Tiny’s and Bill’s house proved to be a modern bungalow with a wonderful outlook over a deep valley. Tiny and Bill both were out when the party arrived, but the housekeeper was certain that they would soon return. She put out whisky and sherry, turned a red setter, two Manx cats and a bull-terrier out of the armchairs, repeated that Mr Fullalove and his cousin would be back at any moment, added that old Mrs Yates’ roof did not really leak and never had, but that the Irish were like that, and left the company to themselves.

‘Yes, Tiny and Bill are bachelors, lucky chaps,’ said Jonathan, smiling at Deborah who was looking adorably beautiful that day. ‘They’ve got a treasure in Mrs Dalby Whittier, their housekeeper. Oh, yes, she has to be given her full name. It’s her only idiosyncrasy. She’s a real find, though. Tiny says he doesn’t know what they did before she came. She popped up out of nowhere and asked for the job. Just came up to the door two years ago and said she’d heard in the village that they had a vacancy for a cook-housekeeper. They’ve kept her ever since. It’s a lonely spot up here, but she never minds being by herself. Bill is a bit of a naturalist, so he says, and is often out at night badger-watching and all that sort of thing, and Tiny sometimes goes up to Town, but she never turns a hair. Queer, in a way, because she’d lived all her life in London until she came here, or so she told them.’

‘What made her leave London, I wonder?’ Mrs Bradley remarked. Her nephew had no time to answer, for at that moment both dogs began to bark, one cat jumped on to the window sill and the other on to the table. Jonathan went to the window and opened it, and an alert man of about fifty with a face almost as dark as an Indian’s and small light-green eyes, climbed over the sill, shut the window, glanced down at his leggings, and then, with a cat on each shoulder and a dog’s muzzle glued firmly to each knee, advanced to greet the guests.

‘Get off, Mick. Get off, Deemster,’ said he to the cats. ‘Chuck it, Lassie. Go away, Cripes,’ he added to the dogs. ‘Hullo, Bradley. Good morning, Mrs Bradley.’

‘This is Tiny Fullalove, Aunt Adela,’ said Deborah. ‘Tiny, this is Jon’s aunt, Mrs Lestrange Bradley.’

‘I am always taken aback when it is recalled that Deborah is also Mrs Bradley,’ observed the reptilian, favouring Mr Fullalove with a leer. He responded with a gallantly meaningless remark, and began to dispense sherry.