He had bought an attractive bunch of flowers and had also carefully selected a bottle of wine, and armed with these was making his way to Oakbridge and his dinner date with Jonquil Charmwood. He had to confess it, he found the young woman extremely attractive in an offhand sort of way. She had all the attributes that he liked: nice hair, large expressive eyes, a kindly mouth, but she was terribly brittle in the modern style of her sex. She was one of those girls who seemed to be constantly in a hurry, dashing from one thing to the next. Frankly, Nick had been terribly surprised to be invited to dinner and wondered whether he was merely making weight, had been called upon because he was that much sought-after thing – an extra male. So he was astonished when arriving at her maisonette in a thirties house situated in a side street behind The George and Dragon, to discover that he was the only guest. His heart sank a little as he realized that the entire burden of conversation would fall on him.
