Tales of St. Austin's

by P. G. Wodehouse

'What?' he said.

I obliged with a repetition of my remark.

'Likely bits? Oh, you mean for the Thucydides. I don't know. Mellish never sets the bits any decent ordinary individual would set. I should take my chance if I were you.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I'm going to read Pickwick. Thicksides doesn't come within a mile of it.'

I thought so too.

'But how about tomorrow?'

'Oh, I shan't be there,' he said, as if it were the most ordinary of statements.

'Not there! Why, have you been sacked?'

This really seemed the only possible explanation. Such an event would not have come as a surprise. It was always a matter for wonder to me why the authorities never sacked Bradshaw, or at the least requested him to leave. Possibly it was another case of the ass and the bundles of hay. They could not make up their minds which special misdemeanour of his to attack first.