Chapter 32

The Venerable and the Don shook hands. Mr. Ponsonby, being a very subtle person who could talk to you all night on “conditional reflexes,” or multiple personality, or scribble Gilbertian verse and sing it to you with a vamped accompaniment, could say everything that was apposite while saying nothing. He just bent to you and smiled down through beneficent spectacles. He was admirable with parents. He had a wicked way of making mothers feel that they were even more interesting than their sons. He had the fine qualiti…