As they sat down together Mrs Nash looked quizzically at Lucy and said: "Well, now that you are here in the flesh, Miss Pym, we can ask you something we are dying to know. We want to know how you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Impress Pamela."
"Yes," said Mr Nash, "that is just what we should like to know. All our lives we have been trying to make some impression on Pamela, but we remain just a couple of dear people who happen to be responsible for her existence and have to be humoured now and then."
"Now you, it seems, are quite literally something to write home about," Mrs Nash said, and raised an eyebrow and laughed.
"If it is any consolation to you," Lucy offered, "I am greatly impressed by your daughter."
"Pam is nice," her mother said. "We love her very much; but I wish we impressed her more. Until you turned up no one has made any impression on Pamela since a Nanny she had at the age of four."
"And that impression was a physical one," Mr Nash volunteered.
"Yes. The only time in her life that she was spanked."
"What happened?" Lucy asked.