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with a vicarage to match. The Swans’ house stood back from the road and the front garden was overgrown with trees and shrubs. Just inside the gate was a guelder rose bush; Deirdre had loved the greenish-white flower balls when she was a child, but now the bush seemed to need pruning and the flowers, when they came, were full of green fly. Ah, my childhood, my innocent childhood, she thought, remembering a Tchekov play which she had recently seen. In the middle of the garden path lay a headless doll, no doubt left there by one of the Lovell children from next door. Deirdre pushed it aside with her foot.
    ‘Is that you, dear?’ Her mother’s voice greeted her as she opened the front door.
    ‘Yes. I hope you haven’t waited supper?’
    ‘No, we were just going to start.’
    In the dining-room Rhoda and Malcolm were already sitting at the table contemplating their salads.
    ‘I had salad for lunch,’ said Deirdre.
    ‘Oh, did you, dear? I hope you don’t mind having it again.’
    ‘Well, it’s not madly exciting, is it.’
    ‘You could have an egg,’ her aunt suggested.
    ‘I don’t feel like an egg,’ said Deirdre unhelpfully. ‘I’d like something different .’
    There was an expectant silence round the table.
    ‘Some rice, all oily and saffron yellow, with aubergines and red peppers and lots of garlic,’ went on Deirdre extravagantly.
    ‘Oh, well, dear, it’s no good wishing for that sort of thing Lere’ said her mother with an air of relief.
    ‘You look rather pink in the face, dear sister,’ said Malcolm in a jocular tone. ‘Almost as if you’d been drinking.’
    ‘I’ve had three glasses of sherry,’ said Deirdre rather defiantly. ‘I was at the new Library place—Felix’s Folly we call it—and there was a sort of party there.’
    ‘I suppose it was for anthropologists,’ said Rhoda, bringing out the word with difficulty.
    ‘Yes, there were quite a lot there.’
    ‘What about the one you rather like—was he there?’ Mabel asked.
    ‘The one I like?’ said Deirdre coldly. ‘I can’t think who you can mean. I don’t like any of them particularly.’
    ‘I thought there was one who lent you some notes or something,’ floundered Mrs. Swan. ‘I’m sure you said something about it,’
    ‘One of them may once have been a little more polite than the others,’ said Deirdre, ‘but I don’t think I particularly liked him for it,’
    ‘I expect the right one will come along one of these days,’ said Rhoda with an aunt’s confidence. She liked to think of her niece as being courted by suitable young men, though, from what she had heard of them, she rather doubted whether anthropologists could be so regarded. There was something disquieting about all this going out to Africa to study the natives, she felt. She would have preferred to see Deirdre married to one of Malcolm’s friends and comfortably settled in a nice little house nearby.
    ‘You must make us some of this rice you were talking about,’ said Mabel quickly. ‘I dare say it is delicious and if we weren’t going out to bridge or seeing Father Tullivcr about anything it wouldn’t really matter about the garlic, would it, Rhoda?’ she turned to her sister, anxious to prevent her from making any more remarks about the right young man coming along. Spinsters didn’t really know how to deal with young people, and even mothers said the wrong thing often enough.
    ‘All right, I’ll get the things in Soho one day,’ said Deirdre quite graciously.
    ‘Do you happen to know whether Mr. Lydgate’s sister lives rent free with that Miss Clovis?’ Rhoda asked.
    ‘Why ever should I? You’d better ask Mr. Lydgate,’ said Deirdre. ‘Though somehow I can’t imagine Miss Clovis letting anyone have anything for nothing.’
    ‘It’s a wonder she doesn’t live with her brother,’ mused Rhoda. ‘Of course the house is smaller than this one, but there would certainly be room.’
    The older woman speculated on this, while