In the Best Families

And I still hadn't been able to decide when, at the dinner table, we had finished the dessert and got up to go elsewhere for coffee. At first I had thought he couldn't possibly be wise, when I had him sized up for a dummy who had had the good luck to catch Mrs Rackham's eye somewhere and then had happened to take the only line she would fall for, but further observation had made me reconsider. His handling of his wife had character in it; it wasn't just yes or no. At the dinner table he had an exchange with Pierce about rent control, and without seeming to try he got the statesman so tangled up he couldn't wiggle loose. Then he had a good laugh, took the other side of the argument, and made a monkey out of Dana Hammond.

I decided I'd better start all over.

On the way back to the living-room for coffee, Lina Darrow joined me. “Why did you take it out on me? she demanded.

I said I didn't know I had.

“Certainly you did. Trying to indict me for dog poisoning. You went after me much harder than you did the others. Her fingers were on the inside of my arm, lightly.

“Certainly, I conceded. “Nothing new to you, was it? A man going after you harder than the others?

“Thanks. But I mean it. Of course you know I'm just a working girl.

“Sure. That's why I was tougher with you. That, and because I wondered why you were playing dumb.

The statesman Pierce broke us up then, as we entered the living-room, and I didn't fight for her. We collected in the neighbourhood of the fireplace for coffee, and there was a good deal of talk about nothing, and after a while somebody suggested television, and Barry Rackham went and turned it on. He and

Annabel turned out lights. As the rest of us got settled in favourably placed seats, Mrs Rackham left us. A little later, as I sat in the semi-darkness scowling at a cosmetic commercial, some obscure sense told me that danger was approaching and I jerked my head around. It was right there at my elbow: a

Doberman pinscher, looking larger than normal in that light, staring intently past me at the screen.

Mrs Rackham, just behind it, apparently misinterpreting my quick movement, spoke hastily and loudly above the noise of the broadcast. “Don't try to pat him!

“I won't, I said emphatically.

“He'll behave, she assured me. “He loves television. She went on with him, farther forward. As they passed Calvin Leeds the affectionate pet halted for a brief sniff, and got a. stroke on the head in response. No one else was honoured.