29 Three Men and a Maid

by Unknown

  “Anyway, I hate you!” she said, giving the conversation another turn.

  “Why? In the name of goodness, why?”

  “How dared you make a fool of me in your father’s office that morning?”

  “It was a sudden inspiration. I had to do something to make you think well of me, and I thought it might meet the case if I saved you from a lunatic with a pistol. It wasn’t my fault that you found out.”

  “I shall never forgive you!”

  “Why not Cornwall?” said Sam. “The Riviera of England! Let’s go to Cornwall. I beg your pardon. What were you saying?”

  “I said I should never forgive you and I won’t.”

  “Well, I hope you’re fond of motoring,” said Sam, “because we’re going on till you do.”

  “Very well! Go on, then!”

  “I intend to. Of course, it’s all right now while it’s dark. But have you considered what is going to happen when the sun gets up? We shall have a sort of triumphal procession. How the small boys will laugh when they see a man in a helmet go by in a car! I shan’t notice them myself because it’s a little difficult to notice anything from inside this thing, but I’m afraid it will be rather unpleasant for you … I know what we’ll do. We’ll go to London and drive up and down Piccadilly! That will be fun!”

  There was a long silence.

  “Is my helmet on straight?” said Sam.

  Billie made no reply. She was looking before her down the hedge-bordered road. Always a girl of sudden impulse, she had just made a curious discovery, to wit, that she was enjoying herself. There was something so novel and exhilarating about this midnight ride that imperceptibly her dismay and resentment had ebbed away. She found herself struggling with a desire to laugh.

  “Lochinvar!” said Sam suddenly. “That’s the name of the chap I’ve been trying to think of! Did you ever read about Lochinvar? ‘Young Lochinvar’ the poet calls him rather familiarly. He did just what I’m doing now, and everybody thought very highly of him. I suppose in those days a helmet was just an ordinary part of what the well-dressed man should wear. Odd how fashions change!”

  Till now dignity and wrath combined had kept Billie from making any enquiries into a matter which had excited in her a quite painful curiosity. In her new mood she resisted the impulse no longer.

  “Why are you wearing that thing?”

  “I told you. Purely and simply because I can’t get it off. You don’t suppose I’m trying to set a new style in gents’ headwear, do you?”

  “But why did you ever put it on?”

  “Well, it was this way. After I came out of the cupboard in the drawing-room….”

  “What!”

  “Didn’t I tell you about that? Oh yes, I was sitting in the cupboard in the drawing-room from dinner-time onwards. After that I came out and started cannoning about among Aunt Adeline’s china, so I thought I’d better switch the light on. Unfortunately I switched on some sort of musical instrument instead. And then somebody started shooting. So, what with one thing and another, I thought it would be best to hide somewhere. I hid in one of the suits of armour in the hall.”

  “Were you inside there all the time we were…?”

  “Yes. I say, that was funny about Bream, wasn’t it? Getting under the bed, I mean.”

  “Don’t let’s talk about Bream.”

  “That’s the right spirit! I like to see it! All right, we won’t. Let’s get back to the main issue. Will you marry me?”

  “But why did you come to the house at all?”

  “To see you.”

  “To see me! At that time of night?”

  “Well, perhaps not actually to see you.” Sam was a little perplexed for a moment. Something told him that it would be injudicious to reveal his true motive and thereby risk disturbing the harmony which he felt had begun to exist between them. “To be near you! To be in the same house with you!” he went on vehemently feeling that he had struck the right note. “You don’t know the anguish I went through after I read that letter of yours. I was mad! I was … well, to return to the point, will you marry me?”

  Billie sat looking straight before her. The car, now on the main road, moved smoothly on.

  “Will you marry me?”

  Billie rested her hand on her chin and searched the darkness with thoughtful eyes.

  “Will you marry me?”

  The car raced on.

  “Will you marry me?” said Sam. “Will you marry me? Will you marry me?”

  “Oh, don’t talk like a parrot,” cried Billie. “It reminds me of Bream.”

  “But will you?”

  “Yes,” said Billie.

  Sam brought the car to a standstill with a jerk, probably very bad for the tires.

  “Did you say ‘yes’?”

  “Yes!”

  “Darling!” said Sam, leaning towards her, “Oh, curse this helmet!”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I rather wanted to kiss you and it hampers me,”

  “Let me try and get it off. Bend down!”

  “Ouch!” said Sam.

  “It’s coming. There! How helpless men are!”

  “We need a woman’s tender care,” said Sam depositing the helmet on the floor of the car, and rubbing his smarting ears. “Billie!”

  “Sam!”

  “You angel!”

  “You’re rather a darling after all,” said Billie. “But you want keeping in order,” she added severely.

  “You will do that when we’re married. When we’re married!” he repeated luxuriously. “How splendid it sounds!”

  “The only trouble is,” said Billie, “father won’t hear of it.”

  “No, he won’t. Not till it is all over,” said Sam.

  He started the car again.

  “What are you going to do?” said Billie. “Where are you going?”

  “To London,” said Sam. “It may be news to you but the old lawyer like myself knows that, by going to Doctors’ Commons or the Court of Arches or somewhere or by routing the Archbishop of Canterbury out of bed or something, you can get a special license and be married almost before you know where you are. My scheme—roughly—is to dig this special license out of whoever keeps such things, have a bit of breakfast, and then get married at our leisure before lunch at a registrar’s.”

  “Oh, not a registrar’s!” said Billie.

  “No?”

  “I should hate a registrar’s.”

  “Very well, angel. Just as you say. We’ll go to a church. There are millions of churches in London. I’ve seen them all over the place.” He mused for a moment. “Yes, you’re quite right,” he said. “A church is the thing. It’ll please Webster.”

  “Webster?”

  “Yes, he’s rather keen on the church bells never having rung out so blithe a peal before. And we must consider Webster’s feelings. After all, he brought us together.”

  “Webster? How?”

  “Oh, I’ll tell you all about that some other time,” said Sam. “Just for the moment I want to sit quite still and think. Are you comfortable? Fine! Then off we go.”

  The birds in the trees fringing the road stirred and twittered grumpily as the noise of the engine disturbed their slumbers. But, if they had known it, they were in luck. At any rate, the worst had not befallen them, for Sam was too happy to sing.

  THE END

  End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Three Men and a Maid, by P. G. Wodehouse

  *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE MEN AND A MAID ***

  This file should be named thrmm10.txt or thrmm10.zip Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, thrmm11.txt VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, thrmm10a.txt

  Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

  Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not keep eBooks
in compliance with any particular paper edition.

  We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, even years after the official publication date.

  Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so.

  Most people start at our Web sites at: http://gutenberg.net or http://promo.net/pg

  These Web sites include award-winning information about Project Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).

  Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

  http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03

  Or etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90p>

  Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, as it appears in our Newsletters.

  Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

  We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 If they reach just 1-2% of the world’s population then the total will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year’s end.

  The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

  Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):

  eBooks Year Month

  1 1971 July 10 1991 January 100 1994 January 1000 1997 August 1500 1998 October 2000 1999 December 2500 2000 December 3000 2001 November 4000 2001 October/November 6000 2002 December* 9000 2003 November* 10000 2004 January*

  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

  We need your donations more than ever!

  As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

  We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones that have responded.

  As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.

  In answer to various questions we have received on this:

  We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, just ask.

  While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to donate.

  International donations are accepted, but we don’t know ANYTHING about how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made deductible, and don’t have the staff to handle it even if there are ways.

  Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

  Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation PMB 113 1739 University Ave. Oxford, MS 38655-4109

  Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment method other than by check or money order.

  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.

  We need your donations more than ever!

  You can get up to date donation information online at:

  http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html

  ***

  If you can’t reach Project Gutenberg, you can always email directly to:

  Michael S. Hart

  Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.

  We would prefer to send you information by email.

  **The Legal Small Print**

  (Three Pages)

  ***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** Why is this “Small Print!” statement here? You know: lawyers. They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from someone other than us, and even if what’s wrong is not our fault. So, among other things, this “Small Print!” statement disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.

  BEFORE! YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept this “Small Print!” statement. If you do not, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

  ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, is a “public domain” work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association (the “Project”). Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook under the “PROJECT GUTENBERG” trademark.

  Please do not use the “PROJECT GUTENBERG” trademark to market any commercial products without permission.

  To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain works. Despite these efforts, the Project’s eBooks and any medium they may be on may contain “Defects”. Among other things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

  LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES But for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described below, [1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

  If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that time to the person you received it from. If you received it on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement copy. If you received it electronically, such person may choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to receive it electronically.

  THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU “AS-IS”. NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

  Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you may have other legal rights.

  INDEMNITY You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, [2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, or [3] any Defect.

  DISTRIBUTION UNDER “PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm” You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this “Small Print!” and all other references to Project Gutenberg, or:

  [1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the eBook or this “small print!” statement. You may however, if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, including any form resulting from conversion by word processing or hypertext software, but only so long as EITHER: