Saturday, November 01, 2025

Concerning flights to the moon

 Mr. Scrope took a seat and settled himself to wait until Mr. Scrope should find himself at liberty. He was an elderly man with thinning hair, watery blue eyes and a drooping mustache, and he was wearing the anxious look so often seen on the faces of elderly men with thinning hair when they are about to try to borrow money from their younger brothers. From time to time a twitching shudder ran through his gaunt frame. The recent exchanges on the subject of Scropes had robbed him of the little confidence he had possessed when starting out on this mission, and the longer he sat, the less did it seem to him probable that his brother Willoughby, good fellow though he was and kindly disposed though he had shown himself in the past to applications for loans on a smaller scale, could be relied on for the stupendous one of two hundred and three pounds, six shillings and fourpence - a sum roughly equivalent, or so it appeared to Crispin's fevered mind, to what it costs to put a man on the moon.

(from The Girl in Blue, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

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