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didn’t have it for my own until—oh, much later,” she finished rather suddenly , conscious of their fascinated attention.
    “Was it that one?” asked Mab, pointing to the diamonded trifle on Dinah’s wrist.
    “No, it was on a chain,” said Dinah. “You remember, Virginia, we wore them round our necks.”
    Virginia nodded, looking back. She had never heard about Dinah’s watch, though she knew that her brother had had to wait for Dinah to grow up enough to marry him. The things you don’t know about people you see every day, she was thinking. Like Bracken carrying Dinah’s watch up San Juan Hill as a talisman….
    “One’s first watch is very special, it matters a lot who gives it,” said Dinah, and stopped again rather abruptly, wondering to her own surprise if perhaps she shouldn’t have said that just now, and felt Jeff’s eyes shift from her face to his plate.
    “On our side we get a watch on our eighteenth birthday,” said Sylvia, unconscious of undercurrents. “This is mine—from Stevie.” She held out her wrist with pride.
    “But we can’t be certain any more how things will be, by the time Mab is eighteen,” Jeff said quietly, looking at his plate. “I thought she might as well make sure of it.”
    There was a pause. They all sat watching him, without surprise or actual alarm, but with a sort of—alertness?
    “What did Bracken say?” Dinah asked then.
    “Nothing much. Don’t—don’t get excited, it hasn’t happened .” Once again his eyes travelled lovingly from face to face. “We may know tonight,” he said.
    “Know what?” That was Sylvia.
    “There’s something in the wind again,” he said, almost as though he sniffed it. “Something brewing. A lot of activity here and there.” His grave, compassionate gaze came back to Mab’sanxious silence across the table. “Bracken says to tell you to hold tight,” he said. “The party’s not off, by any means. He’ll be home for tea—he thinks.”
    “Well, in that case there’s plenty of time to go shopping,” Virginia said briskly.
    “Aren’t you going to put it on?” Jeff asked, for the open case was still in Mab’s hand.
    “You should put it on for her,” Sylvia advised, as the first course came in. “That makes it legal.”
    Mab, who sat between Virginia and Dinah, pushed back her chair and carried the watch round the table to Jeff, holding out her left arm solemnly for him to slip the bracelet into place. His hands were long and bony and very deft.
    Quite suddenly, while his fingers were still on the bracelet, she had a surging impulse to bend and kiss them. An even swifter panic repressed it, and then, with the maids going round the table behind him and the others falling to on the food, Jeff raised her wrist and set his lips lightly on the watch where it lay, and turned away at once to help himself from the dish which appeared at his other elbow. Such tiny bones Mab had, he thought, giving his attention to the servers. Like a bird’s.
    “Thank you, Jeff,” she whispered, and returned to her chair without looking into his face.
    “If there’s going to be a war—that is to say, a State of Emergency ,” Virginia was saying as she put butter on her roll, for she never had to think twice about gaining weight, “I fancy one of the things we should lay in is woollies, because we’re sure to be short of heat again, like last time. So Mab and I will skip round to Fortnum’s this afternoon and run amuck on Cashmere jumpers and skirts. We can also bring back something special from there for tea. Bracken will need it.”
    “I’ll tell him,” Jeff promised. “I’m going down to the Shop after lunch, so I can fetch him back here bodily if nothing—if there’s no more news by four o’clock.”
    “ If ,” cried Virginia, and struck the table unexpectedly with a small exasperated fist, so that they all stared at her, astonished, and even the dishes jumped. “Was there ever a time when we made a simple plan