"Why, if it isn't Fanshaw... Look, for crissake, help me... Susie Beveridge has broken her string of pearls. We're looking for them because with all these strange people... How do you do, Henley? I hadn't seen you." He got to his feet unsteadily and rubbed his hand across his closecropped yellow hair. "Gosh, I'm tight as a tick... Come into the library and have a cocktail... I got to have a lil' sip to sober me." "I thought you were looking for the wedding ring," said Henley. "Right after a lil' sip to sober up we mus' look for pearls again. Two of 'em rolled into the hall." They followed Cham into the library, a great wainscoted room dense with the sweetness of the yellow mimosa that stood in pots in the fireplace. A group of girls and young men stood round a brass smoking table on which was a shaker and a great array of cocktail glasses shining in the grey light that poured in through a broad window. In a morrischair sat a fatfaced girl, her eyes brimmed with tears holding a lot of various sized pearls in her cupped hands. "Count them again, Susie.... Maybe you've got them all," somebody said. "Have a lil' cocktail with us and then we'll all look an we won't stop looking till we find every last one of 'em." "But it's time, Cham," whined the girl in the morrischair. "Well, where's Allie? I'm ready.... Here's looking at you, Fanshaw." "Brush off your knees, they're all over dust.... I hear the orchestra tuning up. Come along, everybody." "For God's sake, don't anybody get me started laughing," said Cham straightening himself up and goosestepping stiffly towards the door. "Come on, Cham, they are waiting," said in a voice staccato with excitement a little grey-haired grey faced man in a frock coat too long for him who appeared in the door. "All right, Dad, I'm coming.... But, where's Allie? I refuse to be married without Allie." Fanshaw drank down his cocktail and followed. Behind him he heard a voice still whining, "I don't know where to put my pearls." He pulled the door to and started down the stairs beside a black toque with a cockade like a Westpointer's in it. "My," the girl was saying, "You should have seen the rehearsal of the ceremony this morning. It was a scream. Everybody got the giggles so we couldn't go on." "Sh-sh," went someone. Everything was quiet but for the rustle of dresses, an occasional cough or a sound of creaky tiptoeing. They were packed into a long drawing room down the middle of which an aisle had been made by a row of little orange trees in pots. Fanshaw flattened himself against the wall beside a picture that he was in constant fear of knocking down. The string orchestra grouped about the piano in the far corner behind the palms struck up. Everybody craned their necks. "That's the overture," whispered someone. "What, deary?" came in broken elderly tones. "The overture, Mother,... Beethoven." "Ah, Beethoven." "Sh-sh."