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Jemima assumed to be some kind of governess (although they were surely rather too old for that kind of thing?}. This lady was familiarly addressed by the Cartwrights as Ketty, but introduced to Jemima as Miss Katherine Kettering - 'the two names have somehow got combined over the years', She was certainly much at her ease; the girls chattered to her, rather than to their other neighbours, throughout the meal. Fat little Blanche's sulky face lit up talking to Ketty in a way that it never did, Jemima noticed, when Blanche addressed her mother.
    'But, Ketty, you remember: the Easter Sunday we all went to the beach and Daddy did press-ups and got sand all over his cricketing trousers—'
    The pretty dark-haired daughter Regina, who chose at one point to recite a good deal of Christina Rossetti in the over-loud voice she had inherited from her father, addressed those words also to Ketty. 'When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me ...' and so on and so on. Ketty listened intently and then said: 'Well done, Rina,' as if she had been hearing a lesson.
    'Regina,' she informed Jemima across the table, 'has been making a study of Christina Rossetti. She knows most of her work by heart.' 'How delightful,' murmured Jemima, hoping that no one had any plans for recitations of the works of Christina Rossetti by Miss Regina Cartwright aged seventeen in the course of her television programme. As usual, it was Cherry who saved the situation:
    'Oh, I adore Christina Rossetti,' she cried happily. 'And Dante - Dante Gabriel, I mean, not the other Dante.' Cherry proceeded to quote at length, by virtue of her past involvement in Christina and Company - a Rose among the Rossettis. The series might have been one of Megalith's most noted failures, reflected Jemima, but at least Cherry's education had benefited; and Ketty and Regina were temporarily routed.
    Like Mrs Blagge, Miss Kettering had very dark red hair, of a hue which was so bizarre as to be surely dyed; in Ketty's case the hair was strained back into a large thick bun, revealing a pair of dangling green earrings set in big powerfully l obed ears. It was while pondering on the coincidence of two women with the same strange taste in hair dye being in the same room that Jemima realized how much Ketty and Mrs Blagge also resembled each other in other ways. They had the same long thin finely chiselled noses and small firm mouths. Ketty however wore a violent scarlet lipstick; Mrs Blagge none.
    Sisters? If so, one sat at the table and drank, Jemima observed, at least her due share of wine. The other served.
    On Christabel's right sat Gregory Rowan. He had arrived rather late, with a scant air of apology, into the charming sun-filled conservatory adorned with orange trees in large dark green wooden tubs where the Cartwrights had doled out pre-lunch drinks. His hair was still conspicuously damp, its thickness temporarily restrained, and Jemima had seen Christabel give him a slightly sardonic look on arrival.
    'Did you go for a quick one, darling? Quick cooling off?' she enquired. She handed him a silver goblet.
    'Had to wash off the taste of chocolate,' replied Gregory. 'Next year you can organize the Easter egg hunt. If you're still with us, that is. To the return and the stay of the prodigal.' He lifted the goblet on whose silver surface the chilly contents - champagne and orange juice - had already left white clouds.
    It was the only conceivable reference, Jemima noted, throughout the meal and its prelude, to Christabel's past. Christabel merely gave one of her low musical laughs.
    Jemima, who was on Julian Cartwright's right, had the Director of the Larminster Festival on her other side. This seemed rather a grand title for the pleasant-faced boy, scarcely older than the Cartwright girls, who introduced himself to her as Nat Fitzwilliam, told her that he was Bridset born, and confided that he had been running the theatre since he left Oxford 'because no one else much wanted to do