THE COMING OF BILL ***
Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
The Coming of Bill
by P. G. Wodehouse
1920
CONTENTS
BOOK I
Chapter
I. A PAWN OF FATE
II. RUTH STATES HER INTENTION
III. THE MATES MEET
IV. TROUBLED WATERS
V. WHEREIN OPPOSITES AGREE
VI. BREAKING THE NEWS
VII. SUFFICIENT UNTO THEMSELVES
VIII. SUSPENSE
IX. THE WHITE HOPE IS TURNED DOWN
X. AN INTERLUDE OF PEACE
XI. STUNG TO ACTION
XII. A CLIMAX
BOOK II
Chapter
I. EMPTY-HANDED
II. AN UNKNOWN PATH
III. THE MISADVENTURE OF STEVE
IV. THE WIDENING GAP
V. THE REAL THING
VI. THE OUTCASTS
VII. CUTTING THE TANGLED KNOT
VIII. STEVE TO THE RESCUE
IX. AT ONE IN THE MORNING
X. ACCEPTING THE GIFTS OF THE GODS
XI. MR. PENWAY ON THE GRILL
XII. DOLLS WITH SOULS
XIII. PASTURES NEW
XIV. THE SIXTY-FIRST STREET CYCLONE
XV. MRS. PORTER'S WATERLOO
XVI. THE WHITE-HOPE LINK
BOOK ONE
Chapter I
A Pawn of Fate
Mrs. Lora Delane Porter dismissed the hireling who had brought her automobile around from the garage and seated herself at the wheel. It was her habit to refresh her mind and improve her health by a daily drive between the hours of two and four in the afternoon.
The world knows little of its greatest women, and it is possible that Mrs. Porter's name is not familiar to you. If this is the case, I am pained, but not surprised. It happens only too often that the uplifter of the public mind is baulked by a disinclination on the part of the public mind to meet him or her half-way. The uplifter does his share. He produces the uplifting book. But the public, instead of standing still to be uplifted, wanders off to browse on coloured supplements and magazine stories.
If you are ignorant of Lora Delane Porter's books that is your affair. Perhaps you are more to be pitied than censured. Nature probably gave you the wrong shape of forehead. Mrs. Porter herself would have put it down to some atavistic tendency or pre-natal influence. She put most things down to that. She blamed nearly all the defects of the modern world, from weak intellects to in-growing toe-nails, on long-dead ladies and gentlemen who, safe in the family vault, imagined that they had established their alibi. She subpoenaed grandfathers and even great-grandfathers to give evidence to show that the reason Twentieth-Century Willie squinted or had to spend his winters in Arizona was their own shocking health 'way back in the days beyond recall.
