Keen to reassure my good fellows that everything was proceeding *exactly* according to plan, I bade him desist with his tomfoolery, and shifted his patch so it no longer obscured his good eye.
“What miracle is this?!” he begged. “For five years have I seen naught, but now thou hast my sight restored!” He embraced me like a long-lost son, and told of how he had awoken one morning, blind as the proverbial. Ever the sage, he had attributed this novel handicap to the questionable moonshine he’d knocked back after a particularly hard night of dice and wenching.
With the benefit of hindsight, he now realised that said impediment was more likely due to his wayward valet, who on finding the opportunity for mischief had evidently seized it with both hands before scarpering toot-suite to the ale house.
With great fury and oaths he strode to the door and bellowed for his manservant. The rascal appeared directly and, without missing a beat, asked whether the admiral should care to have his breeches fetched before or after the imminent disciplinary hearing.
And so, gaze averted, we waited for the gentleman’s gentleman to confine the admiral’s gentleman to quarters more befitting the occasion.
Gentleman’s gentleman
Wally Wallace, The Plunderer of Penzance
Likes: electricity
Dislikes: icebergs
“What miracle is this?!” he begged. “For five years have I seen naught, but now thou hast my sight restored!” He embraced me like a long-lost son, and told of how he had awoken one morning, blind as the proverbial. Ever the sage, he had attributed this novel handicap to the questionable moonshine he’d knocked back after a particularly hard night of dice and wenching.
With the benefit of hindsight, he now realised that said impediment was more likely due to his wayward valet, who on finding the opportunity for mischief had evidently seized it with both hands before scarpering toot-suite to the ale house.
With great fury and oaths he strode to the door and bellowed for his manservant. The rascal appeared directly and, without missing a beat, asked whether the admiral should care to have his breeches fetched before or after the imminent disciplinary hearing.
And so, gaze averted, we waited for the gentleman’s gentleman to confine the admiral’s gentleman to quarters more befitting the occasion.
Gentleman’s gentleman
Wally Wallace, The Plunderer of Penzance
Likes: electricity
Dislikes: icebergs
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