In spite of sunburn, freckles and pervading hairiness of face, Jaffery grew red.

“Shut up, you silly fool!” said he, like the overgrown schoolboy that he was.

And I shut up—­not because he commanded, but because Barbara, like spring in deep summer, and Doria, like night at noontide, appeared on the terrace.

Soon afterwards lunch was announced.  By common conspiracy Jaffery and Susan upset the table arrangements, insisting that they should sit next each other.  He helped the child to impossible viands, much to my wife’s dismay, and told her apocalyptic stories of Bulgaria, somewhat to her puzzledom, but wholly to her delight.  But when he proposed to fill her silver mug (which he, as godfather, had given her on her baptism) with the liquefied dream of Paradise that Barbara, sola mortalium, can prepare, consisting of hock and champagne and fruits and cucumber and borage and a blend of liqueurs whose subtlety transcends human thought, Barbara’s Medusa glare petrified him into a living statue, the crystal jug of joy poised in his hand.

“Why mayn’t I have some, mummy?”

“Because Uncle Jaff’s your godfather,” said I.  “And your mother’s hock-cup is a sinful lust of the flesh.  Spare the child and fill up your own glass.”

“Don’t you know,” said Barbara, “that this is Berkshire, not the Balkans?  We don’t intoxicate infants here to make a summer holiday!”

At this rebuke he exchanged winks with my daughter, and refusing a handed dish of cutlets asked to be allowed to help himself to some cold beef on the sideboard.  The butler’s assistance he declined.  No Christian butler could carve for Jaffery Chayne.  After a longish absence he returned to the table with half the joint on his plate.  Susan regarded it wide-eyed.

“Uncle Jaff, are you going to eat all that?” she asked in an audible whisper.

“Yes, and you too,” he roared, “and mummy and daddy and Uncle Adrian, if I don’t get enough to eat!”

“And Aunt Doria?”

Again he reddened—­but he turned to Doria and bowed.

“In my quality of ogre only—­a bonne bouche,” said he.

It was said very charmingly, and we laughed.  Of course Susan began the inevitable question, but Barbara hurriedly notified some dereliction with regard to gravy, and my small daughter was, so to speak, hustled out of the conversation.  Jaffery by way of apology for his Gargantuan appetite discoursed on the privations of travel in uncivilised lands.  A lump of sour butter for lunch and a sardine and a hazelnut for dinner.  We were to fancy the infinite accumulation of hunger-pangs.  And as he devoured cold beef and talked, Doria watched him with the somewhat aloof interest of one who stands daintily outside the railed enclosure of a new kind of hippopotamus.