one outstanding day all the celebrations had been
failures, though he had never ceased to look forward to them. For days
before his last birthday he had suspected everyone of secret delicious
plottings on his behalf. He had come down to breakfast shaking with
anticipation. All through the morning he had waited for the surprise
that was to be sprung on him, hanging at everyone's heel in turn, and
it was only towards dusk that he knew with bitter certainty that he had
been forgotten. A crisis had wiped him and his birthday out
altogether. And then he had cried, and James Stonehouse, moved to
generous remorse, had rushed out and bought a ridiculously expensive
toy having first borrowed money from Christine and scolded her at the
top of his booming voice for her heartless neglect of his son's
happiness.

Christine had argued with him in her quiet obstinate way.

"But, Jim dear, you can't afford it----"

There had been one of those awful rows.

And Robert had crept that night, unwashed, into bed, crying more
bitterly than ever.

But this time he had really had no hope at all. Yesterday had seen a
crisis and a super-crisis. In the afternoon the butcher had stood at
the back door and shouted and threatened, and he had been followed
almost immediately by a stout shabby man with a bald head and
good-natured face, who announced that he had come to put a distraint on
the furniture which, incidentally, had never been paid for. Edith
Stonehouse, with an air of outraged dignity, had lodged him in the
library and regaled him on a bottle of stout and the remnants of a cold
joint, and it was understood that there he would remain until such time
as Christine raised 40 pounds from somewhere.

These were mere incidents--entirely commonplace--but at six o'clock
James Stonehouse himself had driven up in a taxi, to the driver of
which he had appeared to hand the contents of all his pockets, and a
moment later stormed into the house in a mood which was, if anything,
more devastating than his ungovernable rages. He had been
exuberant--exultant--his good-humour white-hot and dangerous. Looking
into his brilliant blue eyes with their two sharp points of light, it
would have been hard to tell whether he was laughing or mad with anger.
His moods were like that--too close to be distinguished from one
another with any safety. Christine, who had just come from
interviewing the bailiff, had looked grave and disapproving. She knew
pr