Friday, March 20, 2020

He had treated her abominably

     "How are you, Agnes?"
     "If you had asked me that question this morning, Vincent," replied Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, "I should have been obliged to say that I felt far from well. I had an odd throbbing feeling in the left elbow, and I am sure my temperature was above normal. But this afternoon I am a little better. How are you, Vincent?"
     "Although she had, as I recalled from the reports of the case, been compelled some years earlier to request the Court to sever her marital relations with Vincent Jopp on the ground of calculated and inhuman brutality, in that he had callously refused, in spite of her pleadings, to take old Dr. Bennett's Tonic Swamp-Juice three times a day, her voice, as she spoke, was kind and even anxious. Badly as this man had treated her - and I remember that several of the jury had been unable to restrain their tears when she was in the witness-box giving her evidence - there still seemed to linger some remnants of the old affection.

(from "The Heel of Achilles," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

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