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gather.”
    â€œRichie,” said Will.
    â€œAh,” said Stephen. He jumped down from the wall to stand next to the car. “How do you do, Mr. Moore. I dropped your son into some water, I believe.”
    â€œGreen water,” said the man. “Ruined his shirt.”
    â€œI should be happy to buy him a new one,” Stephen said easily. “What size is he?”
    â€œDon’t talk rubbish,” the man said, expressionless. “I just wanted to get the rights and wrongs of it, that’s all. Wondered why a young man like you should be playing those sort of games with kids.”
    Stephen said, “It wasn’t a game, Mr. Moore. I simply feltvery strongly that your son deserved to be dropped into the water.”
    Mr. Moore ran one hand over his large glistening forehead. “Maybe. Maybe. He’s a wild kid, that one. They kick him around, he kicks back. What did he do to you?”
    â€œDidn’t he tell you?” Will said.
    Mr. Moore looked across the low wall at Will as though he were something small and irrelevant, like a beetle. “What Richie told me, it wasn’t something that gets people dropped in streams. So like as not it wasn’t true. That’s what I want to get straight.”
    â€œHe was tormenting a younger boy,” Stephen said. “There’s not much point in going into detail.”
    â€œHaving a bit of fun, he said.”
    â€œNot much fun for the other one.”
    â€œRichie said he didn’t lay a finger on him,” Mr. Moore said.
    â€œHe just threw his music-case full of music into the stream, that’s all,” Will said shortly.
    â€œWe—ell,” Mr. Moore said. He paused, tapping the edge of the car window absently. “It was that Indian kid from the Common, I gather.”
    The three Stantons stood looking at him in silence. He stared back, blankly. At length Barbara said, in a small polite voice, “Does that make a difference?”
    Before the man could answer, Mr. Stanton said amiably from behind them, “Good afternoon.”
    â€œAfternoon,” said Mr. Moore, turning his head, with a tinge of relief in his tone. “I’m Jim Moore. We were just—”
    â€œYes, I heard some of it,” Mr. Stanton said. He propped himself against the edge of the wheelbarrow he had just set down, and took out his pipe and matches. “I must say I thought Steve might have over-reached himself a bit that day. Still—”
    â€œThe thing is, you can’t always believe these people, you see,” said the man in the car, smiling, confident of agreement.
    There was a silence. Mr. Stanton lit his pipe. He said, puffing, blowing out the match, “I don’t quite follow, I’m afraid.”
    Stephen said coldly, “It wasn’t a case of believing anyone, just of what I happened to see for myself.”
    Mr. Moore was looking at Mr. Stanton with a kind of anxious adult
bonhomie.
“Made a lot of fuss about nothing, that kid, I dare say. You know how they are, always on about something.”
    â€œTrue, true,” said Roger Stanton, his round face placid. “Mine usually are.”
    â€œOh no, no,” said Mr. Moore heartily, “I’m sure your bunch are very nice. I meant coloureds, not kids.”
    He went on, ploughing unawares through the silence that came again, “I see a lot of them at work. I’m in personnel, you know—Thames Manufacturing. Not much I don’t know about Indians and Pakkies, after all these years. Of course I’ve got nothing against them personally. Very intelligent, well-educated, some of them. Got myself an op from an Indian doctor at the Memorial Hospital last year—clever little chap, he was.”
    Barbara said, in the same small polite voice, “I expect even some of your best friends are Indians and Pakistanis.”
    Her father gave her a sharp warning glance, but the words went flickering quite