P. G. Wodehouse: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

14. THREE FROM DUNSTERVILLE (continued)

'I'm due back at the office,' he said, hoarsely.

'Busy man! I'm having a slack day. Well, good-bye. I'll see Mary back.'

Joe seated himself in the vacant chair.

'You're looking tired,' he said. 'Did Eddy talk too much?'

'Yes, he did ... Joe, you were right.'

'Ah--Mary!' Joe chuckled. 'I'll tell you something I didn't tell Eddy. It wasn't entirely through carelessness that I posted those letters in the wrong envelopes. In fact, to be absolutely frank, it wasn't through carelessness at all. There's an old gentleman in Pittsburgh by the name of John Longwood, who occasionally is good enough to inform me of some of his intended doings on the market a day or so before the rest of the world knows them, and Eddy has always shown a strong desire to get early information too. Do you remember my telling you that your predecessor at the office left a little abruptly? There was a reason. I engaged her as a confidential secretary, and she overdid it. She confided in Eddy. From the look on your face as I came in I gathered that he had just been proposing that you should perform a similar act of Christian charity. Had he?'

Mary clenched her hands.

'It's this awful New York!' she cried. 'Eddy was never like that in Dunsterville.'

'Dunsterville does not offer quite the same scope,' said Joe.

'New York changes everything,' Mary returned. 'It has changed Eddy--it has changed you.'

He bent towards her and lowered his voice.

'Not altogether,' he said. 'I'm just the same in one way. I've tried to pretend I had altered, but it's no use. I give it up. I'm still just the same poor fool who used to hang round staring at you in Dunsterville.'