The year was at the spring and the day at the morn and God may have been in His Heaven, but as far as Mr. Samuel Whipplestone was concerned the evidence was negligible. He was, in a dull, muddled sort of way, miserable. He had become possessed, with valedictory accompaniments, of two solid silver Georgian gravy-boats. He had taken his leave of Her Majesty’s Foreign Service in the manner to which his colleagues were accustomed. He had even prepared himself for the non-necessity of getting up at seven-thirty, bathing, shaving, breakfasting at eight — but there is no need to prolong the Podsnappian recital. In a word he had fancied himself tuned in to retirement and now realized that he was in no such condition. He was a man without propulsion. He had no object in life. He was finished.

By ten o’clock he found himself unable to endure the complacent familiarity of his “service” flat It was in fact at that hour being “serviced,” a ritual which normally he avoided and now hindered by his presence.

He was astounded to find that for twenty years he had inhabited dull, oppressive, dark and uncomely premises. Deeply shaken by this abrupt discovery he went out into the London spring.

A ten-minute walk across the park hardly raised his spirits. He avoided the great water-shed of traffic under the quadriga, saw some inappropriately attired equestrians, passed a concourse of scarlet and yellow tulips, left the park under the expanded nostrils of Epstein’s liberated elementals, and made his way into Baronsgate.

As he entered that flowing cacophony of changing gears and revving engines, it occurred to him that he himself must now get into bottom gear and stay there until he was parked in some-sub-fusc lay-by to await — and here the simile became insufferable — a final towing-off. His predicament was none the better for being commonplace. He walked for a quarter of an hour.