a bit of salmon fishing.”
I ordered another. If this was going to be a fish-story, I needed stimulants.
“On the liner going to New York I met a girl.”
Biffy made a sort of curious gulping noise not unlike a bulldog trying to swallow half a cutlet in a hurry so as to be ready for the other half. “Bertie, old man, I can’t describe her. I simply can’t describe her.”
This was all to the good.
“She was wonderful! We used to walk on the boat-deck after dinner. She was on the stage. At least, sort of.”
“How do you mean, sort of?”
“Well, she had worked with a concert party and posed for artists and been a mannequin in a big dressmaker’s and all that sort of thing, don’t you know,” said Biffy, vaguely.
“Anyway, she had saved up a few pounds and was on her way to see if she could get a job in New York. She told me all about herself. Her father ran a milk-walk in Clapham. Or it may have been Cricklewood. At least, it was either a milk-walk or a boot-shop.”
“Easily confused.”
“What I’m trying to make you understand,” said Biffy, “is that she came of good, sturdy, respectable middle-class stock. Nothing flashy about her. The sort of wife any man might have been proud of.”
“Well, whose wife was she?”
“Nobody’s. That’s the whole point of the story. I wanted her to be mine, and I lost