A Few Quick Ones Read Free

carrots, my boy. Apart from acting directly on the fatty corpuscles, they are rich in Vitamins A, B, C, D, E, G and K."
     
    Mr. Prosser went off to have a massage after he had digested his lunch, and Oofy, as he drove back to London, was still shuddering at the recollection of what the other had said about the effeurage, stroking, friction, kneading, petrissage, tapotement and vibration which massage at Hollrock Manor involved. He was appalled. With that sort of thing going on in conjunction with the potassium broth and dandelion coffee, it was plain that the man would come to the post a mere shadow. Lord Blicester, if in anything like mid-season form, would make rings round him.
    Many young men in such a situation would have thrown in the towel and admitted defeat, but Oofy kept his head.
    "I must be calm, calm," he was saying to himself as he went to the Drones next day, and it was with outward calmness that he approached Freddie Widgeon, who was having a ham sandwich at the bar.
    "Gosh, Freddie," he said, after they had pip-pipped, "I'm glad I ran into you. Do you notice that I am quivering like an aspen?"
    "No," said Freddie. "Are you quivering like an aspen?"
    "You bet I'm quivering like an aspen."
    "Why are you quivering like an aspen?"
    "Well, wouldn't any man of good will be quivering like an aspen if he had had the narrowest of escapes from letting an old friend down? Here are the facts in a nutshell. With the best of motives, if you remember, I persuaded you to exchange your Lord Blicester ticket for my Uncle Horace. You recall that?"
    "Oh, rather. You wanted to do your Boy Scout act of kindness for the day."
    "Exactly. And now what do I find?
    "What do you find?"
    "I'll tell you what I find. I find that in comparison with my Uncle your Uncle is slender. I had a letter from Uncle Horace this morning, enclosing asnapshot of himself. Take a look at it."
    Freddie examined the snapshot, and such was his emotion that the ham sandwich flew from his grasp.
    "Crumbs!"
    "You may well say Crumbs!"
    "Golly!"
    "And also Golly!”
    “I said the same thing myself. It is pretty obvious, I think you will agree with me, that Blicester hasn't achance. A good selling-plater, I admit, but this time he has come up against aclassic yearling."
    "You told me your uncle had been perspiring for years in the hot sun of the Argentine."
    "No doubt the sun was not as hot as I have always supposed, or possibly his pores do not work freely. I also said, I recall, that he did alot of riding over pampas. I was wrong. On the evidence of this photograph he can't have ridden over a pampa in his life. Well, fortunately I discovered this in time. There is only one thing to do, Freddie. We must change tickets again."
    Freddie gaped.
    "You really…Oh, thanks," he said, as apassing Bean picked up the ham sandwich and returned it to him. "You really mean that?"
    "I certainly do."
    "I call it pretty noble of you."
    "Oh, well, you know how it is. Once a Boy Scout, always a Boy Scout," said Oofy, and a few moments later he was informing the Crumpet that the list in his notebook must once more be revised.
    It was Oofy's practice, whenever life in London seemed to him to be losing its savour and the conversation of his fellow members of the Drones to be devoid of its customary sparkle, to pop over to Paris and get a nice change, and shortly after his chat with Freddie he made another of his trips to the French capital. And as he sat sipping an aperitif one morning at a Cafe on the Champs Elysees, his thoughts turned to his Uncle Horace, and not for the first time he found himself marvelling that the love of a woman could have made that dedicated man mortify the flesh as he was doing. Himself, Oofy would not have forgone the simplest pat of butter to win the hand of Helen of Troy, and had marriage with Cleopatra involved the daily drinking of potassium broth and seaweed soup, there would have been no question of proceeding with the ceremony. "I am sorry," he