“Is it time. Mummy? Because it must be, so may I get down?”

“Yes, thank you, my sweet. You have been terribly good and I must think of some exciting reward.”

“Going to see Mr. Garbel frinstance?”

“I’m afraid,” Troy said, “that Daddy, poor thing, was being rather silly.”

“Well then — ride to Babylon?” Ricky suggested, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at his father.

“All right,” Alleyn groaned, parodying despair. “O.K. All right. Here we go!”

He swung the excitedly squealing Ricky up to his shoulders and grasped his ankles.

“Good old horse,” Ricky shouted and patted his father’s cheek. “Non-stop to Babylon. Good old horse.”

Troy looked dotingly at him. “Say to Nanny that I said you could ask for an extra high tea.”

“Top highest with strawberry jam?”

“If there is any.”

“Lavish!” said Ricky and gave a cry of primitive food-lust. “Giddy-up horse,” he shouted. The family of Alleyn broke into a chant:

How many miles to Babylon?

Five score and ten.

Can I get there by candle-light?

“Yes! And back again! Ricky yelled, and was carried at a canter from the room.

Troy listened to the diminishing rumpus on the stairs and looked at her work.

“How happy we are!” she thought, and then foolishly, “Touch wood!” And she picked up a brush and dragged a touch of colour from the hair across the brow. “How lucky I am,” she thought, more soberly, and her mood persisted when Alleyn came back with his hair tousled like Ricky’s and his tie under his ear.

He said: “May I look?”

“All right,” Troy agreed, wiping her brushes, “but don’t say anything.”

He grinned and walked round to the front of the easel. Troy had painted a head that seemed to have light as its substance. Even the locks of dark hair might have been spun from sunshine. It was a work in line rather than in mass, but the line flowed and turned with a subtlety that made any further elaboration unnecessary. “It needs another hour,” Troy muttered.