Money for nothing

by P. G. Wodehouse

"He doesn't."

"Pardon me," said Hugo firmly. "Have you ever seen a stuffed frog? Well, I have. I had one for years when I was a kid. And John has exactly the same power of expressing emotion. You can't go by what he says or the way he looks. You have to keep an eye out for much subtler bits of evidence. Now, last night he was explaining the rules of cricket to this girl, and answering all her questions on the subject, and, as he didn't at any point in the proceeding punch her on the nose, one is entitled to deduce, I consider, that he must be strongly attracted by her. Ronnie thinks so, too. So what I'm asking you to do...."

"Good-bye," said Pat. They had reached the gate of the little drive that led to her house, and she turned sharply.

"Eh?"

"Good-bye."

"But just a moment," insisted Hugo. "Will you...."

At this point he stopped in mid-sentence and began to walk quickly up the road; and Pat, puzzled to conjecture the reason for so abrupt a departure, received illumination a moment later when she saw her father coming down the drive. Colonel Wyvern had been dealing murderously with snails in the shadow of a bush, and the expression on his face seemed to indicate that he would be glad to extend the treatment to Hugo.

He gazed after that officious young man with a steely eye. The second post had arrived a short time before, and it had included among a number of bills and circulars a letter from his lawyer, in which the latter regretfully gave it as his opinion that an action against Mr. Lester Carmody in the matter of that dynamite business would not lie. To bring such an action would, in the judgment of Colonel Wyvern's lawyer, be a waste both of time and money.

The communication was not calculated to sweeten the Colonel's temper, nor did the spectacle of his daughter in apparently pleasant conversation with one of the enemy help to cheer him up.

"What are you talking about to that fellow?" he demanded. It was rare for Colonel Wyvern to be the heavy father, but there are times when heaviness in a father is excusable. "Where did you meet him?"