My Adventure at Chiselhurst

Towards the end of last September I went to the Radio A Exhibition at
Olympia, and very fine it was, too. I drifted about, and after I'd, so
to speak, "done" the ground floor and was going up the stairs to the
gallery, I ran into a man I knew. Just at the moment it wouldn't do at
all for me to mention his name, so I'll merely call him James, but
there's no harm in saying that he was a retired stockbroker and he lived
near Chiselhurst.

Anyhow, there he was, and he hailed me with glee and insisted on our
walking round together. I was rather sorry about this because it's so
much more fun wandering about exhibitions by oneself, and not only that,
he was evidently starting a bad cold which didn't attract me
particularly, but there was no getting out of it without offending him,
so I didn't try.

After all, he was by way of being a friend of mine and I'd known him for
ages, but we hadn't come across each other for some months, and during
this time he'd gone and got married again, unexpected-like. I mean,
everyone had come to look on him as a chronic widower, and he'd have
probably stopped so if the daughter who kept house for him hadn't got
married herself and gone to live in Birmingham. You must excuse these
details, but I want you to understand exactly what the position was. At
things were, he hadn't seen the catch of running an enormous great house
all by himself, so Mrs. James the Second had come to the throne as a
matter of course. I had never actually met her, but from all accounts
she was a great success.