Friday 9 January 2009

wodehouse vs us

I won't say how we get our protagonists together, because he does it like this:

The only girl in London who did not seem to be attached was a girl in brown who was coming along the sidewalk in a manner that suggested that she found Piccadilly a new and stimulating spectacle.
As far as George could see she was an extremely pretty girl, small and dainty, with a proud little tilt to her head and the jaunty walk that spoke of perfect health. She was, in fact, precisely the
sort of girl that George felt he could love with all the stored-up devotion of an old buffer of twenty-seven who had squandered none of his rich nature in foolish flirtations. He had just begun to weave a rose-tinted romance about their two selves, when a cold reaction set in. Even as he paused to watch the girl threading her way through the crowd, the east wind jabbed an icy finger down the back of his neck, and the chill of it sobered him. After all, he reflected bitterly, this girl was only alone because she was on her way somewhere to meet some confounded man. Besides there was no earthly chance of getting to know her. You can't rush up to pretty girls in the street and tell them you are lonely. At least, you can, but it doesn't get you anywhere except the police station.
...
The girl in brown was quite close now, and George was enabled to get a clearer glimpse of her. She more than fulfilled the promise she had given at a distance. Had she been constructed to his own specification, she would not have been more acceptable in George's sight. And now she was going out of his life for ever. With an overwhelming sense of pathos, for there is no pathos more bitter than that of parting from someone we have never met, George hailed a taxicab which crawled at the side of the road; and with all the refrains of all the sentimental song hits he had ever composed ringing in his ears, he got in and passed away.
'A rotten world,' he mused, as the cab, after proceeding a couple of yards, came to a standstill in a block of traffic. 'A dull, flat bore of a world, in which nothing ever happens or ever will happen. Even when you take a cab it just sticks and doesn't move.'
At this point the door of the cab opened, and the girl in brown jumped in.
'I'm so sorry,' she said breathlessly, 'but would you mind hiding me, please?'

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