The Girl on the Boat - Penn State University

nary ball with the mashie which he had taken out of
his golf-bag. For this was the day when he went down
to Walton Heath for his weekly foursome with three
old friends. His tubby form was clad in tweed of a violent
nature, with knickerbockers and stockings. “Sam!”
“Well?”
“Sam, a man at the club showed me a new grip the
other day. Instead of overlapping the little finger of the
right hand …. Oh, by the way, Sam.”
“Yes?”
“I should lock up the office to-day if I were you, or
anxious clients will be coming in and asking for advice,
and you’ll find yourself in difficulties. I shall be
gone, and Peters is away on his holiday. You’d better
lock the outer door.”
“All right,” said Sam absently. He was finding
Widgery stiff reading. He had just got to the bit about
Raptu Haeredis, which—as of course you know, is a
writ for taking away an heir holding in socage.
Sir Mallaby looked at his watch.
“Well, I’ll have to be going. See you later, Sam.”
P. G. Wodehouse
127
“Good-bye.”
Sir Mallaby went out, and Sam, placing both elbows
on the desk and twining his fingers in his hair, returned
with a frown of consternation to his grappling with
Widgery. For perhaps ten minutes the struggle was an
even one, then gradually Widgery got the upper hand.
Sam’s mind, numbed by constant batterings against
the stony ramparts of legal phraseology, weakened,
faltered, and dropped away; and a moment later his
thoughts, as so often happened when he was alone,
darted off and began to circle round the image of Billie
Bennett.
Since they had last met, at Sir Mallaby’s dinner-table,
Sam had told himself perhaps a hundred times that he
cared nothing about Billie, that she had gone out of his
life and was dead to him; but unfortunately he did not
believe it. A man takes a deal of convincing on a point
like this, and Sam had never succeeded in convincing
himself for more than two minutes at a time. It was
useless to pretend that he did not still love Billie more
than ever, because he knew he did; and now, as the