Free Young Men in Spats by P. G. Wodehouse Page A

easier. And it was at this point that the kid, having no longer anything to occupy herself with, reached out and picked up the book.
    â€˜Hullo! Are you reading Tennyson?’
    â€˜I was before we started, and I shall doubtless dip into him again later on. You will generally find me having a pop at the bard under advisement when I get a spare five minutes.’
    â€˜You don’t mean to say you like him?’
    â€˜Of course I do. Who doesn’t?’
    â€˜I don’t. April’s been making me read him, and I think he’s soppy.’
    â€˜He is not soppy at all. Dashed beautiful.’
    â€˜But don’t you think his girls are awful blisters?’
    Apart from his old crony, the Lady of Shalott, Freddie had not yet made the acquaintance of any of the women in Tennyson’s poems, but he felt very strongly that if they were good enough for April Carroway they were good enough for a green-eyed child with freckles all over her nose, and he said as much, rather severely.
    â€˜Tennyson’s heroines,’ said Freddie, ‘are jolly fine specimens of pure, sweet womanhood, so get that into your nut, you soulless kid. If you behaved like a Tennyson heroine, you would be doing well.’
    â€˜Which of them?’
    â€˜Any of them. Pick ’em where you like. You can’t go wrong. How much further to this Ferry place?’
    â€˜It’s round the next bend.’
    It was naturally with something of a pang that Freddie tied the boat up at their destination. Not only was this Griggs’s Ferry a lovely spot, it was in addition completely deserted. There was a small house through the trees, but it showed no signs of occupancy. The only living thing for miles around appeared to be an elderly horse which was taking a snack on the river bank. In other words, if only April had been here and the kid hadn’t, they wouldhave been alone together with no human eye to intrude upon their sacred solitude. They could have read Tennyson to each other till they were blue in the face, and not a squawk from a soul.
    A saddening thought, of course. Still, as the row had given him a nice appetite, he soon dismissed these wistful yearnings and started unpacking the luncheon basket. And at the end of about twenty minutes, during which period nothing had broken the stillness but the sound of champing jaws, he felt that it would not be amiss to chat with his little guest.
    â€˜Had enough?’ he asked.
    â€˜No,’ said the kid. ‘But there isn’t any more.’
    â€˜You seem to tuck away your food all right.’
    â€˜The girls at school used to call me Teresa the Tapeworm,’ said the kid with a touch of pride.
    It suddenly struck Freddie as a little odd that with July only half over this child should be at large. The summer holidays, as he remembered it, always used to start round about the first of August.
    â€˜Why aren’t you at school now?’
    â€˜I was bunked last month.’
    â€˜Really?’ said Freddie, interested. ‘They gave you the push, did they? What for?’
    â€˜Shooting pigs.’
    â€˜Shooting pigs?’
    â€˜With a bow and arrow. One pig, that is to say. Percival. He belonged to Miss Maitland, the headmistress. Do you ever pretend to be people in books?’
    â€˜Never. And don’t stray from the point at issue. I want to get to the bottom of this thing about the pig.’
    â€˜I’m not straying from the point at issue. I was playing William Tell.’
    â€˜The old apple-knocker, you mean?’
    â€˜The man who shot an apple off his son’s head. I tried to get one of the girls to put the apple on her head, but she wouldn’t, so I went down to the pigsty and put it on Percival’s. And the silly goop shook it off and started to eat it just as I was shooting, which spoiled my aim and I got him on the left ear. He was rather vexed about it. So was Miss Maitland. Especially as I was supposed to be in