‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think it’s good. Yes, it’s definitely a success.’

Mrs Fellows-Brown turned sideways and looked in the mirror.

‘I must say,’ she said, ‘your clothes do do something to my behind.’

‘You’re much thinner than you were three months ago,’ Sybil assured her.

‘I’m really not,’ said Mrs Fellows-Brown, ‘though I must say I look it in this. There’s something about the way you cut, it really does minimize my behind. I almost look as though I hadn’t got one—I mean only the usual kind that most people have.’ She sighed and gingerly smoothed the troublesome portion of her anatomy. ‘It’s always been a bit of a trial to me,’ she said. ‘Of course, for years I could pull it in, you know, by sticking out my front. Well, I can’t do that any longer because I’ve got a stomach now as well as a behind. And I mean—well, you can’t pull it in both ways, can you?’

Alicia Coombe said, ‘You should see some of my customers!’

Mrs Fellows-Brown experimented to and fro.

‘A stomach is worse than a behind,’ she said. ‘It shows more. Or perhaps you think it does, because, I mean, when you’re talking to people you’re facing them and that’s the moment they can’t see your behind but they can notice your stomach. Anyway, I’ve made it a rule to pull in my stomach and let my behind look after itself.’ She craned her neck round still farther, then said suddenly, ‘Oh, that doll of yours! She gives me the creeps. How long have you had her?’

Sybil glanced uncertainly at Alicia Coombe, who looked puzzled but vaguely distressed.

‘I don’t know exactly . . . some time I think—I never can remember things. It’s awful nowadays—I simply cannot remember. Sybil, how long have we had her?’

Sybil said shortly, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Fellows-Brown, ‘she gives me the creeps. Uncanny! She looks, you know, as though she was watching us all, and perhaps laughing in that velvet sleeve of hers. I’d get rid of her if I were you.’ She gave a little shiver, then she plunged once more into dress-making details. Should she or should she not have the sleeves an inch shorter? And what about the length? When all these important points were settled satisfactorily, Mrs Fellows-Brown resumed her own garments and prepared to leave. As she passed the doll, she turned her head again.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t like that doll. She looks too much as though she belonged here. It isn’t healthy.’

‘Now what did she mean by that?’ demanded Sybil, as Mrs Fellows-Brown departed down the stairs.

Before Alicia Coombe could answer, Mrs Fellows-Brown returned, poking her head round the door.

‘Good gracious, I forgot all about Fou-Ling. Where are you, ducksie? Well, I never!’

She stared and the other two women stared, too. The Pekinese was sitting by the green-velvet chair, staring up at the limp doll sprawled on it. There was no expression, either of pleasure or resentment, on his small, pop-eyed face. He was merely looking.