computers or biochemistry about which he knew absolutely nothing. But this morning the absence of the car had given her the opportunity to get her own questions in.
'I didn't say I didn't come in late,' said Wilt through a mouthful of muesli. Eva was still into organic foods and her home-made muesli, designed to guarantee an adequate supply of roughage, did just that and more.
'That's a double negative,' said Emmeline.
Wilt looked at her balefully. 'I know it is,' he said, and spat out the husk of a sunflower seed.
'Then you weren't telling the truth,' Emmeline continued. 'Two negatives make a positive and you didn't say you had come in late.'
'And I didn't say I hadn't,' said Wilt, struggling with his daughter's logic and trying to use his tongue to get the bran off the top of his dentures. The damned stuff seemed to get everywhere.
'There's no need to mumble,' said Eva. 'What I want to know is where the car is.'
'I've already told you. I left it in a car park. I'll get a mechanic to go round and see what's wrong with the thing.'
'You could have done that last night. How do you expect me to take the girls to school?'
'I suppose they could always walk,' said Wilt, extracting a raisin from his mouth with his fingers and examining it offensively. 'It's an organic form of transportation, you know. Unlike this junior prune which would appear to have led a sedentary life and a sedimentary death. I wonder why it is that health foods so frequently contain objects calculated to kill. Now take this'
'I am not interested in your comments,' said Eva. 'You're just trying to wriggle out of it and if you expect me to...'
'Walk?' interrupted Wilt. 'God forbid. The adipose tissue with which you'
'Don't you adipose me, Henry Wilt,' Eva began, only to be interrupted by Penelope.
'What's adipose?'
'Mummy is,' said Wilt. 'As to the meaning, it means fat, fatty deposits and appertaining to fat.'
'I am not fat,' said Eva firmly, 'and if you think I'm spending my precious time walking three miles there and three miles back twice a day you're wrong.'
'As usual,' said Wilt. 'Of course. I was forgetting that the gender arrangements of this household leave me in a minority of one.'
'What are gender arrangements?' demanded Samantha.
'Sex,' said Wilt bitterly and got up from the table.
Behind him Eva snorted. She was never prepared to discuss sex in front of the quads. 'It's all very well for you,' she said, reverting to the question of the car which provided a genuine grievance. All you have to do is'
'Catch a bus,' said Wilt, and hurried out of the house before Eva could think of a suitable reply. In fact there was no need. He caught a lift with Chesterton from the Electronics Department and listened to his gripes about financial cuts and why they didn't make them in Communication Skills and get rid of some of those Liberal Studies deadbeats.
'Oh well, you know how it is,' said Wilt as he got out of the car at the Tech. 'We have to make good the inexactitudes of science.'
'I didn't know there were any,' said Chesterton.
'The human element,' said Wilt enigmatically, and went through the library to the lift and his office. The human element was waiting for him.
'You're late, Henry,' said the Vice-Principal.
Wilt looked at him closely. He usually got on rather well with the V-P. 'You're looking pretty
