Grammar

Grammar is like ties: there is no time at which it does not matter. Please identify the purists in the following excerpts.

1. Another and a longer explosion from below, and more bullets wasted themselves on air. A___ sighed.

"They make me tired," he said. "This is no time for a feu de joie. Action! That is the cry. Action! Get busy, you blighters!"

The Irish neighbours expressed the same sentiment in different and more forcible words. There was no doubt about it – as warriors, the Three Pointers had failed to give satisfaction.

A voice from the room called up to A___.

"Say!"

"You have our ear,"said A___.

"What's that?"

"I said you had our ear."

"Are youse stiffs comin' down off out of dat roof?"

"Would you mind repeating that remark?"

"Are youse guys goin' to quit off out of dat roof?"

"Your grammar is perfectly beastly," said A___ severely.

2. "The fact remains that in spite of being engaged to me and pretending this afternoon that you were tickled pink to be engaged to me, you are still so much in love with B___ that you can't keep away from him. You think I don't know all about your being engaged to him in New York, but I do. Oh, I'm not complaining," said C___, looking rather like Saint Sebastian on receipt of about the fifteenth arrow. "You have a perfect right to love who you like..."

"Whom, old man," I couldn't help saying. D___ has made me rather a purist in these matters.

3. "In fairness to the lad," he pointed out, sipping his hot Scotch and lemon, "we must remember that our bar-parlour contains no grand piano or priceless old walnut table, which to the younger generation are the normal and natural repositories for lighted cigarette-ends. Failing these, he, of course, selected the wastepaper basket. Like E___."

"Like who?" asked F___.

"Whom," corrected G___.

F___ apologized.

"A nephew of mine. [...] A comely lovable sensitive youth with large, fawn-like eyes, delicately chiselled features and excellent teeth. I mention these teeth, because [...] if he had had no teeth he would not have gone to the dentist's that day, and if he had not gone to the dentist's he would not have met H___."

"H___ whom?"

"Who," corrected G___.

"Oh, shoot," said F___.

4. "Do you get that?"

"I suppose so."

"What do you mean, you suppose so?"

"Well," said I___ candidly, "it sounds to me a good deal like apple sauce. Seems like there ain't no sense in it."

The tutor clutched his thinning hair and groaned hollowly. That extra fifty dollars a month had raised his salary to a very respectable figure, but it frequently occurred to him that he was receiving but trivial payment for what he had to endure.

" 'Seems like there ain't no sense in it!' " he echoed despairingly. "Can't you see that's not grammar?"

"I don't know about its being grammar," retorted I___ with spirit. "It gets across, don't it?"

5. "May I say something?"

"Do," said J___ cordially.

"Do," said K___, even more cordially.

"It's just this," said L___, ignoring him and adressing her uncle. "I wouldn't marry K___, if he was the last man on earth."

It was a line on which many a heroine of many a play had taken her exit, laughing hysterically. L___ did not laugh hysterically, but she left the room, and closed the door behind her with a bang.

It was J___ who broke the silence which followed her departure. He had been sitting for some moments with wrinkled brow, in his eyes that thoughtful look which was always a sign that his brain had found something to engage it.

" 'Were,' surely?" he said.

K___ shook off that numbed feeling, so apt to come to young men on hearing loved lips utter words like those to which he had just been listening. That odd, dreamlike sensation of having been hit on the base of the skull with a yard of lead piping slowly left him.

" 'Were' ?"

"Not 'was'. 'I wouldn't marry K___ if he were the last man on earth.' Dash it," said J___, driving home his point, "the thing's a conditional clause."

Round 262 - 15 February 2006

Newts

This round is about the aquatic members of the family Salamandridae which constitute the genus Molge.

1. He called to her, and she came over to where he sat. It was dim in the hall, but it struck him that she was not looking quite herself. The elasticity seemed to have gone out of her walk, that jaunty suppleness which he had always admired so in A___. But possibly this was merely his imagination. He was always inclined to read a fictitious sombreness into things when the shadows began to creep over the world and it was still too early for a cocktail.

[...]

B___ gave her a sharp glance through his monocle. It was as he had suspected. This girl was not festive.

"Anything the matter?"

"Oh, no."

"Sure?"

"Quite."

"Cigarette?"

"No, thanks."

"Shall I turn on the radio? There may be a lecture on Newts."

"No, don't."

2. "Have you ever been in Trafalgar Square at five in the morning? Very picturesque, that fountain in the first early light of the dawn. It was as we stood on its brink with the sun just beginning to gild the housetops that I got an idea which I can now see, though it seemed a good one at the time, was a mistake."

"What was that?"

"It struck me as a possibility that there might be newts in the fountain, and knowing how keen C___ is on newts I advised him to wade in and hunt around."

"With all his clothes on?"

"Yes, he had his clothes on. I remember noticing."

3. "We are now in the southern pleasaunce or the west homepark or something. Note the refined way the deer are cropping the grass. All the ground on which we are now standing is of historic interest. Oliver Cromwell went through here in 1550. The record has sinced been lowered."

"I haven't time ..."

"Leaving the pleasaunce on our left, we proceed to the northern messuage. The dandelions were imported from Egypt by D___."

"Well, anyhow," said E___ mutinously, "I won't come on the lake."

"You will enjoy the lake," said F___. "The newts are of the famous G___ strain. They were introduced, together with the water-beetles, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth."

4. The butler disappeared through his green baize door, and H___, to fill in the time of waiting, examined the cupboard. It appeared to be a very ordinary sort of cupboard, the kind that a resolute man can open with one well-directed blow. H___ felt complacent. Though primarily a thinker, it pleased him to feel that he could be the man of action when the occasion called.

There was a noise of bumping without. I___ reappeared, packing-case in one hand, hatchet in the other, looking like Noah taking ship's stores aboard the Ark.

"Here they are, sir."

"Thanks."

"I used to keep roberts when I was a lad, sir," said the butler. "Oh, dear, yes. Many's the robert I've made a pet of in my time. Roberts and white mice, those were what I was fondest of. And newts in a little aquarium."

5. The last of the mad J___s, meanwhile, having peeled off the dress-clothes moistened during the recent water-carnival, had draped his bony form in a suit of orange-coloured pyjamas, and was now devoting the full force of a legislator's mind to the situation which had arisen.

He was a long, thin young man with a curved nose which even in his lighter moments gave him the appearance of disapproving things in general; and there had been nothing in the events of the last hour to cause any diminution of this look of disapproval. [...] He had been interrupted at the crucial point of proposal of marriage. He had been plunged into water and prodded with a punt-hole. He had sown the seeds of a cold in the head. And he rather fancied that he had swallowed a newt.

Round 263 - 23 February 2006

Visitors' Day

1. "Visitors' Day, miss."

"Today?"

"No, miss, tomorrow. Premises thrown open to the public every Thursday. A___ shows them round."

"Do a lot of them come?"

"This hot weather seems to bring them out like flies. Three charabangs and a girls' school last week."

"I didn't get here till the Friday, so I missed them."

"You were lucky," said the footman, his eyes black. He seemed to be brooding on past horrors. "Draw that rope tight, B___.," he added as another footman entered bearing a sign that read:

KINDLY DO NOT FINGER OBJECTS OF ART

"Last Thursday a couple of hussies climbed over it and sat on that fender as bold as brass."

A sudden disquieting thought struck C___ like a blow. Only now did that phrase "Premises thrown open to the public" come home to her.

"Can anyone come on Visitors' Day?"

"Anyone that's got half-a-crown, miss," said the footman, giving the rope another pull.

2. "What are you doing here?"

"I am in residence."

"What?"

"This charming place of yours is now my home. I am one of your father's guests. If D___, like so many English country houses, is open to the public on Thursdays, the butler, as he shows the customers around, will be in a position, dating from today, to say 'We are now approaching the banqueting hall. At the table you will observe, banqueting like billy-o, the great playwright, E___.' This added attraction, once the news gets about, should lead to many an extra shilling at the turnstiles."

3. "I'm going to tell you something very strange," she said. "It struck me so strongly when I came in at the front door I had to sit down for a moment. Your butler thought I was ill."

"You aren't, I hope?"

"No, not at all. It was simply that I was... overcome. I realized that I had been here before."

F___ looked politely puzzled. It was left to G___ to supply the explanation.

"Oh, as a sightseer?" he said. "One of the crowd that used to come on Fridays during the summer months to be shown over the place at a bob a head. I remember them well in the days when you and I were walking out, F___. The Gogglers, we used to call them. They came in charabancs and dropped nut chocolate on the carpets. Not that dropping nut chocolate on them would make these carpets any worse. That's all been discontinued now, hasn't it, H___? Nothing left to goggle at, I suppose."

4. "Is it not a fact that on Saturday afternoons throughout the Spring and Summer months this historic joint is thrown open to the general public on payment of an entrance fee of a bob a nob?"

"Why, of course!"

"Don't say 'Of course' in that light way. You wouldn't have thought of it in a million years."

"I___ can come with the crowd –"

"Complete with camera."

"He can get all the photographs he wants."

"Without incurring the least suspicion."

"But how about J___? He shows them round."

"Disregard J___. He can't do a thing. We have the Indian sign on him. J___ is as the dust beneath our chariot wheels. [...] And now ought we not to be making our way to the drawing-room? I should imagine that your sister K___ is a woman who throws her weight about a good deal, if people are late for dinner."

Round 264 - 3 March 2006

Things You Can Do With Books

1. Of all the little group in the amber drawing-room, only one member has now been left unaccounted for.

An animal of slow thought-processes, the dog A___ had not at first observed what was happening to the sack. At the moment of its transference from the custody of B___ to that of C___, he had been engaged in sniffing at the leg of a chair. It was only as the door began to close that he became aware of the bereavement that threatened him. He bounded forward with a passionate cry, but it was too late. He found himself faced by unyielding wood. And when he started to scratch vehemently on this wood, a sharp pain assailed him. A book on the treatment of pigs in sickness and in health, superbly aimed, had struck him in the small of the back. Then, for a space, he, like B___, his social sponsor, sat down and mourned.

2. "He kissed you?"

"Yes. You had an article in the Home Companion last week, uncle, saying what a holy and beautiful thing the first kiss is. Well, D___'s wasn't. He hadn't shaved and he was wearing a dressing gown. Also, he was pallid and greenish, and looked as if he had been out all night. Anything less beautiful and holy I never saw."

"He kissed you! What did you do?"

"I hit him very hard with a book which I was taking to read to E___. It was the Rev. F___'s Is there a hell? and I'll bet D___ thought there was. Until then I had always rather disliked E___'s taste in literature, which shows how foolish I was. If she had preferred magazines, where would I have been? There were about six hundred pages of F___, bound in stiff cloth, and he blacked D___'s eye like a scholar and a gentleman."

3. "I don't know what's the matter with the son of Belial. Here he is, with nine of G___'s lunches and eight of G___'s dinners tucked away among the gastric juices, and he refuses to get down to brass tacks. He hums –"

"What on earth does he do that for?"

"– and haws. He evades the issue. I strain every nerve to make him talk turkey, but I can't pin him down. He doesn't say Yes and he doesn't say No."

"There's a song called that ... or, rather, 'She didn't say Yes and she didn't say No'. I sing it a good deal in my bath. It goes like this."

I started to render the refrain in a pleasant light baritone, but desisted on receiving Agatha Christie abaft the frontal bone. The old relative seemed to have fired from the hip like somebody in a Western B. picture.

4. "Most people when they get fired don't ask for a personal interview with the boss of the studio and in the course of conversation throw a richly bound copy of the Saturday Evening Post at his head. What made you do that?"

"It seemed a good idea at the time. He had incurred my displeasure. Did H___ tell you about it?"

"Yes."

"H___ talks too much."

"So you got yourself blacklisted. Not very balanced behaviour, do you think?"

I___ patted her hand indulgently.

"Women don't understand these things," he said. "There comes a time in the life of every man placed in juxtaposition with J___ when he is compelled to throw copies of the Saturday Evening Post at his head. It's why they publish the Saturday Evening Post."

5. "K___," I said, "one moment. How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy."

"Well, look what I've done myself! I'm somewhere down at the bottom of that dashed ravine, and it'll take me a dozen strokes to get out. Do you call that just and holy? Here, give me that book for a moment!"

He snatched the little volume out of my hands. For an instant he looked at it with a curious expression of loathing, then he placed it gently on the ground and jumped on it a few times. Then he hit it with his driver. Finally, as if feeling that the time for half-measures had passed, he took a little run and kicked it strongly into the long grass.

Round 265 - 13 March 2006

Fourth Annual Valentine's Day Quiz

Admittedly, this quiz is a little late for Valentine's Day, but to make up for this, the theme is the great time-saver: love at first sight. Identify the lovers-at-first-sight in the passages below.

1. "Miss A__. ... My nephew – such as he is – B__."

"How do you do?"

"How do you do?" said B__. He spoke a little huskily, for he had once more fallen in love at first sight. The heart of B__ had always been an open door with "Welcome" clearly inscribed on the mat, and you never knew what would walk in next. At brief intervals during the past few years he had fallen in love at first sight with a mixed gaggle or assortment of females to the number of about twenty, but as he gazed at this girl like an ostrich goggling at a brass door-knob it seemed to him that here was the best yet.

2. It was in a traffic jam at the top of Whitehall that he first observed this girl. His cab had become becalmed in a sea of omnibuses, and, chancing to look to the right, he perceived within a few feet of him another taxi, which had been heading for Trafalgar Square. There was a face at its window. It turned towards him, and their eyes met. To most men it would have seemed an unattractive face. To C__, surfeited with the coy, the beaming, and the delicately-chiselled, it was the most wonderful thing he had ever looked at. All his life, he felt, he had been searching for something on these lines. That snub-nose – those freckles – that breadth of cheekbone – the squareness of that chin. And not a dimple in sight.

3. "Well, D__ darling, did you have a nice game? You didn't get your feet wet, I hope? This is E__, dear."

D__ shook hands with E__. And at her touch the strange dizzy feeling which had come over him at the sight of her suddenly became increased a thousand-fold. As I see that you are consulting your watch once more, I will not describe his emotions as exhaustively as I might. I will merely say that he had never felt anything resembling this sensation of dazed ecstasy since the occasion when a twenty-foot putt of his, which had been going well off the line, as his putts generally did, had hit a worm-cast sou'-sou'-east of the hole and popped in, giving him a snappy six. D__, as you will have divined, was in love at first sight. Which makes it all the sadder to think E__ at the moment was regarding him as an outcast and a blister.

4. "I was saying to F__, whom I drove down here in my car, how extraordinary it was that any girl should have fallen in love with you at first sight. I wouldn't have thought it could be done."

"It came as quite a surprise to me, too. You could have knocked me down with a feather."

"I don't wonder. Still, all sorts of unlikely people do seem to excite the spark of passion. Look at my Aunt G__."

5. H__'s asperity became more marked. Their evening together had filled him with a deep affection for J__, but even from a great friend he could not countenance loose talk of this sort.

"I am sorry you think she looks like an all-in wrestler," he said stiffly. "To me she seems to resemble one of those Norse goddesses. However, be that as it may, I love her, J__. I fell in love with her at first sight."

Recalling the picture of K__ in smock and trousers with a good deal of mud on her face, J__ found this difficult to believe, but he was sympathetic.

Round 266 - 21 March 2006

When Animals Attack

In Rounds 260 and 264, Ian Michaud and Fr Rob Bovendeaard exposed the dangers of golf and books. This week's quiz continues the public service by providing a salutary warning concerning some of our more fearsome dumb chums. Even the fearless Captain Fosdyke quails before the perils posed by Pekes.

This quiz is dedicated to Mr and Mrs Steptoe of Texas, who, according to a Wodehouse article in Punch (2 May 1956), were bitten by, respectively, a skunk and an opossum.

1. "I was once bitten by a pig."

"Not really?"

"Yes, sir. And ever since then I've had a horror of the animals."

A__ hastened to point out that the present was a special case.

"You can't be bitten by B__."

"Oh, no? Who made that rule?"

"She's as gentle as a lamb."

"I was once bitten by a lamb."

Name the person bitten by both a pig and a lamb. For a bonus point, name another Wodehouse character who is bitten by a pig.

2. "... By the way, that man I was telling you about. He was as near as a toucher bitten by a shark once."

"Nothing to what happens in C__," said D__ patriotically. The occupant of the Firs at the corner of Buller Street and Myrtle Avenue – a Mr E__ – perhaps you have heard of him?"

"No."

"Mr E__. Connected with the firm of Birkett, Birkett, Birkett, Son, Podmarsh, Podmarsh & Birkett, the solicitors."

"What about him?"

"Last summer," said D__, "he was bitten by a guinea-pig."

3. "I thought I'd look in," said F__.

"Oh?"

"To ask after your ankle."

"Oh?"

"How is it?"

"Bad."

"Good. I mean, I'm sorry. What does the doctor say? Any signs of gangrene? That's what you want to watch out for, gangrene. Do you remember a fellow in the old days called G__? He was bitten in the leg by a Siamese cat, got gangrene and as near as a toucher passed beyond the veil. You will probably argue that you have not been bitten in the leg by a Siamese cat, and that's of course a good point, but even so you can't feel safe."

4. "I wish you wouldn't say 'Ha!' in that abrupt way. I've dropped another stitch. It was the voice of that American fellow who is staying at the hall. Carstairs is, I think, the name."

"H__."

"Indeed? J__ knows a man named H__. You've probably heard me speak of him. A most interesting life he has had, J__ says, with curious things constantly happening to him. He was once bitten by a rabbit."

"You don't say?"

"So J__ assures me. An angora. It turned on him and sank its teeth in his wrist while he was offering it a carrot."

Round 267 - 29 March 2006

All Wet

"You're wet."

"Yes."

"By Jove, you are wet. You'd better go and change."

"Yes."

"Into something dry."

– Ronald O Fish and Monty Bodkin, Heavy Weather

This week, we have several wet characters for you to identify.

1. At this point he dived. A__, alarmed by the splash, swam rapidly for the bank, but B__ was too quick for him. Grasping him firmly by the neck, he scrambled ashore and ran for the house, followed by the housekeeper.

The girl was seated on the porch. Over her there bent the tall soldierly figure of a man with keen eyes and greying hair. The housekeeper raced up.

"Oh, miss! A__! In the river! He saved him! He plunged in and saved him!

The girl drew a quick breath.

"Gallant, damme! By Jove! By gad! Yes, gallant, by George!" exclaimed the soldierly man ...

"Yes, you are brave – brave," the girl whispered.

"I am wet – wet," said B__, and went upstairs to change his clothes.

2. The skipper's daughter was standing beside him, looking down commiseratingly. Of the rest of the family all he could see was the broad blue seats of their trousers as they leaned hopefully over the side in the quest for wealth.

"Yes, sir! You sure are wet! Gee! I never seen anyone so wet! I seen wet guys but I never seen anyone so wet as you. Yessir, you're certainly wet!"

"I am wet," admitted C__.

"Yessir, you're wet! Wet's the word all right. Good and wet, that's what you are!"

"It's the water," said C__.

3. What had astonished him was not the other's presence there, for the proprietor of a country house has of course a perfect right to cross lawns on his own premises, but the fact that he was wet. Indeed, the word "wet" was barely adequate. He was soaked from head to foot and playing like a Versailles fountain.

A few pages later, the wet one explains his condition to another character.

"D__," said E__, also changing the subject, "is it true that you jumped into the lake this morning with all your clothes on?"

"Eh? What? Yes, certainly. I couldn't wait to take them off. Only it was a log."

"What was a log?"

"The boy."

"What boy?"

"The log."

4. "Mr F__," he said, for all the world as if he had been the father of the heroine of "Hilda's Hero", "we parted recently in anger. Let me thank you for your gallant conduct, and hope that bygones will be bygones."

I came out strong. I continued to hold his hand. The crowd raised a sympathetic cheer.

I said, "G__, the fault was mine. Show that you have forgiven me by coming up to the farm and putting on something dry."

"An excellent idea, me boy; I am a little wet."

"A little," I agreed.

We walked briskly up the hill to the farm.

H__ met us at the gate. He diagnosed the situation rapidly.

"You're all wet," he said.

5. The partiality of drowning men for straws is proverbial; but, as a class, they are broad-minded and will clutch at punt-poles with equal readiness. I__ seized the pole and pulled strongly; and J__, who happened to be leaning his whole weight on it at the moment, was not proof against what practically amounted to a formal invitation. A moment later he had joined I__ in the depths.

K__ rescued the punt-pole, which was floating away on the tide, and peered down through the darkness. Stirring things were happening below. J__ had grasped I__. I__ had grasped J__. And K__, watching from above, was irresistibly reminded of a picture she had seen in her childhood of alligators fighting in the River Hooghly.

Round 268 - 6 April 2006

What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing at Night

Wodehouse's men are fastidious dressers (with the occasional exceptions, such as Lord Emsworth and Boko Fittleworth) but vary in their tastes as to the color (or colour) of their pyjamas (or pajamas). Name the characters below in pyjamas.

1. There had been a moment that night when A__, disrobing for bed, had wavered absently between his brown and his lemon-coloured pyjamas, little recking of what hung upon the choice. Fate had directed his hand to the lemon-coloured, and he had put them on; with the result that he shone now in the dim night like the white plume of Navarre. B__ could follow his movements perfectly, and, when he was far enough away from his base to make the enterprise prudent, she slipped out and raced for home and safety. A__ at the moment was leaning on the terrace wall, thinking, thinking, thinking.

It was possibly the cool air, playing about his bare ankles, that at last chilled A__'s dashing mood and brought the disquieting thought that he was doing something distinctly dangerous in remaining out here in the open like this. A gang of thieves are ugly customers, likely to stick at little when a valuable necklace is at stake, and it came to A__ that in his light pyjamas he must be offering a tempting mark for any marauder lurking – say in those bushes.

2. The next moment I had dropped the candle and the room was plunged in darkness. But not before I had seen quite enough to be getting along with.

Reading from left to right, the contents of the bed consisted of C__ in my heliotrope pyjamas with the old gold stripe.

The attitude of fellows towards finding girls in their bedrooms shortly after midnight varies. Some like it. Some don't. I didn't ...

A match scratched and a candle by the bed flamed up and lent a bit of light to the scene. Once more I was able to observe those pyjamas, and I'm bound to admit they looked extraordinarily dressy. C__ was darkish in her general colour scheme, and heliotrope suited her.

3. For about three-and-a-quarter seconds or possibly more we just stood there, drinking each other in, so to speak, the old boy still attached with a limpet-like grip to my elbow. If I hadn't been in a dressing-gown and he in pink pyjamas with a blue stripe, and if he hadn't been glaring quite so much as if he were shortly going to commit a murder, the tableau would have looked rather like one of those advertisements you see in the magazines, where the experienced elder is patting the young man's arm ...

4. His mood, as he undressed and put on a suit of yellow pyjamas with purple stripes, was ruffled and rebellious. A proud man, he resented having to behave like a hunted stag in order to keep on good terms with a mere Hollywood magnate, and the slow passing of time after he was between the sheets did nothing to improve his outlook.

(Two pages later, this man is out of bed and active:)

And so it came about that D__, roused from slumber by a hand that gripped his arm and shook it, opened his eyes drowsily. Seeing a stout man in yellow and purple pyjamas, accompanied by a dim something that looked like a vulture, and naturally supposing that this was merely a continuation of the nightmare he had been having, he closed them again and turned over on his side.

5. "Carry on, E__. You have our ear. What is biting you?"

"It is your pyjamas, m'lord. Had I been aware that your lordship was in the habit of sleeping in mauve pyjamas, I would have advised against it. Mauve does not become your lordship. I was once compelled, in his best interests, to speak in a similar vein to F__, who at that time was also a mauve-pyjama addict."

G__ found himself at a loss.

"How have we got on to the subject of pyjamas?" he asked, wonderingly.

"They thrust themselves on the notice, m'lord. That very aggressive purple. If your lordship would be guided by me and substitute a quiet blue or possibly a light pistachio green –"

"E__!"

"M'lord?"

"This is no time to be prattling of pyjamas."

"Very good, m'lord."

"As a matter of fact, I rather fancy myself in mauve."

Extra Credit: The window opened, and X__ appeared. He was wearing orange-coloured pyjamas and a revolver, and on his face was a look of wonder and bafflement.

Sighting Y__ below, he sought information in a voice of thunder.

"Where's my burglar?"

Round 269 - 16 April 2006

Sculpture, particularly emphasizing defacement of

Statues and busts appear frequently in the canon. Typically unattractive, they often inspire lively characters to edit their appearance in various ways. Identify the characters (and one pub) below involved in statuary confrontations.

1. Everything about this club of __A__’s depressed __B_, and not least the ordeal to which visitors were subjected immediately on entering. They found themselves in a vast hall liberally provided with repellant-looking statues and presided over by a porter who might have been the model for any one of them. To him they gave their names and the name of their host, and the porter, plainly not believing their story for a moment but deciding that it would be amusing to lure them on before exposing their pretensions, dispatched a page in quest of the member they asked for, confident that he would return with the information that the gentleman had never heard of them in his life. And that, he seemed to be saying, would teach them not to come here trying to borrow money.

2. The terrace terminated in a low stone wall, along the top of which were dotted busts of the Caesars and other ancient worthies, placed there in the spacious days of Sir__C__ when people liked that sort of thing. The one nearest __D__ was that of the censor Cato, an unpleasant-looking man who suffered from having a long nose and no eyeballs, but had the saving virtue of possessing a very large bare upper lip, the sort of upper lip which calls imperiously to every young man of spirit to draw a mustache on it with a pencil.

__D__, fortunately, had a pencil on his person, and was soon absorbed in his work. So absorbed, indeed, that it was only a moment or two after it had been uttered that he heard the curious, sharp exclamation in his rear.

He turned. __E__ was standing there.

3. “What was it?” he quavered, rightly speaking of the object in the past tense.

“It’s a sort of sawn-off statue like …”

(…)

__F__’s brow grew damper. A stylist would now have described it as beaded. And simultaneously he found himself chilled to the bone. He was a human replica of one of those peculiar puddings which lure the diner on into supposing that he is biting into a hot soufflé and then suddenly turn right around and become ice cream in the middle.

Matters were even worse, he perceived, than he had feared. This was not one of those minor breakages which get passed off with a light apology on the one side and a jolly laugh on the other.

4. “You don’t like sculptors?”

“Scum of the earth.”

“Yet sculptors are also God’s creatures.”

“In a sense, yerss. But they’ve no right to leave things like that lying about the place.”

[Later the sculptor-foe is moved to direct action]

It is always difficult to pin down to an exact point in time the birth of an inspiration, for one never knows how long it may not have been lurking unnoticed in the subconscious. Quite possibly the idea of climbing the fence into __G__’s garden, armed with a pot of black paint, and painting on the chin of his colossal nude a small imperial beard of the type worn by ambassadors had been burgeoning within __H__ for weeks. But it was only as he walked back from the ___I___ after his frugal dinner that the thought stole into the upper reaches of his mind that a small imperial beard was just what the colossal nude needed and that he would never have a better opportunity of applying it than now.

5. The door opened and __J__ , the Hall butler, came in. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, with the apologetic air of one bringing bad news. “Some ladies have arrived.”

__K__ came out of his trance and stared at him blankly. “Ladies?”

“Six in number, sir. I gather they wish to borrow Sir___L__’s portrait.”

“For the statue they’re putting up in the market square, ___K__,” said __M__ helpfully. ”The sculptor has to copy it...”

Bonus point: The four items in the following list have one thing in common. What?

1. Statue of the President of the Brinkmeyer-Magnifico Motion Picture Corporation
2. London visited by Lord Shortlands
3. Lord Emsworth’s egg cabinet
4. The bull terrier Sammy

Round 269 - 24 April 2006

V-shaped depressions, nor'east half-gales and other heavy weather

Of course it is always summer at Blandings Castle, but various clemencies and inclemencies prevail elsewhere and often are used as similes for characters' emotions. Please identify the weathered characters below.

1. "She said, 'Gosh, _A__, you look like a rainy Sunday in Pittsburgh!' And I said, 'I feel like a rainy Sunday in Pittsburgh.' And she said, 'Have you been eating something that disagreed with you?' And I said, 'And how!' And she said, 'Poor old slob, your stomach always was weak, wasn't it? A king among men, but a push-over for the gastric juices, even in the old days.'"

"These were the first words you had exchanged in fifteen years?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I had often wondered what lovers said to one another when they met again after long parting. Now I know."

2. My first emotion on beholding him was one of surprise, a feeling that of all the in and out performers I had ever met he was the most unpredictable. I mean, you couldn't tell from one minute to another what aspect he was going to present to the world, for he switched from Stormy to Set Fair and from Set Fair to Stormy like a barometer with something wrong with its works. At dinner on the previous night he had been all gaiety and effervescence, and here he was now, only a few hours later, once more giving that impersonation of a dead codfish which had caused __B__ to take so strong a line with him. Fixing me with lack-luster eyes, if lack-luster is the word I want, and wasting no time on preliminary pip-pipping and pourparlers, he started straight off cleansing his bosom of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.

3. His mood, as the train sped through the quiet countryside, was one of perfect tranquillity and happiness. It seemed to him that his troubles were now definitely ended. He looked down the vista of the years and saw nothing but joy and sunshine. If somebody had told _C__ at that moment that even now a V-shaped depression was coming along which would shortly blacken the skies and lower the general temperature to freezing-point, he would not have believed him.

Nor when, two days later, as he sat in his club, he was informed that a Mr ___D___ was waiting to see him in the small smoking-room, did he have an inkling that here was the V-shaped depression in person.

4. He had been sitting there for perhaps ten minutes when a burst of sunshine filled the lobby, harpsichords and sackbuts began to play soft music, and he saw__E__coming through the swing door.

"Am I late?" she said.

"Not a bit," said _F_. "Beautiful day."

"Except for the rain."

"Is it raining?"

"Rather hard."

"Probably all for the best. I hear the farmers need it."

"Are you fond of farmers?"

"I love them."

5. "So I took him out for a couple of rounds after lunch. We've just got back. We found the little woman waiting for us. She seemed rather stirred. Directing my attention to the fact that the child was bright blue and that icicles had formed on him, she said that if he expired his blood would be on my head. She then took him off to thaw him out with hot-water bottles. Life can be very difficult."

"Very."

"I suppose there was a sort of nip in the air, though I hadn't noticed it myself, but I had meant so well."

[Who is speaking here? A hint is available by email from the QM for Question 5, at the cost of one-half point.]

Bonus point: Except for snow forming on the upper slopes of butlers and characters (most of them) pure as the driven s., there is very little snow and ice in the PGW world. One person does depart the scene, fed up with shovelling snow. Who does this from what house?