Presently they are seated on camp-stools sipping tea, eating
strawberries and cakes, under the striped sun-blind.

_Norie_ continues: "Do you remember Beryl Clarges at Newnham?"

_Vivie_: "Yes--the pretty girl--short, curly hair, brown eyes,
rather full lips, good at mathematics--hockey ... purposely shocked
you by her outspokenness--well?"

_Norie_: "Well, she's had a baby ... a month ago ... awful rumpus
with her people ... Father's Dean Clarges ... Norwich or Ely, I
forget which ... They've put her in a Nursing Home in Seymour
Street. Mother wears a lace mantilla and cries softly. Beryl went
wrong, as they call it, with an architect."

_Vivie_: "Pass your cup ... Don't take _all_ the strawberries
(_Norie_: "Sorry! Absence of mind--I've left you three fat ones")
Architect? Strange! I always thought all architects were like
Praddy--had no passions except for bricks and mortar and chiselled
stone and twirligig iron grilles ... perhaps just a thrill over a
nude statue. Why, till you told me this I'd as soon have trusted my
daughter--if I had one--with an architect as with a Colonel of
Engineers--You know! The kind that believes in the identity of the
Ten Lost Tribes with the British and is a True Protestant! Poor
Beryl! But how? what? when? why?"

_Norie_: "I think it began at Cambridge--the acquaintance did ...
Later, it developed into a passion. He had already one wife in
Sussex somewhere and four children. He took a flat for her in
Town--a studio--because Berry had given up mathematics and was going