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
Mr. Faucitt, when he was a small boy, used to live in a little village
in Gloucestershire, near a place called Cirencester--at least, it isn't:
it's called Cissister, which I bet you didn't know--and after forgetting
about it for fifty years, he has suddenly been bitten by the desire to
end his days there, surrounded by pigs and chickens. He took me down to
see the place the other day. Oh, Ginger, this English country! Why any
of you ever live in towns I can't think. Old, old grey stone houses with
yellow haystacks and lovely squelchy muddy lanes and great fat trees and
blue hills in the distance. The peace of it! If ever I sell my soul, I
shall insist on the devil giving me at least forty years in some English
country place in exchange.
Perhaps you will think from all this that I am too much occupied to
remember your existence. Just to show how interested I am in you, let
me tell you that, when I was reading the paper a week ago, I happened to
see the headline, “International Match.” It didn't seem to mean anything
at first, and then I suddenly recollected. This was the thing you had
once been a snip for! So I went down to a place called Twickenham, where
this football game was to be, to see the sort of thing you used to do
before I took charge of you and made you a respectable right-hand man.
There was an enormous crowd there, and I was nearly squeezed to death,
but I bore it for your sake. I found out that the English team were the
ones wearing white shirts, and that the ones in red were the Welsh. I
said to the man next to me, after he had finished yelling himself
black in the face, “Could you kindly inform me which is the English
scrum-half?” And just at that moment the players came quite near where
I was, and about a dozen assassins in red hurled themselves violently
on top of a meek-looking little fellow who had just fallen on the ball.
Ginger, you are well out of it! That was the scrum-half, and I gathered
that that sort of thing was a mere commonplace in his existence.
Stopping a rush, it is called, and he is expected to do it all the time.
The idea of you ever going in for such brutal sports! You thank your
stars that you are safe on your little stool in Fillmore's outer office,
and that, if anybody jumps on top of you now, you can call a cop. Do you
mean to say you really used to do these daredevil feats? You must have
hidden depths in you which I have never suspected.
As I was taking a ride down Piccadilly the other day on top of a bus, I
saw somebody walking along who seemed familiar. It was Mr. Carmyle. So
he's back in England again. He didn't see me, thank goodness. I don't
want to meet anybody just at present who reminds me of New York.
Thanks for telling me all the news, but please don't do it again. It
makes me remember, and I don't want to. It's this way, Ginger. Let me
write to you, because it really does relieve me, but don't answer my
letters. Do you mind? I'm sure you'll understand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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