Mr Mulliner Speaking/Meet Mr Mulliner/Mulliner Nights [antikvár]

I The Reverent Wooing of ArchibaldThe conversation in the bar-parlour of the Anglers' Rest, which always tends to get deepish towards closing-time, had turned to the subject of the Modem Girl; and a Gin-and-Ginger-Ale sitting in the corner by the window remarked that it was strange how types die out.'I can remember the days/ said the Gin-and-Ginger-Ale, 'when every other girl you met stood about six feet two in her dancing-shoes, and had as many curves as a Scenic Railway. Now they are all five foot nothing and you can't see them sideways. Why is this?'The Draught Stout shook his head.'Nobody can say. It's the same with dogs. One moment the world is full of pugs as far as the eye can reach; the next, not a pug in sight, only Pekes and Alsatians. Odd!'The Small Bass and the Double-Whisky-and-Splash admitted that these things were very mysterious, and supposed we should never know the reason for them. Probably we were not meant to know.'I cannot agree with you, gentlemen/ said Mr Mulliner. He had been sipping his hot Scotch and lemon with a rather abstracted air: but now he sat up alertly, prepared to deliver judgment. 'The reason for the disappearance of the dignified, queenly type of girl is surely obvious. It is Nature's method of ensuring the continuance of the species. A world full of the sort of young woman that Meredith used to put into his novels and du Maurier into his pictures in Punch would be a world full of permanent spinsters. The modern young man would never be able to summon up the nerve to propose to them.''Something in that/ assented the Draught Stout.