little dog, whom I have reared from a puppy, caught one sight of my face and is now in the hands of the
vet. and unlikely to recover. And it was you, Wilfred Mulliner, who brought this curse upon me!”
Many men would have wilted beneath these searing words, but Wilfred Mulliner merely smiled with infinite compassion and understanding.
“It is quite all right,” he said. “I should have warned you, sweetheart, that this occasionally happens in cases where the skin is exceptionally delicate and finely-textured. It can be speedily remedied by an application of the Mulliner Snow of the Mountains Lotion, four shillings the medium-sized bottle.”
“Wilfred! Is this true?”
“Perfectly true, dearest. And is this all that stands between us?”
“No!” shouted a voice of thunder.
Wilfred wheeled sharply. In the doorway stood Sir Jasper ffinch-ffarrowmere. He was swathed in a bath-towel, what was visible of his person being a bright crimson. Behind him, toying with a horsewhip, stood Murgatroyd, the butler.
“You didn’t expect to see me, did you?”
“I certainly,” replied Wilfred, severely, “did not expect to see you in a lady’s presence in a costume like that.”
“Never mind my costume.” Sir Jasper turned.
“Murgatroyd, do your duty!”
The butler, scowling horribly, advanced into the room.
“Stop!” screamed Angela.
“I haven’t begun yet, miss,” said the butler, deferentially.
“You shan’t touch Wilfred. I love him.”
“What!” cried Sir Jasper. “After all that has happened?”
“Yes. He has explained everything.”
A grim frown appeared on the baronet’s vermilion face.
“I’ll bet he hasn’t explained why he left me to be cooked in that infernal Turkish Bath. I was beginning to throw out clouds of smoke when Murgatroyd, faithful fellow, heard my cries and came and released me.”
“Though not my work,” added the butler.
Wilfred eyed him steadily.
“If,” he said, “you used Mulliner’s Reduc-o, the recognized specific for obesity, whether in the tabloid form at three shillings the tin, or as a liquid at five and six the flask, you would have no need to stew in Turkish Baths. Mulliner’s Reduc-o, which contains no injurious chemicals, but is compounded purely of health-giving herbs, is guaranteed to remove excess weight, steadily and without weakening aftereffects, at the rate of two pounds a week. As used by the nobility.”
The glare of hatred faded from the baronet’s eyes.
“Is that a fact?” he whispered.
“It is.”
“You guarantee it?”
“All the Mulliner preparations are fully guaranteed.”
“My boy!” cried the baronet. He shook Wilfred by the hand. “Take her,” he said, brokenly. “And with her my b-blessing.”
A discreet cough sounded in the background.
“You haven’t anything, by any chance, sir,” asked Murgatroyd, “that’s good for lumbago?”
“Mulliner’s Ease-o will cure the most stubborn case in six days.”
“Bless you, sir, bless you,” sobbed Murgatroyd. “Where can I get it?”
“At all chemists.”
“It catches me in the small of the back principally, sir.”
“It need catch you no longer,” said Wilfred.
There is little to add. Murgatroyd is now the most lissom butler in Yorkshire. Sir Jasper’s weight is down under the fifteen stone and he is thinking of taking up hunting again. Wilfred and Angela are man and wife; and never, I am informed, had the wedding-bells of the old church at ffinch village rung out a blither peal than they did on that June morning when Angela, raising to her love a face on which the brown was as evenly distributed as on an antique walnut table, replied to the clergyman’s question, “Wilt thou, Angela, take this Wilfred?” with a shy, “I will.” They now have two bonny bairns—the small, or Percival, at a preparatory school in Sussex, and the large, or Ferdinand, at Eton.
Here Mr. Mulliner, having finished his hot Scotch, bade us farewell and took his departure.
A silence followed his exit. The company seemed plunged in deep thought. Then somebody rose.
“Well, good night all,” he said.
It seemed to sum up the situation.
Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo
The village Choral Society had been giving a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Sorcerer in aid of the Church Organ Fund; and, as we sat in the window of the Anglers’ Rest, smoking our pipes, the audience came streaming past us down the little street. Snatches of song floated to our ears, and Mr. Mulliner began to croon in unison.
“ ‘Ah me! I was a pa-ale you-oung curate then!’ ” chanted Mr. Mulliner in the rather snuffling voice in which the amateur singer seems to find it necessary to render the old songs.
“Remarkable,” he said, resuming his natural tones, “how fashions change, even in clergymen. There are very few pale young curates nowadays.”
“True,” I agreed. “Most of them are beefy young fellows who rowed for their colleges. I don’t believe I have ever seen a pale young curate.”
“You never met my nephew Augustine, I think?”
“Never.”
“The description in the song would have fitted him perfectly. You will want to hear all about my nephew Augustine.”
At the time of which I am speaking (said Mr. Mulliner) my nephew Augustine was a curate, and very young and extremely pale. As a boy he had completely outgrown his strength, and I rather think at his Theological College some of the wilder spirits must have bullied him; for when he went to Lower Briskett-in-the-Midden to assist the vicar, the Rev. Stanley Brandon, in his cure of souls, he was as meek and mild a young man as you could meet in a day’s journey. He had flaxen hair, weak blue eyes, and the general demeanour of a saintly but timid codfish. Precisely, in short, the sort of young curate who seems to have been so common in the eighties, or whenever it was that Gilbert wrote The Sorcerer.
The personality of his immediate superior did little or nothing to help him to overcome his native diffidence. The Rev. Stanley Brandon was a huge and sinewy man of violent temper, whose red face and glittering eyes might well have intimidated the toughest curate. The Rev. Stanley had been a heavyweight boxer at Cambridge, and I gather from Augustine that he seemed to be always on the point of introducing into debates on parish matters
