“It’s Chaucerian.”

“I suppose the cat’s called Piers Plowman.”

“No. He’s out of the prevailing period. He’s called Hodge.”

“I’ve never heard Richard utter her name.”

Charles said: “She’s on the stage, it appears.”

“Oh, God!”

“In the new club theatre behind Walton Street. The Bonaventure.”

“You need say no more, my poor Charles. One knows the form.” Charles was silent and the voice asked impatiently, “Are you still there?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“How do you know Richard’s so thick with them?”

“I meet him there occasionally,” Charles said, and added lightly, “I’m thick with them too, Mary.”

There was further silence and then the voice, delightful and gay, shouted, “Florrie! Bring me you know what.”

Florence picked up her own offering and went into the bathroom.

Charles Templeton stared through the window at a small London square, brightly receptive of April sunshine. He could just see the flower-woman at the corner of Pardoner’s Row, sitting in a galaxy of tulips. There were tulips everywhere. His wife had turned the bow window into an indoor garden and had filled it with them and with a great mass of early-flowering azaleas, brought up in the conservatory and still in bud. He examined these absent-mindedly and discovered among them a tin with a spray-gun mechanism. The tin was labelled “Slaypest” and bore alarming captions about the lethal nature of its contents. Charles peered at them through his eyeglass.

“Florence,” he said, “I don’t think this stuff ought to be left lying about.”

“Just what I tell her,” Florence said, returning.

“There are all sorts of warnings. It shouldn’t be used in enclosed places. Is it used like that?”

“It won’t be for want of my telling her if it is.”

“Really, I don’t like it. Could you lose it?”

“I’d get the full treatment meself if I did,” Florence grunted.