hadn’t even begun to rehearse him in his part.
I tried to break up the scene.
“We were just going down to the beach,” I said.
“Yes?” said the girl. She listened for a moment. “So you’re having your piano tuned?” she said. “My aunt has been trying to find a tuner for ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when he has finished here?”
I mopped the brow.
“Er—I shouldn’t go in just now,” I said. “Not just now, while he’s working, if you don’t mind. These fellows can’t bear to be disturbed when they’re at work. It’s the artistic temperament. I’ll tell him later.”
“Very well. Ask him to call at Pine Bungalow. Vickers is the name … Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he will be out in a minute now. I’ll wait.”
“Don’t you think—shouldn’t you be getting on to the beach?” I said.
She had started talking to the kid and didn’t hear. She was feeling in her bag for something. “The beach,” I babbled.
“See what I’ve got for you, baby,” said the girl. “I thought I might meet you somewhere, so I bought some of your favourite sweets.”
And, by Jove, she held up in front of the kid’s bulging eyes a chunk of toffee about the size of the Albert Memorial!
That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid was all worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
“Kiss Fweddie!” he shouted.
And the French windows opened and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for all the world as if he had been taking a cue.
“Kiss Fweddie!” shrieked the child.
Freddie looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the ground, and the kid looked at the toffee.
“Kiss Fweddie!” he yelled. “Kiss Fweddie!.”
“What does this mean?” said the girl, turning on me.
“You’d better give it him,” I said. “He’ll go on till you do, you know.”
She gave the kid the toffee and he subsided. Freddie, poor ass, still stood there gaping, without a word.
“What does it mean?” said the girl again. Her face was pink, and her eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don’t you know, that makes a fellow feel as if he hadn’t any bones in him, if you know what I mean. Yes, Bertram felt filleted. Did you ever tread on your partner’s dress at a dance—I’m speaking now of the days when women wore dresses long enough to be trodden on—and hear it rip and see her smile at you like an angel and say, “Please don’t apologise. It’s nothing,” and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you in the face? Well, that’s how Freddie’s Elizabeth looked.
“Well?” she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much. Then I said, “Oh, well, it was this way.” And I told her all about it. And all the while Idiot Freddie stood there gaping, without a word. Not one solitary yip had he let out of himself from the start.
And the girl didn’t speak, either. She just stood listening.
And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She leaned against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while Freddie, the World’s Champion Dumb Brick, standing there, saying nothing.
Well, I finished my story and sidled to the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it seemed to me that about here the stage-direction “exit cautiously” was written in my part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a word it might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless.
Just out of sight of the house I met Jeeves, returning from his stroll.
“Jeeves,” I said, “all is over. The thing’s finished. Poor dear old Freddie has made a complete ass of himself and killed the whole show.”
“Indeed, sir? What has actually happened?”
I told him.
“He fluffed in his lines,” I concluded. “Just stood there saying nothing, when if ever there was a time for eloquence, this was it. He … Great Scott! Look!”
We had come back within view of the cottage, and there in front of it stood six children, a nurse, two loafers, another nurse, and the fellow from the grocer’s. They were all staring. Down the road came galloping five more children, a dog, three men and a boy, all about to stare. And on our porch, as unconscious of the spectators as if they had been alone in the Sahara, stood Freddie and his Elizabeth, clasped in each other’s arms.
“Great Scott!” I said.
“It would appear, sir,” said Jeeves, “that everything has concluded most satisfactorily, after all.”
“Yes. Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines,” I said, “but his business certainly seems to have gone with a bang.”
“Very true, sir,” said Jeeves.
Clustering Round Young Bingo
I blotted the last page of my manuscript and sank back, feeling more or less of a spent force. After incredible sweat of the old brow the thing seemed to be in pretty fair shape, and I was just reading it through and debating whether to bung in another paragraph at the end, when there was a tap at the door and Jeeves appeared.
“Mrs. Travers, sir, on the telephone.”
“Oh?” I said. Preoccupied, don’t you know.
“Yes, sir. She presents her compliments and would be glad to know what progress you have made with the article which you are writing for her.”
“Jeeves, can I mention men’s knee-length underclothing in a woman’s paper?”
“No, sir.”
“Then tell her it’s finished.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And, Jeeves, when you’re through, come back. I want you to cast your eye over this effort and give it the OK”
My Aunt Dahlia, who runs a woman’s paper called Milady’s Boudoir, had recently backed me into
