Collection 2: "The Mixer" by P.G. Wodehouse

I was born, as I say, in a public-house in the East End, and however lacking a public-house may be in refinement and the true culture, it certainly provides plenty of excitement.

Before I was six weeks old, I had upset three policemen by getting between their legs when they came round to the sidedoor, thinking they had heard suspicious noises; and I can still recall the interesting sensation of being chased seventeen times round the yard with a broom-handle after a well-planned and completely successful raid on the larder.

This may be due to a gipsy strain in my ancestry—one of my uncles traveled with a circus—or it may be the Artistic Temperament, acquired from a grandfather who, before dying of a surfeit of paste in the property-room of the Bristol Coliseum, which he was visiting in the course of a professional tour, had an established reputation on the music-hall stage as one of Professor Pond’s Performing Poodles.

This may be due to a gipsy strain in my ancestry—one of my uncles traveled with a circus—or it may be the Artistic Temperament, acquired from a grandfather who, before dying of a surfeit of paste in the property-room of the Bristol Coliseum, which he was visiting in the course of a professional tour, had an established reputation on the music-hall stage as one of Professor Pond’s Performing Poodles.

She was no Gladys Cooper herself, but she never hesitated to criticize my appearance.

Mother always said, “A dog without influence or private means, if he is to make his way in the world, must have either good looks or amiability.”

“Why, he’s took quite a fancy to you already,” said Master.

The man didn’t say a word. He seemed to be brooding on something. He was one of those silent men.

“He’s more like a son to me than a dog,” said Master, sort of wistful.

I was going on to tell him a lot more about Fred, who had always been one of my warmest friends, when he suddenly got hold of a stick and walloped me with it.

It was the longest speech I had ever heard the man make, and it seemed to impress Bill. He was quite humble.

I have a good, deep voice, due to a hound strain in my pedigree, and at the public-house, when there was a full moon, I have often had people leaning out of the windows and saying things all down the street.

I couldn’t possibly have mistaken what Mother had said to me. She said it too often for that. Bark! Bark! Bark! It was the main plank of her whole system of education.

“Well?” he said, not very cordially.

“What do you want for this one?”
“Five shillings.”

You may think it strange that I should pine for the man, after all the wallopings he had given me, and it is odd, when you come to think of it.

I found a shoe and an old clothes-brush in one of the rooms, but could eat nothing. I just sat and moped.

I quite appreciated that, but I couldn’t help feeling that the man carried shyness to a point where it became morbid. And he didn’t give himself a chance to cure himself of it.

At first he was quite peevish.
“What’s the idea,” he said, “coming and spoiling a man’s beauty-sleep? Get out.”

Mother’s was in some ways a narrow outlook, but she had a great fund of sterling common sense.