At last the carriage arrived at the front door, and Collis escorted his mother out on to Twenty-first Street. It was a bright, hazy day, with a faint wind blowing from the north-west, which did something to relieve the ripe smell of garbage and horse manure in the streets. The Edmondses had a newish dark-green brougham, and their coachman, Steadman, was holding the door open for them, with his usual inane smile fixed on his face, as if he were about to burst out laughing. They climbed aboard and settled themselves down while Steadman hauled himself up on to the box and snapped his whip at their two well-polished chestnuts, Scylla and Charybdis. They rolled eastward across town, Ida shaded by her fringed parasol and Collis sitting back on his seat with his white gloves on his knee and his worried eyes looking out at the crowded sidewalks as if he were a French nobleman being taken to the Bastille in a tumbril.

‘I always think I look more elegant in light brown,’ remarked Ida. ‘I was wearing light brown when I first met your father.’

‘She’d better not be too stout,’ said Collis. ‘If she’s too stout, I’m leaving at once.’

Ida turned to him, offended that he hadn’t commented on her elegance in light brown. ‘Of course she’s not stout,’ she said coldly. ‘You don’t think I would marry you off to anyone stout?’

‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ said Collis gloomily. ‘I think you’d marry me off to anyone, particularly if she looked less elegant in light brown than you do.’

Ida gave a tight, disapproving sniff. ‘You’re absolutely insufferable, do you know that? I thought you’d changed your ways when you agreed to come today, but now I’m not so certain.’

‘I came today because I wanted to,’ Collis told her.

She shook her parasol to shoo off the flies. ‘I was afraid of that,’ she said. ‘It was too much to expect that you might have come for my sake.’

Collis sighed. ‘Mother, I am only going along with this preposterous arrangement because I agree it’s time I started to think about my future, and I have to start somewhere. If I like Delphine, and Delphine likes me, there may be a possibility of our coming to some sort of arrangement; but if we dislike each other, then there really isn’t any point in continuing. You may look a picture in light brown and ostrich plumes, but Cupid’s wings and little golden bows and arrows really don’t suit you at all.’

‘Oh, if your father were here,’ said Ida.

‘If my father were here, there would be very much less room in this carriage than there is now, and that’s all. Now do try to calm down, Mother. We’re supposed to be on a casual shopping expedition, remember? We don’t want to spoil the illusion.’