P. G. Wodehouse

“ Blatherwick's mind was far away in the future, dealing with visions of a school grown to colossal proportions and patronized by millionaires who paid on the nail. The section of it which still worked in the present was just large enough to enable him to understand that he felt kindly, and even almost grateful to Violet. But it was too small to make him see how wrong it was to kiss her in a vague, fatherly way across the coffee tray just as James Datchett strolled into the room. ”

“ It was no part of James' duties as assistant master at Harrow House to wander about kissing housemaids, even in a brotherly manner. On the other hand, there was no great harm done. In the circles in which Violet moved the kiss was equivalent to the handshake of loftier society. Everybody who came to the back door kissed Violet. The expressman did; so did the the baker, the butcher, the grocer, the gardener, the postman, the policeman, and the fishmonger. They were men of widely differing views on most points. ”

“ Parents who visited the school put his vagueness down to activity of mind. “That busy brain,” they thought, “is never at rest. Even while he is talking to us some abstruse mathematical problem or some obscure passage in the classics is occupying him.”
About a fortnight after James' appointment to the post of English tutor to Adolf, the proprietor of Harrow House was seated in his study, brooding on the hardships of life and the iniquities of parents. A certain type of parent, he thought with some bitterness, seemed to think that he kept a school from purely philanthropic motives. ”