P. G. Wodehouse: Uneasy Money

Chapter 4 (continued)

'Yes, like this. I feel like a bally thief.'

'Why on earth?'

'If it hadn't been for me this girl--what's her name?'

'Her name is Boyd--Elizabeth Boyd.'

'She would have had the whole million if it hadn't been for me. Have you told her yet?'

'She's in America. I was writing her a letter just before you came in--informal, you know, to put her out of her misery. If I had waited for the governor to let her know in the usual course of red tape we should never have got anywhere. Also one to the nephew, telling him about his twenty pounds. I believe in humane treatment on these occasions. The governor would write them a legal letter with so many "hereinbefores" in it that they would get the idea that they had been left the whole pile. I just send a cheery line saying "It's no good, old top. Abandon hope," and they know just where they are. Simple and considerate.'

A glance at Bill's face moved him to further speech.

'I don't see why you should worry, Bill. How, by any stretch of the imagination, can you make out that you are to blame for this Boyd girl's misfortune? It looks to me as if these eccentric wills of old Nutcombe's came in cycles, as it were. Just as he was due for another outbreak he happened to meet you. It's a moral certainty that if he hadn't met you he would have left all his money to a Home for Superannuated Caddies or a Fund for Supplying the Deserving Poor with Niblicks. Why should you blame yourself?'

'I don't blame myself. It isn't exactly that. But--but, well, what would you feel like in my place?'

'A two-year-old.'

'Wouldn't you do anything?'