LISA MAKES MISCHIEF When Ivor was safely out of the room, my first thought was to escape from behind the lounge, and get upstairs to my own quarters.

But just as I had sat up, very cramped and wretched, with one foot and one arm asleep, Lord Mountstuart came in again, and down I had to duck.
He had brought a friend, who was as mad about old books and first editions, as he; a stuffy, elderly thing, who had never seen Lord Mountstuart's treasures before.

As both were perfectly daft on the subject, they must have kept me lying there an hour, while they fussed about from one glass-protected book-case to another, murmuring admiration of Caxtons, or discussing the value of a Mazarin Bible, with their noses in a lot of old volumes which ought to have been eaten up by moths long ago.

As for me, I should have been delighted to set fire to the whole lot.
At last Lord Mountstuart (whom I've nicknamed "Stewey") remembered that there was a ball going on, and that he was the host.

So he and the other duffer pottered away, leaving the coast clear and the door wide open.