She was a silent girl. Harry went straight for her and they danced together, hardly saying a word, while Juan shouted boring reminiscences about Handall’s and Northgate to Harry, addressing him as ‘man.’

‘I like this room,’ muttered Francis to Sophia as he handed her some sherry. He looked with simple admiration at the leopard-skin seats of the chairs, the sheepskin pouffes and a painting by Chirico of two splendid heavy horses which reared over the built-in electric fire. The room glittered with money and newness. Francis had never seen a place like this.

‘Don’t you?’ he added.

‘Mercy, no. I like the horses, but not, oh not in a house like this!’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s all wrong. Like playing a theme from the Fifth Symphony and syncopating it.’

‘Well, I like it.’

Better than the cottage, thought his sister bitterly. She was in a bad mood. It distressed her to see the rooms of The Judge’s House furnished without individuality, like rooms in a fashionable hotel. The room was beautiful, but it was clear that some of our leading decorators had done their most chic with it. Not so should a house of character be furnished.

But Harry and Francis seemed to like it.

Poor lambs, she thought, watching her brothers. Luxury’s so utterly new to them; we’ve never had even a sniff of it. No wonder they enjoy it.

CHAPTER XVIII

They were granted many sniffs of it for the next month or so.

Juan took a great liking to both the boys. This was not a compliment, because Juan liked everyone except his Aunt Maria, an extremely small, brown, silent, smiling person who glided into the room when the children were being entertained at The Judge’s House, bowed, made a sound like ‘Pleece’ and glided out again.

For some time Sophia believed her to be dumb, but did not dare to ask Juan if this were so; the question would be so indelicate if she were not, or, for that matter, if she were.

Francis had no such scruples.

‘I say, Juan, is your aunt dumb?’ he demanded one day, after the aunt had said her piece and made her exit.

‘Man, of course not! She can say enough when she wants to. She’s always on at me about driving too fast, and jawing Belinha about flirting. Coo! she’s an old cow, I can tell you.’

Sophia found it hard to believe that the aunt was an old cow, but she wondered very much what went on in her head, as she wondered about everyone.

Juan shared his car and much of his leisure with his new friends. He was to be in England for two years, learning banking and getting acquainted with English life. He would finally take a post in a large Argentinian bank which was largely controlled by an uncle, not the husband of the old cow, but another uncle, who was her brother and Juan’s guardian. His parents were dead.

The weekends were their nicest times. In the week, as Harry was playing, they could only have impromptu parties after the show, which sent Harry and Francis carolling home to bed at half past two in the morning, but at weekends Juan would drive the two Gardens and Belinha out to a roadhouse, where they danced and swam and spent a great deal of money.