“Oh, all right,” Christine said. She heaved herself out of the bathtub, swathed her pink bulk in a towel and splattered to the phone.

“Hello,” she said gruffly. At a distance he was not pathetic, he was a nuisance. She could not imagine how he had tracked her down: most likely he went through the phone book, calling all the numbers with her last name until he hit on the right one.

“It is your friend.”

“I know,” she said. “How are you?”

“I am very fine.” There was a long pause, during which Christine had a vicious urge to say, “Well, goodbye then,” and hang up; but she was aware of her mother poised figurinelike in her bedroom doorway. Then he said, “I hope you also are very fine.”

“Yes,” said Christine. She wasn’t going to participate.

“I come to tea,” he said.

This took Christine by surprise. “You do?”

“Your pleasant mother ask me. I come Thursday, four o’clock.”

“Oh,” Christine said, ungraciously.

“See you then,” he said, with the conscious pride of one who has mastered a difficult idiom.

Christine set down the phone and went along the hall. Her mother was in her study, sitting innocently at her writing desk.

“Did you ask him to tea on Thursday?”

“Not exactly, dear,” her mother said. “I did mention he might come round to tea sometime, though.”

“Well, he’s coming Thursday. Four o’clock.”

“What’s wrong with that?” her mother said serenely. “I think it’s a very nice gesture for us to make. I do think you might try to be a little more co-operative.” She was pleased with herself.

“Since you invited him,” said Christine, “you can bloody well stick around and help me entertain him. I don’t want to be left making nice gestures all by myself.”

“Christine, dear,” her mother said, above being shocked. “You ought to put on your dressing gown, you’ll catch a chill.”

After sulking for an hour Christine tried to think of the tea as a cross between an examination and an executive meeting: not enjoyable, certainly, but to be got through as tactfully as possible.