"You will speak all right?"

"You can be quite sure I'll get you your chance to prink."

"Oh, you know I didn't mean that. About Seb and me, I was trying to tell?" she asked.

"If their Byzantine obliqueness will allow, I might," he answered gaily, when a man hailed low and soft.

"Liz," he called.

"There he is, oh at last," she exclaimed.

"Birt, can that be you?" the old man cautiously raised his voice. "And if so, don't skulk."

A dark, short figure rose, almost from under their feet.

"This is not Guy Fawkes night, after all," the sage commented.

"Sorry, sir, but you know the way things are," Sebastian excused himself, adopting the hearty voice of a junior who was there to report present.

"Have they found my other child, then?" Mr Rock asked.

"Good Lord sir, not yet," Birt replied, still the shy, deprecating junior.

"Then you may lead us to the front entrance, for my granddaughter and I to be announced like civilized beings," he said.

The younger man was struck silent at this effrontery. He felt that Mr Rock should on no account so flaunt himself.

"It's this way, Gapa," Elizabeth prompted, resigned to disaster.

They turned, and at once became aware of the new powered moon, infinitely more than electric light which, up till then, had seemed, by a soft reflection from whence it cut into the Terrace, pallidly to surprise by stealth these mansion walls. For their moon was still enormous up above on a couch of velvet, blatant, a huge female disc of chalk on deep blue with holes around that, winking, squandered in the void a small light as of latrines. The moon was now all powerful, it covered everything with salt, and bewigged distant trees; it coldly nicked the dark to an instantaneous view of what this held, it stunned the eye by stone, was all-powerful, and made each of these three related people into someone alien, glistening, frozen eyed, alone.

"I'll leave you now," Sebastian said, as if to announce the moon had found him out.

"Thank you, I don't fancy that," Mr Rock objected. "They shall not come upon us unawares in this light." He also had on his mind the winking pairs of silvered eyelashes, still unseen, there might be watching from out black caverns of unlit, shadowed upstair casements.

"Oh, is this wise?" Elizabeth half wailed.

"He's to escort us in good order," the old man explained of Sebastian who had no torch.

"Well sir, I'd really rather not," Sebastian attempted to insist.

"Nonsense. Never try to duck when you're in the open."

Thus it was they came, one hydra-headed body to the enormous, overhanging portals, and Mr Rock pressed the bell which, by the moon, shone like a pearl on a vast hunk of frozen milk. To do so he had to enter and be lost, as if by magic, in a cube of impenetrable shade.

Elizabeth almost cried out after him, until his dead hand came forth to stab the bell a second time.

"Did it ring before?" he asked, out of his deafness.

"The girls are off duty," Sebastian said. "Tonight."

"Then we'll stay on notwithstanding, till we are made welcome," the old man answered, sure of himself, from the dark.

Steps made themselves heard within, at the advance. And, with a fearful creak, the great door was opened. Miss Baker stood silhouetted. It was Elizabeth she saw first, and she mistook the girl.

"Mary," she cried, in a small voice. But she did not take long to come back to earth.

"Oh do enter in," Miss Baker said, bright as the light behind, to three silent people.

Mr Rock took time to dry his gum boots after which, through what to them was blinding electric, copper illumination they followed Baker, without another word, the short distance down this corridor on into the sanctum.

Each of these two Principals thought the other had invited Mr Rock and his granddaughter, yet, while Baker did the honours, and Edge rose to greet them with the words, "How kind to have troubled," this lady had twin notions at one and the same time; that Sebastian, since he was a member of the staff, had no business unsummoned in the Sanctum; and also that, on no account, must this sudden rush of guests mar Baker's and her own triumphal entry, by which the Dance was ever opened. Thus she observed, while shaking hands, "You are rather late, you know." And added, "which is naughty," as she received Mr Rock, letting the smile die when she came to face Sebastian.

The old man bowed with the servile courtesy that he could assume at will.

"The pleasure is ours, ma'am," he announced, attentively serious. He was aware how, washed and brushed, he made a fine figure. Not so Elizabeth, for all her effort to seem at ease, while Sebastian could look no-one in the eye, had even to shift his weight continuously from one foot to the other.

"I regret we have nothing in the way of light refreshment," Edge lied. She was not to put herself out for these people. "It does seem absurd on a Great Night like this, but there things are, we have to abide by our Regulations," she went on. "And if we were to make an exception the once, then we would do no more than to give rise to a Rule, should we not, in a contrary sense?"

"We are not here to eat and drink," Mr Rock pronounced stoutly. "It is just that Elizabeth would like to change her shoes."

"So kind. . sorry. . such a nuisance, I fear," the younger woman stammered.

But, although it was now more than time for the Principals to declare the ball open by making a personal appearance, Miss Edge, who had not wanted to give them more, did not seem able to leave her guests.

"And what is your news?" she asked of Mr Rock.

"At my age, ma'am," the old man answered, "one day is much like another. Which is what renders tonight memorable," he added, with a gleam in the huge eyes behind spectacles. "Because, on this occasion, I must insist that you allow me a dance."

"Oh Mr Rock, how splendid," Baker warmly said.

"But I always do dance with you, whenever you ask. What about last year? You remember?" Miss Edge put in at random, almost whinnying with nerves.

"I have not attended these three years past," Mr Rock, who had never been to one of their dances, announced with a small bow. "The year before I was indisposed, and on a previous occasion, I remember, I had hurt my leg."

"Twisted his knee. . sprained his ankle," Elizabeth supplemented.

"Yet what I feel is, it only seems like yesterday," Edge announced, with a wee inclination from the waist. "And Sebastian," she ordered, turned on him for the first time, "you are not to shrink now. Not sit out continually."

"He won't. I promise," Elizabeth shrieked.

"These special Occasions mean so much to the Girls," Baker added.

"Because, while we're here, and if you permit, of course, I have a small suggestion I might offer," Mr Rock said to Miss Edge.

"By all means," she agreed. "And let it be now rather than later. Otherwise we could seem to be sharing secrets, putting our heads together before the children, and that, even at our age, might seem curious," she added with a sort of sneer.

"You flatter an old man," he said.

"My dear Mr Rock," Miss Baker cried, delighted, unaware.

"It was only, ma'am, it came to me I could, perhaps, render a small service. But, naturally, this is a mere suggestion."