P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

THE EPISODE OF THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER First of a Series of Six Stories [First published in Pictorial Review, May 1916] When a seed-merchant of cautious disposition and an eye to the main chance receives from an eminent firm of jam-manufacturers an extremely large order for clover-seed, his emotions are mixed. Joy may be said to predominate, but with the joy comes also uncertainty. Are these... more...

CHAPTER I. SALLY GIVES A PARTY1Sally looked contentedly down the long table. She felt happy at last. Everybody was talking and laughing now, and her party, rallying after an uncertain start, was plainly the success she had hoped it would be. The first atmosphere of uncomfortable restraint, caused, she was only too well aware, by her brother Fillmore's white evening waistcoat, had worn off; and the... more...

TERM BEGINS Marriott walked into the senior day-room, and, finding no one there, hurled his portmanteau down on the table with a bang. The noise brought William into the room. William was attached to Leicester's House, Beckford College, as a mixture of butler and bootboy. He carried a pail of water in his hand. He had been engaged in cleaning up the House against the conclusion of the summer... more...

CHAPTER ONE Through the curtained windows of the furnished apartment which Mrs. Horace Hignett had rented for her stay in New York rays of golden sunlight peeped in like the foremost spies of some advancing army. It was a fine summer morning. The hands of the Dutch clock in the hall pointed to thirteen minutes past nine; those of the ormolu clock in the sitting-room to eleven minutes past ten; those of... more...

CHAPTER I. The supper room of the Savoy Hotel was all brightness and glitter and gayety. But Sir James Willoughby Pitt, baronet, of the United Kingdom, looked round about him through the smoke of his cigarette, and felt moodily that this was a flat world, despite the geographers, and that he was very much alone in it. He felt old. If it is ever allowable for a young man of twenty-six to give himself up... more...

Chapter 1 AN ENGLISH BOY'S HOME August the First, 19— Clarence Chugwater looked around him with a frown, and gritted his teeth. "England—my England!" he moaned. Clarence was a sturdy lad of some fourteen summers. He was neatly, but not gaudily, dressed in a flat-brimmed hat, a coloured handkerchief, a flannel shirt, a bunch of ribbons, a haversack, football shorts, brown boots, a... more...

CHAPTER I THE CABLE PROM MERVO A pretty girl in a blue dress came out of the house, and began to walk slowly across the terrace to where Elsa Keith sat with Marvin Rossiter in the shade of the big sycamore. Elsa and Marvin had become engaged some few days before, and were generally to be found at this time sitting together in some shaded spot in the grounds of the Keith's Long Island home.... more...

PATIENT PERSEVERANCE PRODUCES PUGILISTIC PRODIGIES 'Where have I seen that face before?' said a voice. Tony Graham looked up from his bag. 'Hullo, Allen,' he said, 'what the dickens are you up here for?' 'I was rather thinking of doing a little boxing. If you've no objection, of course.' 'But you ought to be on a bed of sickness, and that sort of thing.... more...

"With apologies to gent opposite," said Clowes, "I must say I don't think much of the team." "Don't apologise to me," said Allardyce disgustedly, as he filled the teapot, "I think they're rotten." "They ought to have got into form by now, too," said Trevor. "It's not as if this was the first game of the term." "First game!"... more...

LEAVE IT TO JEEVES Jeeves—my man, you know—is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable. Honestly, I shouldn't know what to do without him. On broader lines he's like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next... more...