‘But do you?’ Barbara persisted, changing her posture with a jerk.

‘Well, he’s not out of the top drawer of course, poor thing.’

‘I don’t mind about that. And anyway what is the top drawer? It’s a maddening sort of way to classify people. Such cheek! I’m sorry, Mummy, I didn’t mean to be rude. But honestly, for us to talk about class!’ Barbara gave a loud hoot of laughter. ‘Look at us!’ she said.

Mrs Claire edged modestly towards the side of the pool and thrust her book at her daughter. Stronger waves of sulphurous smells rose from the disturbed waters. A cascade of drops fell from the elderly rounded arm.

‘Take Cranford,’ she said. Barbara took it. Mrs Claire pulled her rubber bag a little closer about her ears. ‘My dear,’ she said, pitching her voice on a note that she usually reserved for death, ‘aren’t you mixing up money and breeding? It doesn’t matter what one does surely…’ She paused.

‘There is an innate something…’ she began. ‘One can always tell,’ she added.

‘Can one? Look at Simon.’

‘Dear old Simon,’ said her mother reproachfully.

‘Yes, I know. I’m very fond of him. I couldn’t have a kinder brother, but there isn’t much innate something about Simon, is there?’

‘It’s only that awful accent. If we could have afforded…

‘There you are, you see,’ cried Barbara, and she went on in a great hurry, shooting out her words as if she fired them from a gun that was too big for her. ‘Class consciousness is all my eye. Fundamentally it’s based on money.’

On the verandah the bell was rung again with some abandon.

‘I must pop out,’ said Mrs Claire. ‘That’s Huia ringing.’

‘It’s not because he talks a different language or any of those things,’ said Barbara hurriedly, ‘that I don’t like Mr Questing. I don’t like him. And I don’t like the way he behaves with Huia. Or,’ she added under her breath, ‘with me.’

‘I expect,’ said Mrs Claire, ‘that’s only because he used to be a commercial traveller. It’s just his way.’

‘Mummy, why do you find excuses for him? Why does Daddy, who would ordinarily loathe Mr Questing, put up with him? He even laughs at his awful jokes. It isn’t because we want his board money. Look how Daddy and Uncle James practically froze out those rich Americans who were very nice, I thought.’ Barbara drove her long fingers through her mouse-coloured hair, and avoiding her mother’s gaze stared at the top of Rangi’s Peak. ‘You’d think Mr Questing had a sort of hold on us,’ she said, and then burst into one of her fits of nervous laughter.

‘Barbie darling,’ said her mother, on a note that contrived to suggest the menace of some frightful indelicacy, ‘I think we won’t talk about it any more.’