to afford a flat somewhere in Westminster, and he goes abroad to Bruges and those sorts of places every year, and always dresses well, and gives quite nice luncheon-parties in the season. You can’t do all that on two hundred a year, can you?’

‘Does he write for any other papers?’ queried Mrs Troyle.

‘No, you see he specialises so entirely on liturgy and ecclesiastical architecture that his field is rather restricted. He once tried the Sporting and Dramatic with an article on church edifices in famous fox- hunting centres, but it wasn’t considered of sufficient general interest to be accepted. No, I don’t see how he can support himself in his present style merely by what he writes.’

‘Perhaps he sells spurious transepts to American enthusiasts,’ suggested Clovis.

‘How could you sell a transept?’ said Mrs Riversedge; ‘such a thing would be impossible.’

‘Whatever he may do to eke out his income,’ interrupted Mrs Troyle, ‘he is certainly not going to fill in his leisure moments by making love to my maid.’

‘Of course not,’ agreed her hostess; ‘that must be put a stop to at once. But I don’t quite know what we ought to do.’

‘You might put a barbed wire entanglement round the yew tree as a precautionary measure,’ said Clovis.

‘I don’t think that the disagreeable situation that has arisen is improved by flippancy,’ said Mrs Riversedge; ‘a good maid is a treasure—’

‘I am sure I don’t know what I should do without Florinda,’ admitted Mrs Troyle, ‘she understands my hair. I’ve long ago given up trying to do anything with it myself. I regard one’s hair as I regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one’s private divergences don’t matter. Surely that was the luncheon gong.’

Septimus Brope and Clovis had the smoking-room to themselves after lunch. The former seemed restless and preoccupied, the latter quietly observant.

‘What is a lorry?’ asked Septimus suddenly; ‘I don’t mean the thing on wheels, of course I know what that is, but isn’t there a bird with a name like that, the larger form of a lorikeet?’

‘I fancy it’s a lory, with one “r,” ’ said Clovis lazily, ‘in which case it’s no good to you.’

Septimus Brope stared in some astonishment.

‘How do you mean, no good to me?’ he asked, with more than a trace of uneasiness in his voice.

‘Won’t rhyme with Florrie,’ explained Clovis briefly.

Septimus sat upright in his chair, with unmistakable alarm on his face.

‘How did you find out? I mean how did you know I was trying to get a rhyme to Florrie?’ he asked sharply.

‘I didn’t know,’ said Clovis, ‘I only guessed. When you wanted to turn the prosaic lorry of commerce into a feathered poem flitting through the verdure of a tropical forest, I knew you must be working up a sonnet, and Florrie was the only female name that suggested itself as rhyming with lorry.’

Septimus still looked uneasy.

‘I believe you know more,’ he said.