Meet Mr Mulliner by P.G. Wodehouse

everybody else might be,
you never saw Fatty without his bun.”
    “Catsmeat,” said the bishop, “I’ll tell
you something about Fatty that isn’t generally known. In a scrum in the final
House Match in the year 1888 he deliberately hoofed me on the shin.”
    “You don’t mean that?”
    “I do.”
    “Great Scott!”
    “An ordinary hack on the shin,” said the
bishop coldly, “no fellow minds. It is part of the give and take of normal
social life. But when a bounder deliberately hauls off and lets drive at you
with the sole intention of laying you out, it—well, it’s a bit thick.”
    “And those chumps of Governors have put up
a statue to him!”
    The bishop leaned forward and lowered his
voice.
    “Catsmeat.”
    “What?”
    “Do you know what?”
    “No, what?”
    “What we ought to do is to wait till
twelve o’clock or so, till there’s no one about, and then beetle out and paint
that statue blue.”
    “Why not pink?”
    “Pink, if you prefer it.”
    “Pink’s a nice colour.”
    “It is. Very nice.”
    “Besides, I know where I can lay my hands
on some pink paint.”
    “You do?”
    “Gobs of it.”
    “Peace be on thy walls, Catsmeat, and
prosperity within thy palaces,” said the bishop. “Proverbs cxxi. 6.”
     
    It seemed to the bishop, as he closed the front
door noiselessly behind him two hours later, that providence, always on the
side of the just, was extending itself in its efforts to make this little
enterprise of his a success. All the conditions were admirable for
statue-painting. The rain which had been falling during the evening had
stopped: and a moon, which might have proved an embarrassment, was conveniently
hidden behind a bank of clouds.
    As regarded human interference, they had
nothing to alarm them. No place in the world is so deserted as the ground of a
school after midnight. Fatty’s statue might have been in the middle of the
Sahara. They climbed the pedestal, and, taking turns fairly with the brush,
soon accomplished the task which their sense of duty had indicated to them. It
was only when, treading warily lest their steps should be heard on the gravel
drive, they again reached the front door that anything occurred to mar the
harmony of the proceedings.
    “What are you waiting for?” whispered the
bishop, as his companion lingered on the top step.
    “Half a second,” said the headmaster in a
muffled voice. “It may be in another pocket.”
    “What?”
    “My key.”
    “Have you lost your key?”
    “I believe I have.”
    “Catsmeat,” said the bishop, with grave
censure, “this is the last time I come out painting statues with you.”
    “I must have dropped it somewhere.”
    “What shall we do?”
    “There’s just a chance the scullery window
may be open.”
    But the scullery window was not open.
Careful, vigilant, and faithful to his trust, the butler, on retiring to rest,
had fastened it and closed the shutters. They were locked out.
    But it has been well said that it is the
lessons which we learn in our boyhood days at school that prepare us for the
problems of life in the larger world outside. Stealing back from the mists of
the past, there came to the bishop a sudden memory.
    “Catsmeat!”
    “Hullo?” If you haven’t been mucking the
place up with alterations and improvements, there should be a water-pipe round
at the back, leading to one of the upstairs windows.”
    Memory had not played him false. There,
nestling in the ivy, was the pipe up and down which he had been wont to climb
when, a pie-faced lad in the summer of ‘86, he had broken out of this house in
order to take nocturnal swims in the river.
    “Up you go,” he said briefly.
    The headmaster required no further urging.
And presently the two were making good time up the side of the house.
    It was just as they reached the window and
just after the bishop had informed his old friend that, if he kicked him on the
head again, he’d hear of it, that the window was suddenly flung