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Nevertheless he thought (and his cousin read his thoughts) that she was asking the impossible. An idea struck him.

“Has Dimmy been called to the Bar?” he asked.

She looked up, puzzled. “I don’t think so.... No, I know he hasn’t. I put up a hundred for him in 1908 and he buzzed it. I should certainly have heard if he had done anything more before his marriage. Naturally since then....”

“Yes, naturally,” said the Prime Minister sympathetically. He mused. “He wouldn’t go abroad?” he said, looking round.

“What on earth’s the good of that?” said Mary Smith a little testily.

“Well,” answered the Prime Minister vaguely, as he reviewed certain posts in his mind, “... No. There isn’t much in that. Anything that could be of any use wants leading up to.” And he plunged into thought again.

Then with a gesture that many had noticed in him and had thought a mere idle trick but which was really an accompaniment to calculation, he put his ten fingers down upon his knees and lifted them slowly one after another. When he had so lifted nine (it was the ring finger of his left hand) a touch of animation passed over his face, an expression his cousin could see even in that subdued light.