Coming Up for Air Page 24

  'But dash it---'

  Quite useless, of course. She'd found me guilty and now she was going to tell me what she thought of me. That might take her a couple of hours. And after that there was further trouble looming up, because presently it would occur to her to wonder where I'd got the money for this trip, and then she'd discover that I'd been holding out on her about the seventeen quid. Really there was no reason why this row shouldn't go on till three in the morning. No use playing injured innocence any longer. All I wanted was the line of least resistance. And in my mind I ran over the three possibilities, which were:

  A. To tell her what I'd really been doing and somehow make her believe me.

  B. To pull the old gag about losing my memory.

  C. To let her go on thinking it was a woman, and take my medicine.

  But, damn it! I knew which it would have to be.

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  First published by Victor Gollance 1939

  Uniform Edition published by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd 1948

  Published in Penguin Books 1962

  This edition first published by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

  in the Complete Works of George Orwell series 1986

  Published in Penguin Books with a new Note on the Text 1990

  Reprinted in Penguin Classics 2000

  Copyright 1939 by Eric Blair

  This edition copyright (c) the Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell, 1986

  Note on the Test copyright (c) Peter Davison, 1990

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-141-18569-9