Victorian Gothic peaks and their white cast-iron tracery, greenly shaded on one side by honeysuckle and on the other side by wistaria, and revealed the stains upon the red and white check tablecloth, the cake crumbs upon the stains, and the coffee beans and human hair upon the paved floor. The position was that the twins had had their tea, Theo had removed his, Pierce had not come down for his, Kate was late for hers as usual, Mary and Paula and Casie were having theirs.'She's got a new car again,' said Casie.'I wish you'd say who you mean and not call everybody «she»,' said Mary.'My sister.' Casie, having spent most of her life tending her late ailing mother whom she referred to as 'the old bitch', could not forgive her younger sister for having escaped this fate and married an affluent husband. Casie, with a red chunky face and a coil of iron grey hair, was much given to crying fits, often set off by sad things she saw on television, which claimed Mary's preoccupied and exasperated sympathy.'What kind?' said Paula absently. She was still thinking about Lucretius and wondering if a certain passage would be too hard to set in the examination.'A Triumph something or other. It's well for some people.The Costa Brava and all.''We saw that flying saucer again today,' announced Henrietta, who had come back carrying Barbara's cat, Montrose.The twins often made this claim.'Really?' said Mary. 'Henrietta, please don't put Montrose on the table.'Montrose was a large cocoa-coloured tabby animal with golden eyes, a square body, rectangular legs and an obstinate self-absorbed disposition, concerning whose intelligence fierce arguments raged among the children.
