‘That will be her now,’ said Mrs Flynn, pausing grimly in her task. ‘Wanting something else instead of the biscuits. Wanting a sponge cake or a muffin, as if such things grew on trees and did not have to be measured and mixed and baked and set on a tray to cool.’

It was an inconvenience to Mrs Flynn, always having to prepare food, always having to cook. She shook her head and resumed her plucking.

In the drawing room the ladies were seated, two on the settee, one on the upright armchair and Mrs Dunlevy in the other armchair nearest to the little side table upon which the tea things were arranged.

‘Her mistake was to confront her husband,’ said Mrs Rothe, and, ‘She was the housekeeper!’ exclaimed Mrs Pyke.

Mrs Pyke was perched on the very edge of the settee, a teacup and saucer balanced on her lap. She fell silent as Alice entered. They all fell silent. The feeling in the room was sharp and thrilling and rather terrible, as though something had been said or done that could not be undone.

‘Alice, see if Mrs Flynn has any cake or muffins,’ said Mrs Dunlevy. ‘Miss Dempsey does not care for cinnamon.’

‘It is not the cinnamon per se,’ corrected Miss Dempsey. ‘It is the presence of cinnamon in a biscuit I find not to my liking.’

Miss Dempsey was a slight figure in her prim white blouse, very upright, but it was the uprightness of a thin layer of ice that would shatter if a single drop of rain fell on it. The flesh of her face was stretched tightly over muscles constantly contracting and releasing, eyes alighting and darting away and alighting afresh someplace else. Mrs Pyke had exclaimed, ‘She was the housekeeper!’ and Miss Dempsey’s discomfort, her horror, was writ large. Miss Dempsey took refuge in the failing of the cinnamon biscuits.

‘Told you, didn’t I?’ said Mrs Flynn with grim satisfaction when presented with this request. ‘She can have the last of the almond cake from last week, and if it is stale and nasty I shall not be the one to blame for it.’

And she cut a slice of this almond cake, which Alice duly delivered, though to enter the room in which the four ladies sat induced in her such a reluctance she afterwards fled to the solitariness of the dining room. It unsettled her, this sudden reluctance, and she could not account for it. Mrs Pyke had exclaimed, She was the housekeeper! and Miss Dempsey had spurned the cinnamon biscuits and they sat, the four ladies, perched on the very cusp of their chairs like birds about to take flight.