"You don't mean to tell me that you were expecting it?"

"It crossed my mind as a possibility."

"Did it, by Jove! Well, I think, you might have warned us!"

"I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir."

Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer
frame of mind, what had happened wasn't my fault, if you come down to
it. I couldn't be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a
cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the
same I'm bound to admit that I didn't relish the idea of meeting Corky
again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of
soothing work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few
months. I gave it the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when I was
beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather
up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the
healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on
it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that Mrs. Alexander Worple
had presented her husband with a son and heir.

I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn't the heart to
touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself. I was bowled
over. Absolutely. It was the limit.

I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to
Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and
then, thinking it over, I hadn't the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the