“Oh, God!” said Harriet, as the car started. Fast driving terrified her, as he very well knew. After five breath-taking miles, he shot a glance sideways at her, to see how she was standing it, and slacked his foot from the accelerator.

“That was my triumph song. Was it a bad four minutes?”

“I asked for it ” said Harriet with set teeth. “Go on.”

“I’m damned if I will. We will go at a reasonable pace and risk the undergraduate, damn his bones!”

The ivory chessmen were, however, still in the window when they arrived. Peter subjected them to a hard and monocled stare, and said:

“They look all right.”

“They’re lovely. Admit that when I do do a thing, I do it handsomely. I’ve asked you now for thirty-two presents at once.”

“It sounds like Through the Looking-Glass. Are you coming in, or will you leave me to fight it out by myself?”

“Of course I’m coming in. Why?-Oh! Am I looking too keen?”

“Much too keen.”

“Well, I don’t care. I’m coming in.”

The shop was dark, and crowded with a strange assortment of first-class stuff, junk, and traps for the unwary. The proprietor, however, had all his wits about him and, recognizing after a preliminary skirmish of superlatives that he had to do with an obstinate, experienced and well-informed customer, settled down with something like enthusiasm to a prolonged siege of the position. It had not previously occurred to Harriet that anybody could spend an hour and forty minutes in buying a set of chessmen. Every separate carved ball in every one of thirty-two pieces had to be separately and minutely examined with finger-tips and the naked eye and a watchmaker’s lens for signs of damage, repair, substitution or faulty workmanship; and only after a sharp catechism directed to the “provenance” of the set, and a long discussion about trade conditions in China, the state of the antique market generally and the effect of the American slump on prices, was any figure mentioned at all; and when it was mentioned, it was instantly challenged, and a further discussion followed, during which all the pieces were scrutinized again. This ended at length in Peter’s agreeing to purchase the set at the price named (which was considerably above his minimum, though within his maximum estimate) provided the board was included. The unusual size of the pieces made it necessary that they should have their own board; and the dealer rather reluctantly agreed, after having it firmly pointed out to him that the board was sixteenth-century Spanish-clean out of the period-and that it was therefore almost a condescension on the purchaser’s part to accept it as a gift.

The combat being now brought to an honourable conclusion, the dealer beamed pleasantly and asked where the parcel should be sent.

“We’ll take it with us,” said Peter, firmly. “If you’d rather have notes than a cheque-”

The dealer protested that the cheque would be quite all right but that the parcel would be a large one and take some time to make up, since the pieces ought all to be wrapped separately.

“We’re in no hurry,” said Peter. “We’ll take it with us”; thus conforming to the first rule of good nursery behaviour, that presents must always be taken and never delivered by the shop.

The dealer vanished upstairs to look for a suitable box, and Peter turned apologetically to Harriet.

“Sorry to be so long about it. You’ve chosen better than you knew. I’m no expert, but I’m very much mistaken if that isn’t a very fine and ancient set, and worth a good bit more than he wants for it. That’s why I haggled so much. When a thing looks like a bargain, there’s usually a snag about it somewhere. If one of those dashed pawns wasn’t the original, it would make the whole lot worthless.”

“I suppose so.” A disquieting thought struck Harriet. “If the set hadn’t been perfect, should you have bought it?”

“Not at any price.”

“Not if I still wanted it?”

“No. That’s the snag about me. Besides, you wouldn’t want it. You have the scholarly mind and you’d always feel uncomfortable knowing it was wrong, even if nobody else knew.”

“That’s true. Whenever anybody admired it I should feel obliged to say, ‘Yes, but one of the pawns is modern’-and that would get so tedious. Well, I’m glad they’re all right, because I love them with a perfectly idiotic passion. They have been haunting my slumbers for weeks. And even now I haven’t said thank you.”

“Yes, you have-and anyway, the pleasure is all mine… I wonder whether that spinet’s in order.”

He threaded his way through the dark backward and abysm of the antique shop, clearing away a spinning-wheel, a Georgian wine-cooler, a brass lamp and a small forest of Burmese idols that stood between him and the instrument. “Variations on a musical-box,” he said, as he ran his fingers over the keys, and, disentangling a coffin-stool from his surroundings, sat down and played, first a minuet from a Bach suite and then a gigue, before striking into the air of Greensleeves.

“Alas! my love, you do me wrong

To cast me off discourteously,

And I have loved you so long,

Delighting in your company.”

He shall see that I don’t mind that, thought Harriet, and raised her voice cheerfully in the refrain:

“For O Greensleeves was all my joy,

And O Greensleeves was my delight-”

He stopped playing instantly.

“Wrong key for you. God meant you for a contralto.” He transposed the air into E minor, in a tinkling cascade of modulations. “You never told me you could sing…No, I can hear you’re not trained…chorus-singer? Bach Choir?… of course-I might have guessed it… ‘And O Greensleeves was my heart of gold And who but my Lady Greensleeves’… Do you know any of Morley’s Canzonets for Two Voices?… Come on, then, ‘When lo! by Break of Morning’… Whichever part you like-they’re exactly the same… ‘My love herself adorning… G natural, my dear, G natural…”

The dealer, descending with his arms full of packing materials, paid no attention to them. He was well accustomed to the eccentricities of customers; and, moreover, probably cherished hopes of selling them the spinet. “This kind of thing,” said Peter, as tenor and alto twined themselves in a last companionable cadence, “is the body and bones of music. Anybody can have the harmony, if they will leave us the counterpoint. What next?… ‘Go to Bed, sweet Muse’? Come, come! Is it true? is it kind? is it necessary?… ‘Love is a fancy, love is a frenzy.’… Very well, I owe you one for that,” and with a mischievous eye he played the opening bars of “Sweet Cupid, Ripen Her Desire.”

“No,” said Harriet, reddening.

“No. Not in the best of taste. Try again.”

He hesitated; ran from one tune to another; then settled down to that best-known of all Elizabethan love-songs.

“Fain would I change that note

To which fond love hath charmed me…”

Harriet, with her elbows on the lid of the spinet and her chin propped on her hands, let him sing alone. Two young gentlemen, who had strayed in and were talking rather loudly in the front part of the shop, abandoned a halfhearted quest for brass candlesticks and came stumbling through the gloom to see who was making the noise.

“True house of joy and bliss

Where sweetest pleasure is

I do adore thee;

I see thee what thou art,

I love thee in my heart

And fall before thee.”

Tobias Hume’s excellent air rises to a high-pitched and triumphant challenge in the penultimate line, before tumbling with a clatter to the keynote. Too late, Harriet signed to the singer to moderate his voice.

“Here, you!” said the larger of the two young gentlemen, belligerently. “You’re making a filthy row. Shut up!”

Peter swung round on the stool. “Sir?” He polished his monocle with exaggerated care, adjusted it and let his eye travel up the immense tweedy form towering over him. “I beg your pardon. Was that obligin’ observation addressed to me?”