They spread their table-cloth on its slope and under the dappled shadows of the half-fledged trees, with Christine presiding on the high ground.  Her wispy grey hair fluttered out from under the wide black hat, and she looked pretty and pathetic, with her shabby black bag and her old umbrella, like a witch, as Howard said, who had been caught whilst absent-mindedly gathering toad-stools and carried here in triumph to bless their mortal festivity.

“The umbrella keeps off rain,” he explained mysteriously, “and besides that, it’s a necromantic Handley-Page which might fly off with her at any minute.  When you see it opening, stand clear and hold on to yourselves.”

He made a limerick on this particular fancy.  It was a very bad limerick, as bad, probably, as his theories on pyridine and its relation to the alkaloids which had floored him in his last exam.; but the Gang applauded enthusiastically, and drank to Christine out of mugs of beer.  Unlicked and cynical as they were, they seemed to have a chivalrous tenderness for her.  And she was at home among them—­silent, smiling wistfully down upon their commonplace eccentricities, as though through the mist of her coming blindness they were somehow lovable.

They ate outrageously of fearsome things.  Yet over her third meringue Connie Edwards broke down with lamentations for the lost powers of youth.

“I can remember eating five of ’em,” she said, “and coming home to a tea of winkles and bloater paste.  Oh Gawd!  I’ll be in my grave before I can turn round.”

She had been from the start in an unusually pensive and philosophic mood—­a trifle wide-eyed and even awe-struck.  It seemed that the night before the “French dame” had appeared unexpectedly during a rehearsal—­a peculiarly gingerless performance according to Connie’s account—­and had watched from the wings awhile, and then, unasked and apparently without premeditation, had broken in among them and at the edge of the footlights, to a gaping, empty theatre, had danced and sung a little song.

“A French song,” Connie said solemnly.  “Not a word of the blessed thing could we understand, and yet we were all hugging ourselves.  Not pretty either—­a mere bone and a yank of hair—­and no more voice than a sparrow.  But you just went along too.  Couldn’t help it.  And afterwards we played up as though we liked it, and hadn’t been plugging at the rottenest show in England for the last ten weeks.  And she laughed and clapped her hands, and our tongues hung out we were that pleased.  She’s It, friends.  It.  Gyp Labelle from the Folies Bergeres and absolutely It.”

Rufus Cosgrave rolled over on his face and lay blinking out of the long grass like a sleepy, red-headed satyr.

“Gyp Labelle,” he said drowsily, “Gyp Labelle!”

Robert knew that he was thinking of the Circus.  And he did not want to think about the Circus.  He pushed the memory from him.  He was glad when Howard said gravely: