Engaged (Twice)

What – besides matrimony, of course – is worse than being engaged? Bertie Wooster would be baffled if you put the question to him. The correct answer is: being engaged to two persons at the same time! Identify the poor perishers in the following excerpts.

1. "Great Scot!" A___ was staring, amazed. "Why, that's exactly what happened to me."

"Were you killed by a hansom cab?"

"No, but I was engaged to a girl, and she broke it off because I poached her shots."

"Ah, I see. I misunderstood you. When did this happen?"

"About two months ago."

"But you've only been engaged to B___ two or three days."

"I'm not talking about B___, I'm talking about C___."

"You mean you were engaged to C___?"

"I still am."

"But you're engaged to B___."

"I know. That's the trouble. I'm engaged to both of them."

D___ removed his monocle and polished it. He found his companion's story, though full of human interest, a little difficult to follow.

2. "E___! You've been smoking!"

"Not me," said E___. "My betrothed."

"What! You aren't engaged?"

"I am."

"You've kept that very dark. Since when?"

"It only happened tonight."

"Who is he?"

"His name's F___."

The announcement caused a brief pause in the conversation. It is always disconcerting for a girl who is engaged to a man to be told by a friend that she, the friend, is also engaged to him.

3. "You? Engaged to two girls? Half a second, let me work this out."

There was a pause, during which G___ seemed to be doing sums in his head.

"No," he said at length. "I don't get it. I am aware that you are betrothed to my little friend H___, but however often I tot up the score, that only makes one. You're sure you haven't slipped up somewhere in your figures?"

J___'s eye rolled in a fine frenzy, glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, though one would more readily have expected that sort of thing from his poetic brother.

"Look here," he said. "Could we sit down somewhere? This is going to take some time."

4. "I have no wish to send you to prison."

"Spoken like a man."

"I ought to, of course."

"Yes, but it's a lot better fun doing things that you oughtn't, isn't it?"

"Well, the point is, I have a friend who is in a difficulty, and it occurs to me that you can get him out."

"Always glad to oblige."

"My friend is going to be married to-day, and he has just heard that a previous fiancée of his, whom in the excitement inseparable from falling in love with the girl who is to be his bride he had unfortunately overlooked, is on her way here."

"To make trouble?"

"Precisely."

Round 322 - 23 July 2007

Goldfish

Several quizzes have been dedicated in the past to Plum's Dumb Chums. But goldfish have, to my knowledge, never received the attention they deserve. This week's round is therefore a tribute to these dumbest of all chums.

1. I could picture the woman so exactly. Stout, red-faced, spectacled, a little irritable, perhaps, if interrupted when baking a cake or thinking out a sauce, but soft as butter at heart. No doubt something in A___'s wan aspect had touched her, ("That boy needs feeding up, poor little fellow"), or possibly she was fond of goldfish and had been drawn to him because he reminded her of them.

2. They had apparently been breakfasting out in the patio, for there was a white-clothed table in the middle by the goldfish pond. It bore the remains of a meal, and it was with a rush of emotion that I perceived that on a dish in the centre there was lying a derelict sausage. Sated with pleasure, these gorgers hadn't been able quite to make the grade. They had left of their abundance this admirable sausage.

The goldfish were looking up expectantly, obviously hoping for their cut, but my need was greater than theirs. I ate the unclaimed.

3. "Oh, B___," said C___, "I wanted to see you. We have run out of ants' eggs for the goldfish. Will you go to the village first thing tomorrow and buy some? I think you can get them at the grocer's."

"Of course, of course. Certainly, C___, delighted," said B___.

D___ said that she had often thought how curious it was that goldfish should ever have acquired a taste for ants' eggs, seeing that in their natural, wild state they could scarcely have moved in the same social sphere, so to speak, as ants. This led to C___, who had a fund of good stories about the animal kingdom, telling of an emu she had known which ate aspirin tablets, and in the interest of these exchanges all thoughts of the mystery man with the indiarubber legs passed from B___'s mind.

4. "Well, she stood there up-stage, don't you know, and every now and then she would skip down-stage, hand this chap a bowl of goldfish or something, beam at the audience, do a sort of dance step and skip back again. You know the kind of thing."

A dark frown had come to E___'s face.

"I do," he said grimly. "My only nephew has been ensnared by a bally, beaming goldfish-handler! Ha!"

5. At the house which a builder with romance in his soul had named F___ its rays made their way across the neat garden and passed through french windows into a cosy living-room, where they lit up, among other interesting objects, an aspidistra plant, a cuckoo clock, a caged canary, a bowl of gold fish, the photograph in a silver frame of a strikingly handsome girl, inscribed "Love, G___", and another photograph similarly framed – this one of an elderly gentleman with a long upper lip and beetling eyebrows, who signed himself "Cordially yours, H___."

Round 323 - 31 July 2007

False Teeth

Some weeks ago, Quizmistress Lynn gave us a toothsome quiz about teeth. This week's round is its natural (or should I say artificial?) complement ...

1. "It's great seeing you again, A___."

"Great seeing you, B___."

"Gave you a surprise, eh?"

"You could have knocked me down with a feather," said A___, quite untruly. The feather had not been grown by bird that could have disturbed her balance for an instant. "What are you doing on this side? Business?"

"And pleasure."

"You still travelling with those floor sweepers of yours?"

"Gee, no. I quit peddling them fifteen years ago."

"What are you doing now?"

"Well, you might say I'd retired. I thought I had. But you know how it is. You get with a bunch of the boys and they talk you into things. Say, you look just the same, A___."

"You're kind of fatter."

"I guess I have put on a pound or two."

"Those teeth are new, aren't they?"

"This year's," said B___ rather proudly.

2. "How's the book coming along?"

"Magnificently, my dear. Splendidly. I had no notion writing was so easy. The stuff just pours out. C___, I wanted to ask you about a date. What year was it there was that terrible row between young D___ and E___, when D___ stole the old chap's false teeth, and pawned them at a shop in the Edgware Road? '96? I should have said later than that – '97 or '98. Perhaps you're right, though. I'll pencil in '96 tentatively."

3. F___ was the first to break the silence which had fallen on the room.

"She must be mad! Why, the thing's a H___ [name of painter]. It's worth a fortune. What on earth could have made her do it?"

"Religion, cocky," said J___, never at a loss for the logical explanation. "Religious fervour. It takes the females that way sometimes. I had an aunt who pawned my father's false teeth in order to contribute to the mission for propagating the gospel among the unenlightened natives of West Africa."

4. "Has the doctor seen him?"

"Yes miss." A soft smile played over the butler's face. "It appears that the gentleman has sustained no injury. He merely lost his teeth."

K___ stared at this iron man, bewildered. His air was that of one announcing a purely minor disaster. And while you naturally expect the emotion of a butler who is speaking of someone else losing his teeth to differ in degree from that of a butler who has lost his own, this perplexed her.

"His teeth were knocked out?"

"They fell out, miss. False teeth. The gentleman gave minute instructions as to where they were to be found, and I have dispatched the knife-and-boot boy on his bicycle to recover them."

5. "It is a lasting regret to me that I merely fined him five pounds."

"Mistaken kindness," said L___.

"So I have always felt, L___. A sharper lesson might have done him all the good in the world."

"Never does to let these fellows off lightly," said M___. "I had a servant chap in Mozambique who used to help himself to my cigars, and I foolishly overlooked it because he assured me he had got religion and everything would be quite all right from now on. And it wasn't a week later that he skipped out, taking with him a box of Havanas and my false teeth, which he sold to one of the native chiefs in the neighbourhood. Cost me a case of trade gin and two strings of beads to get them back."

Round 324 - 8 August 2007

Ladies with Cigars

In her article "Wodehouse - A Male Thing?" (published in Wooster Sauce number 29), the regretted Helen Murphy argued that "Wodehouse is one of the most consistently feminist writers of the 20th century". Further evidence for this statement is provided by this week's quiz, simply entitled "Ladies with Cigars" - instead of "Cigar Smoking Ladies" - because it cannot be proven beyond a doubt that the lady in question 1 ever took a puff at the object in her hands ...

1. Rendered quite lissom with relief, A___ began positively to frisk up and down the terrace. And as he frisked he suddenly became aware of a young woman approaching him. It was B___, C___'s maid. In one hand she carried a book, in the other a half-smoked cigar.

This surprised A___. He was far from being an anti-tobacconist, nor had he any prejudice against the fashionable modern addiction of women to the weed. But he could not remember ever having seen a woman with a cigar.

B___ drew closer. Halting, she fixed him with a respectful eye and extended the cigar-stump between dainty fingers.

"Would you be requiring this any further, sir?"

"Eh?"

"You left it in moddom's room, and I thought perhaps you would be needing it."

2. "There's nothing wrong in your having supper with an old friend."

"N-no," said D___ doubtfully. "But ..."

"E___," said F___ reflectively. "Is that Sir E___, whose name one's always seeing in the papers?"

"E___ is in the papers a lot. He's an MP and all sorts of things."

"Good-looking fellow. Ah, here's the coffee."

"I don't want any, thanks."

"Nonsense. Why spoil your meal because of this? Do you smoke?"

"No, thanks."

"Given it up, eh? Daresay you're wise. Stunts the growth and increases the expenses."

"Given it up?"

"Don't you remember sharing one of your father's cigars with me behind the haystack in the meadow? We cut it in half. I finished my half, but I fancy about three puffs were enough for you."

3. "G___?"

"Oh, hullo, light of my life. When did you get back?"

"Just now."

"How did everything go?"

"Quite satisfactorily."

"Did H___ make a speech?"

"Yes, H___ spoke."

"Lots of the old college chums there, I suppose."

"Quite a number."

"Must have been nice for you meeting them. No doubt you got together and swopped reminiscences of midnight feeds in the dormitory and what the Games Mistress said when she found J___ and K___ smoking cigars behind the gymnasium."

4. "I'll tell you what I think her best plan would be. She ought to ask her solicitor."

"Why, of course. A solicitor would probably know dozens of private detectives."

"I think so. Solicitors always have oodles of shady work to be done – documents stolen from rival firms, heirs kidnapped, wills pinched and destroyed and so on. Trot along and put it up to her. And now, if you'll excuse me," said L___, "I must be buzzing off on my official duties, or heaven knows what the denizens of M___ will be getting up to in my absence. Awfully nice to have seen you."

N___ returned to O___, who had finished her breakfast and was enjoying one of her mild cigars.

5. Arriving at the Blue Room, he banged heartily on the door and breezed in. He found P___ propped up with pillows. She was smoking a cigar and reading a book. [...]

P___ had lowered her cigar. She now raised her eyebrows.

"What are you doing in my room, Q___?"

"It's a little hard," said Q___, trembling with self-pity. "I go to enormous expense to buy detective stories, and no sooner is my back turned than people rush about the place sneaking them."

Round 325 - 16 August 2007

Acts of Kindness

“What is it the poet says, Jeeves?“

“‘These little acts of unremembered kindness’, sir?”

“That’s it in a nutshell, Jeeves.”

Except that this week’s quiz examines altruistic good deeds that were remembered, and with immense gratitude by the recipients.

1. His tone lost its lightness momentarily. “My father died, you know, and that sort of broke things up. He didn’t leave any too much money, either. Apparently we had been living on rather too expensive a scale during the time I knew you. At any rate, I was more or less up against it until your father got me a job in an office in New York.”

“My father!”

“Yes. It was wonderfully good of him to bother about me. I didn’t suppose he would have known me by sight, and, even if he had remembered me, I shouldn’t have imagined that the memory would have been a pleasant one. But he couldn’t have taken more trouble if I had been a blood-relation.”

“That was just like father,” said __(A)__ softly.

“He was a prince.”

2. “She died two years ago, leaving me everything she possessed. This consisted of about three tons of shares in bogus companies. I was right up against it.”

“From riches to rags, what?”

(…)

“My aunt’s lawyer, a man named __(B)__, happened by a miracle to be one of those fellows who pop up every now and then just to show that there is a future for the human race, after all. He had an eye like a haddock and a face like teak, and whenever he came to dinner at our place he always snubbed me like a fine old gentleman of the old school if I dared to utter a word; but, my gosh, beneath that rough exterior –! He lent me two hundred pounds to keep me going – two hundred solid quid – and if ever I have a son he is going to be christened __(B,C) _.”

“Better not have a son,” advised __(D)__.

(Note: C is the family name of the grateful recipient of B’s loan and the father of the hypothetical son.)

3. “But I can’t take his money now.”

“Of course you can. Stick to it like glue. He has far too much money, anyway, and it’s very bad for him. Look on adhering to this five hundred as a kindly act in his best interests, designed to make him a better, deeper man. It may prove to be a turning point in his life. (…) The problem that presents itself now, it seems to me, is Where do you go from here? I take it that you will wish to return to London, but you don’t want another stuffy journey in the train. I’ll tell you what,” said __(E)__, inspired. “We’ll hire a car. I’ll pay for it, and you can reimburse me when that typewriting bureau of yours gets going. Don’t forget the bunch of white violets.”

“Oh, __(E)__!” said __(F)__ devoutly. “What a help you are!”

“Help is a thing I am always glad to be of,” said __(E)__ in his courteous way.

4. He was, moreover, looking forward to meeting __(G)__ again. He had described him (…) as a human snapping turtle, and a human snapping turtle, unless the years had mellowed him, turning him into a kindly old gentleman with a fondness for the society of his juniors, he no doubt still was. But __(H)__ knew him to be one of those snapping turtles which beneath rough exteriors conceal hearts of gold. He had learned from his late father that when the crash of 1929 had wiped out the __(H)__ fortune, it was __(G)__ who had come to the rescue, full of strange oaths but bearing a checkbook and fountain pen and offering to write a check for any amount his old friend might require to see him through the bad times. You might have to dig for the rich ore in __(G)__, but it was there.

(Note: Apologies for the ‘check’ and ‘checkbook’ but the only copy your Quizmaster owns of this particular book is a US edition.)

5. “We’ve got the will in the old oak chest,” went on __(I)__. “I won’t show it to you, partly because the governor has got the key and he would have a fit if he knew that I was giving you early information like this, and partly you wouldn’t understand it. (…) It takes the legal mind, like mine, to tackle wills. What it says, when you’ve peeled off a few of the long words which they put in to make it more interesting, is that old __(J)__ leaves you the money because you are the only man who ever did him a disinterested kindness – and what I want to get out of you is, what was the disinterested kindness? Because I’m going straight out to do it to every elderly, rich-looking man I can find till I pick a winner.”

Round 326 - 28 August 2007

The Odd Man Out

We offer something a little different in this week’s quiz. A few years ago you were provided with a quiz consisting of lists of names and were challenged to think of something everyone on each list had in common. (Quiz #94 “The Missing Link” if you want to refresh your memory by dipping into the Quiz archives.) So, being somewhat bereft of new quiz ideas, the time seemed right to bring back the old “Missing Link” quiz with a new twist. Each of the following lists will include one name that doesn’t belong and your challenge will be to identify the odd person out and explain why he or she doesn’t belong on the list.

For example, if you were faced with a list consisting of Bimbo Plank, Pimples Glossop, Mr Roddis, Inspector Jervis, Ephraim Gadsby, George Robinson, and JG Bulstrode, you would identify Ephraim Gadsby as the odd man out on the ground that his was the only name on the list not included in the galaxy of assumed identifies taken on by Lord Ickenham.

Got the idea? Right ho then, we’re off! With multiple names on each list, unless you’re feeling particularly energetic, there’s no need to go bustling about providing your sources this week, although they will be provided in due course when the answers are posted.

1. Jeremy Garnet, Bruce Carmyle, Ashe Marson of Something Fresh (but not the Ashe Marson of the American book Something New), Lady Malvern, Sir William Romney.

2. Gussie Fink-Nottle, Bertie Wooster, Jeeves, Albert Einstein, Jack Dempsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

3. Gloria Salt, Mavis Mulligan, Poppy Kegley-Bassington, Cora McGuffy Spottsworth.

4. Lord Emsworth, Miss Maitland, Sir Gregory Parsloe, Old Wivenhoe, Vera Sipperley, Lord Tilbury.

5. Ilfracombe, Forshore, Waynscote, Barraclough, Wensleydale, Creeby, Woodshott, Marlinghue, Michelhever, Bluffingdale.

Round 327 - 5 September 2007

Wage Slaves

With the Labor Day holiday weekend now behind us in North America, let’s take a look at a handful of Wodehouse characters who earn their daily bread with a spot of honest labour. Even if we exclude school masters, policemen (much the same thing, really), domestic servants, literary people, clergymen, performing artistes, and motion picture studio executives from consideration, we’re still left with a wide variety of employment options.

1. (We begin with a question that provides you with two wage slaves for the price of one.)

Each was connected with a business in the metropolis; and often, before he left for the links, __(A)__ would go to the trouble and expense of ringing up the office to say he would not be coming in that day; while I myself have heard __(B)__ – and this not once, but frequently – say while lunching in the club-house, that he had half a mind to get Gracechurch Street on the ’phone and ask how things were going. They were, in fact, the type of men of whom England is proudest – the backbone of a great country, toilers in the mart, untired businessmen, keen red-blooded men of affairs.

2. She wasn’t the sort of girl you would have expected __(C)__ to rave about. And yet, I don’t know. What I mean is, she worked for her living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand’s turn in his life there’s undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a girl who works for her living.

Her name was __(D)__. She was about five feet six; she had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When __(C)__ smashed himself up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn’t been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to the registrar’s and fixed it up. Quite the romance.

3. “Take a typical morning like yesterday. (…) What happens? I wake. I rise. I shave. I bathe. I breakfast. I take my hat and cane. I say to myself ‘And now for the bureau’. I go out into the street and at once I am in a world of sunshine and laughter and happiness, a world in which it seems ridiculous to be shut up in a stuffy office (…) And all of a sudden … how it happens I couldn’t tell you … I find myself in a chair on the boulevard, a cigarette between my lips, coffee and a cognac in front of me. It’s a most mysterious state of affairs.”

“A state of affairs which cannot –”

“But I am strong,” proceeded __(E)__. “I take out my watch and I lay it on the table. ‘When the hands point to eleven,’ I say to myself, ‘Ho for the bureau.’ And when they point to eleven I say, ‘Ho for the bureau when they point to half past’. And when they point to half past –”

“You wait till noon and then go off to lunch?”

“Exactly.”

“And after lunch the same thing happens?”

“Precisely. It goes on day after day. It’s most distressing. I fret. I lose weight.”
“Then might I ask what has brought you here this morning?”

“It was raining,” said __(E)__ simply.

4. Life was very swift and stimulating for __(F)__ during the early days of her professional career. The inner workings of a busy broker’s office are always interesting to the stranger. She had never understood how business men made their money, and she did not understand now; but it did not take her long to see that if they were all like __(G)__ they earned it. There were days of comparative calm. There were days that were busy. And there were days that packed into the space of a few hours the concentrated essence of a music-hall knock-about sketch, an earthquake, a football scrimmage, and the rush-hour on the Tube; when the office was full of shouting men; when strange figures dived in and out and banged doors like characters in an old farce, and Harold, the proud office-boy, lost his air of being on the point of lunching with a duke at the club and perspired like one of the proletariat. On these occasions you could not help admiring __(G)__, even if you hated him. When a man is doing his job well, it is impossible not to admire him. And __(G)__ did his job well, superlatively well. He was everywhere. Where others trotted, he sprang. Where others raised their voices, he yelled. Where others were in two places at once, he was in three and moving towards a fourth.

5. “But it’s no use,” she said, her lovely eyes filling with tears. “Mother will never give her consent.”

“Why not?” said __(H)__, stunned. “What is it she objects to about me?”

“I don’t know. But she generally alludes to you as ‘that pipsqueak’. (…) It’s a pity she ever found out that you are an interior decorator.”

“An honourable profession,” said __(H)___, a little stiffly.

“I know; but what she admires are men who have to do with the great open spaces.”

“Well, I also design ornamental gardens.”

“Yes,” said the girl doubtfully, “but still –”

Round 328 - 13 September 2007

Acts of Kindness - Vol. 2

We began this quiz cycle with an examination of Acts of Kindness that were gratefully received by the recipients and conclude with another series of Acts of Kindness, which unfortunately went wrong, leaving the party of the second part feeling more like a victim than a beneficiary.

1. “(…) The mind flits back to the time he mended my egg boiler. Occasionally, when I am much occupied with a job of work, sparing no effort to give my public of my best, I rise early, before my housekeeper turns up in the morning. On these occasions, it is my practice to boil myself a refreshing egg, using one of those patent machines for the purpose. You know the sort of thing I mean. It rings an alarm, hopes you’ve slept well, pours water on the coffee, lights a flame underneath and gets action on the egg. Well, the day after __(A)__ had fixed some trifling flaw in the apparatus, the egg was scarcely in position when it flew at me like a bullet, catching me on the tip of the nose and knocking me base over apex. I bled for hours. (…)”

__(B)__ speculated as to the chances of somebody some day murdering __(A)__ and we agreed that the hour must eventually produce the man.

2. The way he jerked his wrist when, having reached a spot secluded from human eye, he threw the brown-paper parcel containing the photographs from him was positively rollicking. He heard it flop behind him without a pang, and was caracolling gayly on down the path, when a shrill voice spoke in his ear.

“Hi! Mister!”

So unexpected was this voice that it had for one brief instant an uncanny effect of being the voice of the brown-paper parcel. A moment before __(C)__ had been convinced that there was not a soul within a hundred yards. But it is a peculiarity of the London parks that no spot in them is ever really secluded from the human eye; and now there had sprung up – apparently through the asphalt – a small and grubby girl in a print frock. She was trotting towards him, her face beaming with helpfulness and good will. With her left hand she dragged along a small male relation, who in his turn dragged a still smaller male relation; with her right she waved the brown-paper parcel.

“You dropped this, mister.”

3. __(D)__ went to bed, but not to sleep. He had slid between the sheets a few minutes before midnight. At one a.m. he was still restless and wakeful. Nor had conditions improved by two. At two-fifteen his mind was made up. He rose, put on a dressing-gown, crept down to the study took the __(objet d’art of some type)__ from the mantelpiece, deposited it in the middle drawer of the desk and went back to his bed. Tomorrow afternoon, if he could not manage it earlier, he would telephone __(E)__ and put him abreast.

He was asleep by two-forty-seven.

4. The train was just moving out of the station when his eye was suddenly caught by the stranger’s bag, lying snugly in the rack.

And here, I regret to say, __(F)__ acted from the best motives, which is always fatal.

He realized in an instant what had happened. The fellow had forgotten his bag. __(F)__ had not been greatly fascinated by the stranger’s looks; but, after all, the most supercilious person on earth has a right to his own property. Besides, he might have been quite a nice fellow when you got to know him. Anyhow, the bag had better be returned at once. The train was already moving quite fast, and __(F)__’s compartment was nearing the end of the platform.

He snatched the bag from the rack and hurled it out of the window. (Porter __(G)__, who happened to be in the line of fire, escaped with a flesh wound.) Then he sat down again with the inward glow of satisfaction which comes to one when one has risen successfully to a sudden emergency.

5. “What’s all this about apologising? Apologising for what?”

“For putting that Mickey Finn in your highball yesterday.”

In one of her early novels Rosie M Banks has a passage in which she describes the reactions of (…) the hero, on becoming aware that the girl to whom he was betrothed had not, as he had supposed, been deceiving him. (It was her brother from Australia he had seen her kissing.) He felt, she says, as if a blinding light had flashed upon him. It was much the same with __(H)__ as he heard these words. (…) So intense was his righteous wrath that he could not speak, merely standing there making a noise like the death rattle of an expiring soda siphon, and Mr __(I)__ proceeded.

“Yes, I do feel I owe you an apology, though I must claim to have had some excuse for acting as I did. You had spoken of the girl with the utmost enthusiasm, you were taking her to dinner, you had had a manicure and a shampoo. Naturally it seemed (….) that there was no time to be lost and only Method B would serve. I was actuated by motives of the purest altruism. I felt I had a mission to save you from yourself. I pictured you thanking me later with tears in your eyes.”

Round 329 - 22 September 2007

Snails

"Just as, according to Shakespeare, snails creep unwillingly to school ..."
– PG Wodehouse (preface to The World of Mr Mulliner)

"The snail was on the wing and the lark on the thorn – or, rather, the other way round."
– BW Wooster

Since most of my past animal quizzes have been mammalocentric, I shall try to make amends to our non-fur-bearing friends in the next four rounds, beginning gastropodically.

Name the characters in the following passages designated by letters (you don’t have to name the snails).

1. Among the first things that met his eye in the garden was a handsome snail, and he stood staring at it with unblinking gaze, his always enquiring mind concentrated on the problem of how snails, handicapped as they are by having no legs, manage nevertheless to get from point to point at so creditable a rate of speed ...

(A few paragraphs later, this deep thinker confides to a companion:)

"... I've been watching a snail."

"Always watch snails," said A__ approvingly. "It is the secret of a happy and successful life. A snail a day keeps the doctor away."

2. By nature sociable, she yearned for company, and for some minutes roamed the garden in quest of it. She found a snail under a laurel bush, but snails are reserved creatures, self-centred and occupied with their own affairs, and this one cut B__ dead, retreating into its shell with a frigid aloofness which made anything in the nature of camaraderie out of the question.

3. C__ brought the car to a stop and looked behind him. The limousine, a couple of hundred yards in the rear, was coming up like a galleon under sail. He grasped D__'s arm. It was a moment for swift action.

"Come on!" he cried. And, jumping out, they ran through the gate.

The garden in which they found themselves was one of those beautifully trim preserves whose every leaf and petal speaks eloquently of a loving proprietor. Neat little sticks supported neat little plants. Neat little gravel paths ran between neat little flower-beds. It was the sort of garden from which snails, wandering in with a care-free nonchalance, withdrew abashed, blushing and walking backwards, realizing that they are on holy ground. And it should have affected C__ and D__, those human intruders, with the same self-conscious awe.

4. E__ had been dealing murderously with snails in the shadow of a bush, and the expression on his face seemed to indicate that he would be glad to extend the treatment to F__ …

"What were you talking about to that fellow?" he demanded. It was rare for E__ to be the heavy father, but there are times when heaviness in a father is excusable ...

"I met him on the bridge. We were talking about G__."

"Well, kindly understand that I don't want you to hold any communication whatsoever with that young man or his cousin G__ or his infernal uncle or any of that Hall gang. Is that clear?"

Her father was looking at her as if she were a snail which he had just found eating one of his lettuce-leaves, but H__ still contrived with some difficulty to preserve a pale, saintlike calm.

(In a later chapter, a snail crosses H's path; "She did not tread on it, for she had a kind heart, but she gave it a look.")

5. "... My home is in Hollywood."

"Oh, are you in the movies?"

"No, I am a lawyer."

J__ uttered a pleased cry.

"Then you can tell me if the woman next door has any right to throw her snails into my garden."

"None whatever. Legally, snails are wild animals."

"What ought I to do?"

"Throw them back."

Extra Credit: Who expresses the hope that a relative will be bitten by wild snails ("Ferocious ones, with long horns")?

Round 330 - 1 October 2007

Worms

"I am a worm that wriggles in a swamp of Disillusionment."
– Lancelot Mulliner, "Darkling: A Threnody"

"... I shall crush her as I would a worm."
"Do you crush worms?" asked Penny, interested.
– Pigs Have Wings, Chapter 2

Worms are another dumb chum prevalent in Wodehouse, ranging from worms i' the bud that feed on damask cheeks to Bertie Wooster, who describes himself as "a prudent, levelheaded worm".

Identify the speakers (and, in #4, the book or story).

1. "And when we were children together," proceeded A__, her voice cold and hard, "I used, if you remember, to put worms down the back of your neck from time to time, when such a corrective to your insufferable behaviour seemed to be indicated. Persist in your refusal to become the genial hostess to my friend B__, and I shall resume that practice."

"We are not amused."

"No, and you'll be still less amused after lunch when, as you show C__ the rose garden, you find me sliding up behind you with a fistful of worms."

D__ gasped. Forty years of acquaintance with her sister A__ had left her with the unpleasant feeling that she was not a woman to be trifled with. There might be things which her sister A__ would hesitate to do, but, she was forced to admit, not many.

"I believe you mean it!"

"Of course I mean it. Not one worm, mark you, but a bevy of worms. Large, fat, sticky worms, D__. Slithery, writhing, wriggly worms. Cold, clammy –"

D__ capitulated.

2. E__'s eyes narrowed. She kicked moodily at a passing worm.

"I don't like it," she said. "It's fishy. Too much zeal. It looks very much to me as if our Mr. F__ had a special reason for wanting to get up to London for the night. And I think I know what the reason is. Did you ever hear of a girl named G__?" ...

The start which H__ gave eclipsed in magnitude all the other starts he had given that morning. And they had been many and severe.

"It isn't true."

"What isn't true?"

"That there's anything whatever between F__ and G__."

"Oh? Well, I had it from an authoritative source."

It was not the worm's lucky morning. It had now reached H__, and he kicked at it, too. The worm had the illusion that it had begun to rain shoes.

3. "His letter?"

"Yes. He wrote asking me to marry him." ...

J__ remained for a moment without speaking. He searched his mind for carefree, debonair remarks, and found it singularly short of them.

"F's a splendid chap," he contrived to say at length.

"Yes."

"Yes – so bright!"

"Yes."

"Nice-looking fellow."

"Yes."

"A thoroughly good chap."

"Yes."

J__ found that he had exhausted the subject of F__'s qualities. He relapsed into a gray silence and half thought of treading on an offensively cheerful worm which had just appeared beside his shoe and seemed to be asking for it.

4. … On the greensward without the early bird was already breakfasting and making the dickens of a noise about it, too. …

It’s a rummy thing about breakfast … When you can’t get it, you feel like a python when the Zoo officials have just started to bang the luncheon gong. Speaking for myself, I have, as a rule, to be more or less lured to the feast. I mean to say, I don’t as a general rule become what you might call breakfast-conscious till I’ve had my morning tea and rather thought things over a bit. And I can give no better indication of the extraordinary change which had come over my viewpoint now than by mentioning that there was a young fowl of sorts not far away engaged in getting outside a large, pink worm, and I could willingly have joined it at the board.

5. "I saw you drinking!"

"No, you didn't."

"Yes, I did. Let me smell your breath."

"I will not let you smell my breath."

"Suspicious," said K__. "Highly suspicious."

There was a pause, occupied by L__ in perspiring at every pore. K__ resumed the conversational exchanges.

"Do you know what alcohol does to the common earthworm?"

"No, I don't. What does it do?"

"Plenty," said K__ darkly. He was silent for a moment, seeming to be musing on the tragic end of earthworms he had known.

Extra Credit: Which Wodehouse hero put a worm down the heroine's back?