conduct frozen limit. What do you mean by planting your loathsome friends
on me like this? Do you think Brinkley Court is a leper colony or what is
it? Who is this Spink-Bottle? Love. Travers._

I had expected some such initial reaction. I replied in temperate vein:

_Not Bottle. Nottle. Regards. Bertie._

Almost immediately after she had dispatched the above heart cry, Gussie
must have arrived, for it wasn't twenty minutes later when I received the
following:

_Cipher telegram signed by you has reached me here. Runs "Lay off the
sausages. Avoid the ham." Wire key immediately. Fink-Nottle._

I replied:

_Also kidneys. Cheerio. Bertie._

I had staked all on Gussie making a favourable impression on his hostess,
basing my confidence on the fact that he was one of those timid,
obsequious, teacup-passing, thin-bread-and-butter-offering yes-men whom
women of my Aunt Dahlia's type nearly always like at first sight. That I
had not overrated my acumen was proved by her next in order, which, I was
pleased to note, assayed a markedly larger percentage of the milk of
human kindness.

As follows:

_Well, this friend of yours has got here, and I must say that for a