Tales of St. Austin's

by P. G. Wodehouse

'Not at all, Mr MacArthur. You were saying—?'

'I was only going to ask you if you played croquet?'

'Yes; do you?'

'No.'

'Ah!'

'If this is going to continue,' thought the Babe, 'I shall be reluctantly compelled to commit suicide.'

There was another long pause.

'Tell me the names of some of the masters at St Austin's, Mr MacArthur,' said Miss Beezley. She habitually spoke as if she were an examination paper, and her manner might have seemed to some to verge upon the autocratic, but the Babe was too thankful that the question was not on Browning or the higher algebra to notice this. He reeled off a list of names.

'... Then there's Merevale—rather a decent sort—and Dacre.'

'What sort of a man is Mr Dacre?'