Jill the Reckless by P.G. Wodehouse
Author:P.G. Wodehouse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jovian Press
* * *
CHAPTER XII
~
UNCLE CHRIS BORROWS A FLAT
I
UNCLE CHRIS WALKED BREEZILY INTO the room, flicking a jaunty glove. He stopped short on seeing that Mr. Pilkington was not alone.
“Oh, I beg your pardon! I understood....” He peered at Jill uncertainly. Mr. Pilkington affected a dim, artistic lighting-system in his studio, and people who entered from the great outdoors generally had to take time to accustom their eyes to it. “If you’re engaged....”
“Er—allow me.... Miss Mariner.... Major Selby.”
“Hullo, Uncle Chris!” said Jill.
“God bless my soul!” ejaculated that startled gentleman adventurer, and collapsed on to a settee as if his legs had been mown from under him.
“I’ve been looking for you all over New York,” said Jill.
Mr. Pilkington found himself unequal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation.
“Uncle Chris?” he said with a note of feeble enquiry in his voice.
“Major Selby is my uncle.”
“Are you sure?” said Mr. Pilkington. “I mean....”
Not being able to ascertain, after a moment’s self-examination, what he did mean, he relapsed into silence.
“Whatever are you doing here?” asked Uncle Chris.
“I’ve been having tea with Mr. Pilkington.”
“But ... but why Mr. Pilkington?”
“Well, he invited me.”
“But how do you know him?”
“We met at the theatre.”
“Theatre?”
Otis Pilkington recovered his power of speech.
“Miss Mariner is rehearsing with a little play in which I am interested,” he explained.
Uncle Chris half rose from the settee. He blinked twice in rapid succession. Jill had never seen him so shaken from his customary poise.
“Don’t tell me you have gone on the stage, Jill!”
“I have. I’m in the chorus....”
“Ensemble,” corrected Mr. Pilkington softly.
“I’m in the ensemble of a piece called ‘The Rose of America.’ We’ve been rehearsing for ever so long.”
Uncle Chris digested this information in silence for a moment He pulled at his short moustache.
“Why, of course!” he said at length. Jill, who knew him so well, could tell by the restored ring of cheeriness in his tone that he was himself again. He had dealt with this situation in his mind and was prepared to cope with it. The surmise was confirmed the next instant when he rose and stationed himself in front of the fire. Mr. Pilkington detested steam-heat and had scoured the city till he had found a studio apartment with an open fireplace. Uncle Chris spread his legs and expanded his chest. “Of course,” he said. “I remember now that you told me in your letter that you were thinking of going on the stage. My niece,” explained Uncle Chris to the attentive Mr. Pilkington, “came over from England on a later boat. I was not expecting her for some weeks. Hence my surprise at meeting her here. Of course. You told me that you intended to go on the stage, and I strongly recommended you to begin at the bottom of the ladder and learn the ground-work thoroughly before you attempted higher flights.”
“Oh, that was it?” said Mr. Pilkington. He had been wondering.
“There is no finer training,” resumed Uncle Chris, completely at his ease once more, “than the chorus. How many of the best-known actresses in America began in that way! Dozens.
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