dear Mary,” he said. “That was not the prettiest of remarks.”

“Quite so. Precisely,” Mr. Cartell agreed. “You should exercise more discipline, Connie.”

Leonard said: “The only way with Moppett is to beat her like a carpet.”

“Care to try?” she asked him.

Alfred announced luncheon.

It was the most uncomfortable meal Nicola had ever eaten. The entire party was at cross purposes. Everybody appeared to be up to something indefinable.

Miss Cartell had bought a new car. Leonard spoke of it with languid approval. Moppett said they had seen a Scorpion for sale in George Copper’s garage. Leonard spoke incomprehensibly of its merits.

“Matter of fact,” he said, “I’d quite like to buy it. Trade in my own heap with him, of course.” He leant back in his chair and whistled quietly through his teeth.

“Shall we look at it again?” Moppett suggested, grandly.

“No harm in looking, is there?”

Nicola suddenly thought: That was a pre-planned bit of dialogue. Alfred returned with an envelope which he placed before Mr. Period.

“What’s this?” Mr. Period asked pettishly. He peered through his eyeglass.

“From the Rectory, sir. The person suggested it was immediate.”

“I do so dislike interruptions at luncheon,” Mr. Period complained. “ ’Scuse, everybody?” he added playfully.

His guests made acquiescent noises. He read what appeared to be a very short letter and changed colour.

“No answer,” he said to Alfred. “Or rather-say I’ll call personally upon the Rector.”

Alfred withdrew. Mr. Period, after a fidgety interval and many glances at Mr. Cartell, said: “I’m very sorry, Hal, but I’m afraid your Pixie has created a parochial crise.”

Mr. Cartell said: “Oh, dear. What?”

“At the moment she, with some half-dozen other — ah — boon companions, is rioting in the Vicar’s seed beds. There is a Mothers’ Union luncheon in progress, but none of them has succeeded in catching her. It couldn’t be more awkward.”

Nicola had an uproarious vision of mothers thundering fruitlessly among rectorial flower beds. Miss Cartell broke into one of her formidable gusts of laughter.

“You always were hopeless with dogs, Boysie,” she shouted. “Why you keep that ghastly bitch!”

“She’s extremely well bred, Connie. I’ve been advised to enter her for the parish dog show.”

“My God, who by? The Rector?” Miss Cartell asked with a bellow of laughter.

“I have been advised,” Mr. Cartell repeated stuffily.

“We’ll have to have a freak class.”

“Are you entering your Pekingese?”

“They’re very keen I should, so I might as well, I suppose. Hardly fair to the others, but she’d be a draw, of course.”

“For people that like lapdogs, no doubt.”

Mr. Period intervened: “I’m afraid you’ll have to do something about it, Hal,” he said. “Nobody else can control her.”

“Alfred can.”

“Alfred is otherwise engaged.”

“She’s on heat, of course.”

“Really, Connie!”

Mr. Cartell, pink in the face, rose disconsolately, but at that moment there appeared in the garden a disheveled clergyman dragging the overexcited Pixie by her collar. They were watched sardonically by a group of workmen.

Mr. Cartell hurried from the room and reappeared beyond the windows with Alfred.

“It’s too much,” Mr. Period said. “Forgive me!”

He, too, left the room and joined the group in the garden.

Leonard and Moppett, making extremely uninhibited conversation, went to the window and stood there, clinging to each other in an ecstasy of enjoyment. They were observed by Mr. Period and Mr. Cartell. There followed a brief scene in which the Rector, his Christian forbearance clearly exercised to its limit, received the apologies of both gentlemen, patted Mr. Period, but not Mr. Cartell, on the shoulder, and took his leave. Alfred lugged Pixie, who squatted back on her haunches in protest, out of sight, and the two gentlemen returned — very evidently in high dudgeon with each other. Leonard and Moppett made little or no attempt to control their amusement.

“Well!” Mr. Period said with desperate savoir faire. “What were we talking about?”

Moppett spluttered noisily. Connie Cartell said: “You’ll have to get rid of that mongrel, you know, Hal.” Her brother glared at her. “You can’t,” Connie added, “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

“I entirely agree,” Mr. Cartell said, very nastily indeed, “and have often said so much, I believe, to you.”

There was a quite dreadful silence, broken at last by Mr. Period.

“Strange,” he observed, “how, even in the animal kingdom, breeding makes itself felt.” And he was off, in a very big way, on his favourite topic. Inspired, perhaps, by what he would have called Pixie’s lack of form, he went to immoderate lengths in praising this quality. He said, more than once, that he knew the barriers had been down for twenty years but nevertheless…On and on he went, all through the curry and well into the apple flan. He became, Nicola had regretfully to admit, more than a little ridiculous.

It was clear that Mr. Cartell thought so. He himself grew more and more restive. Nicola guessed that he was fretted by divided loyalties and even more by the behaviour of Leonard Leiss, who, having finished his lunch, continued to lean back in his chair and whistle softly through his teeth. Moppett asked him, sardonically, how the chorus went. He raised his eyebrows and said, “Oh, pardon me — I just can’t seem to get that little number out of my system,” and smiled generally upon the table.

“Evidently,” said Mr. Cartell.

Mr. Period said he felt sure that he himself made far too much of the niceties of civilized behaviour and told them how his father had once caused him to leave the dining-room for using his fishknife.

Mr. Cartell listened with mounting distaste. Presently he wiped his lips, leant back in his chair and said: “My dear P.P., that sort of thing is no doubt very well in its way, but surely one can make a little too much of it?”

“I happen to feel rather strongly about such matters,” Mr. Period said, with a small deprecating smile at Nicola.

Miss Cartell, who had been watching her adopted niece with anxious devotion, suddenly shouted: “I always say that when people start fussing about family and all that, it’s because they’re a bit hairy round the heels themselves, ha ha!”

She seemed to be completely unaware of the implications of her remark or its effect upon Mr. Period.

“Well, really, Connie!” he said. “I must say!”

“What’s wrong?”

Mr. Cartell gave a dry little laugh. “After all,” he said. “When Adam delved, you know.”

“ ‘Dolve,’ I fancy, not ‘delved,’ ” Mr. Period corrected rather smugly. “Oh, yes. The much-quoted Mr. Ball, who was afterwards hanged for his pains, wasn’t he? Who was then the gentleman? The answer is, of course, ‘Nobody.’ It takes several generations to evolve the genuine article, don’t you agree?”

“I’ve known it to be effected in less than no time,” Mr. Cartell said dryly. “It’s quite extraordinary to what lengths some people will go. I heard on unimpeachable authority of a man who forged his name in a parish register in order to establish descent from some ancient family or another.”

Miss Cartell laughed uproariously.

Mr. Period dropped his fork into his pudding.

Leonard asked with interest: “Was there any money in it?”

Moppett said: “How was he found out? Tell us more.”

Mr. Cartell said, “There has never been a public exposure. And there’s really no more to tell.”

Conversation then became desultory. Leonard muttered something to Moppett, who said: “Would anybody mind if we were excused? Leonard’s car is having something done to its guts and the chap in the garage seemed to be quite madly moronic. We were to see him again at two o’clock.”