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Authors: P. G. Wodehouse
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ever since he came to.'
La Brinkmeyer scouted this theory.
'Stuff and nonsense! He isn't delirious. He's talking that way just to be aggravating.'
'You think so?'
'Of course. Have you ever had to look after a sassy, swollen-headed, wisecracking child star who thinks he's everybody just because a lot of fool women crowd to see hi m on the screen and say doesn't he look cute and sweet and innocent?'
B. K. Burwash said no, he had not had this experience.
'Well, I've been doing it for a year, and I know his ways.'
This seemed to reassure the dubious dentist. 'You feel, then, that there is no cause for anxiety?' 'Of course there isn't.'
'You relieve me. I was afraid he was not quite himself.' 'He's himself, worse luck.'
'Hal' I exclaimed, smiling a bit, for this struck me as
quaint. Ironical, you might say. 'Funny you should say that. Because myself, in a nutshell, is precisely what I'm bally well not.'
It seemed an admirable opportunity to issue that statement. The topic could not have been more neatly introduced.
'Madam,' I began, 'and you, B. K. Burwash, prepare yourselves for a bit of a surprise. Unless I am very much mistaken, this is going to make you sit up a trifle.'
'Oh, be quiet.'
'The poet Shakespeare has well said that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. One of these has just broken loose in this very room. You will doubtless be interested to learn that owing to an unforeseen crossing of the wires in the fourth dimension —'
'Stop this nonsense and come along.'
'But I wish to issue a statement. Briefly, then, owing, as I say, to funny work in the fourth dimension ... mark you, I call it the fourth, but it may quite easily be the fifth ... I'm a bit shaky on dimensions —'
'You'll be shaky if I start shaking you, as I shall in a minute, I know I shall. I've no patience with you. Will you come along? '
I came along. And if you feel that this was weak of me, I can only say that the Albert Memorial would have come along in precisely the same manner, had Miss Beulah Brinkmeyer attached herself to its wrist and pulled. I left the chair like a cork emerging from a bottle under the ministrations of a sinewy butler.
'Oh, all right,' I said, resigning myself to the inev. 'Pip-pip, Burwash.'
As a matter of fact, I was not sorry I had been interrupted in the issuing of my statement, for Reason had suddenly returned to her throne and I perceived that I had been on the point of making an ass of myself.
I mean to say, the one lesson one learns from these stories about coves get ting switched into other coves' bodies is that on such occasions statements are no good. No use whatever. Just a waste of breath. The chaps in the stories always try to make them, and nobody ever believes a word. I resolved that from now on I would be cold and taciturn and refrain from all attempts to put myself right with the public. However irksome it might be to remain silent on a topic concerning which I had so much to say, a complete reserve was, I saw, the wiser policy.
Contenting myself, accordingly, with a word of warning to the effect that if she shook me I should be sick, I accompanied Miss Brinkmeyer to the door. My demeanour as I did so was not jaunty, for I was, I must confess, apprehensive and ill at ease. I was asking myself how I was going to render supportable a life spent in the society of this decidedly frightful old geezer. In comparing her to Simon Legree, the Cooley child had shown himself an astute judge of character. She seemed also to possess many of the less agreeable qualities of the late Captain Bligh of the Bounty.
In the street a sumptuous automobile awaited us, and presently we were rolling along, she sniffing at intervals as if my company gave her the pip and self leaning back against the cushions with a meditative frown. And after a while the car turned in at a drive gate and pulled up in front of a large white house.
Chapter 8
C hez B rinkmeyer - at which I
La Brinkmeyer scouted this theory.
'Stuff and nonsense! He isn't delirious. He's talking that way just to be aggravating.'
'You think so?'
'Of course. Have you ever had to look after a sassy, swollen-headed, wisecracking child star who thinks he's everybody just because a lot of fool women crowd to see hi m on the screen and say doesn't he look cute and sweet and innocent?'
B. K. Burwash said no, he had not had this experience.
'Well, I've been doing it for a year, and I know his ways.'
This seemed to reassure the dubious dentist. 'You feel, then, that there is no cause for anxiety?' 'Of course there isn't.'
'You relieve me. I was afraid he was not quite himself.' 'He's himself, worse luck.'
'Hal' I exclaimed, smiling a bit, for this struck me as
quaint. Ironical, you might say. 'Funny you should say that. Because myself, in a nutshell, is precisely what I'm bally well not.'
It seemed an admirable opportunity to issue that statement. The topic could not have been more neatly introduced.
'Madam,' I began, 'and you, B. K. Burwash, prepare yourselves for a bit of a surprise. Unless I am very much mistaken, this is going to make you sit up a trifle.'
'Oh, be quiet.'
'The poet Shakespeare has well said that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. One of these has just broken loose in this very room. You will doubtless be interested to learn that owing to an unforeseen crossing of the wires in the fourth dimension —'
'Stop this nonsense and come along.'
'But I wish to issue a statement. Briefly, then, owing, as I say, to funny work in the fourth dimension ... mark you, I call it the fourth, but it may quite easily be the fifth ... I'm a bit shaky on dimensions —'
'You'll be shaky if I start shaking you, as I shall in a minute, I know I shall. I've no patience with you. Will you come along? '
I came along. And if you feel that this was weak of me, I can only say that the Albert Memorial would have come along in precisely the same manner, had Miss Beulah Brinkmeyer attached herself to its wrist and pulled. I left the chair like a cork emerging from a bottle under the ministrations of a sinewy butler.
'Oh, all right,' I said, resigning myself to the inev. 'Pip-pip, Burwash.'
As a matter of fact, I was not sorry I had been interrupted in the issuing of my statement, for Reason had suddenly returned to her throne and I perceived that I had been on the point of making an ass of myself.
I mean to say, the one lesson one learns from these stories about coves get ting switched into other coves' bodies is that on such occasions statements are no good. No use whatever. Just a waste of breath. The chaps in the stories always try to make them, and nobody ever believes a word. I resolved that from now on I would be cold and taciturn and refrain from all attempts to put myself right with the public. However irksome it might be to remain silent on a topic concerning which I had so much to say, a complete reserve was, I saw, the wiser policy.
Contenting myself, accordingly, with a word of warning to the effect that if she shook me I should be sick, I accompanied Miss Brinkmeyer to the door. My demeanour as I did so was not jaunty, for I was, I must confess, apprehensive and ill at ease. I was asking myself how I was going to render supportable a life spent in the society of this decidedly frightful old geezer. In comparing her to Simon Legree, the Cooley child had shown himself an astute judge of character. She seemed also to possess many of the less agreeable qualities of the late Captain Bligh of the Bounty.
In the street a sumptuous automobile awaited us, and presently we were rolling along, she sniffing at intervals as if my company gave her the pip and self leaning back against the cushions with a meditative frown. And after a while the car turned in at a drive gate and pulled up in front of a large white house.
Chapter 8
C hez B rinkmeyer - at which I
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