Meet Mr Mulliner Read Online Free Page B

lobster; but I have always made it a
practice—and I always shall make it a practice—to speak nothing but the bare
truth. My brother Wilfred simply had rather a curious adventure.”
     
    My brother Wilfred (said Mr Mulliner) is
the clever one of the family. Even as a boy he was always messing about with
chemicals, and at the University he devoted his time entirely to research. The
result was that while still quite a young man he had won an established
reputation as the inventor of what are known to the trade as Mulliner’s Magic
Marvels—a general term embracing the Raven Gipsy Face-Cream, the Snow of the
Mountains Lotion, and many other preparations, some designed exclusively for
the toilet, others of a curative nature, intended to alleviate the many ills to
which the flesh is heir.
    Naturally, he was a very busy man: and it
is to this absorption in his work that I attribute the fact that, though—like
all the Mulliners—a man of striking personal charm, he had reached his thirty-first
year without ever having been involved in an affair of the heart. I remember
him telling me once that he simply had no time for girls.
    But we all fall sooner or later, and these
strong concentrated men harder than any. While taking a brief holiday one year
at Cannes, he met a Miss Angela Purdue, who was staying at his hotel, and she
bowled him over completely.
    She was one of these jolly, outdoor girls;
and Wilfred had told me that what attracted him first about her was her
wholesome, sunburned complexion. In fact, he told Miss Purdue the same thing
when, shortly after he had proposed and been accepted, she asked him in her girlish
way what it was that had first made him begin to love her.
    “It’s such a pity,” said Miss Purdue, “that
the sunburn fades so soon. I do wish I knew some way of keeping it.”
    Even in his moments of holiest emotion
Wilfred never forgot that he was a business man.
    “You should try Mulliner’s Raven Gipsy
Face-Cream,” he said. “It comes in two sizes—the small (or half-crown) jar and
the large jar at seven shillings and sixpence. The large jar contains three and
a half times as much as the small jar. It is applied nightly with a small
sponge before retiring to rest. Testimonials have been received from numerous
members of the aristocracy and may be examined at the office by any bona-fide
inquirer.”
    “Is it really good?”
    “I invented it,” said Wilfred, simply.
    She looked at him adoringly.
    “How clever you are! Any girl ought to be
proud to marry you.”
    “Oh, well,” said Wilfred, with a modest
wave of his hand.
    “All the same, my guardian is going to be
terribly angry when I tell him we’re engaged.”
    “Why?”
    “I inherited the Purdue millions when my
uncle died, you see, and my guardian has always wanted me to marry his son,
Percy.”
    Wilfred kissed her fondly, and laughed a
defiant laugh.
    “Jer mong feesh der selar,” he said
lightly.
    But, some days after his return to London,
whither the girl had preceded him, he had occasion to recall her words. As he
sat in his study, musing on a preparation to cure the pip in canaries, a card
was brought to him.
    “Sir Jasper ffinch-ffarrowmere, Bart.,” he
read. The name was strange to him.
    “Show the gentleman in,” he said. And
presently there entered a very stout man with a broad, pink face. It was a face
whose natural expression should, Wilfred felt, have been jovial, but at the
moment it was grave.
    “Sir Jasper Finch-Farrowmere?” said
Wilfred.
    “ffinch-ffarrowmere,” corrected the visitor,
his sensitive ear detecting the capital letters.
    “Ah yes. You spell it with two small ‘f’s.”
    “Four small f’s.”
    “And to what do I owe the honour—”
    “I am Angela Purdue’s guardian.”
    “How do you do? A whisky-and-soda?”
    “I thank you, no. I am a total abstainer.
I found that alcohol had a tendency to increase my weight, so I gave it up. I
have also given up butter, potatoes, soups of all