Lucia fumbled for a moment at the brooch containing Beethoven’s hair. She had a feeling that the pin had come undone. “Dear Miss Olga,” she said, “how good of you to take an interest, you with your great mission of melody in the world, in our little affairs! I am encouraged. Well, Pepino and I feel--don’t we, _sposo mio?_--that now that this opportunity has come to us, of perhaps having a little salon in London, we ought to take it. There are modern movements in the world we really know nothing about. We want to educate ourselves. We want to know what the cosmopolitan mind is thinking about. Of course we’re old, but it is never too late to learn. How we shall treasure all we are lucky enough to glean, and bring it back to our dear Riseholme.” There was a slight and muffled thud on the ground, and Lucia’s fingers went back where the brooch should have been. “Georgino, my brooch, the Beethoven brooch,” she said; “it has fallen.” Georgie stooped rather stiffly to pick it up: that work with the garden roller had found out his lumbar muscles. Olga rose. “Too thrilling, Mrs. Lucas!” she said. “You must tell me much more. Shall we go? And how lovely for me: I have just taken a house in Brompton Square for the season.” “No!” said Lucia. “Which?” “Oh, one of the little ones,” said Olga. “Just opposite yours. Forty-two A.” “Such dear little houses!” said Lucia. “I have a music-room. Always yours to practise in.” “Capital good dinner,” said Robert, who had not spoken for a long time. Lucia put an arm round Daisy Quantock’s ample waist, and thus tactfully avoided the question of precedence. Daisy, of course, was far, far the elder, but then Lucia was Lucia. “Delicious indeed,” she said. “Georgie, bring the Beethoven with you.” “And don’t be long,” said Olga. Georgie had no use for the society of his own sex unless they were young, which made him feel young too, or much older than himself, which had the same result. But Pepino had an unpleasant habit of saying to him “When we come to our age” (which was an unreasonable assumption of juvenility), and Robert of sipping port with the sound of many waters for an indefinite period. So when Georgie had let Robert have two good glasses, he broke up this symposium and trundled them away into the drawing-room, only pausing to snatch up his embroidery tambour, on which he was working at what had been originally intended for a bedspread, but was getting so lovely that he now thought of putting it when finished on the top of his piano. He noticed that Lucia had brought a portfolio of music, and peeping inside saw the morsel of Stravinski.... And then, as he came within range of the conversation of the ladies, he nearly fell down from sheer shock.