"I wish I could ask you to have dinner with me, but unfortunately I've come out without my money and they don't know me here, so I can't sign the bill."
"I don't want any dinner. You can see me home if you like. Not Laburnham Road. Fountain Court, Park Lane."
"Yes, somebody told me you had moved."
"I'm living there with another girl."
"So whoever it was who told me said. Was it her you were waiting for?"
"No, she's gone to a dinner. Something to do with her old school."
Jaklyn was relieved. He would have found a meeting with Daphne Dolby embarrassing. It is never agreeable for a man who is engaged to one girl and has just proposed to another to find himself in the company of both of them.
(from Bachelors Anonymous, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
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There is, of course, a grammatical error in this passage. It should have been, "Was it she you were waiting for?" It is interesting that a writer of Sir Pelham's eminence, who grew up hearing the King's English and whose publisher no doubt had a small army of proofreaders available would have made that mistake. UNLESS, of course, it was not a mistake and that he was of the (correct) opinion that the distinction in the case of the pronouns is a purely arbitrary one that serves no useful purpose.
This reminds me of Churchill's famous barb at needless grammatical conventions: “From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”
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