An enormous chatter filled the room. The psychologist sat silent, noticing things. Mr. Whittaker fussed about with coffee and thin glasses. Odd corners of tables and mantelpieces and bookshelves became crowded with discarded coffee-cups and dissipated glasses, perilously poised. Mrs. Whittaker, talking busily to the Reverend Peter, listened anxiously, with both ears at the public pulse, as it were, and could detect no single murmur of domestic worries. Everyone, it seemed, was being interesting and intelligent.

Then the carroty-haired Mrs. Vincent bustled up to her. “ Won’t you make them sing to us, Mrs. Whittaker?⁠— Mr. Byrne’s Choir, I mean. I’ve never heard them, you know.”