Meet Mr Mulliner by P.G. Wodehouse Page B

turned appealingly
from one to the other. “Vicar! Bish!”
    The vicar had moved away and was wiping
his eyes. The bishop fumbled for a pocket-handkerchief. There was a silence.
    “Sorry, Pieface,” said the bishop, in a
choking voice.
    “Shouldn’t have spoken as I did. Boko,”
mumbled the vicar.
    “If you want to know what I think,” said
the bishop, “you are right in attributing your indisposition at the house
supper to something wrong with the turkey. I recollect saying at the time that
the bird should never have been served in such a condition.”
    “And when you put that white mouse in the
French master’s desk,” said the vicar, “you performed one of the noblest
services to humanity of which there is any record. They ought to have made you
a bishop on the spot.”
    “Pieface!”
    “Boko!”
    The two men clasped hands.
    “Splendid!” said Augustine. “Everything
hotsy-totsy now?”
    “Quite, quite,” said the vicar.
    “As far as I am concerned, completely hotsy-totsy,”
said the bishop. He turned to his old friend solicitously. “You will continue
to wear all the orphreys you want— will you not, Pieface?”
    “No, no. I see now that I was wrong. From
now on. Boko, I abandon orphreys altogether.”
    “But, Pieface—”
    “It’s all right,” the vicar assured him. “I
can take them or leave them alone.”
    “Splendid fellow!” The bishop coughed to
hide his emotion, and there was another silence. “I think, perhaps,” he went
on, after a pause, “I should be leaving you now, my dear chap, and going in search
of my wife. She is with your daughter, I believe, somewhere in the village.”
    “They are coming up the drive now.”
    “Ah, yes, I see them. A charming girl,
your daughter.”
    Augustine clapped him on the shoulder.
    “Bish,” he exclaimed, “you said a
mouthful. She is the dearest, sweetest girl in the whole world. And I should be
glad, vicar, if you would give your consent to our immediate union. I love Jane
with a good man’s fervour, and I am happy to inform you that my sentiments are
returned. Assure us, therefore, of your approval, and I will go at once and
have the banns put up.”
    The vicar leaped as though he had been
stung. Like so many vicars, he had a poor opinion of curates, and he had always
regarded Augustine as rather below than above the general norm or level of the
despised class.
    “What!” he cried.
    “A most excellent idea,” said the bishop,
beaming. “A very happy notion, I call it.”
    “My daughter!” The vicar seemed dazed. “My
daughter marry a curate!”
    “You were a curate once yourself.
Pie-face.”
    “Yes, but not a curate like that.”
    “No!” said the bishop. “You were not. Nor
was I. Better for us both had we been. This young man, I would have you know,
is the most outstandingly excellent young man I have ever encountered. Are you
aware that scarcely an hour ago he saved me with the most consummate address
from a large shaggy dog with black spots and a kink in his tail? I was sorely
pressed, Pieface, when this young man came up and, with a readiness of resource
and an accuracy of aim which it would be impossible to overpraise, got that dog
in the short ribs with a rock and sent him flying.”
    The vicar seemed to be struggling with
some powerful emotion. His eyes had widened.
    “A dog with black spots?”
    “Very black spots. But no blacker, I fear,
than the heart they hid.”
    “And he really plugged him in the short
ribs?”
    “As far as I could see, squarely in the
short ribs.”
    The vicar held out his hand.
    “Mulliner,” he said, “I was not aware of
this. In the light of the facts which have just been drawn to my attention, I
have no hesitation in saying that my objections are removed. I have had it in
for that dog since the second Sunday before Septuagesima, when he pinned me by
the ankle as I paced beside the river composing a sermon on Certain Alarming
Manifestations of the So-called Modern Spirit. Take