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Updated: June 7, 2025
Even after a Pongo Twistleton birthday party, I was capable of grasping simple facts like these. "I follow you, yes. I see the point you are trying to make, certainly. Market ... Snodsbury ... Grammar School ... Board of governors ... Prize-giving.... Quite. But what's it got to do with me?" "You're going to give away the prizes." I goggled. Her words did not appear to make sense.
It was evident that Gussie was striking something of a new note in Market Snodsbury scholastic circles. Looks were exchanged between parent and parent. The bearded bloke had the air of one who has drained the bitter cup. As for Aunt Dahlia, her demeanour now told only too clearly that her last doubts had been resolved and her verdict was in.
She came to tell me I'd got to distribute the prizes at some beastly seminary she's a governor of down at Market Snodsbury." "Indeed, sir? I fear you will scarcely find that a congenial task." "Ah, but I'm not going to do it. I'm going to shove it off on to Gussie." "Sir?"
My chief reason for fixing the date as specified is that tomorrow, though you have doubtless forgotten, is the day of the distribution of prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School, at which, as you know, Gussie is to be the male star and master of the revels.
I told her a little frigidly that I had divined as much. "Well, how was I to know that a man with a mind like yours would grasp it so quickly?" she protested. "All right, then. Market Snodsbury Grammar School is, as you have guessed, the grammar school at Market Snodsbury. I'm one of the governors." "You mean one of the governesses." "I don't mean one of the governesses. Listen, ass.
There was a board of governors at Eton, wasn't there? Very well. So there is at Market Snodsbury Grammar School, and I'm a member of it. And they left the arrangements for the summer prize-giving to me. This prize-giving takes place on the last or thirty-first day of this month. Have you got that clear?" I took another oz. of the life-saving and inclined my head.
Except, therefore, for one short snatch of song on his part, nothing untoward marked the occasion, and presently we rose, with instructions from Aunt Dahlia to put on festal raiment and be at Market Snodsbury not later than 3.30. This leaving me ample time to smoke a gasper or two in a shady bower beside the lake, I did so, repairing to my room round about the hour of three.
He looked at me with a sudden sharp interest. "Has Market Snodsbury Grammar School burned down?" "Not that I know of." "Have mumps broken out? Is the place closed on account of measles?" "No, no." "Then what do you mean you've got good news?" I endeavoured to soothe. "You mustn't take it so hard, Gussie. Why worry about a laughably simple job like distributing prizes at a school?"
What news could possibly be good to me at this moment except the information that bubonic plague had broken out among the scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School, and that they were all confined to their beds with spots?" The moment had come for me to speak. I laid a hand gently on his shoulder. He brushed it off. I laid it on again. He brushed it off once more.
It was the hottest day of the summer, and though somebody had opened a tentative window or two, the atmosphere remained distinctive and individual. In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered.
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