Money for Nothing Read Free Page A

John, shocked to the core of his being.
    He had excellent lungs, and he used them to the last ounce of their power. A young man who sees the father of the girl he loves being swallowed alive by a Welsh terrier does not spare his voice. The word came out of him like the note of the Last Trump, and Colonel Wyvern, leaping spasmodically, dropped his bottle of Brophy. It fell on the pavement and exploded, and Emily, who could do her bit in a rough-and-tumble but barred bombs, tucked her tail between her legs and vanished. A faint, sleepy cheering from outside the Carmody Arms announced that she had passed that home from home and was going well.
    John continued to be agitated. You would not have supposed, to look at Colonel Wyvern, that he could have had an attractive daughter, but such was the case, and John's manner was as concerned and ingratiating as that of most young men in the presence of the fathers of attractive daughters.
    'I'm so sorry, Colonel. I do hope you're not hurt, Colonel.'
    The injured man, maintaining an icy silence, raked him with an eye before which sergeant-majors had once drooped like withered roses, and walked into the shop. The anxious face of Chas Bywater loomed up over the counter. John hovered in the background.
    'I want another bottle of that Stuff,' said the Colonel shortly.
    'I'm awfully sorry,' said John.
    'I dropped the other outside. I was attacked by a savage dog.'
    'I'm frightfully sorry.'
    'People ought not to have these pests running loose and not under proper control.'
    'I'm fearfully sorry.'
    'A menace to the community and a nuisance to everybody,' said Colonel Wyvern.
    'Quite,' said Mr Bywater.
    Conversation languished. Chas Bywater, realizing that this was no moment for lingering lovingly over brown paper and toying dreamily with string, lowered the record for wrapping a bottle of Brophy's Paramount Elixir by such a margin that he set up a mark for other chemists to shoot at for all time. Colonel Wyvern snatched it and stalked out, and John, who had opened the door for him and had not been thanked, tottered back to the counter and in a low voice expressed a wish for two ounces of the Special Mixture.
    'Quite,' said Mr Bywater. 'In one moment, Mr John.'
    With the passing of Colonel Wyvern a cloud seemed to have rolled away from the chemist's world. He was his old, charmingly chatty self again. He gave John his tobacco, and, detaining him by the simple means of not handing over his change, surrendered himself to the joys of conversation.
    'The Colonel appears a little upset, sir.'
    'Have you got my change?' said John.
    'It seems to me he hasn't been the same man since that unfortunate episode up at the Hall. Not at all the same sunny gentleman.'
    'Have you got my change?'
    'A very unfortunate episode, that,' sighed Mr Bywater.
    'My change?'
    'I could see, the moment he walked in here, that he was not himself. Shaken. Something in the way he looked at one. I said to myself "The Colonel's shaken!"'
    John, who had had such recent experience of the way Colonel Wyvern looked at one, agreed. He then asked if he might have his change.
    'No doubt he misses Miss Wyvern,' said Chas Bywater, ignoring the request with an indulgent smile. 'When a man's had a shock like the Colonel's had – when he's shaken, if you understand what I mean – he likes to have his loved ones around him. Stands to reason,' said Mr Bywater.
    John had been anxious to leave, but he was so constituted that he could not tear himself away from anyone who had touched on the subject of Patricia Wyvern. He edged a little nearer the counter.
    'Well, she'll be home again soon,' said Chas Bywater. 'Tomorrow, I understand.'
    A powerful current of electricity seemed to pass itself through John's body. Pat Wyvern had been away so long that he had fallen into a sort of dull apathy in which he wondered sometimes if he would ever see her again.
    'What!'
    'Yes, sir. She returned from France yesterday. She had a good crossing. She is at the