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born into with scornful dismay. Harry was glad to be screened from him at table by a parson’s amiable wife.
    On his other hand, his left, he had Mrs Wells, who was full of kind curiosity about his mother’s family and evidently a little alarmed by the subject of his father. By oversight or mischief, she had placed Winifred so he could admire but could not speak to her. Mrs Wells was, he began to realise, something of a manipulator.
    ‘You come from a small family, Mrs Wells was telling me,’ said the parson’s wife.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s just my brother and myself.’
    ‘I was an only,’ she said. ‘The functioning of large families remains a mystery to people like us. There are currents and influences we cannot always read correctly. And then, of course, we have to beware of clinging too tightly.’
    ‘To what?’
    ‘Why, to those we love! People from large families crave freedom and privacy above all else. I know; my Benedict’s father was a Mr Quiverful.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘A character from Trollope with a great many children. I tease Benedict that he should have joined a silent order and he teases me back that he might just yet. Oh! We’re off already and I’ve barely begun to scratch your interesting surface!’
    Taking her cue from their hostess, she stood, as of course did he, and she made him a little smiling bob and followed the ladies from the room. The five gentlemen were left briefly speechless, as feminine laughter and conversation flared in the hall, then were enclosed in the drawing room. Harry thought cigars tasted of something meaty and long dead, and port invariably gave him a headache because nerves and politeness made him drink it like water. Not for the first time in his life, he felt a craven impulse to create a sensation by hurrying out in the ladies’ wake.
    He found the courage to wave aside the cigar Robert offered him and was about to pour, as a lesser evil, a small glass of port, thinking he might simply not then touch it and so avoid drinking too much, when Frank said, ‘Or perhaps you’ll join me in a Scotch? Port always gives me filthy headaches. Evil drink, I say. Like drinking wine gone bad. You know where you stand with whisky.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘I will. Thanks,’ managing not to stammer on the W in his relief, and he passed the port on to Robert, who snorted disapproval. Perhaps whisky was more expensive? Harry had no idea.
    ‘It’s good to meet the famous Brothers Cane finally,’ Robert said. ‘The girls have talked of little else.’
    ‘How very dull for you all,’ Harry said. At least, he began to, but Robert was putting him in mind of a particularly cruel Harrow bully he had managed, until then, to forget, so all that came out was ‘How-how-how . . .’
    Well trained, Jack came to his rescue. ‘How very relieved you must be to find us both so ordinary. Excellent cigar,’ he added. ‘Are they Cuban? Harry won’t let me smoke them at home.’ He knew that playing on Harry’s compulsion to correct an unjust or inaccurate statement was one of the surest ways of helping him out.
    ‘Only because, on a student vet’s income, you have no business buying such luxuries,’ Harry said, with no trace of a stammer.
    ‘It’s touching that you look to your younger brother’s welfare so,’ the parson said. He had accepted both port and cigar with alacrity but seemed to be saving his cigar for later. ‘Jack has been telling me you’ve been like a father to him.’
    ‘Well, sir, as I’m sure our host can attest, the eldest has certain responsibilities.’
    ‘Huh,’ Robert Wells said.
    ‘Forgive me, but I’m always intrigued by cases like yours. My wife says I should have made a novelist but I fear I lack the necessary lightness. If you were so busy keeping Jack out of scrapes as you were growing up, who looked after you?’
    Harry liked the parson, as he had liked his wife; there was nothing of the prefect about him and he had a