The Coming of Bill

The Coming of Bill

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Coming of Bill, by P. G. Wodehouse #16 in our series by P. G. Wodehouse
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
Title: The Coming of Bill
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6880] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 6, 2003] [Date last updated: August 15, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 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.
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 rare moods of discouragement, was her niece, Ruth Bannister, daughter of John Bannister, the millionaire. It was not so long ago, she reflected with pride, that she had induced Ruth to refuse to marry Basil Milbank--a considerable feat, he being a young man of remarkable personal attractions and a great match in every way. Mrs. Porter's objection to him was that his