‘Sarah Snappe! Of course. Barbara shall have a new dress for this Maori concert on Saturday. Black, of course. It must be terribly simple. You can write at once. No, perhaps you should go to Harpoon and telephone, and they must put it on tomorrow’s train. There was a dress in the window, woollen with a dusting of steel stars. Really quite good. It would fit her. And ask them to be kind and find shoes and gloves for us. If possible, stockings. You can get the size somehow. And underclothes, for God’s sake. One can imagine what hers are like. I shall indulge myself in this, Dikon. And we must take her to a hairdresser and stand over him. I shall make her up. If Sarah Snappe doesn’t believe you’re my secretary you can ring up the hotel and do it through them.’ Gaunt beamed at his secretary. ‘What a child I am, after all, Dikon, aren’t I? I mean this is going to give me such real pleasure.’

Dikon said in a voice of ice: ‘But it’s quite impossible, sir.’

‘What the devil do you mean!’

‘There’s no parity between Barbara Claire and an understudy at the Unicorn.’

‘I should damn well say there wasn’t. The other little person had quite a lot to start with. She was merely incredibly vulgar.’

‘Which Barbara Claire is not,’ said Dikon. He looked at his employer, noted his air of peevish complacency and went on steadily. ‘Honestly, sir, the Claires would never understand. You know what they’re like. A comparative stranger to offer their daughter clothes!’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘It just isn’t done in their world.’

‘You’ve become maddenly class-conscious all of a sudden, my good Dikon. What is their world, pray?’

‘Shall we say proudly poor, sir?’

‘The suspicious-genteel, you mean. The incredibly, the insultingly stupid bourgeoisie who read offence in a kindly impulse. You wish me to understand that these people would try to snub me, don’t you?’

‘I think they would be very polite,’ Dikon said, and tried not to sound priggish, ‘but it would, in effect, be a snub. I’m sure they would understand that your impulse was a kind one.’

Gaunt’s face had bleached. Dikon, who knew the danger signals, wondered in a panic if he was about to lose his job. Gaunt walked to the door and looked out. With his back still turned to his secretary he said: ‘You will go into Harpoon and give the order over the telephone. The bill is to be sent to me, and the parcel to be addressed to Miss Claire. Wait a moment.’ He went to his desk and wrote on a slip of paper. ‘Ask them to write out this message and put it in the parcel. No signature, of course. You will go at once, if you please.’

‘Very well, sir,’ said Dikon.