Sublime

For Beatrix, there were also special codas: When paying calls, wear gloves and hat, And never bring a squirrel, or rat, Or any four-legged creatures who Do not belong indoors with you.

The “poor chap” of whom the Colonel was thinking was his son, Denis, now a prisoner of war in Japanese hands. Whether the Colonel’s epithet was due to Denis’s plight or to the wife he had married was uncertain, but Colonel St Cyres disliked his daughter-in-law as heartily as any well-bred man allowed himself to dislike a woman.