Round 492 – 2 January 2012

For the last instalment of women you have to find

Some of my favourite Wodehouse women

1. ‘You see, I’m devoted to ____A – and I like you.’

She smiled for the first time. Her embarrassment was passing.

‘That is the whole point,’ she said. ‘I do like you. And I’m quite sure that if you were really the sort of man I thought you when I first heard about all this, I shouldn’t. The friend who told me about you and ____A made it seem as if the whole fault had been yours. I got the impression that you had been very unkind to ____A. I thought you must be a brute. And when ____B told me who you were, my first impulse was to hate you. I think if you had come along just then I should have been rather horrid to you. But you were late, and that gave me time to think it over …’

2. … but in sealing ____C with the stamp of his approval he was perfectly justified. ____D, speaking of this woman to ____E, had used the adjective “lovely”. While not quite that, she was undeniably attractive. Brown eyes, brown hair, just the right sort of nose and a wide humorous mouth that smiled readily and was smiling now. Her personality, too, had a distinct appeal of its own. There was about her a kindly briskness which seemed to say “Yes, yes, you have your troubles, I can see you have, but leave everything to me.” Fierce authors who came into the ____F offices like lions went out like lambs after talking with ____C.

3. ____G scrambled out and bent down to where he sat, holding to the bank.

“I’m not nearly so beastly now, ____H,” she said in a whisper. “You’ll find that out some day, if you’re very patient. Good-night, ____H, dear. Don’t forget tomorrow.”

She flitted away into the darkness, and ____H, releasing his hold on the bank and starting up as if he had had an electric shock, was carried out into midstream. He was tingling from head to foot. It could not have happened, of course, but for a moment he had suddenly received the extraordinary impression that ____G had kissed him.

4. ‘… ____J’s a woman with ideas. When we were co-workers on the ____K lot, there was a traffic cop out on ____L who lurked beside his motor cycle in a dark corner and sprang on it and dashed out to pursue motorists and give them tickets. We used to watch him from our windows, and we all burned to do something to the man, but only ____J had the vision and intelligence to go out and tie a chain to his back wheel while he was in the drug store and fasten the other end to a hydrant, so that the next time he sprang on his machine and started off, he was brought up short and shot over the handlebars and looked about as silly as I ever saw a traffic cop look …’

5. ‘… Well, you will do it, won’t you?’

____M reflected.

‘I suppose I’ll have to, if you insist,’ he said at length. ‘If I don’t, you’ll just hand in your notice anyway. I know you. You’re a sportsman, ____N. Your mother was just the same. But are you sure you’ll manage all right? I shan’t be casting the new show till the end of August, but I may be able to fix you up somewhere if I look round.’

‘I don’t see how you could look any rounder if you tried, you poor darling. Do you realize, Pa, that if you got up early every morning and did half an hour’s Swedish exercises …’

‘If you don’t want to be murdered, stop!’

6. It was as she heaved a weary sigh and fell to wondering whether to get up and go to the library for the book which she had been reading after dinner or to stay where she was and give the sandman another chance, that a faint whoofle from the direction of the door and a scratching of delicate paws on the woodwork told her that ____O, her Peke, was up and about and wished to leave the room.

‘Okay,’ said ____P, rather pleased that the problem had been settled for her. ‘Just a minute. Hold the line.’

She turned on the light, and rose and donned a dressing-gown.

‘Grass?’ she said.

The Peke nodded briefly.

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Answers, please, by 6pm GMT on Monday, 9 January 2011

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Your Quizmaster, Tom Boye Poulsen

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