Minnie never argued with Ogden. He was not always right, but the brief triumph of proving him wrong was seldom worth the ensuing coolness. The last time she had insisted on having her way there had been, though it was the height of the season, an extraordinary falling off in the number of ripe peaches available for the house from the greenhouse. She had thought it better not to refer to it but had taken the point. After all he was a good gardener and good gardeners were known to be on the despotic side.

She turned instead to greet Violet and Nanny who were setting off across the garden for their morning walk.

‘Are you going fishing?’

Violet was carrying a net and a jam jar.

‘I’m going to catch a stickleback and look for Elfrida Beetle so Osbert can go and get her when he’s finished lessons.’

‘Who is Elfrida Beetle?’

‘She’s very naughty, she hasn’t had breakfast.’

‘It’s the name they give the duck,’ Nanny explained.

‘It’s a silly name, that’s why we don’t call it her.’

‘I think it’s rather a nice name. How did she get it?’

‘She used to be called Alfred and then when she turned into a female she was going to be called Alfreda but Nanny said it wasn’t Alfreda but Elfrida and then she’d just swallowed a beetle and elle is French for she.’

‘I see,’ said Minnie, prepared to let it go at that.

‘She freed the beetle,’ explained Violet. ‘By swallowing it. She freed it from the miseries of life. Elle freed a beetle. Elfrida Beetle.’

‘Ah,’ said Minnie.

‘It’s a silly name but it is her name.’

‘And she has run away?’

‘She thought Osbert meant her to go to the river but he didn’t. But she will come back because she hasn’t had breakfast.’

‘I hope she does.’

‘She’ll be back,’ said Nanny. ‘I never saw such a greedy animal.’

‘Bird,’ said Violet.

‘No need to be pert,’ said Nanny.

Violet held her arms out sideways and ran in zig-zags across the lawn saying in a silly voice, ‘Pert bird, bird pert, perty birdy.’

Nanny shook her head and followed doggedly.

‘I suppose the youngest always does tend to get a bit spoilt,’ said Minnie, turning back to Ogden.

‘They do that.’ He smiled. For this apparent taking of him into her confidence he was prepared to overlook the bold remarks about the asters.

They killed sixty-two pheasants on the first drive. The mist had all cleared by the time the guns were allotted their positions. They waited, fifty yards or so away from each other, in silence, their loaders, with or without dogs, behind them. Bob Lilburn sat on his shooting stick, relaxed in his tweeds, a big fit man, a figure of kindly authoritarianism, eminently capable of fulfilling all the obligations of the day’s sport. He was a good shot – ‘How did you do?’ Olivia would ask him, ‘Got my share,’ he’d say casually – was never in doubt as to any of the small points of procedure or etiquette, when to leave a bird for someone else to shoot, how much to press into Glass’s hand at the end of the day – details which still worried young Marcus and even sometimes Tommy Farmer whose father the General had no shooting of his own. It was a familiar world to Bob Lilburn and he moved at ease in it – some people might have said he was at his best there. Sir Reuben Hergesheimer, next to him, smoked a cigar while he waited, his face expressionless apart from a faint weariness. Two of the Nettleby men waited with him as loaders. He was an indifferent shot, though not a positively bad one. Shooting was something one did for purely social reasons, and social reasons to him were adequate reasons.