'How depressed you look! What on earth's the matter?'

'Central Europe,' I said, 'and the chaos in China is something awful. There's a threatened shortage, too, of beer in Copenhagen.'

'But why should that worry you?'

'It doesn't. It's what I said to Mrs. Rumbal—I do say such idiotic things! She asked me to come to see them. "I shall be delighted," I said, "as delighted—"

'But it's your fault for lending me that book of Siamese translations!—"as delighted," I said, "Mrs. Rumbal, as a royal flamingo, when he alights upon a cluster of lotuses."'