‘I’ll take you to the bathroom,’ said he, steering her between the revellers. She did not attract him, because for the moment he could think of no girl beside Toby, but he felt it his duty as a host to see that people had somewhere to be sick in if they wanted to be.

He glanced reproachfully at Sophia as he passed her. Surely this was her job. But Sophia and Celia were carefully not looking at Sally; and he had to take her into the bathroom and sit her miserably on the edge of the bath, with a chiffon handkerchief which smelled sweet held up to her mouth. Her large dark eyes, round which the lashes stood out in stiff rays, looked moistly up at him, her cheeks were crimson with youth, health, excitement rouge and gin. It was not easy to believe that she felt sick.

‘Feel bad. Not drunk. It was that nasty sand-wish.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ he soothed her politely. ‘Now you just stay quietly here in the cool, and you’ll feel better.’

‘Want Harry. Where’s Harry? He’s a swine, going off and leaving me when I feel sho bad. Feel so bad. Want Harry.’

‘I’ll try and get him,’ promised Francis, who was bored with the situation. How tiresome women could be. He went back along the corridor which isolated the bathroom from the rest of the cottage, and approached Sophia.

‘She’s sitting on the bath. She keeps on asking for Harry. I think it’s just a try-on to get him into the bathroom; she’s no more sick than I am.’

‘Leave her alone; she’ll get over it,’ advised Edward. A wail came from the bathroom, so loud that it sounded above that of Mr Bing Crosby intoning ‘Stormy Weather.’

‘WANT HARRY. FEEL SICK. Oh, I feel SO BAD.’

‘Damned little bore,’ murmured Edward, interrupting his own crooning of ‘Stormy Weather’. ‘Harry,’ he called, ‘you’re wanted in the bathroom.’

Harry, who was kissing Jane, waved him away impatiently.

‘Harry. Come here. Be a sport. Want to tell you shomething. Important.’

Sophia had gone to the large cupboard on the right of the mantelpiece, and was taking from it a tin of Eno’s Fruit Salts.

‘Perhaps,’ remarked Sophia to Celia, ‘she really does feel sick. I think we had better go in to her.’

And Sally, who had looked up hopefully at the sound of footsteps coming along the corridor, was horrified to behold two severe young women dressed in black, the tall one holding aloft a tin of Eno’s and the short one a glass of water with a spoon in it.

‘We have brought you some Eno’s,’ said Harry’s sister politely. ‘I am sorry you feel ill.’

‘Shorry to be a nuisance, darling,’ said Sally, with her dazzling and lovely smile. ‘It was that nasty sandwish. Fish.’

‘Perhaps,’ suggested Celia, looking at her with thoughtful curiosity, ‘it is something you ate before you came here. Or drank.’

‘Nothing but champagne. Only half a glash. Nasty fish. Feel better now.’