“The pretty girl in the white dress,” Larry said. “Talking to the matron in purple and the man in the blazer.” He giggled. “Sybil’s keeping a tight hand on him today,” he said.

“Be quiet,” I said.

“I’ll tell you after they’re gone.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I said stiffly.

Larry giggled again. “Not much you don’t, Big Ears.”

He wasn’t the sort of person one felt angry with, but for a moment I had a strong desire to hit him. I didn’t want Norah to bracket me with him, I didn’t want Norah to see me as other than grown-up. Then I saw that she was amused, not coldly but indulgently, that she already had Larry’s measure. There was no harm in him; he gave people pieces of gossip in the same way that he gave them drinks or cigarettes or flowers or chocolates.

To my surprise, Norah took his arm. “You like to give pleasure, don’t you?” she said. I stared at her; it was the continuation of my thoughts.

“I do my poor best,” Larry said.

We joined Susan and Mark and Sybil; to my relief Susan seemed so engrossed in her conversation that it seemed unlikely that she’d noticed that I hadn’t been circulating. All traces of the scene in the car had vanished from her face, she seemed full of gaiety, distributing it recklessly around her, like a queen throw­ing gold coins to beggars. And Mark and Sybil were cer­tainly the beggars; he was looking at her as if it were only the overflow from her vitality that was keeping him on his feet; and Sybil, looking more than usually dowdy in her purple dress, was looking at her not so much with envy as with a sort of greedy love.

Her face was blotchy under its thick layer of powder; Susan and I weren’t the only ones who’d had a scene that morning. She’d found out something about Mark’s goings on, as she always did. Normally I would have taken sides with one or the other. I should have been maliciously glad at the discomfiture of one or the other; it served Sybil right for not giving Mark what he wanted, it served Mark right for seducing silly little girls who seemed to get younger every time.

But this morning I was sorry for them both. It was an odd feeling, an unaccustomed feeling. It wasn’t a feeling that would be comfortable to live with. I introduced Norah; the flat formal statements of name, the repetition of the inquiry to which there was no answer but the repetition of the inquiry, seemed more than usually unreal. I should at least have told them that a grown-up was here, it was a fact worth announcing.