Three Men and a Maid

"Nature abhors a vacuum. Samuel Marlowe was a susceptible young man, and for many a long month his heart had been lying empty, all swept and garnished, with 'Welcome' on the mat. This girl seemed to rush in and fill it. She was not the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She was the third prettiest. He had an orderly mind, one capable of classifying and docketing girls. But there was a subtle something about her, a sort of how-shall-one-put-it, which he had never encountered before. He swallowed convulsively. His well-developed chest swelled beneath its covering of blue flannel and invisible stripe. At last, he told himself, he was in love, really in love, and at first sight, too, which made it all the more impressive. He doubted whether in the whole course of history anything like this had ever happened before to anybody. ... "But she had bitten him in the arm. That was hardly the right spirit. That, he felt, constituted an obstacle." A trans-Atlantic voyage sets the scene for romance and comedy, as the redoubtable Billie Bennett finds herself a-sea with three avid suitors. The course of true love never runs smoothly, especially in the world of P. G. Wodehouse, where the course of true love is apt to run very chaotically indeed!