Father Conroy’s hat rested on his knee. He began to dust it slowly, with care. The game seemed lost; it had been a mistake to appeal to the woman. Yet something might perhaps be salvaged. He rose thoughtfully to his feet and took Mrs. Drewitt’s hand.

“Good day to you, ma’am,” he murmured, and pressed her hand sympathetically; then, while she stared in surprise, he began his dignified walk toward the door.

Behind him, Drewitt struggled to get out of the depths of his armchair, but so tightly did it hold him that Father Conroy was in the hall before he heaved himself erect. Viciously he flung the Agatha Christie into the chair. “Just a moment!” he shouted.

Father Conroy’s voice could be heard exchanging pleasantries with Teresa. By the time Mr. Drewitt reached the hall, she had the hall door open and Father Conroy was outside, pausing at the top of the steps to don his hat. Drewitt would have shouted again, but there was something so practiced about the gesture with which the hat was fitted to the gray head, something so ceremonious about the slow descent of the steps in spite of or rather because of, the slight limp, that he felt that for once he had affronted more than a man. Deep down in his nonconformist subconscious was a feeling of ancestral awe that kept him silent just a moment too long. By the time the shout came, Father Conroy had got away.

Got away, at least, for the present. With the car door shut and the engine started, he knew he was not really getting away. Sooner or later, Drewitt would be after him for the pony. Sooner or later, the animal would have to be handed over. Was its mouth that bad? He sat in the car in the drive outside his own house and tried a little uneasily to recall what he had told Drewitt. Suppose there was a court case? Suppose its mouth was found to be fine? Ah no, damn it, how could it be when the old lady had been tugging at it for years, like a bell rope.

I’m losing my grip, he told himself, staring at the house. If I go in there now, I’ll spend the evening worrying about the pony. But what else is there to do? Who is there to call on? He passed his hand over his scalp, feeling the length of hair, and fell, at last, as he knew he would, to the lure of Kavanagh’s. He could do with a haircut, and if he hurried he might get the cartoons as well, at the end of Children’s Hour.