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That well-known but quite unillusioned novelist was an old friend of the Pallisers and though she was really old enough to be Jane's mother, the two had always been very intimate and Mrs. Morland's youngest boy, Tony, had adopted himself as an uncle to the small Frank, who thought him the cleverest and most delightful person in the world and copied faithfully all mannerisms least suitable for a boy of eight. What Mrs. Morland wanted to say, in her usual circumlocutory manner, was that the Fieldings had asked her to dinner and spend the night next Wednesday, and would Jane and her father be there. Jane said they would.

"I'll tell you everything at dinner," said Mrs. Morland, "or at least after dinner, unless it's the kind of war dinner party where we sit next to a woman because of not enough men, which is very restful but not exactly what a dinner party is for. Not that there's anything to tell. There never is. At least not here."

"Sadly true," said Jane. "Nor here either."

"I'm sorry," said Mrs. Morland, who understood by this that Jane had no news of her husband, just as well as Jane had understood that Mrs. Morland was asking if she had heard of Francis. "Oh, Jane, do you know anything about a Mr. Adams? Mrs. Tebben's son Richard has been turned out of the army, I don't mean for cowardice or drink or anything, but some tropical disease I think, though nothing that shows," she added, in case Jane envisaged a hideous leper or an acute case of elephantiasis, "and I saw her in Barchester, and she says he has been offered a job at this man Adams's works who is immensely rich and Richard has had very good experience before the war in some kind of business and can talk Argentine, or whatever they talk in Argentina which seems to me a most disloyal place, and Mr. Adams is going to have a branch there and it sounds very suitable, but Mrs. Tebben wondered if it was all right."