A Pelican at Blandings by P. G. Wodehouse

Author:P. G. Wodehouse [Wodehouse, P. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics, Humor, Fiction
ISBN: 9781409063506
Publisher: Penguin (UK)
Published: 2009-05-27T04:00:00+00:00

2

For perhaps two or possibly three minutes after they had left Lady Constance's boudoir Gally and John preserved an unbroken silence. Gally was plunged again in thoughts of how cleverly he had grappled with the various problems which had confronted him, a feat possible only to one trained in the hard school of the Pelican Club, while John was in the grip of the peculiar numbed sensation, so like that caused by repeated blows on the head from a blunt instrument, which came to all but the strongest who met Lady Constance for the first time when she was feeling frosty. It was as though he had been for an extended period shut up in a frigidaire with the first Queen Elizabeth.

'I think you came through that well, Johnny,' said Gally at length. 'Just the right blend of amiability and reserve. It is not every man who can come through the ordeal of being introduced to Connie with such elan and aplomb. It leads me to hope that when you come up against La Gilpin, she will be less than the dust beneath your chariot wheels. Too bad she's away, but she ought to be with us in an hour or so.'

'By which time I may have started to recover.'

'Yes, I could see that, however little you showed it, you found Connie overpowering. Long association has made me immune, but she does take the stuffing out of most people. Somebody wrote a story years ago entitled The Bird With The Difficult Eye, and I have always thought the author must have had Connie in mind. She takes after my late father, a man who could open an oyster at sixty paces with a single glance. But you mustn't let her sap your nerve, for you'll need all you have for the coming get-together with that popsy of yours.'

'I wish you wouldn't—'

'I am a plain man. I call a popsy a popsy. How were you thinking of playing the scene of reunion, by the way, always taking into consideration the fact that she, too, will have a difficult eye? Her mood when we were discussing you the other day was not sunny. You will need to pick your words carefully. I would advise the tender reminiscent note, what you might call the Auld Lang Syne touch. Remind her of those long sunlit afternoons when you floated down the river in your punt or canoe, just she and you, the world far away, no sound breaking the summer stillness except the little ripples whispering like fairy bugles among the rushes.'

'We didn't float.'

'Didn't you ever go on the river?'

'No.'

Gally was surprised. He said that in his day you always took a spin with the popsy in a punt or canoe, with a bite to eat afterwards at Skindles. It was the first step towards a fusion of souls.

'Then where did you plan your future?'

'We didn't plan it anywhere. I asked her to marry me and she said she would, and that was that. We hadn't any time to plan futures.

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