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illustration for Modern Happiness, unguarded, relaxed, entirely themselves, in a way that made Harry feel he belonged to the old century. Perhaps it wasn’t beauty, ultimately, that won men to women or vice versa, but an ability to make one laugh? Harry made a gesture as of putting on a hat and pointed to George, but Jack wilfully misunderstood, making ever more complicated hand gestures back to make George laugh in turn.
    ‘Does he ever do as he’s told?’ Winifred asked, in a tone that made Harry wonder if she wouldn’t rather be in the little boat instead of her sister.
    ‘Not often,’ he admitted, and she gave one of her grave half-smiles.
    ‘It’s not easy being the eldest,’ she said.
    ‘George bears it pretty lightly.’
    ‘Don’t be gallant,’ she fired back. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’
    ‘Sorry. Your mother said you were shy, but you don’t seem—’
    ‘I’m shy in groups. I’m hopeless in groups, and that’s what a family like ours tends to be. All the time.’
    ‘Well I’m shy even on my own. There are days when I hardly speak.’
    ‘How wonderful!’
    ‘It’s surprising how few words you need once you put your mind to it.’
    ‘Do you ever dream about invisibility?’ she asked him.
    ‘Often. To be left entirely alone!’
    ‘That’s it!’ She clapped. ‘Some people would immediately rob a jeweller’s or an art gallery if no one could see them, but I think I would simply stay quietly in my room with a novel.’
    He was struck by how closely she had voiced his own instincts, and having established that each preferred silence, they walked wordlessly away from their happy siblings and around the rest of the garden, pausing to watch a bumblebee lumbering around the bells of a foxglove and a song thrush savaging a worm.
    Mrs Wells greeted their return with a tray of lemonade and cake, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to have entrusted a pretty daughter to a complete stranger for half an hour. ‘Pattie expressed a wish to come down and sing to you all. Pattie is my next youngest girl, Mr Cane. She fancies herself an artiste. Don’t fret,’ she went on in response to Winnie’s heavy sigh. ‘I told her perhaps another time. Encouragement of talent is all very well, but it doesn’t do to go too far. Ah. And here come the athletes!’
    Jack had a young boy’s instinct for sniffing out sweet things. ‘If I’m not hungry,’ he told them, ‘I’m either ill or asleep.’
    He had encouraged his companion to replace her hat so as to avoid a scolding. Shaded by its straw brim and blue ribbons, she looked almost demure.
    ‘It’s been a delightful afternoon,’ Harry told Mrs Wells.
    ‘Well I hope you’ll come again,’ she said, offering him a dry little hand. ‘Perhaps next time you’ll come for dinner, so you can meet my boys?’ She pulled a comical face. ‘Though we’ll all have to be on our best behaviour for Robert.’
    ‘That would be splendid,’ Jack said.
    Harry tried to catch Winifred’s eye but she had dropped her glance to the crumbs on the cake plates. He supposed that, being shy, she regarded dinners as a necessary evil.
    ‘Miss Wells,’ he said.
    She looked up, gave one of her sad little smiles and offered him her hand. ‘Mr Cane,’ she said.
    George mocked their formality by dropping Jack a deep curtsey, at which everyone laughed.

Chapter Four
    A second invitation came from Mrs Wells, summoning them both to dinner, where they met two of the three brothers.
    Robert, the eldest, who was possibly good-looking behind a fulsome beard, suffered from the pompous, hectoring manner of a stupid man who believed himself clever.
    Frank, his younger by some six years, had successfully insisted on being made senior partner on their father’s death. He was softly spoken, observant, utterly lacking in social skills and really rather frightening. Winifred had already warned Harry he was very clever. Certainly he seemed to regard the family he had been