Piccadilly Jim P. G. Wodehouse (great book club books .TXT) 📖

of spirit could possibly stand it? If ever there had been a time for being soothing and serious and pleading, it had been these last few minutes. And he talked like that!

Ten minutes passed. Jimmy sprang from his chair. He thought he had heard a footstep. He flung the door open. The passage was empty. He returned miserably to his chair. Of course she had not come back. Why should she?

A voice spoke.

“Jimmy!”

He leaped up again, and looked wildly round. Then he looked up. Ann was leaning over the gallery rail.

“Jimmy, I’ve been thinking it over. There’s something I want to ask you. Do you admit that you behaved abominably five years ago?”

“Yes!” shouted Jimmy.

“And that you’ve been behaving just as badly ever since?”

“Yes!”

“And that you are really a pretty awful sort of person?”

“Yes!”

“Then it’s all right. You deserve it!”

“Deserve it?”

“Deserve to marry a girl like me. I was worried about it, but now I see that it’s the only punishment bad enough for you!” She raised her arm.

“Here’s the dead past, Jimmy! Go and bury it! Good night!”

A small book fell squashily at Jimmy’s feet. He regarded it dully for a moment. Then, with a wild yell which penetrated even to Mr. Pett’s bedroom and woke that sufferer just as he was dropping off to sleep for the third time that night he bounded for the gallery stairs.

At the further end of the gallery a musical laugh sounded, and a door closed. Ann had gone.

Colophon

Piccadilly Jim
was published in 1917 by
P. G. Wodehouse.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Hui-chang Wang,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2012 by
Jim Tinsley and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
HathiTrust Digital Library.

The cover page is adapted from
Crossing the Brook,
a painting completed in 1815 by
J. M. W. Turner.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
July 27, 2020, 1:33 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/p-g-wodehouse/piccadilly-jim.

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Uncopyright

May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

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