“Barbie darling,” said her mother, on a note that contrived to suggest the menace of some frightful indelicacy, “I think we won’t talk about it any more.”

“Uncle James hates him, anyway.”

“Barbara!”

“Lunch, Agnes,” said a quiet voice on the other side of the fence. “You’re late again.”

“Coming, dear. Please go on ahead with Daddy, Barbara,” said Mrs. Claire.

Dr. Ackrington bucketed his car down the drive and pulled up at the verandah with a savage jolt just as Barbara reached it. She waited for him and took his arm.

“Stop it,” he said. “You’ll give me hell if you hurry me.” But when she made to draw away he held her arm in a wiry grasp.

“Is the leg bad, Uncle James?”

“It’s always bad. Steady now.”

“Did you have your morning soak in the Porridge Pot?”

“I did not. And do you know why? That damned poisonous little bounder was wallowing in it.”

“Mr. Questing?”

“He never washes,” Dr. Ackrington shouted. “I’ll swear he never washes. Why the devil you can’t insist on people taking the shower before they use the pools is a mystery. He soaks his sweat off in my mud.”

“Are you sure…?”

“Certain. Certain. Certain. I’ve watched him. He never goes near the shower. How in the name of common decency your parents can stomach him…”

“That’s just what I’ve been asking Mummy.”

Dr. Ackrington halted and stared at his niece. An observer might have been struck by their resemblance to each other. Barbara was much more like her uncle than her mother, yet while he, in a red-headed edgy sort of way, was remarkably handsome, she contrived to present as good a profile without its accompaniment of distinction. Nobody noticed Barbara’s physical assets; her defects were inescapable. Her hair, her clothes, her incoherent gestures, her strangely untutored mannerisms, all combined against her looks and discounted them. She and her uncle stared at each other in silence for some seconds.