Questing, after clearing his throat, broke into loud applause, tapping Mr Falls’s pipe enthusiastically against the verandah post. ‘Well, well, well,’ cried Mr Questing. ‘If that wasn’t an intellectual treat! Quite a treat, Mr Falls, wasn’t it?’

‘My pipe, I believe,’ said Mr Falls, politely, and took it. ‘Thank you.’ He turned to Gaunt. ‘Of course you may lay the agnosticism of those lines at the door of character and set against them a hundred others that are orthodox enough, but my own opinion—’

‘As You Like It has always been my favourite,’ said Mrs Claire from the window. ‘Such a pretty play. All those lovely woodland scenes. Dear Rosalind!’

Dr Ackrington advanced from his doorway. ‘With all this modern taste for psychopathological balderdash,’ he said, ‘I wonder you get anyone to listen to the plays.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Gaunt stuffily, ‘there is a renaissance.’

Huia came out—clanging her inevitable bell. The Colonel appeared from his study looking vaguely miserable.

‘Is that lunch?’ he asked. ‘What have you been talking about? Sounded as if someone was making a stump speech or somethin’.’

Barbara whispered hurriedly in her father’s ear.

‘Eh? I can’t hear you,’ he complained. ‘What?’ He stared at Gaunt. ‘Out of a play, was it? Good Lord.’ He seemed to be faintly disgusted, but presently an expression of complacency stole over his face. ‘We used to do quite a bit of theatrical poodle-fakin’ when I was a subaltern in India,’ he said. ‘They put me into one of their plays once. Damn’ good thing. D’you know it? It’s called Charley’s Aunt:’

IV