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cover?” he asked. “You’re going to have to tell Mrs. O’Connor that we’ve cut holes in her quilt cover.”
    Betty reflected for a moment. “Why me?” she asked.

5
    D INNER AT M OUNTPENNY H OUSE WAS preceded by the serving of drinks in the east drawing room. There, around a log fire set in the wide stone fireplace, the guests would assemble before dinner, exactly as had been promised in the brochure. Fatty and Betty were first down, Betty wearing the diaphanous silk dress she had brought with her for just such an occasion, Fatty wearing his new pants, which were a brown, houndstooth check, one of the green shirts prepared for him by Mr. Joseph Delaney, and the jacket which did not do up. The overall effect, he thought, was not inappropriate. It was sufficiently casual for one who was on vacation and yet smart enough for a summer dinner party.
    â€œYou look so good, Fatty,” Betty said, her voice lowered in deference to the refined atmosphere of the drawing room.
    Fatty smiled. “Thanks to Mr. Delaney. I wonder what happened to my clothes, though. I was fond of that shirt.”
    Betty shook her head. “You feel so helpless when abroad. Back home I would make no end of a fuss, but here you never know.” She spoke with the air of one accustomed to overseas travel, and Fatty thought herobservation quite pertinent. He himself had been to France before his marriage and he knew all about the perils of other cultures. He had also been to London on more than one occasion for antique shows and had come across the English and their curious ways; such strange people, and so utterly disconcerting.
    They seated themselves on either side of the fire. Although it was early summer, the evenings were still cool, and there was a slight chill in the east-facing room. Fatty cast an eye round the room, appraising the contents. At one end of the room stood a double-fronted Victorian bookcase, stocked, he suspected, with books of a hunting and fishing nature; at the other was a grand piano (badly damaged casing, he thought) and a bureau on which a large occasional lamp (Chinese base, later Ching) had been placed. There were also several low tables, an Edwardian revolving bookcase, and an interesting Canterbury. The Canterbury, which was oak, with bronze fittings, was filled with magazines, and he and Betty each picked one out to read while they waited.
    Fatty’s choice was a recent copy of the glossy social magazine,
The Irish Tatler
. He paged through the advertisements for soft furnishings and Scotch whiskey, past an article on the plans of the Irish Georgian Society,and alighted on one of the several social pages. This was interesting material. There had been a ball in County Wicklow, to which the social correspondent had gone. There was an account of the host’s house – Strawberry Gothic in style “with a charming, quite charming” ballroom and minstrels’ gallery. There were pictures of the guests, and a photograph of a long table groaning with salmon and game. Fatty thought that it looked as if it had been splendid fun, and for a moment he felt a pang of jealousy. That was a life that he could so easily be living, but would probably never experience. He knew nobody in County Wicklow; indeed the only people he knew in Ireland were the various Mr. Delaneys, and he suspected that they moved in rather different circles from those portrayed in the social columns of
The Irish Tatler
.
    He turned the page. There had been a reception in Dublin to mark the opening of a new art gallery. According to the magazine,
everybody
had been there. And there they were, photographed talking to one another over glasses of wine.
Professor Roderick Finucane
of Trinity College was seen talking to
Miss Georgina Farrell
and her aunt, the well-known watercolourist,
Mrs. Annabel Farrell
, recently returned from
Bermuda
. Then there was conversation between
Mr. Pears van Eck
and
Mr. Maurice