Delicately, with the tips of her fingers on the handle, she drew out the middle drawer of the desk. Paper clips— elastic bands—an artists’ small transparent ruler and triangle, drawing materials of all kinds, a huddle of foreign coins in an uncovered box, a pen-knife, a bottle-opener, a cork-screw—she closed the drawer, disappointed, and opened the right-hand one. Piles of note paper and envelopes—Edward VIII stamps.

“I know!” she said suddenly. “Handkerchiefs!”

As she approached the tall chest of drawers in the corner, she met Alice’s level, sulky stare in the silver frame. To his intense amusement, without hesitation she lifted the frame and turned Alice’s face to the wall. Then she opened the top left-hand drawer, glanced once at its contents and closed it hastily, and tried the next one. Handkerchiefs, yes—a tidy pile, all marked with the letter H. No more.

“Not Henry,” she said aloud. “I couldn’t bear that! Nor Harold, either. What other H’s are there?”

“Hilary,” he insisted, moving towards her across the room. “Do try to hear me, Sabrina. Hilary.”

“Hector,” she guessed wildly, and grinned. “How awful! Well, where else, I wonder?”

“My blessed idiot, the inside breast pocket of a man’s coat has his name on a label. Don’t you know anything about us at all? Look in my coats in the wardrobe.”

Such an unsatisfactory sort of person he was, anyway, she grumbled to herself as she turned away from the chest of drawers. No name—no face—no address— She had come again to the picture of little boys grouped on a lawn with a football, and she paused in front of it, staring at it hopelessly.

“Second from the right in the first row,” he said over her shoulder, and pointed with his finger on the glass. “That’s me.”

She turned away with a sigh, laying a caressing hand on the panels of the wardrobe as she passed it.

“There you are,” he said quickly. “My coats.”

“He might have had a bookplate,” she muttered, drifting discontentedly across the carpet. “But all he ever does is write ‘Shenstone’ inside the cover.”

“It’s in my Kipling,” he said, following her. “Surely you’ve had my Kipling off the shelf? My name’s in every volume of the older ones. Look in my Kipling, Sabrina.”

She stood behind the chesterfield, scowling at the handsome rows of books in their open shelves which lined the walls. Didn’t he ever win prizes at school? She never had, but other girls had been presented with Bibles or Jane Austen or Maria Edgeworth, with their own names actually printed on in real type, or else inscribed in a clergyman’s flowing hand. Surely if he was a bright little boy, and showed up well when visitors came.... Surely he was the right sort of little boy at school, and never made a fool of himself there, as she had done....