The Girl on the Boat - Penn State University

of blacking up! You talk as though you expected me to
come to the altar smothered in burnt cork.”
“I shall always think of you as I saw you to-night.”
She looked at him sadly. “<strong>The</strong>re’s a bit of black still on
your left ear.”
He tried to take her hand. But she drew it away. He
fell back as if struck.
“So this is the end,” he muttered.
“Yes. It’s partly on your ear and partly on your cheek.”
“So this is the end,” he repeated.
“You had better go below and ask your steward to
give you some more butter.”
He laughed bitterly.
“Well, I might have expected it. I might have known
what would happen! Eustace warned me. Eustace was
right. He knows women—as I do now. Women! What
mighty ills have not been done by woman? Who was’t
betrayed the what’s-its-name? A woman! Who lost …
lost … who lost … who—er—and so on? A woman ….
So all is over! <strong>The</strong>re is nothing to be said but goodbye?”
P. G. Wodehouse
77
“No.”
“Good-bye, then, Miss Bennett!”
“Good-bye,” said Billie sadly. “I—I’m sorry.”
“Don’t mention it!”
“You do understand, don’t you?”
“You have made everything perfectly clear.”
“I hope—I hope you won’t be unhappy.”
“Unhappy!” Sam produced a strangled noise from
his larynx like the cry of a shrimp in pain. “Unhappy!
Ha! ha! I’m not unhappy! Whatever gave you that idea?
I’m smiling! I’m laughing! I feel I’ve had a merciful
escape. Oh, ha, ha!”
“It’s very unkind and rude of you to say that.”
“It reminds me of a moving picture I saw in New
York. It was called ‘Saved from the Scaffold.’”
“Oh!”
“I’m not unhappy! What have I got to be unhappy
about? What on earth does any man want to get married
for? I don’t. Give me my gay bachelor life! My
Uncle Charlie used to say ‘It’s better luck to get married
than it is to be kicked in the head by a mule.’ But