P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

He was fumbling in his pocket.

“May I read you a letter?” he said.

“A letter?”

“Quite a short one. It is from Epstein, the picture-dealer. This is what he says. ‘Sir,’ meaning me, not ‘Dear Bill,’ mind you-just ‘Sir.’ ‘I am glad to be able to inform you that I have this morning received an offer of ten guineas for your picture, “Child and Cat.” Kindly let me know if I am to dispose of it at this price.’ ”

“Well?” said Annette, in a small voice.

“I have just been to Epstein’s. It seems that the purchaser is a Miss Brown. She gave an address in Bayswater. I called at the address. No Miss Brown lives there, but one of your pupils does. I asked her if she was expecting a parcel from Miss Brown, and she said that she had had your letter and quite understood and would take it in when it arrived.”

Annette was hiding her face in her hands.

“Go away!” she said, faintly.

Mr. Bates moved a step nearer.

“Do you remember that story of the people on the island who eked out a precarious livelihood by taking in one another’s washing?” he asked, casually.

“Go away!” cried Annette.

“I’ve always thought,” he said, “that it must have drawn them very close together-made them feel rather attached to each other. Don’t you?”

“Go away!”

“I don’t want to go away. I want to stay and hear you say you’ll marry me.”

“Please go away! I want to think.”

She heard him moving towards the door. He stopped, then went on again. The door closed quietly. Presently from the room above came the sound of footsteps-footsteps pacing monotonously to and fro like those of an animal in a cage.

Annette sat listening. There was no break in the footsteps.

Suddenly she got up. In one corner of the room was a long pole used for raising and lowering the window- sash. She took it, and for a moment stood irresolute. Then with a quick movement, she lifted it and stabbed three times at the ceiling.

Something to Worry About

A girl stood on the shingle that fringes Millbourne Bay, gazing at the red roofs of the little village across the water. She was a pretty girl, small and trim. Just now some secret sorrow seemed to be troubling her, for on her forehead were wrinkles and in her eyes a look of wistfulness. She had, in fact, all the distinguishing marks of one who is thinking of her sailor lover.

But she was not. She had no sailor lover. What was she thinking of was that at about this time they would be lighting up the shop-windows in London, and that of all the deadly, depressing spots she had ever visited this village of Millbourne was the deadliest.

The evening shadows deepened. The incoming tide glistened oilily as it rolled over the mud flats. She rose and shivered.

“Goo! What a hole!” she said, eyeing the unconscious village morosely. “What a hole!”

This was Sally Preston’s first evening in Millbourne. She had arrived by the afternoon train from London-not of her own free will. Left to herself, she would not have come within sixty miles of the place. London supplied all that she demanded from life. She had been born in London; she had lived there ever since-she hoped to die there. She liked fogs, motor-buses, noise, policemen, paper-boys, shops, taxi-cabs, artificial light, stone pavements, houses in long, grey rows, mud, banana-skins, and moving-picture exhibitions. Especially moving-picture exhibitions. It was, indeed, her taste for these that had caused her banishment to Millbourne.

The great public is not yet unanimous on the subject of moving-picture exhibitions. Sally, as I have said, approved of them. Her father, on the other hand, did not. An austere ex-butler, who let lodgings in Ebury Street and preached on Sundays in Hyde Park, he looked askance at the “movies.” It was his boast that he had never been inside a theatre in his life, and he classed cinema palaces with theatres as wiles of the devil. Sally, suddenly unmasked as an habitual frequenter of these abandoned places, sprang with one bound into prominence as the Bad Girl of the Family. Instant removal from the range of temptation being the only possible plan, it seemed to Mr. Preston that a trip to the country was indicated.