Margaret got blushingly to her feet. She had not seen this man since the time he called at the house in the early days. He was so strange and alarmingly vigorous that she felt shy and on her guard.

‘That’s my friend – Miss Hanson,’ Daisy said. She seemed to have no shyness towards Mr Carson.

‘Ah – your friend,’ Mr Carson said meaningfully. ‘I see. Well – good afternoon, Miss Hanson.’

Margaret responded as her hand was shaken vigorously, and his dark eyes bored into her. She remembered the effect this man had had on her the first time she saw him. Close up, she found him rather strange. It came to her that beside the inner glow of energy that she sensed in Philip Tallis, all Mr Carson’s outward flurry seemed to her rather exaggerated.

‘Tea, James?’ Philip Tallis asked. ‘There’s a drop left.’

‘Yes, yes – ooh, cake, yes, please! – Now listen, Tallis. I’ve come to drag you out with me – and Daisy – soon, tonight. No, no –’ He waved a hand at Philip Tallis’s attempts to refuse. ‘I know you don’t think you go in for the Kyrle Society or the Guild or whatever you want to call it. But there’s something rather special tonight. We’ve a visiting speaker – a lady, moreover – and you’re coming even if I have to drag you bodily to Great Charles Street. You must bring Daisy – and this young lady as well. No one should miss it!’

Daisy was listening now with avid attention. ‘What is it? Tell us, Mr Carson!’

‘First of all –’ Mr Carson squatted down and spoke very solemnly to Daisy – ‘you must promise me to get your old man there by hook or by crook.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, James, spit it out,’ Philip Tallis said, picking up Daisy’s half-finished bowl as if he had better things to be doing. ‘Daisy will need her bed – she has school tomorrow.’

‘No, I don’t, Pa,’ Daisy said. ‘It’s Saturday tomorrow!’

‘Daisy,’ Mr Carson announced pompously, standing upright again, ‘will need no other schooling after this. Not only is the speaker a woman . . .’

‘Oh, tell us, Mr Carson!’ Daisy was hopping up and down. Margaret was beginning to feel overcome by suspense herself.

‘The lady is a Miss Hoyland,’ Mr Carson said. ‘A remarkable woman – a pioneer in the new colour photography. I have already heard her this afternoon, giving a talk about her work. But even more remarkably, she has travelled all the way to the United States of America . . .’ He spun his story out like a fairy tale and Margaret was almost as hooked as Daisy, whose mouth was hanging open now.

‘Miss Hoyland – Miss Jacintha Emily Hoyland, being the woman’s full appellation –’ he smiled, mocking his own pomposity – ‘has brought back colour photographs which she has taken of some of the work of Mr Tiffany in Fifth Avenue, New York.’