Busman’s Honeymoon Read Online Free PDF

because when he came out after telephoning, Bunter reported that he had ‘booked the best room at the Lord Warden, my lord, for the night of the 16th, and reserved cabin and train accommodation for Mentone as instructed.’ P. asked, were the hell-hounds on the trail? B. said. Yes—leading hell-hound had approached him as expected with pump working full blast. Had asked, Why Lord Warden and not night boat or aeroplane? B. had replied. Lady a martyr to sea-and-air-sickness. Hound appeared satisfied and tipped B. 10s., which B. says he will take liberty of forwarding to Prisoners’ Aid Society. I said, ‘Really, Peter!’ but he said. Why shouldn’t he arrange continental trip for deserving couple? and posted off reservations to Miss Climpson, for benefit of tubercular accountant and wife in reduced circumstances. (Query: How does one reduce a circumstance?)
     
       5 October.— Worth has made magnificent effort and delivered dress. Few select friends invited to see trousseau—including Miss Climpson, miraculously reduced to speechlessness by Peter’s gift of mink coat—950 guineas admittedly perhaps a trifle extravagant, but his sole contribution, and he looked as scared and guilty when he presented it as he did when he was a small boy and his father caught him with his pocket full of rabbits after a night out with that rascally of poacher Merryweather he took such a fancy to—and how that man’s cottage did smell! But it is a lovely cloak, and H. hadn’t the heart to say more than, ‘Oh, Mr Rochester!’—in fun, and meaning Jane Eyre, who I always think behaved so ungraciously to that poor man—so gloomy to have your bride, however bigamous, insisting on grey alpaca or merino or whatever it was, and damping to a lover’s feelings.... Hell-hound’s paragraph in Morning Star —discreetly anonymous but quite unmistakable. Helen rang up to know if it was true. I replied, with exactness, that it must be all invention! In evening, took Peter and Harriet to Cheyne Walk to dine with Paul—who insists on coming to wedding, arthritis or no arthritis. Noticed unusual constraint between P. and H., who had been all right when I saw them off to dinner and theatre last night. Paul gave one look at them, and started off to chatter about his eternal cloisonné and the superiority of naturally matured French wines over port. Uncomfortable evening, with everybody unlike themselves. At last, Paul sent P. and H. off by themselves in a taxi, saying he wanted to talk business with me—obvious excuse. I asked, did he think anything was wrong? Paul said, ‘ Au contraire, ma soeur, c’est nous qui sommes de trop. Il arrive toujours le moment ou l’on apprend a distinguer entre embrasser et baiser ’—adding with one of his grins, ‘I was wondering how long Peter would last before he let the bars down—he’s his father all over again, with a touch of myself, Honoria, with a touch of my self!’ Couldn’t waste time and breath being annoyed with Paul—who has always been the complete polygamist—and so was Peter’s father, of course, dearly as I loved him—so I said, ‘Yes, but, Paul, do you think Harriet—?’ Paul said ‘Bah! the wine she drinks is made of grapes. Il y a des femmes qui ont le génie —’ I really could not stand Paul on le génie de l’amour, because he goes on and on, getting more and more conscientiously French every moment, with illustrative anecdotes from his own career, and, anyway, he’s only as much French as I am—exactly one-eighth—so I told him hastily I was sure his diagonal was the right one (wonder whether I meant ‘angle’ or ‘diagnosis’), and I expect it is have never known Paul mistaken about the progress of a love-affair. Realise that this explains why he and Harriet have always got on so well together, though one would never have expected it, considering her reserve and his usual taste in women. Suggested to Paul it was time he went to bed; so he said rather