Joy In The Morning by P. G. Wodehouse

Author:P. G. Wodehouse [Wodehouse, P. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

I sat up, rubbing the occiput, and a squeaky voice spoke in my earhole. Eyeing me solicitously, or else gloating over his handiwork, I couldn’t tell which, was young blighted Edwin.

‘Coo!’ he said. ‘Is that you, Bertie?’

‘Yes, it jolly well is,’ I replied with a touch of not unnatural asperity. I mean, life’s difficult enough without having Boy Scouts beaning one every other minute, and I was incensed. ‘What’s the idea? What do you mean, you repellent young boll weevil, by socking me with a dashed great club?’

‘It wasn’t a club. It was my Scout’s stick. Sort of like a hockey stick. Very useful.’

‘Comes in handy, does it?’

‘Rather! Did it hurt?’

‘You may take it as definitely official that it hurt like blazes.’

‘Coo! I’m sorry. I mistook you for the burglar. There’s one lurking in the grounds. I heard him underneath my window. I said “Who’s there?” and he slunk off with horrid imprecations. I say, I’m not having much luck tonight. The last chap I mistook for the burglar turned out to be father.’

‘Father?’

‘Yes. How was I to know it was him? I never thought he would be wandering about the garden in the middle of the night. I saw a shadowy form crouching down, as if about to spring, and I crept up behind it and—’

‘You didn’t biff him?’

‘Yes. Rather a juicy one.’

I must say my heart leaped up, as Jeeves tells me his does when he beholds a rainbow in the sky. The thought of Uncle Percy stopping a hot one with the trouser seat was pretty stimulating. It had been coming to him for years. I had that sort of awed feeling one gets sometimes, when one has a close-up of the workings of Providence and realises that nothing is put into this world without a purpose, not even Edwin, and that the meanest creatures have their uses.

‘He was a bit shirty about it.’

‘It annoyed him, eh?’

‘He wanted to give me beans, but Florence wouldn’t let him. She said, “Father, you are not to touch him. It was a pure misunderstanding.” Florence is very fond of me.’

I raised my eyebrows. A girl, I felt, of strange, even morbid tastes.

‘So all he did was to tell me to go to bed.’

‘Then why aren’t you in bed?’

‘Bed? Coo! Not likely. How’s your head?’

‘Rotten.’

‘Does it ache?’

‘Of course it aches.’

‘Have you got a contusion?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘This is where I could give you first aid.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Don’t you want first aid?’

‘No, I don’t. We have threshed all this out before, young Edwin. You know my views.’

‘I don’t ever seem able to get anyone to let me give them first aid,’ he said wistfully. ‘And what one needs is lots of practice. What are you doing here, Bertie?’

‘Everybody asks me what I’m doing here,’ I replied, with a touch of pique. ‘Why shouldn’t I be here? This place is related to me by ties of blood. If you really want to know, I came here for an after dinner saunter with Boko Fittleworth.

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