He looked hurt, but nothing could seriously impair his vision of himself. A couple of minutes later, Mathilda, turning on the taps in the bathroom they both shared, could hear him humming to himself in his dressing-room. He hummed the first few phrases of an old ballad inaccurately and incessantly, and Mathilda, who had an ear for music, thumped on the door leading from the bathroom to his dressing-room, and begged him either to learn the ditty or to gag himself. Then she was sorry, because, finding that by raising his voice a trifle he could easily converse with her, he became very chatty, and favoured her with some sentimental reminiscences of his careless youth. Occasionally he would interrupt himself to ask her if she was listening, but he did not seem to need the stimulus of intelligent comment, and, indeed, went on talking happily for quite some time after she had left the bathroom. However, he was not at all offended by the discovery that for quite ten minutes his conversation had reached her only as an indistinguishable burble of sound, but laughed good-humouredly, and said, Alas, he found himself living very much in the past nowadays, and feared he must be turning into a dreadful old bore. After that he returned to his Victorian ballad, alternately humming and singing it until Mathilda began to nourish thoughts of homicide.

She called out to him: ‘Are you sure you never appeared in Grand Opera, Joe? What a Siegfried you’d have made! Figure and all!’

‘Naughty, naughty!’ he replied, with an archness which made her understand Stephen’s brutality to him. ‘Tilda dear, are you dressed yet?’

‘Nearly. Why?’

‘Don’t go down without me! I’ve got an idea!’

‘You’re not laying your head together with mine, Joe: don’t think it!’

He only laughed at this, but he must have kept an ear cocked, for when she opened her door a few minutes later, he instantly emerged from his room, rubbing his hands together, and saying gleefully: ‘Ah, you can’t fox your old uncle, you bad girl!’

‘Let me point out to you, Joe, that you’re not my uncle, and that even my best friends don’t call me a girl.’

He linked arms with her. ‘Wasn’t it the Immortal Bard who wrote, To me, dear friend, you never can be old?’

Mathilda closed her eyes for an anguished moment. ‘If we are going to quote at one another, I warn you, you’ll come off the worst!’ she said. ‘I know a song which runs, Your parents missed a golden opportunity: They should of course have drowned you in a bucket as a child.’

He squeezed her arm, chuckling. ‘Oh, that tongue of yours, Tilda! Never mind! I don’t care a bit! not a little bit! Now, just you listen to the plan I’ve made! You’re going to play Piquet with Nat after dinner.’

‘Not on your life.’

‘Yes, yes, you are! I had thought of Bridge again, but that would mean Mottisfont, and he doesn’t seem to be a very strong player, and you know how seriously Nat takes his game! And then I suddenly remembered those grand battles you and he had the last time you stayed here, and how much he enjoyed them. I suggest that after dinner you should challenge Nat to a rubber, while I keep the others amused in the billiard-room. Charades or Clumps, or one of those other good, old-fashioned round games.’