Aunts Aren't Gentlemen by P. G. Wodehouse

Author:P. G. Wodehouse [Wodehouse, P. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Classics, Humor, Fiction
ISBN: 9781409035190
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-05-26T16:02:53+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

One of the questions put to me when I won that Scripture Knowledge prize at my private school was, I recall, 'What do you know of the deaf adder?', and my grip on Holy Writ enabled me to reply correctly that it stopped its ears and would not hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely, and after my session with Herbert Graham I knew how that charmer must have felt. If I had been in a position to compare notes with him, we would have agreed that the less we saw of adders in the future the better it would be for us.

Nobody could have charmed more wisely than me as I urged Herbert Graham to lower his price, and nobody could have stopped his ears more firmly than did that human serpent. Talk about someone not meeting you half-way; he didn't go an inch in the direction of coming to a peaceful settlement. Thirty-five quid, I mean to say. Absolutely monstrous. But that's what happens when you're up against it and the other fellow holds all the cards.

Haggling is a thing that takes it out of you, and it was a limp Bertram Wooster who after Graham and cat had set forth on their journey sat skimming listlessly through the opening pages of By Order Of The Czar. And I had read enough to make me wish I had taken out The Mystery Of A Hansom Cab instead, when the telephone rang.

It was, as I had feared, Aunt Dahlia. Sooner or later, I had of course realized, exchanges with the aged relative were inevitable, but I could have faced them better if they could have been postponed for a while. In my enfeebled condition I was in no shape to cope with aunts. A man who has just become engaged to a girl whose whole personality gives him a sinking feeling and who has had to pay thirty-five quid to a bloodsucker and another twopence to a lending library for a dud book is seldom in mid-season form.

The old ancestor, on the other hand, little knowing that she was about to get a sock on the jaw which would shake her to her foundation garments, was all lightheartedness and joviality.

'Hullo, fathead,' she said. 'What news on the Rialto?'

'What, what, where?' I responded, not getting it.

'The cat. Has he brought it?'

'Yes.'

'Is it in your bosom?'

I saw the time had come. Shrink though I might from revealing the awful truth, it had to be done. I took a deep breath. It was some small comfort to feel that she was at the end of the telephone wire a mile and a half away. You can never be certain what aunts will do when at close quarters. Far less provocation in my earlier days had led this one to buffet me soundly on the side of the head.

'No,' I said, 'it's gone.'

'Gone? Gone where?'

'Billy Graham has taken it back.'

'Taken it back?'

'To Eggesford Court. I told him to.'

'You told him to?'

'Yes.

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