The Little Warrior by P. G. Wodehouse

“Good-bye,” said Nelly.

“Good-bye-ee!” said Freddie mechanically. “That’s to say, I mean to say, half a second!” he added quickly. Ha faced her nervously, with one hand on the grimy railings. This wanted looking into. When it came to girls trickling to and fro in the public streets, weeping, well, it was pretty rotten and something had to be done about it. “What’s up?” he demanded.

“It’s nothing. Good-bye.”

“But, my dear old soul,” said Freddie, clutching the railing for moral support, “it is something. It must be! You might not think it, to look at me, but I’m really rather a dashed shrewd chap, and I can see there’s something up. Why not give me the jolly old scenario and see if we can’t do something?”

Nelly moved as if to turn to the door, then stopped. She was thoroughly ashamed of herself.

“I’m a fool!”

“No, no!”

“Yes, I am. I don’t often act this way, but, oh, gee! hearing you all talking like that about going to America, just as if it was the easiest thing in the world, only you couldn’t be bothered to do it, kind of got me going. And to think I could be there right now if I wasn’t a bonehead!”

“A bonehead?”

“A simp. I’m all right as far up as the string of near-pearls, but above that I’m reinforced concrete.”

Freddie groped for her meaning.

“Do you mean you’ve made a bloomer of some kind?”

“I pulled the worst kind of bone. I stopped on in London when the rest of the company went back home, and now I’ve got to stick.”

“Rush of jolly old professional engagement, what?”

Nelly laughed bitterly.

“You’re a bad guesser. No, they haven’t started to fight over me yet. I’m at liberty, as they say in the Era.”

“But, my dear old thing,” said Freddie earnestly, “if you’ve got nothing to keep you in England, why not pop back to America? I mean to say, home-sickness is the most dashed blighted thing in the world. There’s nothing gives one the pip to such an extent. Why, dash it, I remember staying with an old aunt of mine up in Scotland the year before last and not being able to get away for three weeks or so, and I raved—absolutely gibbered—for a sight of the merry old metrop. Sometimes I’d wake up in the night, thinking I was back at the Albany, and, by Jove, when I found I wasn’t I howled like a dog! You take my tip, old soul, and pop back on the next boat.”

“Which line?”

“How do you mean, which line? Oh, I see, you mean which line? Well — well — I’ve never been on any of them, so it’s rather hard to say. But I hear the Cunard well spoken of, and then again some chappies swear by the White Star. But I should imagine you can’t go far wrong, whichever you pick. They’re all pretty ripe, I fancy.”

“Which of them is giving free trips? That’s the point.”

“Eh? Oh!” Her meaning dawned upon Freddie. He regarded her with deep consternation. Life had treated him so kindly that he had almost forgotten that there existed a class which had not as much money as himself. Sympathy welled up beneath his perfectly fitting waistcoat. It was a purely disinterested sympathy. The fact that Nelly was a girl and in many respects a dashed pretty girl did not affect him. What mattered was that she was hard up. The thought hurt Freddie like a blow. He hated the idea of anyone being hard up.

“I say!” he said. “Are you broke?”

Nelly laughed.

“Am I! If dollars were doughnuts, I wouldn’t even have the hole in the middle.”

Freddie was stirred to his depths. Except for the beggars in the streets, to whom he gave shillings, he had not met anyone for years who had not plenty of money. He had friends at his clubs who frequently claimed to be unable to lay their hands on a bally penny, but the bally penny they wanted to lay their hands on generally turned out to be a couple of thousand pounds for a new car.

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