Although P.G. Wodehouse is perhaps best known for his most famous characters -- that butler of butlers, Jeeves, and his master, Bertie Wooster -- his genius was equally apparent in the creation of Mr. Mulliner, the genial Scheherazade of the Anglers' Rest, a bucolic English pub. Each evening, sipping his Scotch and lemon, Mr. Mulliner tells of an adventure that once befell a nephew of his or a cousin's son or some other not-so-stuffy younger relative. As Jean Stafford says in her introduction, "he spins out a yarn so full of fetching nips-and-tucks and near-croppers and monkeyshines that you dread he may not finish before closing time."