Not the right sort of woman

        A girl who has loved, even if mistakenly, can never be indifferent to the fortunes of the man whom she once regarded as the lode star of her life. She kept wondering how he was making out, and hoped that his vacation was not spoiled by a broken heart.

    The first time she saw him, accordingly, she should have been relieved and pleased. He was escorting Cora McGuffy Spottsworth along the boardwalk, and it was abundantly obvious even from a casual glance that if his heart had ever been broken, there had been some adroit work done in the repair shop. Clark Gable could have improved his technique by watching the way he bent over Cora McGuffey Spottsworth and stroked her slender arm. He also, while bending and stroking, whispered into her shell-like ear, and you could see that what he was saying was good stuff. His whole attitude was that of a man who, recognizing that he was on a good thing, was determined to push it along.

    But Agnes Flack was not relieved and pleased; she was disturbed and concerned. She was perhaps a hard judge, but Cora McGuffy Spottsworth looked to her like the sort of woman who goes about stealing the plans of forts - or, at the best, leaning back negligently on a settee and saying, "Prince, my fan." The impression Agnes formed was of something that might be all right stepping out of a pie at a bachelor party, but not the type you could take home to meet mother.

(from "Feet of Clay," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Close, but lacking a few qualifications

     "Naturally, she compares you to your disadvantage with such a man as 'Mgoopi 'Mgwumpi."

    Ernest Plinlimmon's eyes widened and his mouth fell open, causing him to look exactly like a fish I once caught off Brighton pier.

    "Such a man as - what was that name again?"

    "'Mgoopi 'Mgwumpi. He was the chief, if I remember rightly, of the Lesser 'Mgowpi. I gather that his personality made a deep impression upon Miss Fitch, and that, but for the fact that he was as black as the ace of spades and aready had twenty-seven wives and a hundred pares, something might have come of it. At any rate, she as good as told me the other day that what she was looking for someone who, while possessing the engaging spiritual qualities of this chief, was rather blonder and a bachelor."

(from "There's Always Golf," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Golf by brute force

     Poskitt, the d'Artagnan of the links, was a man who brought to the tee the tactics which in his youth had won him such fame as a hammer thrower. His plan was to clench his teeth, shut his eyes, whirl the club around his head and bring it down with sickening violence in the general direction of the sphere. Usually, the only result would be a ball topped along the ground or - as had been known to happen when he used his niblick - cut in half. But there would come times when by some mysterious dispensation of Providence he managed to connect, in which event the gallery would be stunned by the spectacle of a three-hundred-yarder down the middle. The whole thing, as he himself recognized, was a clean, sporting venture. He just let go and hoped for the best.

(from "The Letter of the Law," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not a woman to mess around with

 Mark you, if ever men had an excuse for being ill at ease in the presence of the opposite sex, these two had. They were both eighteen-handicap men, and Agnes was exuberantly and dynamically scratch. Her physique was an asset to her, especially in the long game. She stood about five feet ten in her stockings, and had shoulders and forearms which would have excited the envious admiration of one of those muscular women on the music-halls, who good-naturedly allow six brothers, three sisters, and a cousin by marriage to pile themselves on her collarbone while the orchestra plays a long-drawn chord and the audience hurries out to the bar. Her eye resembled the eye of one of the more imperious queens of history; and when she laughed, strong men clutched at their temples to keep the tops of their heads from breaking loose.

(from "Those In Peril on the Tee," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Happy ending

     William brooded for a while. He was not a quick thinker.

    "Well, look here," he said at length, "this is the point. This is the nub of the thing. This is where I want you to follow me very closely. Have you asked Anastatia to marry you?"

    "Marry me?" Rodney gazed at him, shocked. "Have I asked her to marry me? I, who am not worthy to polish the blade of her niblick! I, who have not even a thirty handicap, ask a girl to marry me who was in the semi-final of last year's Ladis' Open! No, no, Bates, I may be a vers-libre poet, but I have some sense of what is fitting. I love her, yes. I love her with a fervour which causes me to frequently and for hours at a time lie tossing sleeplessly upon my pillow. But I would not dare to ask her to marry me."

    Anastatia burst into a peal of girlish laughter. "You poor chump!" she cried. "Is that what has been the matter all this time? I couldn't make out what the trouble was. Why, I'm crazy about you. I'll marry you any time you give the word."

    Rodney reeled. "What!"

    "Of course I will."

    "Anastatia!"

    "Rodney!" He folded her in his arms.

(from "The Purification of Rodney Spelvin," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Nothing to be afraid of

     The studio was one of those dim, over-ornamented rooms which appeal to men like Rodney Spelvin. Heavy curtains hung in front o the windows. One corner was cut off by a high-backed Chesterfield. At the far end was an alcove, curtained like the windows. Once Jane had admired this studio, but now it made her shiver. It seemed to her one of those nests in which, as the sub-title of Tried in the Furnace had said, only eggs of evil were hatched. She paced the thick carpet restlessly, and suddenly there came to her the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

    Jane stopped, every muscle tense. The moment had arrived. She faced the door, tight-lipped. It comforted her a little in this crisis to reflect that Rodney was not one of those massive Ethel M. Dell libertines who might make things unpleasant for an intruder. He was only a welter-weight egg of evil; and, if he tried to start anything, a girl of her physique would have little or no difficulty in knocking the stuffing out of him.

(from "The Purification of Rodney Spelvin," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

[Ethel M. Dell was a writer of popular British romance novels.]

Better to be prepared

 "Do not let us speak of it," he said, registering pain. It was quite easy for him to do this. All there was to it was tightening the lips and drawing up the left eyebrow. He had practiced it in front of his mirror, for a fellow never knew when it might not come in useful.

(from "Jane Gets Off the Fairway," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)