The door banged behind Ann.  Jimmy found himself alone.  He walked thoughtfully to Mr. Pett’s armchair and sat down.  There was a feeling of desolation upon him.  He lit a cigarette and began to smoke pensively.  What a fool he had been to talk like that!  What girl of spirit could possibly stand it?  If ever there had been a time for being soothing and serious and pleading, it had been these last few minutes.  And he talked like that!

Ten minutes passed.  Jimmy sprang from his chair.  He thought he had heard a footstep.  He flung the door open.  The passage was empty.  He returned miserably to his chair.  Of course she had not come back.  Why should she?

A voice spoke.

“Jimmy!”

He leaped up again, and looked wildly round.  Then he looked up.  Ann was leaning over the gallery rail.

“Jimmy, I’ve been thinking it over.  There’s something I want to ask you.  Do you admit that you behaved abominably five years ago?”

“Yes!” shouted Jimmy.

“And that you’ve been behaving just as badly ever since?”

“Yes!”

“And that you are really a pretty awful sort of person?”

“Yes!”

“Then it’s all right.  You deserve it!”

“Deserve it?”

“Deserve to marry a girl like me.  I was worried about it, but now I see that it’s the only punishment bad enough for you!” She raised her arm.

“Here’s the dead past, Jimmy!  Go and bury it!  Good-night!”

A small book fell squashily at Jimmy’s feet.  He regarded it dully for a moment.  Then, with a wild yell which penetrated even to Mr. Pett’s bedroom and woke that sufferer just as he was dropping off to sleep for the third time that night he bounded for the gallery stairs.

At the further end of the gallery a musical laugh sounded, and a door closed.  Ann had gone.

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Transcriber’s Notes for edition 11: 

I am greatly indebted to the Wodehouse readers from the BLANDINGS e-mail group who did such detailed research on this text, not only on simple typos but on the differences between the 1916 Saturday Evening Post serialization and the US and UK early printings.

I have made use, in this new PG edition, of the 1918 UK first edition references provided by these helpful savants, to correct misprints or other publisher’s errors in the US edition, but I have otherwise followed the US edition.

The punctuation is somewhat different from the UK versions, notably in its use of colons.  The words “Uncle” and “Aunt”, where used with a name ("Uncle Peter”, “Aunt Nesta"), were capitalized in the original serialized and UK editions, but lower-cased in the US edition, so I have retained the lower-case.

I have also restored some italics omitted in the previous PG edition.

I note below some significant differences between the early printings: