Under normal circumstances lions could have taken his correspondence course, and had [Stinker] encountered Spode on the football field he would have had no hesitation in springing at his neck and twisting it into a lover's knot. The trouble was that he was a curate, and the brass hats of the Church look askance at curates who swat parishioners. Sock your flock, and you're sunk. So now he shrank from intervening, and when he did intervene, it was merely with the soft word that's supposed to turn away wrath.
"I say, you know, what?" he said.
I could have told him he was approaching the thing from the wrong angle. When a gorilla like Spode is letting his angry passions rise, there is little or no percentage in the mild remonstrance. Seeming to realize this, he advanced to where the blighter was now, or so it appeared, trying to stangle Gussie and laid a hand on his shoulder. Then, seeing that this, too, achieved no results, he pulled. There was a rending sound, and the clutching hand relaxed its grip.
I don't know if you've ever tried detaching a snow leopard of the Himalayas from its prey---probably not, as most people don't find themselves out that way much---but if you did, you would feel fairly safe in budgeting for a show of annoyance on the animal's part. It was the same with Spode. Incensed at what I suppose seemed to him this unwarrantable interference with his aims and objects, he hit Stinker on the nose, and all the doubts that had been bothering that man of God vanished in a flash.
I should imagine that if there's one thing that makes a fellow forget that he's in holy orders, it's a crisp punch on the beezer. A moment before, Stinker had been all concern about the disapproval of his superiors in the cloth, but now, as I read his mind, he was saying to himself, "To hell with my superiors in the cloth," or however a curate would put it; "let them eat cake."
It was a superb spectacle while it lasted, and I was able to understand what people meant when they spoke of the Church Militant. A good deal to my regret, it did not last long. Spode was full of the will to win, but Stinker had the science. It was not for nothing that he had added a boxing blue to his football blue when at the old Alma Mater. There was a brief mix-up, and the next thing one observed was Spode on the ground, looking like the corpse which had been in the water several days. His left eye was swelling visibly, and a referee could have counted a hundred over him without eliciting a response.
---from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse.
Ah, the muster of the vultures. Ha!
Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Saturday, February 04, 2006 at 12:30 PM
The muster of the vultures, I say again.
Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Saturday, February 04, 2006 at 12:31 PM
I had been waiting for some Wodehouse from you! Hooray!
Posted by: grishaxxx | Saturday, February 04, 2006 at 01:07 PM