‘Like any other husband and wife without money,’ said Fenella. ‘Paul’s got his pension and I’ve got my profession. We’ll both get jobs.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Millamant comfortably, ‘perhaps after all, your grandfather—’

‘We don’t want Grandfather to do anything, Aunt Milly,’ said Paul quickly. ‘He wouldn’t anyway, of course, but we don’t want him to.’

‘Dearest!’ said his mother. ‘So hard! So bitter! I don’t know you, Paul, when you talk like that. Something’—she glanced with extraordinary distaste at Fenella—‘has changed you so dreadfully.’

‘Where,’ asked Millamant brightly, ‘is Panty?’

‘Where should she be if not in school?’ Pauline countered with dignity. ‘She is not in the habit of breakfasting with us, Milly.’

‘Well, you never know,’ said Millamant. ‘She seems to get about quite a lot, doesn’t she? And, by the way, Pauline, I’ve a bone to pick with Panty myself. Someone has interfered with My Work. A large section of embroidery has been deliberately unpicked. I’d left it in the drawing-room and—’

‘Panty never goes there,’ cried Pauline.

‘Well, I don’t know about that. She must, for instance, have been in the drawing-room last evening during dinner.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Sonia, as I suppose we must call her, says she sat in that chair before dinner, Pauline. She says it was perfectly normal.’

‘I can’t help that, Milly. Panty did not come into the drawing-room last night at dinner-time for the very good reason that she and the other children were given their medicine then and sent early to bed. You told me yourself, Milly, that Miss Able found the medicine in the flower-room and took it straight in for Dr Withers to give the children.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Millamant. ‘Would you believe it, the extraordinary Sonia didn’t trouble to take it in to Miss Able, or to give Papa’s bottle to me. She merely went to the flower-room, where it seems,’ said Millamant with a sniff, ‘orchids had been brought in for her; and dumped the lot. Miss Able hunted everywhere before she found it, and so did I.’

‘T’uh,’ said Pauline.

‘All the same,’ said Paul. ‘I don’t mind betting that Panty—’

‘It has yet to be proved,’ Pauline interrupted with spirit rather than conviction, ‘that Panty had anything to do with—with—’

‘With the Raspberry?’ said Paul, grinning. ‘Mother, of course she did.’

‘I have reason to believe—’ Pauline began.

‘No, really, Mother. It’s Panty all over. Look at her record.’

‘Where did she get it? I’ve never given her such a thing.’

‘Another kid, I suppose, if she didn’t buy it. I’ve seen them in one of the village shops; haven’t you, Fen? I remember thinking to myself that they ought to have been sent to a rubber dump.’