The Adventures of SallyWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
General
The Adventures of Sally
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Humorous stories; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
Produced by Tim Barnett
THE ADVENTURES OF SALLY
By P. G. Wodehouse
CHAPTER I. SALLY GIVES A PARTY
1
Sally 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 male and female patrons of Mrs. Meecher's select
boarding-house (transient and residential) were themselves again.
At her end of the table the conversation had turned once more to the
great vital topic of Sally's legacy and what she ought to do with it.
The next best thing to having money of one's own, is to dictate the
spending of somebody else's, and Sally's guests were finding a good deal
of satisfaction in arranging a Budget for her. Rumour having put the
sum at their disposal at a high figure, their suggestions had certain
spaciousness.
“Let me tell you,” said Augustus Bartlett, briskly, “what I'd do, if
I were you.” Augustus Bartlett, who occupied an intensely subordinate
position in the firm of Kahn, Morris and Brown, the Wall Street brokers,
always affected a brisk, incisive style of speech, as befitted a man
in close touch with the great ones of Finance. “I'd sink a couple of
hundred thousand in some good, safe bond-issue--we've just put one out
which you would do well to consider--and play about with the rest. When
I say play about, I mean have a flutter in anything good that crops up.
Multiple Steel's worth looking at. They tell me it'll be up to a hundred
and fifty before next Saturday.”
Elsa Doland, the pretty girl with the big eyes who sat on Mr. Bartlett's
left, had other views.
“Buy a theatre, Sally, and put on good stuff.”
“And lose every bean you've got,” said a mild young man, with a deep
voice across the table. “If I had a few hundred thousand,” said the
mild young man, “I'd put every cent of it on Benny Whistler for the
heavyweight championship. I've private information that Battling Tuke
has been got at and means to lie down in the seventh...”
“Say, listen,” interrupted another voice, “lemme tell you what I'd do
with four hundred thousand...”
“If I had four hundred thousand,” said Elsa Doland, “I know what would
be the first thing I'd do.”
“What's that?” asked Sally.
“Pay my bill for last week, due this morning.”
Sally got up quickly, and flitting down the table, put her arm round her
friend's shoulder and whispered in her ear:
“Elsa darling, are you really broke? If you are, you know, I'll...”
Elsa Doland laughed.
“You're an angel, Sally. There's no one like you. You'd give your last
cent to anyone. Of course I'm not broke. I've just come back from the
road, and I've saved a fortune. I only said that to draw you.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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