Alleyn grinned. “There you are. It’s all a matter of association. Mine’s lilac and throws back to a pleasant childhood memory. But if beer happened to make you sick or my nanny, whom I detested, had worn lilac in her nankeen bosom or Father Jourdain associated lilies with death, we’d have all hated the sight and smell of these respective flowers.”

Mr. Merryman looked with pity at him. “Not,” he said, “a remarkably felicitous exposition of a somewhat elementary proposition, but, as far as it goes, unexceptionable.”

Alleyn bowed. “Have you, sir,” he asked, “a preference?”

“None, none. The topic, I confess, does not excite me.”

“I think it’s a heavenly topic,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick cried. “But then I adore finding out about People and their preferences.” She turned to Dale and at once his smile reprinted itself. “Tell me your taste in flowers,” she said, “and I’ll tell you your type in ladies. Come clean, now. Your favorite flower? Or shall I guess?”

“Agapanthas?” Mr. Merryman loudly suggested. Dale clapped his glass down on the bar and walked out of the room.

“Now, look here, Mr. Merryman!” Father Jourdain said and rose to his feet.

Mr. Merryman opened his eyes very wide and pursed his lips. “What’s up?” he asked.

“You know perfectly well what’s up. You’re an extremely naughty little man and although it’s none of my business I think fit to tell you so.”

Far from disconcerting Mr. Merryman, this more or less public rebuke appeared to afford him enjoyment. He clapped his hands lightly, slapped them on his knees and broke into elfish laughter.

“If you’ll take my advice,” Father Jourdain continued, “you will apologize to Mr. Dale.”

Mr. Merryman rose, bowed, and observed in an extremely highfalutin manner, “Consilia firmiora sunt de divinis locis.”

The priest turned red.

Alleyn, who didn’t see why Mr. Merryman should be allowed to make a corner in pedantry, racked his own brains for a suitable tag. “Consilium inveniunt multi sed docti explicant, however,” he said.

“Dear me!” Mr. Merryman observed. “How often one has cause to remark that a platitude sounds none the better for being uttered in an antique tongue. I shall now address myself to my postprandial nap.”

He trotted towards the door, paused for a moment to stare at Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s pearls, and then went out.

“For pity’s sake!” she ejaculated. “What is all this! What’s happening? What’s the matter with Aubyn Dale? Why agapanthas?”

“Can it be possible,” Tim Makepiece said, “that you don’t know about Lady Agatha’s umbilicus globular and the hyacinths on the turdy stable?” and he retold the story of Aubyn Dale’s misfortunes.

“How frightful!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick exclaimed, laughing until she cried. “How too tragically frightful! And how naughty of Mr. Merryman.”

Tim Makepiece said, “We don’t ’alf look like being a happy family. What will Mr. Chip’s form be, one asks oneself, when he enters the Torrid Zone?”

“He may look like Mr. Chips,” Alleyn remarked. “He behaves like Thersites.”

Brigid said, “I call it the rock bottom of him. You could see Aubyn Dale minded most dreadfully. He went as white as his teeth. What could have possessed Mr. Chips?”

“Schoolmaster,” Miss Abbott said, scarcely glancing up from her book. “They often turn sour at his age. It’s the life.”

She had been quiet for so long they had forgotten her. “That’s right,” she continued, “isn’t it, Father?”

“It may possibly, I suppose, be a reason. It’s certainly not an excuse.”

“I think,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick lamented, “I’d better throw my lovely hyacinths overboard, don’t you?” She appealed to Father Jourdain. “Wouldn’t it be best? It’s not only poor Mr. Dale.”

“No,” Brigid agreed. “Mr. Cuddy, we must remember, comes over queer at the sight of them.”

“Mr. Cuddy,” Miss Abbott observed, “came over queer but not, in my opinion, at the sight of the hyacinths.” She lowered her book and looked steadily at Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

“My dear!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick rejoined and began to laugh again.

“Well!” Father Jourdain said with the air of a man who refuses to recognize his nose before his face. “I think I shall see what it’s like on deck.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick stood between him and the double doors and he was quite close to her. She beamed up at him. His back was turned to Alleyn. He was still for a moment and then she moved aside and he went out. There was a brief silence.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick turned to Brigid.

“My dear!” she confided. “I’ve got that man. He’s a reformed rake.”

Mr. McAngus re-entered from the passage still wearing his hat. He smiled diffidently at his five fellow passengers.

“All settling down?” he ventured, evidently under a nervous compulsion to make some general remark.

“Like birds in their little nest,” Alleyn agreed cheerfully.

“Isn’t it delicious,” Mr. McAngus said, heartened by this response, “to think that from now on it’s going to get warmer and warmer and warmer?”

“Absolutely enchanting.”

Mr. McAngus made the little chassé with which they were all to become familiar, before the basket of hyacinths.

“Quite intoxicating,” he said. “They are my favourite flowers.”

“Are they!” cried Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “Then do please, please have them. Please do. Dennis will take them to your room. Mr. McAngus, I should adore you to have them.”

He gazed at her in what seemed to be a flutter of bewildered astonishment. “I?” Mr. McAngus said. “But why? I beg your pardon, but it’s so very kind, and positively I can’t believe you mean it.”

“But I do, indeed. Please have them.”

Mr. McAngus hesitated and stammered. “I’m quite overcome. Of course I should be delighted.” He gave a little giggle and tilted his head over to one side. “Do you know,” he said, “this is the first occasion, the very first, on which a lady has ever, of her own free will, offered me her flowers? And my favourites, too. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.”

Alleyn saw that Mrs. Dillington-Blick was touched by this speech. She smiled kindly and unprovocatively at him and Brigid laughed gently.

“I’ll carry them myself,” Mr. McAngus said. “Of course I will. I shall put them on my little table and they’ll be reflected in my looking-glass.”

“Lucky man!” Alleyn said lightly.

“Indeed, yes. May I, really?” he asked. Mrs. Dillington-Blick nodded gaily and he advanced to the table and grasped the enormous basket with his reddish bony hands. He was an extremely thin man and, Alleyn thought, very much older than his strange nut-brown hair would suggest.

“Let me help you,” Alleyn offered.

“No, no! I’m really very strong, you know. Wiry.”

He lifted the basket and staggered on bent legs with it to the door. Here he turned, a strange figure, his felt hat tilted over his nose, blinking above a welter of quivering hyacinths.

“I shall think of something to give you,” he promised Mrs. Dillington-Blick, “after Las Palmas. There must be a reciprocal gesture.”

He went groggily away.

“He may dye his hair a screaming magenta if he chooses,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick said. “He’s a sweetie-pie.”

From behind her covered book Miss Abbott remarked in that not very musical voice, “Meanwhile we await his reciprocal gesture. After Las Palmas.”