“Good-afternoon,” said that nobleman, ambling genially in, “it’s most uncommonly good of you to let me come round wastin’ your time like this. I’ll try not to be too long about it, though I’m not awfully good at comin’ to the point. My brother never would let me stand for the county, y’know—said I wandered on so nobody’d know what I was talkin’ about.”
“Pleased to meet you, Lord Wimsey,” said Mr. Milligan. “Won’t you take a seat?”
“Thanks,” said Lord Peter, “but I’m not a peer, you know—that’s my brother Denver. My name’s Peter. It’s a silly name, I always think, so old-world and full of homely virtue and that sort of thing, but my godfathers and godmothers in my baptism are responsible for that, I suppose, officially—which is rather hard on them, you know, as they didn’t actually choose it. But we always have a Peter, after the third duke, who betrayed five kings somewhere about the Wars of the Roses, though come to think of it, it ain’t anything to be proud of. Still, one has to make the best of it.”
Mr. Milligan, thus ingeniously placed at that disadvantage which attends ignorance, manoeuvred for position, and offered his interrupter a Corona Corona.
“Thanks, awfully,” said Lord Peter, “though you really mustn’t tempt me to stay here burblin’ all afternoon. By Jove, Mr. Milligan, if you offer people such comfortable chairs and cigars like these, I wonder they don’t come an’ live in your office.” He added mentally: “I wish to goodness I could get those long-toed boots off you. How’s a man to know the size of your feet? And a head like a potato. It’s enough to make one swear.”
“Say now, Lord Peter,” said Mr. Milligan, “can I do anything for you?”
“Well, d’you know,” said Lord Peter, “I’m wonderin’ if you would. It’s damned cheek to ask you, but fact is, it’s my mother, you know. Wonderful woman, but don’t realize what it means, demands on the time of a busy man like you. We don’t understand hustle over here, you know, Mr. Milligan.”
“Now don’t you mention that,” said Mr. Milligan; “I’d be surely charmed to do anything to oblige the Duchess.”
He felt a momentary qualm as to whether a duke’s mother were also a duchess, but breathed more freely as Lord Peter went on:
“Thanks—that’s uncommonly good of you. Well, now, it’s like this. My mother—most energetic, self-sacrificin’ woman, don’t you see, is thinkin’ of gettin’ up a sort of a charity bazaar down at Denver this winter, in aid of the church roof, y’know. Very sad case, Mr. Milligan—fine old antique—early English windows and decorated angel roof, and all that—all tumblin’ to pieces, rain pourin’ in and so on—vicar catchin’ rheumatism at early service, owin’ to the draught blowin’ in over the altar—you know the sort of thing. They’ve got a man down startin’ on it—little beggar called Thipps—lives with an aged mother in Battersea—vulgar little beast, but quite good on angel roofs and things, I’m told.”