Joy in the Morning by P. G. Wodehouse Read Free Book Online

twenty-one or forty-one or something. So if Uncle Percy really had an anti-Boko complex, he was in a position to bung a spanner into the works with no uncertain hand.
    I couldn’t get it.
    ‘But why? The man must be cuckoo. Boko is one of our most eligible young bachelors. He makes pots of money with his pen. You see his stuff everywhere. That play he had on last year was a substantial hit. And they were saying at the Drones the other day that he’s had an offer to go to Hollywood. Has he?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, then.’
    ‘Oh, I know all that. But what you’re overlooking is the fact that Uncle Percy is the sort of man who is suspicious of writers. He doesn’t believe in their solvency. He’s been in business all his life, and he can’t imagine anybody having any real money except a business man.’
    ‘But he must know Boko’s dashed near being a celebrity. He’s had his photograph in the Tatler .’
    ‘Yes, but Uncle Percy has the idea that an author’s success is here to-day and gone to-morrow. Boko may be doing all right now, but he feels that his earning capacity may go phut at any moment. I suppose he pictures himself having to draw him out of the bread line a year or two from now and support him and me and half a dozen little Boko’s for the rest of our lives. And then, of course, he was prejudiced against the poor darling from the start.’
    ‘Because of those trousers?’
    ‘They may have helped, perhaps.’
    ‘The man’s an ass. Boko’s a writer. He must know that writers are allowed a wide latitude. Besides, though I wouldn’t care to have Jeeves hear me say so, trousers aren’t everything.’
    ‘But the real reason was that he thought Boko was a butterfly.’
    I couldn’t follow her. She had me fogged. Anything less like a butterfly than good old Boko I’ve never set eyes on.
    ‘A butterfly?’
    ‘Yes. Flitting from flower to flower and sipping.’
    And he doesn’t like butterflies?’
    ‘Not when they flit and sip.’
    ‘What on earth has put the extraordinary idea into his head that Boko’s a flitting sipper?’
    ‘Well, you see, when he arrived in Steeple Bumpleigh, he was engaged to Florence.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘It was she who made him settle there. That was what I meant when I said that he couldn’t woo me, as you call it, with any real abandon at first. Being engaged to Florence sort of hampered him.’
    I was amazed. I nearly ran over a hen in my emotion.
    ‘Engaged to Florence? He never told me.’
    ‘You haven’t seen him for some time.’
    ‘No, that’s true. Well, I’ll be dashed. Did you know that I was once engaged to Florence?’
    ‘Of course.’
    And now Stilton is.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How absolutely extraordinary. It’s like one of those great race movements you read about.’
    ‘I suppose it’s her profile that does it. She has a lovely profile.’
    ‘Seen from the left.’
    ‘Seen from the right, too.’
    ‘Well, yes, in a measure, seen from the right, too. But would that account for it? I mean, in these busy days you can’t spend your whole time dodging round a girl, trying to see her sideways. I still maintain that this tendency on the part of the populace to get engaged to Florence is inexplicable. And that made Uncle Percy a bit frosty to Boko?’
    ‘Glacial.’
    ‘I see. One understands his point of view, of course. He frowns on this in and out running. Florence yesterday, you to-day. I suppose he thinks you are just another of the flowers that Boko is flitting in on for sipping purposes.’
    ‘I suppose so.’
    ‘And, in addition, he doubts his earning capacity.’
    ‘Yes.’
    I pondered. If Uncle Percy really thought that Boko was a butterfly that might go broke at any moment, Love’s young dream had unquestionably stubbed its toe. I mean, an oofy butterfly is bad enough. But it can at least pay the rent. I could well imagine a man of conservative views recoiling from one which might come asking for handouts for the rest of its life.
    A