Ireland wants you.' The letter, especially the last part of it, was sufficiently ridiculous to have moved Hyacinth to a smile.

But it did no such thing.

On the contrary, its rhetoric excited and touched him.

The flattery of the final sentences elated him.

The absurdity of the idea that Ireland needed him, a fifth-rate office clerk, an out-of-work commercial traveller who had failed to sell blankets and flannels, did not strike him at all.