“Exactly,” agreed Watchman drily. His cousin had a trick of saying things that sounded a little like quotations from an interview with himself. Watchman was amused rather than irritated by this mannerism. It was part and parcel, he thought, of Seb’s harmless staginess; like his clothes which were too exactly what a gentleman roughing it in South Devon ought to wear. He liked to watch Seb standing out on Coombe Rock, bareheaded to the breeze, in effect waiting for the camera man to say “O.K. for sound.” No doubt that was the pose Norman had chosen for his portrait of Sebastian. It occurred to him now that Sebastian was up to something. That speech about the artificiality of the stage was the introduction to a confidence, or Watchman didn’t know his Parish. Whatever it was, Sebastian missed his moment. The door opened and a thin man with untidy fair hair looked in.

“Hullo!” said Watchman. “Our distinguished artist.” Norman Cubitt grinned, lowered his painter’s pack, and came into the inglenook.

“Well, Luke? Good trip?”

“Splendid! You’re painting already?”

Cubitt stretched a hand to the fire. The fingers were grimed with paint.

“I’m doing a thing of Seb,” he said. “I suppose he’s told you about it. Laying it on with a trowel, I am. That’s in the morning. To-night I started a thing down by the jetty. They’re patching up one of the posts. Very pleasant subject, but my treatment of it, so far, is bloody.”

“Are you painting in the dark?” asked Watchman with a smile.

“I was talking to one of the fishing blokes after the light went. They’ve gone all politically-minded in the Coombe.”

“That,” said Parish, lowering his voice, “is Will Pomeroy and his Left Group.”

“Will and Decima together,” said Cubitt. “I’ve suggested they call themselves the Decimbrists.”

“Where are the lads of the village?” demanded Watchman. “I thought I heard the dart game in progress as I went upstairs.”