‘But Mummy, they’re not “these people”! Look, there’s…’

‘Barbara darling,’ said Mrs Claire in her special voice, ‘some day you will understand that there are folk who move in rather loud and vulgar sets, and who may seem to be very exciting, and who I expect are all very rich. But, my dear,’ Mrs Claire had added, gently, exhibiting a photograph of an enormously obese peer in bathing shorts, supported on the one hand by a famous coryphée and on the other by a fashionable prize fighter—‘my dear, they are not Our Sort.’ And she had given Barbara a bright smile and a kiss, and Barbara had stuck to her raincoat.

On the occasion of his proposal, Mr Questing, who did not care for sitting on the ground, took a camp stool to the far end of the lake, placed it behind some manuka scrub near the diving board and, fortified by a cigar, sat there until he spied Barbara leaving the house. He then discarded the cigar, and stepped out to meet her.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Mr Questing. ‘Look who’s here! How’s the young lady?’

Barbara clawed the raincoat about her and said she was very well.

‘That’s fine,’ said Mr Questing. ‘Feeling good, eh? That’s the great little lass.’ He laughed boisterously and manoeuvred in an agile manner in order to place himself between Barbara and the diving board. ‘What’s your hurry?’ he asked merrily. ‘Plenty of time for the bathingbeauty stuff. What say we have a wee chin-wag, You, Me and Co, uh?’

Barbara eyed him with dismay. What new and odious development was this? Since the extraordinary scene on the evening of Smith’s accident, she had not encountered Questing alone and was almost unaware of the angry undercurrents which ran strongly through the normal course of life at Wai-ata-tapu. For Barbara was carried along the headier stream of infatuation. She was bemused with calf-love, an infant disease which, caught late, is doubly virulent. Since that first meeting in the dusk, she had not seen much of Gaunt. She was so grateful for her brief rapture and, upon consideration, so doubtful of its endurance, that she made no attempt to bring about a second encounter. It was enough to see him at long intervals, and receive his greeting. Of Questing she had thought hardly at all, and his appearance at the lake surprised as much as it dismayed her.

‘What do you want to see me about, Mr Questing?’

‘Well, now, I seem to have the idea there’s quite a lot I’d like to talk to Miss Babs about. All sorts of things,’ said Mr Questing, dropping his voice to a fruity croon. ‘All sorts of things.’

‘But—would you mind—you see I’m just going to…’