‘Steamer to where?’ demanded Annabel.

‘Heavens! Steamer to anywhere! I’m just imagining a case.’

‘Oh,’ said Annabel.

Fred chuckled, and Dr. Kamerkink looked at both of them suspiciously as he struggled on:

‘You’re on this steamer, and somebody asks you, “Who’s that guy?” Do you answer, “Why, he’s the fellow that sang ‘Trees’ at the ship’s concert,” or “He’s the one that knows the difference between Barbados and Haitian rum.” No! What you answer is, “Him? He’s the biggest manufacturer of automobile tops west of the Mississippi!” and the other fellow gets interested and says, “Is that a fact! Say, I’ve got an automobile top! I’d like to get acquainted with him.” See how I mean, Fred?’

‘I see,’ said Fred.

Hadn’t Doc Kamerkink been saying something about how to get along well on steamers? He’d like to get along on steamers, well or ill.

Sara finished it — Sara tore it.

‘But of course if you ever did retire, actually you wouldn’t stay away for more than a month, Father. Impossible!’

‘How so?’

‘You’re too much a creature of habit. You’ve often laughed and told us about how fussy Grandpa Cornplow was: had to have the wastebasket or his footstool in exactly the same place, and carried on if anybody moved his ruler, which he never used, one inch from its proper place. And of course you’re precisely like him!’

‘Me? That’ve always made such fun of him . . .’

‘Precisely! If the cleaning woman ever changes the order you always keep your toothbrushes in, you have three fits before breakfast. You’re as fixed in your routine as if you were in a plaster cast, and you’d be chilly without it!’

‘Wh-why — me — why, I’m known throughout the entire motor business as a lone wolf. Do just what I please . . .’

‘But, darling, you’re always pleased to do exactly the same thing at exactly the same second every day, and if you went travelling and had to change your habits, you’d go crazy. Please, Father, this isn’t any criticism. Since you’d rather play cards than read anything new and discover what’s going on in the world, it doesn’t matter. Gives you a stability that, maybe, the rest of us do depend on, as you hinted — not awfully politely, I thought. But it does mean you’ll never in the world be able to do anything different from selling Triumphs and coming home to hear Lowell Thomas on the radio.’

‘Why — why . . .’ said Fred.

‘Isn’t that just what I told you!’ crowed Doc Kamerkink, who hadn’t.

There was a certain listlessness, as the party broke up, in all of them except Howard and Annabel, who trotted off together.

‘Routine? Fixed habits? ME?’ raged Fred, as he drank a glass of sodium bicarbonate — remembering that it had been his father’s habit, also, to think that after every company dinner he needed soda.

Hazel raised her eyes at him and dropped them, silent.