Mulliner Nights by P.G. Wodehouse Page B

heavy on his
hands. For a couple of days he managed to endure the monotony, occupying
himself in carving the girl’s initials on the immemorial elms with a heart
round them. But on the third morning, having broken his Boy Scout pocket-knife,
he was at something of a loose end. And to fill in the time he started on a
moody stroll through the messuages and pleasances, feeling a good deal cast
down.
    After pacing
hither and thither for a while, thinking of the girl Clarice, he came to a
series of hothouses. And, it being extremely cold, with an east wind that went
through his plus-fours like a javelin, he thought it would make an agreeable
change if he were to go inside where it was warm and smoke two or perhaps three
cigarettes.
    And, scarcely
had he got past the door, when he found he was almost entirely surrounded by strawberries.
There they were, scores of them, all hot and juicy.
    For a moment,
he tells me, Mervyn had a sort of idea that a miracle had occurred. He seemed
to remember a similar thing having happened to the Israelites in the desert —
that time, he reminded me, when they were all saying to each other how well a
spot of manna would go down and what a dashed shame it was they hadn’t any
manna and that was the slipshod way the commissariat department ran things and
they wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t a case of graft in high places, and
then suddenly out of a blue sky all the manna they could do with and enough
over for breakfast next day.
    Well, to be
brief, that was the view which Mervyn took of the matter in the first flush of
his astonishment.
    Then he remembered
that his uncle always opened the castle for the Christmas festivities, and
these strawberries were, no doubt, intended for Exhibit A at some forthcoming
rout or merry-making.
    Well, after
that, of course, everything was simple. A child would have known what to do.
Hastening back to the house, Mervyn returned with a cardboard box and, keeping
a keen eye out for the head-gardener, hurried in, selected about two dozen of
the finest specimens, placed them in the box, ran back to the house again,
reached for the railway guide, found that there was a train leaving for London
in an hour, changed into town clothes, seized his top hat, borrowed the
stable-boy’s bicycle, pedalled to the station, and about four hours later was
mounting the front-door steps of Clarice Mallaby’s house in Eaton Square with
the box tucked under his arm.
    No, that is
wrong. The box was not actually tucked under his arm, because he had left it in
the train. Except for that, he had carried the thing through without a hitch.
     
    Sturdy common
sense is always a quality of the Mulliners, even of the less mentally gifted of
the family. It was obvious to Mervyn that no useful end was to be gained by
ringing the bell and rushing into the girl’s presence, shouting ‘See what I’ve
brought you!’
    On the other
hand, what to do? He was feeling somewhat unequal to the swirl of events.
    Once, he tells
me, some years ago, he got involved in some amateur theatricals, to play the
role of a butler: and his part consisted of the following lines and business:
     
    (Enter JORKINS , carrying telegram on salver.)
    JORKINS : A telegram, m’lady.
    (Exit JORKINS )
     
     
    and on the night in he came, full
of confidence, and, having said:
    A telegram, m’lady,’
extended an empty salver towards the heroine, who, having been expecting on the
strength of the telegram to clutch at her heart and say: ‘My God!’ and tear
open the envelope and crush it in nervous fingers and fall over in a swoon, was
considerably taken aback, not to say perturbed.
    He felt now as
he had felt then.
    Still,, he had
enough sense left to see the way out. After a couple of turns up and down the
south side of Eaton Square, he came — rather shrewdly, I must confess — to the
conclusion that the only person who could help him in this emergency was Oofy
Prosser.
    The way Mervyn
sketched out the scenario in the