Fortunately Uncle Preston was a little soothed by receiving 48 for Tidiness, a virtue which even spite must grant him, and 50 for Brains, for Aunt Maxine and Aunt Grace and Angela considered that Uncle Preston must naturally be clever, because he was a man. Besides, he ran a business. But Sophia only gave him four for Brains; she considered him unintelligent, even if he was a man.

But the family got into their stride again with Good Temper, for which Uncle Preston received the awful total of 14. This flung him into considerable agitation, and the game was held up for some ten minutes while Uncle Preston debated whether the occasional firmness which he was unfortunately compelled to display could really be counted as bad temper; and Auntie Loo delivered another death blow by saying that certainly it could and adding that she had given him two for Good Temper because it was all he deserved. With the final cheering announcement that Uncle Preston had received 56 marks for Selfishness, the game of Dodo came to an abrupt and welcome end, for Harry’s key was heard in the door, and all turned with the greatest pleasure and relief to welcome him.

‘You look much older, Harry. What have you been doing to yourself?’ said Aunt Grace, when the general clamour of greeting had died down.

She said what all the relatives were thinking. Harry, who was not yet twenty-one, had always an air of extreme self-possession and gay calm which made him seem older than he was; and now he had obtained his first part in a West End show, he was daily drinking gin-and-its with elaborately lacquered young women and double whiskies with cynical yet surprisingly easily-taken-in elderly men, and usually pretending, for the sake of conformity and politeness, to be much more enthusiastic about the state of being alive than he actually felt. Most persons who are on the stage demand such yea-saying; when this over-vivacious, emphatic, egoistic atmosphere is lacking, they become suspicious.

Harry enjoyed the gin-and-its, double whiskies and young women, but he found the yea-saying a strain. The experiences of his childhood had disposed him more towards nay-saying; and the effort of pretending to be constantly on top of life made him look a little fine-drawn and older.

‘Late nights, I expect, isn’t it, dear?’ said Auntie Loo. ‘Don’t you get rather tired, doing the same thing every evening? I should, I’m sure.’

‘Oh well, Auntie Loo, I don’t have much to do, you know. The stage managing is quite hard work, but the acting is really nothing; I don’t come on until the last act, and then all I say is ‘You betta come clean, Spike’.’

“You betta come clean, Spike’,’ murmured Auntie Loo. ‘That seems quite easy to remember. ‘You betta come clean, Spike.’ And who is Spike, dear? The villain?’

‘One of them. There are four. But you’ll see who everybody is when you come next week, I hope. I’ve got two seats for you and Uncle Preston, for next Tuesday evening, and later on I’ll get two for you if you like, Aunt Grace.’