She did, almost literally, run out of the shop filled with a delicious sense of having done something altogether charming. ‘Kind!’ she thought. ‘That’s what I’ve been. Kind as kind. Dicky will be so touched. And when he sees that rather dreary rather inarticulate girl in his own setting – well, if there has been anything, it’ll peter out on the spot.’

She saw the whole thing in a gratifying flash of clairvoyance: the last fumes of temperament subsided in the sunshine of her own loving-kindness. She returned to the house and found Richard in the hall.

‘Darling!’ she cried. ‘All settled! I’ve seen your buddies and asked them. The old fuddy-duddy’s heaven, isn’t he? Out of this world. And the girl’s the nicest little thing. Are you pleased?’

‘But,’ Richard said, amazed. ‘Are they …? Did Anelida say they’d come?’

‘My dear, you don’t imagine, do you, that a bit-part fill-in at the Bonaventure is going to turn down an invitation to my birthday party!’

‘It’s not a bit-part,’ Richard said. ‘They’re doing Pygmalion and she’s playing Eliza.’

‘Poor child.’

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

‘There’s something,’ Miss Bellamy said, ‘so endlessly depressing about those clubs. Blue jeans, beards and a snack-bar, no doubt.’ He didn’t answer and she said kindly:

‘Well! We mustn’t let them feel too lost, must we? I’ll tell Maurice and Charles to be kind. And now, sweetie, I’m off to keep my date with the Great Play.’

Richard said hurriedly: ‘There’s something I wanted to alter…. Could we – ?’

‘Darling! You’re such heaven when you panic. I’ll read it and then I’ll put it in your study. Blessings!’

‘Mary – Mary, thank you so much.’

She kissed him lightly and almost ran upstairs to read his play and to telephone Pinky and Bertie. She would tell them that she couldn’t bear to think of any cloud of dissonance overshadowing her birthday and she would add that she expected them at six-thirty. That would show them how ungrudging she could be. ‘After all,’ she thought, ‘they’ll be in a tizzy because if I did do my stuff with The Management …’ Reassured on all counts she went into her room.