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She nodded.

‘You will have more success if your party is not too large. At a large party the hostess has to flutter from guest to guest and can never enjoy a protracted conversation with anyone. What is more, the guests continually flutter towards the hostess in a manner calculated to show her how much they are enjoying themselves.

‘But at a smaller party where everyone can easily be seen the introductions and general posturing can be speedily completed. You will then have time to size up the persons present and decide on those worth giving your attention to.’

‘I see,’ said Irma. ‘I am going to have lanterns hanging in the garden, too, so that I can lure those whom I think fit out into the apple orchard.’

‘Good heavens!’ said Prunesquallor, half to himself. ‘Well, I hope it won’t be raining.’

‘It won’t,’ said Irma.

He had never known her like this. There was something frightening in seeing a second side of a sister whom he had always assumed had only one.

‘Well, some of them must be left out, then.’

‘But who are they? Who are they?’ he cried. ‘I can’t bear this frightful tension. What are these males that you seem to think of en bloc? This doglike horde who at, as it were, a whistle will be ready to stream across the quadrangle and through the hall, through this door and to take up a score of masculine postures? In the name of fundamental mercy, Irma, tell me who they are.’

‘The Professors.’

As Irma uttered the words her hands grappled with one another behind her back. Her flat bosom heaved. Her sharp nose twitched and a terrible smile came over her face.

‘They are gentlemen!’ she cried in a loud voice. ‘Gentlemen! And worthy of my love.’

‘What! All forty of them.’ Her brother was on his feet again. He was shocked.

But at the same time he could see the logic of Irma’s choice. Who else was there for a party with this hidden end in view? As for their being ‘gentlemen’ – perhaps they were. But only just. If their blood was bluish, so for the most part were their jaws and fingernails. If their backgrounds bore scrutiny, the same could hardly be said for their foregrounds.

‘What a vista opens out before us! How old are you, Irma?’

‘You know very well, Alfred.’

‘Not without thinking,’ said the Doctor. ‘But leave it. It’s what you look like that matters. God knows you’re clean! It’s a good start. I am trying to put myself in your place. It takes an effort – ha ha! – I can’t do it.’

‘Alfred.’

‘My love?’

‘How many do you think would be ideal?’

‘If we chose well, Irma, I should say a dozen.’

‘No, no, Alfred, it’s a party! It’s a party! Things happen at parties – not at friends’ gatherings. I’ve read about it. Twenty, at least, to make the atmosphere pregnant.’

‘Very well, my dear. Very well. Not that we will include a mildewed and wheezy beast with broken antlers because he comes twentieth on the list when the other nineteen are stags, are virile and eligible. But come, let us go into this matter more closely. Let us say, for sake of argument, that we have whittled the probable down to fifteen. Now, of this fifteen, Irma, my sweet co-strategist, surely we could not hope for more than six as possible husbands for you. – No, no, do not wince; let us be honest, though it is brutal work. The whole thing is very subtle, for the six you might prefer are not necessarily the six that would care to share the rest of their lives with you; oh no. It might be another six altogether whom you don’t care about one little bit. And over and above these interchangeables we must have the floating background of those whom I have no doubt you would spurn with your elegantly cloven hooves were they to make the least advance. You would bridle up, Irma: I’m sure you would. But nevertheless they are needful, these untouchables, for we must have a hinterland. They are the ones who will make the party florid, the atmosphere potential.’

‘Do you think we could call it a soirée, Alfred?’

‘There is no law against it that I know