"Oh, he seemed fit enough. Crusty, as usual."
"Crusty, was he? What about?"
"Private matters," said George, sullenly.
Wimsey cursed himself for having started his questions tactlessly. The only thing now was to retrieve the situation as far as possible.
"I'm not at all sure," he said, "that relations shouldn't all be painlessly put away after threescore and ten. Or at any rate segregated. Or have their tongues sterilized, so that they can't be poisonously interferin'."
"I wish they were," growled George. "The old man—damn it all, I know he was in the Crimea, but he's no idea what a real war's like. He thinks things can go on just as they did half a century ago. I daresay he never did behave as I do. Anyway, I know he never had to go to his wife for his pocket-money, let alone having the inside gassed out of him. Coming preaching to me—and I couldn't say anything, because he was so confoundedly old, you know."
"Very trying," murmured Wimsey, sympathetically.
"It's all so damned unfair," said George. "Do you know," he burst out, the sense of grievance suddenly overpowering his wounded vanity, "the old devil actually threatened to cut me out of the miserable little bit of money he had to leave me if I didn't 'reform my domestic behavior.' That's the way he talked. Just as if I was carrying on with another woman or something. I know I did have an awful row with Sheila one day, but of course I didn't mean half I said. She knows that, but the old man took it all seriously."
"Half a moment," broke in Wimsey, "did he say all this to you in the taxi that day?"
"Yes, he did. A long lecture, all about the purity and courage of a good woman, driving round and round Regent's Park. I had to promise to turn over a new leaf and all that. Like being back at one's prep. school."