George thought Lady Valance the most terrifying person he’d ever met, dogmatic, pious, inexcusably direct, and immune to all jokes, even when explained to her; her sons had learned to treasure her earnestness as a great joke in itself. ‘Well, your mother devotes most of her time and energy to good works, doesn’t she,’ George said, with wary piety of his own.

With the serving of the main course and a new wine, George suddenly felt it was going well, what had loomed as an unprecedented challenge was emerging a modest success. Clearly they all admired Cecil, and George’s confidence in his friend’s complete mastery of what to say and do outran his terror of his doing or saying something outrageous, even if simply intended to amuse. At Cambridge Cecil was frequently outrageous, and as for his letters – the things he wrote in letters appeared dimly to George now as a troupe of masked figures, Pompeian obscenities, hiding just out of view behind the curtains, and in the shadows of the inglenook. But for the moment all was well. Rather like the deep in Tennyson’s poem, Cecil had many voices… George’s toe sought out his friend’s now and again, and was received with a playful wriggle rather than a jab. He worried about his mother drinking too much, but the claret was a good one, much commended by Hubert, and a convivial mood, of a perceptibly new kind for ‘Two Acres’, suffused the whole party. Only his sister’s stares and grins at Cecil, and her pert way of putting her head on one side, could really annoy him. Then to his horror he heard Mrs Kalbeck say, ‘And I understand you and George are members of an ancient society!’

‘Oh… oh…’ said George, though at once it was a test above all for Cecil. He found his failure to look at him a reproach in itself.

After a moment, with an almost apologetic flinch, Cecil said, ‘Well, no harm in your knowing, I dare say.’