Dudley is Back to Normal

A Bobbie Wickham short story

Dudley Finch is back in England for a break from sheep farming in Australia, bringing his fiancée Ellabelle with him. Over the garden fence one evening he encounters Roberta Wickham, the girl he briefly fell for two years ago; once again he falls for her glamour. This time she asks him to join her at dinner with her cousin Cuthbert who's getting married the next day. Under her spell, Dudley agrees and goes to Cuthbert's place where he finds Cuthbert behaving oddly and Bobbie is not to be found ...

Characters

Dudley Finch	a young man
Ellabelle Prebble	his fiancée, called Stinker
Bobbie Wickham	a young woman who knows a mug when she sees one
Lady Wickham	her mother
Cuthbert Wickham	Roberta's cousin

Publishing Information

Plum Stones

First published July 1940 in the Strand magazine. (Probably not published in the US.)

Notes and Quotes

Shank of the evening
- the early part of the evening i.e. not too early.

' "That little more," says the poet Browning, "and how much it is." '
- Robert Browning, By the Fireside.

Oh, the little more, and how much it is! And the little less and what worlds away.

Excelsior 'Stay and rest that weary head against this breast.'
- see the full text.

Athenaeum
- a London club for the quieter gentlemen.

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Where's the best man? Whoever might be due to dine with Cuthbert, it would be a man, not Bobbie, so that part of the plot is suspect. This story is a sequel to The Awful Gladness of the Mater.

Parts of the plot are re-cycled in Barmy in Wonderland.