Lord Caterham and his daughter, Bundle, are at breakfast discussing Virginia and the possibility of his lordship marrying her.
‘Have you asked her to be my stepma yet?’
‘I don’t think it would be any good,’ said Lord Caterham mournfully. ‘Although she did call me a darling last night. But that’s the worst of these attractive women with affectionate dispositions. They’ll say anything, and they mean absolutely nothing by it.’
‘No,’ agreed Bundle. ‘It would have been much more hopeful if she’d thrown a boot at you or tried to bite you.’
‘You modern young people seem to have such unpleasant ideas about love-making,’ said Lord Caterham plaintively.
‘It comes from reading The Sheik,’ said Bundle, ‘Desert love. Throw her about, etc.’
‘What is The Sheik?’ asked Lord Caterham simply. ‘Is it a poem?’
Bundle looked up at him with commiserating pity. Then she rose and kissed the top of his head.
‘Dear old Daddy,’ she remarked, and sprang lightly out of the window.
The Secret of Chimneys (1925)
