The Coming of Bill by P. G. Wodehouse 1920 Contents BOOK I CHAPTER I. A Pawn of Fate CHAPTER II. Ruth States Her Intentions CHAPTER III. The Mates Meet CHAPTER IV. Troubled Waters CHAPTER V. Wherein Opposites Agree CHAPTER VI. Breaking the News CHAPTER VII. Sufficient Unto Themselves CHAPTER VIII. Suspense CHAPTER IX. The White Hope is Turned Down CHAPTER X. An Interlude of Peace CHAPTER XI. Stung to Action CHAPTER XII. A Climax BOOK II CHAPTER I. Empty-handed CHAPTER II. An Unknown Path CHAPTER III. The Misadventure of Steve CHAPTER IV. The Widening Gap CHAPTER V. The Real Thing CHAPTER VI. The Outcasts CHAPTER VII. Cutting the Tangled Knot CHAPTER VIII. Steve to the Rescue CHAPTER IX. At One in the Morning CHAPTER X. Accepting the Gifts of the Gods CHAPTER XI. Mr. Penway on the Grill CHAPTER XII. Dolls with Souls CHAPTER XIII. Pastures New CHAPTER XIV. The Sixty-First Street Cyclone CHAPTER XV. Mrs. Porter’s Waterloo CHAPTER XVI. The White-Hope Link BOOK ONE Chapter I. A Pawn of Fate Mrs. Lora Delane Porter dismissed the hireling who had brought her automobile around from the garage and seated herself at the wheel. It was her habit to refresh her mind and improve her health by a daily drive between the hours of two and four in the afternoon. The world knows little of its greatest women, and it is possible that Mrs. Porter’s name is not familiar to you. If this is the case, I am pained, but not surprised. It happens only too often that the uplifter of the public mind is baulked by a disinclination on the part of the public mind to meet him or her half-way. The uplifter does his share. He produces the uplifting book. But the public, instead of standing still to be uplifted, wanders off to browse on coloured supplements and magazine stories. If you are ignorant of Lora Delane Porter’s books that is your affair. Perhaps you are more to be pitied than censured. Nature probably gave you the wrong shape of forehead. Mrs. Porter herself would have put it down to some atavistic tendency or pre-natal influence. She put most things down to that. She blamed nearly all the defects of the modern world, from weak intellects to in-growing toe-nails, on long-dead ladies and gentlemen who, safe in the family vault, imagined that they had established their alibi. She subpoenaed grandfathers and even great-grandfathers to give evidence to show that the reason Twentieth-Century Willie squinted or had to spend his winters in Arizona was their own shocking health way back in the days beyond recall.