The Coming of Bill

The Coming of Bill

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Wodehouse #16 in our series by P. G. Wodehouse
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Title: The Coming of Bill
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6880] [Yes, we are more than
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2003] [Date last updated: August 15, 2003]
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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.
Mrs. Porter's mind worked backward and forward. She had one eye on
the past, the other on the future. If she was strong on heredity, she was

stronger on the future of the race. Most of her published works dealt
with this subject. A careful perusal of them would have enabled the
rising generation to select its ideal wife or husband with perfect ease,
and, in the event of Heaven blessing the union, her little volume,
entitled "The Hygienic Care of the Baby," which was all about germs
and how to avoid them, would have insured the continuance of the
direct succession.
Unfortunately, the rising generation did not seem disposed to a careful
perusal of anything except the baseball scores and the beauty hints in
the Sunday papers, and Mrs. Porter's public was small. In fact, her only
real disciple, as she sometimes told herself in her