“For pity’s sake let’s stick to the point,” Barbara cried. “I’m for having Mr. Gaunt and his staff, Sim’s against it, Mother’s hovering. You’re for it, Uncle, I suppose.”

“I fondly imagined that three resident patients might be of some assistance to the exchequer. What does your father say?” He turned to Colonel Claire. “What do you say, Edward?”

“Eh?” Colonel Claire opened his eyes and mouth and raised his eyebrows in a startled manner. “Is it about that paper you’ve got in your hand? I wasn’t listening. Read it again.”

“Great God Almighty!”

“Your steak,” said Huia, and placed before Dr. Ackrington a strip of ghastly pale and bloated meat from which blood coursed freely over the plate.

During the lively scene which followed, Barbara hooted with frightened laughter, Mrs. Claire murmured conciliatory phrases, Simon shuffled his feet, and Huia in turn shook her head angrily, giggled, and uttered soft apologies. Finally she burst into tears and ran back with the steak to the kitchen, where a crash of breaking crockery suggested that she had hurled the dish to the floor. Colonel Claire, after staring in surprise at his brother-in-law for a few seconds, quietly took up Dr. Forster’s letter and began to read it. This he continued to do until Dr. Ackrington had been mollified with a helping of cold meat.

“Who is this Geoffrey Gaunt?” asked Colonel Claire after a long silence.

“Daddy! You must know. You saw him in Jane Eyre last time we went to the pictures in Harpoon. He’s wildly famous.” Barbara paused with her left cheek bulging. “He was exactly my idea of Mr. Rochester,” she said ardently.

“Theatrical!” said her father distastefully. “We don’t want that sort.”

“Just what I say,” Simon agreed.

“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Claire, “that Mr. Gaunt would find us very humdrum sort of folk. Don’t you think we’d better just keep to our own quiet ways, dear?”