“Who is she?”

“Mrs. Oakley. Her husband’s name is Martin, and he’s a financier. They’ve got pots of money and a little boy of five. His name is Martin too, but they call him Marty, which is pretty frightful for a boy, don’t you think?”

“I do. Go on.”

Dorinda went on.

“Well, first she moaned at me and said all these girls were making her giddy. And I said didn’t any of them do? And she said no-their voices were wrong. She had to have a voice that didn’t jar her nerves, and the last girl was a volcano. I said what about my voice, because I thought if it jarred her like the others, it wasn’t any good my sitting in a spotlight wasting time. She had a good sniff at the smelling-salts and said she thought I had a soothing personality. After that we never looked back, and she’s giving me three pounds a week!”

Justin showed a disappointing lack of enthusiasm.

“What is this job-what are you supposed to do?”

Dorinda giggled.

“She calls it being her secretary. I think I do all the things she’s too fragile to do herself-writing notes, doing the flowers, answering the telephone when it’s someone who insists on speaking to her. She took quite a long time telling me about that. There are times when it jars her too much even to hear the voice of an intimate friend, and she has to be fresh for Martin in the evenings. And then I keep an eye on Marty when his nursery governess gets an afternoon off, and-oh, well, that sort of thing.”

“And where does all this go on-at Claridge’s?”

“Oh, no. She’s got what she calls a country cottage in Surrey. As there’s her, and him, and Marty, and the nursery governess, and me, and a staff of servants, and they mean to have house parties every week end, I expect it’s something pretty vast. Anyhow it’s called the Mill House, and we go down there tomorrow.”