‘Gosh, Miss Staybridge, I’m sorry I never really had a chance to get acquainted with you. You must of been just a kid when you went off to school.’

‘Yes, I was — just a skinny awkward kid. But then I guess I still am, Mr. Cornplow.’

‘You are not! Say, gosh, Miss Staybridge, you got more darn gracefulness and the loveliest lips I ever did see.’

‘Oh, now you’re flattering me, Mr. Cornplow. You college pundits! I’m just another young female, where you’re a regular movie star. You play football at Truxon, don’t you?’

‘Well — that is — course I’m on the scrub team. The captain and the coach ganged up on me. They claim I’m lazy, just because they said I had to live on prunes and bran and go to bed at nine, and I told ’em where they got off! “I’m not going to bed at any nine o’clock and I’m not going to eat any prunes”, I told ’em. No sir! Prunes! Don’t you think so?’

‘Oh, absolutely, Mr. Cornplow . . . Prunes!’

‘I bet you love to dance, Miss Staybridge.’

‘Oh, I adore it, but not with any of these little shrimps — only with tall men — and I’ve noticed that all you golden-haired boys, I don’t know WHY it is, but somehow, you always dance so well.’

‘Me? Golden-haired? It’s just plain, dumb RED— tray ordinary.’

‘Oh, it is not red! It’s gold.’

‘It’s red!’

‘Gold!’

They dived into laughter — Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Mrs. Nickleby and the vegetable marrows.

At the other end of the room, Gene Silga explaining that in Russia — to which he had never been nearer than Fall River — the least skilful workman has a better time than any Detroit foreman: free lectures and a chance to do parachute jumping.

The revolutionary conspirators, the two lovers, could hear from above them an irritable pacing.

‘That’s Father, registering indignation,’ sighed Guy. ‘Don’t it beat the Dutch how unsympathetic all fathers are!’

This beginning of the open season on parents drew the romantics back to the general hunting party, as Sara observed, ‘Doesn’t it! My father, old Freddie, wants to do the right thing by his offspring, sometimes dismayingly so, but he has no imagination; he can’t understand that young people aren’t altogether content to play bridge every evening and go to bed at ten-thirty. Why — why — he still wears a nightshirt instead of pyjamas!’

‘No!’ marvelled Guy.

‘He’s lucky. I usually don’t have on anything at night except an undershirt,’ said Gene.

‘I’ll bet Mr. Cornplow does so have imagination,’ protested Annabel. ‘I mean, I don’t really know your father very well, but I talked to him once about getting a new car — Mr. Putnam Staybridge sure quenched THAT maiden’s dream — and I thought your father was swell. He was so kind and he joked so . . .’

‘Naturally, if he thought he could sell you a car!’ said Sara. ‘Oh, Dad really is kind, or means to be, but he hasn’t got the imagination to see that the younger generation wants something more than being a respected resident of Cooper Boulevard. It’s impossible for him to conceive that we, that Youth, no longer wants anything merely for itself, but demands that the whole world be freed of the bonds of capitalism.’ She looked to Eugene for approval, and got it, from his well-trained professional smile. ‘Why . . . Look, Annabel — I may call you Annabel, mayn’t I? — doesn’t your father travel a lot?’