‘What were they pleased about?’

‘Theeing Dulthibella. What time do you thuppothe it ith? I lotht my watch in Cornwall.’169

‘Still quite early. Not midnight yet. And did she read to them?’

‘Yeth. She read to a Mr Vickery. He thelth bootth. He thaid he knew what kind of bootth, black, with buttonth and high heelth. He uthed to thell them, but he doethn’t now. Not with buttonth. And he made uth look at all the bootth he had in thtock, in cathe they’d do inthead. It took thome time—hourth and hourth, really.’

‘And who did she read to next?’

‘A man with whithkerth—a thaddler.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He thaid—thomething about letting bygoneth be bygoneth.’

Aubrey made a mental note to resume his patronage of these two tradesmen. He remembered that he must also show a polite interest in Jeanie’s share of the expedition. ‘And how did your part of it go off? I hope it went well.’

She did not answer. He repeated the question. Out of her slumber, she replied like an obedient child, ‘A man fell off a ladder and broke hith leg.’ From a deeper layer of slumber, and with a more childish docility, she added, ‘It wath the betht I could do.’

Nothing more was said until Dulcibella came back, when Jeanie sat up with a start and asked where Leo was, with every appearance of having been devoured with dutiful anxiety. Dulcibella replied that Leo was in the fens and that she washed her hands of him. ‘He thought I said Gittingham. Apparently, there’s a Gittingham in Cambridgeshire; anyhow, he must needs go there and 170comb it in vain for Cutbushes. In the end, he rang up the Education Office and got a list of dead headmistresses, and then the name of Foale burst on him in all its hideous familiarity and he got to us through the Tittingham police station. All the rest of it was his own tedious little concerns. Really, there are times when I find Leo too intolerably self-centred! What concern is it of mine whether or no he goes to a temperance hotel in the fens and sprains his ankle?’

Hearing his surname tossed about in the plural, Aubrey began to burn with resentment; and as it is undignified to feel resentment on one’s own behalf, he burned with all the additional incandescence of altruism on behalf of Sir Leopold Pirkheimer, a fellow who had shown a great deal of goodwill and resourcefulness, and got no thanks for it. The least he could do for Sir Leopold, hungering and thirsting in Cambridgeshire, was to cut short this interminable dinner. He rose to his feet, trampled on his table-napkin, and exclaimed, ‘For what we have received, may the Lord make us thankful!’

Hopkins, coming in with the pudding, withdrew.

Dulcibella heaped her plate with salad, added mustard, and remarked, ‘Shouldn’t that be “truly thankful”? Miss Foale said “truly thankful”.’

‘I do not use the adverb until I am in my bed,’ Aubrey replied. ‘Now we will go to the library for coffee, and I shall hope to hear all about this afternoon. I gather it was only a qualified success.’