Hubert nodded and laughed and sat back as if he’d made a joke himself.

‘Dud’s awfully satirical, wouldn’t you say, Georgie?’ Cecil went on, giving him a sly look over the white roses.

‘He works on your mother’s patience,’ said George with a sigh, as though he’d known the family for years, and aware too that this repeated ‘Georgie’, never used by his own family, was showing him to them in a novel light.

‘Is your brother at Cambridge also?’ asked George’s mother.

‘No, he’s at Oxford, thank heavens.’

‘Oh, really, which college?’

‘Now, which one is it?’ said Cecil. ‘I think it’s called something like… Balliol?’

‘That certainly is one of the Oxford colleges,’ said Hubert.

‘Well, that’s it, then,’ said Cecil. George sniggered and gazed with nervous admiration at his pondering face, above the high starched collar and lustrous black tie, the sparkle of his dress-studs in the candlelight, and felt a quick knock against his foot under the table. He gasped and cleared his throat but Cecil was turning with a bland smile to Mrs Kalbeck, and then as Hubert started to say something idiotic George felt the sole of Cecil’s shoe push against his ankle again quite hard, so that the secret mischief had something rougher in it, as often with Cecil, and after a few testing and self-conscious seconds George regretfully edged his foot out of the way. ‘I’m sure you’re absolutely right,’ said Cecil, with another solemn shake of the head. The fact that he was already mocking his brother made George queasily excited, as if some large shift of loyalties was about to be demanded of him, and he soon got up to deal with the wine for the fish, which the maids were hopelessly dim about.

Mrs Kalbeck tackled a small trout with her customary relish. ‘Do you hunt?’ she asked Cecil, in a square, almost jaunty way, rather as though she were always on a horse herself.