“Cares of State heavy tonight?” suggested O’Rourke sympathetically.

Bill groaned.

“I don’t know what your fellow’s like,” he complained. “Looks a good-natured, tubby little chap. But Codders is absolutely impossible. Drive, drive, drive, from morning to night. Everything you do is wrong, and everything you haven’t done you ought to have done.”

“Quite like a quotation from the prayer book,” remarked Jimmy, who had just strolled up.

Bill glanced at them reproachfully.

“Nobody knows,” he said pathetically, “what I have to put up with.”

“Entertaining the Countess, eh?” suggested Jimmy. “Poor Bill, that must have been a sad strain to a woman hater like yourself.”

“What’s this?” asked Bundle.