pence a copy."

"Sixpence," Denis protested. "It'll be worth sixpence."

Anne shook her head. "Twopence," she repeated firmly. "Nobody will pay
more than twopence."

"And now there's Jenny," said Mr Wimbush. "Jenny," he said, raising his
voice, "what will you do?"

Denis thought of suggesting that she might draw caricatures at sixpence
an execution, but decided it would be wiser to go on feigning ignorance
of her talent. His mind reverted to the red notebook. Could it really be
true that he looked like that?

"What will I do," Jenny echoed, "what will I do?" She frowned
thoughtfully for a moment; then her face brightened and she smiled.
"When I was young," she said, "I learnt to play the drums."

"The drums?"

Jenny nodded, and, in proof of her assertion, agitated her knife
and fork, like a pair of drumsticks, over her plate. "If there's any
opportunity of playing the drums..." she began.

"But of course," said Anne, "there's any amount of opportunity. We'll
put you down definitely for the drums. That's the lot," she added.

"And a very good lot too," said Gombauld. "I look forward to my Bank
Holiday. It ought to be gay."

"It ought indeed," Mr Scogan assented. "But you may rest assured that it
won't be. No holiday is ever anything but a disappointment."

"Come, come," protested Gombauld. "My holiday at Crome isn't being a
disappointment."

"Isn't it?" Anne turned an ingenuous mask towards him.

"No, it isn't," he answered.

"I'm delighted to hear it."

"It's in the very nature of things," Mr. Scogan went on; "our holidays
can't help being disappointments. Reflect for a moment. What is a
holiday? The ideal, the Platonic Holiday of Holidays is surely a
complete and absolute change. You agree with me in my definition?" Mr.
Scogan glanced from face to face round the table; his sharp nose moved
in a series of rapid jerks through all the points of the compass. There
was no sign of dissent; he continued: "A complete and absolute change;
very well. But isn't a complete and absolute change precisely the thing
we can never have--never, in the very nature of things?" Mr. Scogan
once more looked rapidly about him. "Of course it is. As ourselves, as
specimens of Homo Sapiens, as members of a society, how can we hope to
have anything like an absolute change? We are tied down by the frightful
limitation of our human faculties, by the notions which society imposes
on us through our fatal suggestibility, by our own p