income. All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren’t respectable live beyond other people’s. A few gifted individuals manage to do both.’

‘It’s hardly so much a gift as an industry.’

‘The crisis came,’ returned Clovis, ‘when she suddenly started the theory that late hours were bad for one, and wanted me to be in by one o’clock every night. Imagine that sort of thing for me, who was eighteen on my last birthday.’

“On your last two birthdays, to be mathematically exact.’

‘Oh, well, that’s not my fault. I’m not going to arrive at nineteen as long as my mother remains at thirty- seven. One must have some regard for appearances.’

‘Perhaps your mother would age a little in the process of settling down.’

‘That’s the last thing she’d think of. Feminine reformations always start in on the failings of other people. That’s why I was so keen on the husband idea.’

‘Did you go as far as to select the gentleman, or did you merely throw out a general idea, and trust to the force of suggestion?’

‘If one wants a thing done in a hurry one must see to it oneself. I found a military Johnny hanging round on a loose end at the club, and took him home to lunch once or twice. He’d spent most of his life on the Indian frontier, building roads, and relieving famines and minimizing earthquakes, and all that sort of thing that one does do on frontiers. He could talk sense to a peevish cobra in fifteen native languages, and probably knew what to do if you found a rogue elephant on your croquet-lawn; but he was shy and diffident with women. I told my mother privately that he was an absolute woman-hater; so, of course, she laid herself out to flirt all she knew, which isn’t a little.’

‘And was the gentleman responsive?’

‘I hear he told some once at the club that he was looking out for a Colonial job, with plenty of hard work, for a young friend of his, so I gather that he has some idea of marrying into the family.’

‘You seem destined to be the victim of the reformation, after all.’

Clovis wiped the trace of Turkish coffee and the beginnings of a smile from his lips, and slowly lowered his dexter eyelid. Which, being interpreted, probably meant, ‘I don’t think!’