The kitchen was on the left of the dining-room. It was a modernized affair with a service hatch. “Cramped!” Mr. Whipplestone thought of saying, but his heart was not in it.

The stairs were steep, which ought to have been a comfort. Awkward for trays and luggage and suppose one died how would they get one out of it? He said nothing.

The view from the master bedroom through the French windows embraced in its middle distance the Square with the Sun in Splendour on the left and — more distantly on the right — the dome of the Basilica. In the foreground was the Walk with foreshortened views of pedestrians, parked cars and an intermittent passage of traffic. He opened a French window. They were ringing the bells in the Basilica. Twelve o’clock. Some service or another, he supposed. But you couldn’t say the house was noisy.

The bells stopped. Somewhere, out of sight, a voice was raised in a reiterated, rhythmical shout. He couldn’t distinguish the sense of it but it came nearer. He went out on one of the two little balconies.

“Air-eye-awf,” shouted the voice, and round the far corner of the Square came a horse-drawn cart, nodding with tulips and led by a red-faced man. He passed No. 1 and looked up.

“Any time. All fresh,” he bawled directly at Mr. Whipplestone, who hastily withdrew.

(His big red glass goblet in the bow window, filled with tulips.)

Mr. Whipplestone was a man who did not indulge in histrionics, but under the last of whatever madness now possessed him he did, as he made to leave the window, flap the air with two dismissive palms. The gesture brought him face-to-face with a couple, man and woman.

“I beg your pardon,” they all said and the small man added: “Sorry, sir. We just head the window open and thought we’d better see.” He glanced at the youth. “Order to view?” he asked.

“Yar.”