Hot Water

Hot Water by Sir P G Wodehouse Page A

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Authors: Sir P G Wodehouse
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ordinary man becomes mere playful eccentricity in a football hero.
    'Do you remember when you sort of wiggled sideways and the fellow just missed you by inches?'
    'I got the breaks,' said Packy modestly.
    'Gosh, I was hoarse for weeks.'
    Her voice and manner were now all amiability. In Blair Eggleston's, on the other hand, the old animosity still lingered.
    'I cannot see,' he said stiffly, 'how Mr Franklyn's ability to run and – ah – wiggle sideways affects the matter under discussion.'
    'No,' agreed Jane, reminded of her wrongs. 'Get back to the point. What were you saying about being able to help us?'
    'I can give Eggleston a few tips which will improve his technique. I can see just how he is planning to go about this business of tackling your father. Left to himself he would creep in and grovel on the floor. All wrong. This asking-father's-consent stuff is pie, if you handle it right. What you need is front. Bright self-confidence.'
    'It's quite true, Blair.'
    'Look at me. Faced by an Earl. What did I do?'
    'What Earl?'
    'Never mind what Earl. It was the Earl of Stableford, if you must know, and a tough baby he is, as anyone in Dorsetshire will tell you. Well, what happened? I just charged in, slapped him on the shoulder, and said: "Hello there, Earl! I'm going to marry your daughter, so let us have no back-talk." Just like that.'
    Blair Eggleston shuddered strongly.
    'And it worked?' said Jane.
    'Like a charm. Fellow's eaten out of my hand ever since.'
    'I can't do it,' said Blair Eggleston.
    'Of course you can.'
    'Of course you can,' said Packy. 'Take a drink first. Take two drinks. Three.'
    'Yes, and have Father sniff it! Haven't you ever heard he's a rabid Dry? If he thought Blair had been drinking, he would have him bumped off and dropped in the Thames by moonlight.'
    Packy mused awhile.
    'I've got it. Go and tell him you're a friend of Miss Opal's and say she pointed me out to you and told you I had mussed up his hair, and you were so mad you sailed right in and knocked me for a loop.'
    'That would make him grateful,' explained Jane.
    'He would be all over you,' said Packy. 'Then, when he's fawning on you and saying "My hero!" you slip him the big news.'
    'H'm!' said Blair Eggleston.
    'Or another method. Pretend to be an influential member of the Temperance Society of England and touch him for a ten dollar subscription. Then give him the works. By this means, whatever happens, you will be ten bucks up, at any rate.'
    'Well, anyway,' said Jane, 'you'd better get action. It's no good standing here doing nothing. Maybe Father will have gone off the boil by now.'
    'Sure to,' said Packy.
    'Go on up, Blair, and get it over.'
    'And if you fail,' said Packy, 'what of it? It will just be one more grave among the hills.'
5
    The departure of Blair Eggleston seemed to remove a certain fevered something from the atmosphere. The conversation up to this point had been conducted in a tensely perpendicular attitude on the part of all concerned. Jane Opal now allowed herself to be led to an alcove where a couple of arm-chairs held out a promise of repose and comfort. She sank into one of these and looked at Packy interestedly.
    'How funny us meeting like this,' she said.
    'A scream,' agreed Packy.
    'I mean, you were the idol of my girlish dreams when I was a kid.'
    'I was in my prime then. A flick of the finger, a broken heart.'
    'I used to go to football games and worship you. You certainly could teach those stevedores to take a joke.'
    Rightly interpreting her to mean by this term the gentlemanly students of Harvard, Princeton, Notre Dame, and other intellectual centres, Packy simpered coyly.
    'Your taste in idols seems to have changed,' he said. 'You appear to like them smaller and brainier nowadays. Incidentally, I wonder how Eggleston is getting on. About now, I should imagine, he is leaning on the bell and your father is shouting "Come on! Come on! Come on!" in that curious way of his that always reminds me of a gorilla

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