‘No, sir.’

‘Do not do so.’

‘Very good, sir.’

And when we reached our chairs in the garden-room he said:

‘I wonder whether Hayter had any intention of mentioning lobsters. I rather think not. Do you know, I believe he thought I was joking?’

Next day, by chance, a weapon came to hand. I met an old acquaintance of school-days, a contemporary of mine named Jorkins. I never had much liking for Jorkins. Once, in my Aunt Philippa’s day, he had come to tea, and she had condemned him as being probably charming at heart, but unattractive at first sight. Now I greeted him with enthusiasm and asked him to dinner. He came and showed little alteration. My father must have been warned by Hayter that there was a guest, for instead of his velvet suit he wore a tail coat; this, with a black waistcoat, very high collar, and very narrow white tie, was his evening dress; he wore it with an air of melancholy as though it were court mourning, which he had assumed in early youth and, finding the style sympathetic, had retained. He never possessed a dinner jacket.

‘Good evening, good evening. So nice of you to come all this way.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t far,’ said Jorkins, who lived in Sussex Square.

‘Science annihilates distance,’ said my father disconcertingly. ‘You are over here on business?’

‘Well, I’m in business, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I had a cousin who was in business – you wouldn’t know him; it was before your time. I was telling Charles about him only the other night. He has been much in my mind. He came’, my father paused to give full weight to the bizarre word – ‘a cropper.’

Jorkins giggled nervously. My father fixed him with a look of reproach.

‘You find his misfortune the subject of mirth? Or perhaps the word I used was unfamiliar; you no doubt would say that he “folded up”.’

My father was master of the situation. He had made a little fantasy for himself, that Jorkins should be an American, and throughout the evening he played a delicate, one-sided parlour-game with him, explaining any peculiarly English terms that occurred in the conversation, translating pounds into dollars, and courteously deferring to him with such phrases as ‘Of course, by your standards…’; ‘All this must seem very parochial to Mr Jorkins’; ‘In the vast spaces to which you are accustomed…’ so that my guest was left with the vague sense that there was a misconception somewhere as to his identity, which he never got the chance of explaining. Again and again during dinner he sought my father’s eye, thinking to read there the simple statement that this form of address was an elaborate joke, but met instead a look of such mild benignity that he was left baffled.

Once I thought my father had gone too far, when he said: ‘I am afraid that, living in London, you must sadly miss your national game.’

‘My national game?’ asked Jorkins, slow in the uptake, but scenting that here, at last, was the opportunity for clearing the matter up.