“Penny! I said prayers!”

One blue eye opened, gazed at her with reproach, and shut again.

“It is saying its prayers. It’s a moo-cow. That’s the way they say them.”

It took about a quarter of an hour to persuade Penny to be human again. Even then a last faint contumacious “Moo!” followed the final amen.

Judy turned a deaf ear, forbade further conversation, and went to tidy herself up in the bathroom. She had just come to the conclusion that she had never looked plainer in her life, when the front door bell rang and she had to go and let Frank Abbott in.

They made the omelette together in Isabel’s minute kitchen. There is nothing like a homely, domestic job for breaking the ice. By the time he had laid the table, and she had called him an idiot for dropping the butter-dish, they might have been married for years. Over the omelette, which was very good and had all sorts of exciting scraps in it, Frank told her so. His naturally impudent tongue was his own again, but if he expected to raise a blush he was disappointed. Miss Elliot agreed with perfect calm.

“Yes, we might-only not so dull.”

“It mightn’t be dull with the right person.”

Judy proffered tomato sauce.

“You mightn’t think it was going to be until it was too late. I mean, we both like this sauce, but if we had to eat it at every meal for the next forty or fifty years we’d be bored stiff.”

“My child, you make me shudder! I can assure you that I have at least thirty distinct flavours-like all the soup and jelly makers used to advertize, and you could always try mixing them if thirty wasn’t enough. Besides, the brain is not completely stagnant-I can invent new ones. You’ve got it all wrong. People are dull because of something in themselves- a tendency to stew over old tea-leaves-keeping the windows tight shut to prevent any new ideas getting in-all that sort of thing. You have been warned!”