Mr Blottisham was inspecting the arrangement of chairs in the Senior Common Room.
Professor Quillibrace looked up.
"Are you planning to redesign the room?"
"No."
"Then may I ask why you are moving the chairs?"
"I am considering hospitality."
Quillibrace paused.
"That is a rare reason for moving furniture."
"I have been thinking about guests."
"An interesting subject."
"Are they not rather strange?"
"In what respect?"
"A guest is simply someone who arrives somewhere."
"Yes."
"Nothing physical changes."
"Explain."
"The walls remain."
"Yes."
"The chairs remain."
"Yes."
"The room is exactly the same size."
"Presumably."
"And yet everyone behaves as though something significant has happened."
Miss Elowen Stray looked up from her book.
"Perhaps something has."
"What?"
"The meaning of the space."
Blottisham looked around.
"The space?"
"Yes."
"It appears unchanged."
"Physically."
"That seems important."
"It is also incomplete."
Quillibrace closed his book.
"A room is not merely its dimensions."
"Then what else is it?"
"Among other things, what it permits."
Blottisham considered this.
"So a guest changes what a room permits."
"Exactly."
"But how?"
Miss Stray smiled.
"By making another person's existence part of it."
Blottisham looked slightly surprised.
"That sounds almost too simple."
"Many profound things do."
He sat down.
"So a house without guests..."
"Can still be beautiful."
"Comfortable."
"Carefully arranged."
"And yet?"
"It has never performed one of its deepest functions."
"Which is?"
"To become a place where someone else is welcomed."
Blottisham nodded slowly.
"I suppose a chair is different when someone is invited to sit in it."
"Indeed."
"A meal is different when it is shared."
"Yes."
"A room is different when it says, 'You belong here for a while.'"
Quillibrace smiled.
"A very good description."
Blottisham looked pleased.
"I have discovered the secret of hospitality."
"Have you?"
"Moving chairs."
Quillibrace looked at him.
"Perhaps do not publish yet."
Miss Stray laughed.
"But the instinct is correct."
"Which instinct?"
"Making space."
Blottisham considered this.
"That is what an invitation does."
"Yes."
"When someone says, 'Would you like to come over?'"
"They are not merely arranging a meeting."
"They are creating a future."
"Exactly."
"A small future in which two lives overlap."
Quillibrace nodded.
"An invitation is a promise that there will be room."
Blottisham smiled.
"That sounds rather generous."
"It is."
"Especially because time is limited."
"Yes."
"People often say they have no time."
"They often mean they have no unallocated time."
"Which is different."
"Very."
Miss Stray looked towards the empty chairs.
"Hospitality begins when someone chooses to interrupt their own arrangements for another person."
Blottisham frowned.
"That sounds inconvenient."
"It can be."
"Then why do it?"
"Because not everything valuable is efficient."
Quillibrace nodded.
"The guest is a reminder that a life entirely protected from interruption may also be protected from encounter."
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
"That is rather uncomfortable."
"Good observations often are."
He smiled.
"There is something else strange about guests."
"What?"
"The guest is technically an outsider."
"Yes."
"And yet we invite them in."
"Exactly."
"Why does that matter?"
"Because if someone already belonged completely, no invitation would be needed."
Miss Stray added,
"Hospitality does not erase difference."
"It welcomes across difference."
Blottisham nodded.
"So it is like a bridge."
"Very much."
"The two sides remain separate."
"Yes."
"But they can meet."
"Exactly."
He thought for a moment.
"That explains why strangers at the door have often been treated as important."
"Indeed."
"Not because every stranger is automatically good."
"No."
"But because every stranger asks a question."
"What question?"
Miss Stray smiled.
"Can the circle become slightly larger?"
A silence followed.
Then Blottisham said,
"Although there must be limits."
"Yes."
"Otherwise a guest becomes an invasion."
"Correct."
"A welcome requires a door."
"And a door requires a lock."
"That sounds contradictory."
"It is not."
Quillibrace leaned back.
"Generosity without boundaries is not hospitality."
"What is it?"
"Confusion."
Blottisham nodded.
"So wisdom is required."
"As with every invisible machine."
"The table can exclude."
"The bridge can divide."
"The letter can wound."
"And the guest?"
"The guest can become an intruder."
Miss Stray looked towards the fireplace.
"But the possibility remains extraordinary."
"What possibility?"
"That human beings can temporarily expand what counts as theirs."
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"Explain."
"A guest borrows your chair."
"Yes."
"Shares your meal."
"Yes."
"Uses your cup."
"Yes."
"Perhaps sleeps beneath your roof."
"Yes."
"And for a while, the boundary between 'mine' and 'yours' becomes less rigid."
Blottisham smiled.
"That is rather beautiful."
"It is also fragile."
"Which may be why we remember it."
"Exactly."
"Not the room."
"No."
"The furniture."
"No."
"The arrangement."
"No."
"But the feeling."
"Yes."
"Someone made space."
"Yes."
"Someone noticed."
"Yes."
"Someone said, 'For this moment, there is room for you here.'"
Quillibrace glanced around the Common Room.
"That is perhaps the simplest definition of hospitality."
Blottisham stood and returned the chairs to their original positions.
"I began by thinking a guest was merely someone who arrived."
"And now?"
"I think a guest is someone who changes the meaning of arrival."
Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.
"A surprisingly careful answer."
"Thank you."
"You may keep it."
"I shall."
Miss Stray looked at the empty doorway.
"Perhaps that is why homes are not measured only by the people inside them."
"By what else?"
"By the people who have been welcomed through them."
At that moment, a knock came at the door.
Blottisham looked alarmed.
"Should we answer?"
Quillibrace looked amused.
"That depends."
"On what?"
"Whether we are prepared to discover what kind of room this is."
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