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realise how busy Fridays were going to be.”
    â€œOh … I hadn’t …”
    â€œWhen Nanny’s here they spend a lot of time in the garden. Didn’t she tell you?”
    3
    Lady Snailwood—Zena to the hundreds of people who knew her, and also to tens of thousands who did not—was in one of her most familiar attitudes, half-curled on a nest of huge satin cushions near the centre of the Great Hall, wearing a white Aertex shirt, white cotton slacks and a pair of strangely mannish brogues, looking tiny compared with the enormous borzoi whose ears she was fondling. She was always smaller than strangers expected and often somehow than acquaintances remembered, but this was evidently one of her days for looking frail and protectorless. It was also one of her days for a faintly Ruritanian accent.
    â€œSo here you are at last, Vincent, darling,” she drawled, making it sound as though it was she alone who had organised his rescue from grim dungeons into this house of comfort. “I’m so happy the soldiers let you go.”
    â€œThey weren’t, very.”
    â€œSilly little men. You must take no notice of them.”
    â€œI have to. It’s the system.”
    â€œThen we will change it.”
    â€œYou …”
    â€œDon’t argue, Vince,” said Harry, who was lolling some yards away on a chintzed armchair, smoking. “Zena means she thinks she would look stunning in a field marshal’s uniform. That’s what she’s after. She’s going to start by spending this week-end drilling her guests on the tennis court. You’re here to teach her the words of command.”
    â€œOh yes!” cried Zena, sitting up. “And one day I shall ride my white charger through the Arch of Victory at the head of all my armies!”
    â€œYou’ll have to arrange for a war, you know,” said Harry. “Enemies to conquer are the main thing, I suppose.”
    â€œThey are there already. We will conquer the Bolsheviks. The new Tsar shall ride by my side—only a little behind.”
    â€œOn the other hand,” said Harry, “you could arrange for a Wonderland war—victory first, fighting afterwards. I shouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t the coming thing in any case.”
    Zena lay back among the cushions, which were located where the sunlight, passing through the stained glass at the top of one of the windows, mottled the floor with blotches of colour. It would be difficult to be sure whether Zena was conscious of this effect, and whether she was wearing white to take advantage of it, but as she moved and the colours moved across her it was almost as though she was practising to become the Chameleon Woman in a fairground, effortlessly adapting her own hues to those of the cushions on which she sprawled.
    â€œThat stupid Alice,” she yawned. “Of course England is no longer great when it is the only book our intelligentsia really care about. Darling Vince, I am so pleased your stammer is becoming so much better.”
    â€œPretty well under control, thank you,” said Vincent with no obvious effort over the guttural.
    â€œI do not understand how you can give orders to your men when you stammer so.”
    â€œI’ll show you. Parade! Paraaaaade … Shun!”
    The commands came out full volume, in the extraordinary gargling yelp of the army drill instructor. The Great Hall was a large enough space to set up a perceptible echo. Zena put her hands over her ears.
    â€œPlease do not do that again,” she said. “Now you have given me a migraine.”
    â€œHave you seen?” said Harry. “Zena’s had a new picture done.”
    â€œI thought there was something different,” said Vincent. “I’m still not used to the room like this … oh yes, there. I say. I like that much better than the John. I think that’s distinctly jolly.”
    He went and stood by