8Nicholas’s laugh was not quite steady.
‘Oh, just going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it, like my namesake in the book of Job.’
She said with a kind of soft irrelevance,
‘Do you remember when you dressed up as the devil with horns and a tail and frightened Sophy’s birthday party into fits by turning out the lights at the main and coming in all daubed with phosphorescent paint?’
He laughed again.
‘It went with a bang!’
‘Because you had a squib at the end of your tail and when you let it off everyone screamed.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I can’t when things happen—I go stiff.’
‘The trouble with you, darling, is that you’re just a mass of inhibitions. You don’t scream, and you don’t cry, and you don’t climb on a chair when you see a mouse.’
‘I might if it was a spider.’
‘S
