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Without all this he would not have been sitting there, saying, “The English working man is at bottom a sensible chap, and if they would only appeal to his common sense it would be all right.”

Then the gong sounded. Dick looked at his watch and remarked, quite good-humouredly, “I wonder how many times your mother has been in time for dinner during the thirty years we have been married.”

At last the door opened, and the Doña came in with Concha.

“I have just been saying I wonder how many times you have been in time for dinner since we were married.”

The Doña ignored this remark, and busied herself in straightening Teresa’s fichu.

Then they went in to dinner.

“By the way, Anna,” said Dick, looking across at the Doña and sucking the soup off his moustache, “I was playing golf with Crofts, and he says there’s going to be a wonderful new rose at the show this year—terra cotta coloured. It’s a Lyons one; he says it’s been got by a new way of hybridising. We must ask Harry about it.”

“Harry wouldn’t know—he knows nothing about gardening,” said the Doña scornfully.