Free Money in the Bank by P. G. Wodehouse

uncomfortable for the feet and there are plenty of trees handy, the silence lasted till they were approaching their destination.
    "But it seems so mad," said Anne, at length.
    "Hey?"
    "Mr. Adair."
    "What about him?"
    "I say he must be mad."
    "Why?"
    "To masquerade like this."
    "Nothing mad about it, at all. Dashed sensible thing to do, considering the way he feels. Isn't it natural for him to want to be at your side, when he's fallen head over ears in love with you?"
    "In love with me?"
    "Certainly. I told you you had bowled him over, didn't I? He fell in love with you at first sight."
    "Don't drivel, darling."
    "I'm not drivelling."
    "He couldn't have fallen in love at first sight."
    "Why not?"
    "People don't."
    "Don't they, by Jove? I'd like to put all the women I've fallen in love with at first sight end to end---"
    "Well, you mustn't. I'm sure you're mistaken."
    "Had it from his own lips."
    "What?"
    "Certainly. After you had left, I looked him in the eye and said 'Are you in love with her, hey?'"
    Anne gasped. "You didn't!"
    "I did."
    "But why?"
    "I wanted to have my suspicions confirmed by a reliable source. Nothing like going to the fountain head, when you need information."
    "And what did he say?"
    "He said 'Yerss.'"
    "A man of few words."
    "You don't need a lot of words to answer a simple question like that. 'Love her, don't yer, hey?' I said. And he said 'Yerss.' So there you are.   I'd grab him, if I were you. Splendid young feller. I took to him from the first."
    "And what about Lionel, my betrothed?"
    "Lionel? Bah! You wouldn't give that poop Lionel Green a second thought, if he hadn't the sort of tailor's-dummy good looks that women seem to be incapable of seeing through, poor misguided creatures. Give me two lumps of coal and a bit of putty, and I'll make you a better man than Lionel Green, any time. Lord-love-a-duck, I'd have liked to have been in court yesterday, and heard that feller putting him through it."
    Anne stopped the car. They were only at the entrance of the drive of Shipley Hall, and though it would have been impolitic for the secretary-companion and the butler of the establishment to bowl up to the front door together, there was no need for her to drop him for at least another two hundred yards.
    But, unlike Myrtle Shoesmith though she was in every other respect, she shared that disciplinarian's view that males who have behaved badly should be punished.
    "Out you get, angel."
    "What, already?"
    "This minute. And I hope you get bitten by wild snails. You know perfectly well how naughty it is to talk of Lionel like that."
    "You wouldn't mind it, if you didn't know in your dashed heart that it was true."
    "Out," said Anne. "Really wild snails. Ferocious ones, with long horns."
    Lord Uffenham descended like some monarch of the forest felled by a woodman's axe, and Anne drove on. Her eyes were once more pensive, and that tooth was again pressing against her lip. She was thinking how intensely she disliked that fiend in human shape, J. G. Miller. She wondered if it would ever be her good fortune to meet him and tell him just what she thought of him.
    She hoped so.
     
     

CHAPTER VIII
     
    The shadows of the great trees that flanked the lawns of Shipley Hall had begun to creep across the smooth turf when the station cab, bearing Jeff, pulled up at the front door. The ringing of the bell produced Lord Uffenham, looking extraordinarily official.
    "Hullo," said Jeff, greeting him with the warmth of an old crony. "So you got back all right? Listen. Give me ten minutes to fraternise with the Black Man's Burden, and we'll go into the matter of that glass of port you spoke of."
    "Sir?"
    The frigid monosyllable, and the blank and unrecognising stare which accompanied it, told Jeff that he was in the presence of an artist. Lord Uffenham, when buttling, evidently permitted no echoes from a sociable past to interfere with his conception of his role. When in the public eye, he was Cakebread, the whole Cakebread