The World of Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. (2/4)
Title: The World of Jeeves.
Author: P.G. Wodehouse.
Genre: Literature, fiction, short stories, humour.
Country: England.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1911, 1922, 1924, 1925, 1926 (this collection 1967).
Summary: A collection of 34 stories about Wooster and his crafty and trusted valet, Jeeves. (Stories 12-20 in this post, refer to PART 1 for stories 1-11, PART 3 for stories 21-29, and PART 4 for stories 30-34.) In The Great Sermon Handicap (1922), summering in the country, Wooster and his friends invent a betting game with all the pastors in the many near-lying hamlets, but there is more at stake behind the scenes than their bored amusements, and of course only Jeeves is in on it. In The Purity of the Turf (1922), disappointed but fired up by their failed gambling affair of the pastors, the gang decides to make a game of placing bets on the participants of a local Village Fair's games, with humorous and disastrous results. In A Metropolitan Touch (1922), Bingo is once again in pursuit of a girl, and decides to put on a metropolitan concert made up of local kids for the village to prove his worth, while Wooster and Jeeves are called upon to assist. In The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace (1922), Wooster's cousins come to stay with him on their last night before shipping out for South Africa, but when they both fall for Wooster's friend and stay indefinitely in his flat in London, driving everyone insane, it is up to Jeeves to save the day. In Bingo and the Little Woman (1922), Wooster and Bingo have the latter's uncle and benefactor convinced Wooster is his favourite author, but when Bingo accidentally and impulsively marries a woman who turns out to actually be said author, it takes Jeeves's dry ingenuity to untangle the web of lies with a favourable outcome. In The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy (1924), when one of Wooster's absent-minded friends ends up trapped in an engagement with Wooster's own hellish ex-fianceé, it's Jeeves to the rescue to help the helpless young man get out of an unwanted engagement, and maybe even find the lost love of his life. In Without the Option (1925), when Wooster gets his friend arrested, he has to assume his identity and take his place visiting his aunt's friends, but things go awry when he realizes he's in the family of his ex-fianceé, Honoria Glossop. In Fixing It for Freddie (1911), while trying to fix his friend's break-up while on vacation at the seaside, Wooster is accidentally saddled with babysitting a child and has to figure out, with Jeeves's help, how to use this inconvenience to help in his scheme. In Clustering Round Young Bingo (1925), Wooster and Jeeves are called upon to try and assist Bingo Little when his new wife decides to submit an emasculating article to one one of Wooster's aunt's magazines. In Jeeves and the Impending Doom (1926), while visiting Aunt Agatha in the country, Wooster and Jeeves are called upon to help Bingo, who's forced by his gambling habits to tutor a hellish youngster while his wife is away travelling.
My rating: 8/10
My review:
♥ Great pals we've always been. In fact there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she's the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I've heard her speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we're just pals. I think she's a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything nice and matey.
♥ Some time after this, Lady Wickhammersley gave the signal for the females of the species to leg it, and they duly stampeded. I didn't get a chance of talking to young Bingo when they'd gone, and later, in the drawing-room, he didn't show up.
♥ "I've been through a bad time, Bertie, these last weeks. The sun ceased to shine-"
"That's curious. We've had gorgeous weather in London."
"The birds ceased to sing-"
"What birds?"
"What the devil does it matter what birds?" said young Bingo, with some asperity. "Any birds. The birds round about here. You don't expect me to specify them by their pet names, do you? I tell you, Bertie, it hit me hard at first, very hard."
"What hit you?" I simply couldn't follow the blighter.
"Charlotte's calculated callousness."
"Oh, ah!" I've seen poor old Bingo through so many unsuccessful love-affairs that I'd almost forgotten there was a girl mixed up with that Goodwood business.
♥ "Do you mean to say you've known Lady Cynthia all that time?"
"Rather! She can't have been seven when I met her first."
"Good Lord!" said young Bingo. He looked at me for the first time as though I amounted to something, and swallowed a mouthful of smoke the wrong way. "I love tat girl, Bertie," he went on, when he'd finished coughing.
"Yes? Nice girl, of course."
He eyed me with pretty deep loathing.
"Don't speak of her in that horrible casual way. She's an angel. An angel!"
♥ "What the devil are you talking about?"
"I'm reading you my poem. The one I wrote to Cynthia last night. I'll go on, shall I?"
"No!"
"No?"
"No. I haven't had my tea."
At this moment Jeeves came in with the good old beverage, and I sprang on it with a glad cry. After a couple of sips things looked a bit brighter. Even young Bingo didn't offend the eye to quite such an extent.
♥ We were arguing the point when the door burst open and in blew Claude and Eustace. One of the things which discourage me about rural life is the frightful earliness with which events begin to break loose. I've stayed at places in the country where they've jerked me out of the dreamless at about six-thirty to go for a jolly swim in the lake.
♥ He's quite a bit of a snob, you know, and when he hears that I'm going to marry the daughter of an earl-"
"I say, old man," I couldn't help saying, "aren't you looking ahead rather far?"
"Oh, that's alright. It's true nothing's actually settled yet, but she practically told me the other day she was fond of me."
"What!"
"Well she said that the sort of man she liked was the self-reliant, manly man with strength, good looks, character, ambition, and initiative."
"Leave me, laddie," I said. "Leave me to my fried egg."
~~The Great Sermon Handicap.
♥ These things had jarred the unfortunate mutt, and he had developed a habit of dropping in on me at all hours and decanting his anguished soul on me. I could stand this all right after dinner, and even after lunch; but before breakfast, no. We Woosters are amiability itself, but there is a limit.
♥ "Boys' and Girls' Mixed Animal Potato Race, All Ages."
This was a new one to me. I had never heard of it at any of the big meetings.
"What's that?"
"Rather sporting," said young Bingo. "The competitors enter in couples, each couple being assigned an animal cry and a potato. For instance, let's suppose that you and Jeeves entered. Jeeves would stand at a fixed point holding a potato. You would have your head in a sack, and you would grope about trying to find Jeeves and making a noise like a cat; Jeeves also making a noise like a cat. Other competitors would be making noises like cows and pigs and dogs, and so on, and groping about for their potato-holders, who would also be making noises like cows and pigs and dogs and so on-"
.."Girls Open Egg and Spoon Race," read Bingo.
"How about that?"
"I doubt if it would be worth while to invest, sir," said Jeeves. "I am told it is a certainty for last year's winner, Sarah Mills, who will doubtless start an odds-on favourite."
"Good, is she?"
"They tell me in the village that she carries a beautiful egg, sir."
.."That's all, except the Choir Boy's Hundred yards Handicap, for a pewter mug presented by the vicar - open to all whose voices have not broken before the second Sunday in Epiphany."
♥ "I was as much astonished as yourself, sir, when I first became aware of the lad's capabilities. I happened to pursue him one morning with the intention of fetching him a clip on the side of the head-"
"Great Scott, Jeeves! You!"
"Yes, sir. The boy is of an outspoken disposition, and had made an opprobrious remark respecting my personal appearance."
"What did he say about your appearance?"
"I have forgotten, sir," said Jeeves, with a touch of austerity. "But it was opprobrious."
♥ ..Harold was put into strict training. It was a wearing business, and I can understand now why most of the big trainers are grim, silent men, who look as though they had suffered.
♥ There was no cheering young Bingo up. He's one of those birds who simply leap at the morbid view, if you give them half a chance.
♥ "You ought to read some of these racing novels. In Pipped on the Post, Lord Jasper Mauleverer as near as a toucher outed Bonny Betsy by bribing the head-lad to slip a cobra into her stable the night before the Derby!"
"What are the chances of a cobra biting Harold, Jeeves?"
"Slight, I should imagine, sir. And in such an event, knowing the boy as intimately as I do, my anxiety would be entirely for the snake."
"Still, unceasing vigilance, Jeeves."
"Most certainly, sir."
♥ There's something about evening service in a country church that makes a fellow feel drowsy and peaceful. Sort of end-of-a-perfect-day feeling. Old Heppenstall, the vicar, was up in the pulpit, and he has a kind of regular, bleating delivery that assists thought. They had left the door open, and the air was full of a mixed scent of trees and honeysuckle and mildew and villagers' Sunday clothes. As far as the eye could reach, you could see farmers propped up in restful attitudes, breathing heavily; and the children in the congregation who had fidgeted during the earlier part of the proceedings were now lying back in a surfeited sort of coma. The last rays of the setting sun shone through the stained-glass windows, birds were twittering in the trees, the women's dresses crackled gently in the stillness. Peaceful. That's what I'm driving at. I felt peaceful. Everybody felt peaceful. And that is why the explosion, when it came, sounded like the end of all things.
I call it an explosion, because that was what it seemed like when it broke loose. One moment a dreamy hush was all over the place, broken only by old Heppenstall talking about our duty to our neighbours; and then, suddenly, a sort of piercing, shrieking squeal that got you right between the eyes and ran all the way down your spine and out at the soles of the feet.
"EE-ee-ee-ee-ee! Oo-ee! Ee-ee-ee-ee!"
It sounded like about six hundred pigs having their tails twisted simultaneously, but it was simply the kid Harold, who appeared to be having some species of fit. He was jumping up and down and slapping at the back of his neck. And about every other second he would take a deep breath and gave out another of the squeals.
♥ A short, red-haired child was making the running, with a freckled blonde second and Sarah Mills lying up an easy third. Our nominee was straggling along with the field, well behind the leaders. It was not hard even as early as this to spot the winner. There was a grace, a practised precision, in the way Sarah Mills held her spoon that told its own story. She was cutting out a good pace, but her egg didn't even wobble, a natural egg-and-spooner, if ever there was one.
Class will tell.
♥ He peered sorrowfully at the multitude.
"With regard to the Girls' Egg and Spoon Race, which has just concluded," he said, "I have a painful duty to perform. Circumstances have arisen which it is impossible to ignore. It is not too much to say that I am stunned."
He gave the populace about five seconds to wonder why he was stunned, then went on.
"Three years ago, as you are aware, I was compelled to expunge from the list of events at this annual festival the Fathers' Quarter-Mile, owing to reports coming to my ears of wagers taken and given on the result at the village inn and a strong suspicion that on at least one occasion the race had actually been sold by the speediest runner. That unfortunate occurrence shook my faith in human nature, I admit - but still there was one event at least which I confidently expected to remain untainted by the miasma of Professionalism. I allude to the Girls' Egg and Spoon Race. It seems, alas, that I was too sanguine."
He stopped again, and wrestled with his feelings.
"I will not weary you with the unpleasant details. I will merely say that before the race was begun a stranger in our midst, the manservant of one of the guests at the Hall - I will not specify with more particularity - approached several of the competitors and presented each of them with five shillings on condition that they - er - finished. A belated sense of remorse had led him to confess to me what he did, but it is too late. The evil is accomplished, and retribution must take its course. It is no time for half-measures. I must be firm. I rule that Sarah Mills, Jane Parker, Bessie Clay, and Rosie Jukes, the first four to pass the winning-post, have forfeited their amateur stratus and are disqualified.."
~~The Purity of the Turf.
♥ "I say Bertie old man I am in love at last. She is the most wonderful girl Bertie old man. This is the real thing at last Bertie. Come here at once and bring Jeeves.
It had been handed in at Twing Post Office. In other words, he had submitted that frightful rot to the goggling eye of a village post-mistress who was probably the mainspring of local gossip and would have the place ringing with the news before nightfall. He couldn't have given himself away more completely if he had hired the town-crier. When I was a kid, I used to read stories about Knights and Vikings and that species of chappie who would get up without a blush in the middle of a crowded banquet and loose off a song about how perfectly priceless they thought their best girl. I've often felt that those days would have suited young Bingo down to the ground.
♥ "Mr. Little is very épris, sir. Brookfield, my correspondent, writes that last week he observed him in the moonlight at an advanced hour gazing up at his window."
"Whose window? Brookfield's?"
"Yes, sir. Presumably under the impression that it was the young lady's."
♥ ..I said. "I say, old lad, aren't we going rather a long way round?"
Considering that we were supposed to be heading for Twing Hall, it seemed to me that we were making a longish job of it. The Hall is about two miles from the station by the main road, and we had cut off down a lane, gone across country for a bit, climbed a stile or two, and were now working our way across a field that ended in another lane.
"She sometimes takes her little brother for a walk round this way," explained Bingo. "I thought we would meet her and bow, and you could see her, you know, and then we would walk on."
"Of course," I said, "that's enough excitement for anyone, and undoubtedly a corking reward for tramping three miles out of one's way over ploughed fields with tight boots, but don't we do anything else? Don't we tack on to the girl and buzz along with her?"
"Good Lord!" said Bingo, honestly amazed. "You don't suppose I've got nerve enough for that, do you? I just look at her from afar and all that sort of thing."
♥ "That is the Reverend Mr. Wingham, Mr. Heppenstall's new curate, sir. I gather from Brookfield that he is Mr. Little's rival, and that at the moment the young lady appears to favour him. Mr. Wingham has the advantage of being on the premises. He and the young lady play duets after dinner, which acts as a bond. Mr. Little on these occasions, I understand, prowls about in the road, chafing visibly."
♥ "Bertie old man I say Bertie could you possibly come down here at once. Everything gone wrong bang it all. Dash it Bertie you simply must come, I am in a state of absolute despair and heart-broken. Would you mind sending another hundred of those cigarettes. Bring Jeeves when you come Bertie. You simply must come Bertie. I rely on you. Don't forget to bring Jeeves. - BINGO."
For a chap who's perpetually hard-up, I must say that young Bingo is the most wasteful telegraphist I ever struck. He's got no notion of condensing. The silly ass simply pours out his wounded soul at twopence a word, or whatever it is, without a thought.
♥ Judge of my chagrin and all that sort of thing, therefore, when, tottering to my room and switching on the light, I observed the foul features of young Bingo all over the pillow. The blighter had appeared from nowhere and was in my bed sleeping like an infant with a sort of happy dreamy smile on his map.
A bit thick, I mean to say! We Woosters are all for the good old mediaeval hosp. and all that, but when it comes to finding chappies collaring your bed, the thing becomes a trifle too mouldy. I hove a shoe, and Bingo sat up, gurgling.
♥ For the next three weeks I didn;t see Bingo. He became a sort of VOice Heard Off, developing a habit og ringing me up on long-distance and consulting me on variousl points arising t rehearsal, uintil the day when he got me out of bed at eight in the mornign to ask whetjher I thought "Merry Christmas!" was a good totle. I told him then that thi nusisance mustr now cease, and agter that he cheeseed it, and practucally passed out og my life till one afternoon when I got back to the fkat to dress doe dinner and found JKeeves inspecting a whacking big poster sort of thing which he had tdraped over the back of an armchair.
"Good Lord, Jeeves!" I said. Iw as feeling rather weak that day, and the thing shook me. "What on earth's that?"
"Nr. Little sent it to ne, sir, and desired me to bring it to your notie."
"Well, you've certainly done it!"
I took another look at the obkect. There was no soubr about it, it caight the eye. It was about seven feet lon, and most of the lettetetring in about as bright red as I ever struck.
This was how it ran:
TWING VILLAGE HALL
Friday, December 23
RICHARD LITTLE
presents
New and Original Revue
Entitled
WHAT HO, TWING!!
Book by
RICHARD LITTLE
Lyrics by
RICHARD LITTLE
Music by
RICHARD LITTLE
With the Full Twing Juvenile
Company and Chorus
Scenic effects by
RICHARD LITTLE
Produced by
RICHARD LITTLE
A RICHARD LITTLE PRODUCTION
♥ It looked like the finale all right. It wasn't long before I realised that it was something more. It was the finish.
I take it you know that Orange number at the Palace? It goes
Oh, won't you something something oranges,
My something oranges,
My something oranges;
Oh, won't you something something something I forget.
Something something something tumty tumty yet:
Oh-
or words to that effect. It's a dashed clever lyric, and the tune's good, too; but the thing that made the number was the business where the girls take oranges out of their baskets, you know, and toss them lightly to the audience. I don't know if you've ever noticed it, but it always seems to tickle an audience to bits when they get things thrown at them from the stage. Every time I've been to the Palace the customers have simply gone wild over this number.
♥ They surged about me in twos and threes, and I've never seen a public body so dashed unanimous on any point. To a man - and to a woman - they were cursing poor old Bingo; and there was a large and rapidly growing school of thought which held that the best thing to do would be to waylay him as he emerged and splash him about in the village pond a bit.
♥ I went behind, and found him sitting on a box in the wings, perspiring pretty freely and looking more or less like the spot marked with a cross where the accident happened. His hair was standing up and his ears were hanging down, and one harsh word would undoubtedly have made him burst into tears.
♥ "Well, I will now proceed to tear him limb from limb. It'll be something to do."
I hated to spoil his day-dreams, but it had to be. "Good heavens, man," I said, "you haven't time for frivolous amusements now. You've got to get out. And quick!"
~~The Metropolitan Touch.
♥ As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into family rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel' peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ("Please read this carefully and send it on to Jane,") the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that. "It's no use trying to get Bertie to take the slightest interest" is more or less the slogan, and I'm bound to say I'm all for it. A quiet life is what I like. And that's why I felt that the curse had come upon me, so to speak, when Aunt Agatha sailed into my sitting-room wile I was having a placid cigarette and started to tell me about Claude and Eustace.
..Since they've been up at Oxford I haven't seen so much of them, but what I have seen has been quite tolerably sufficient. Bright lads, mind you, but a trifle too much for a fellow like me who wants to jog along peacefully through life.
♥ I mean to say, instead of the ordinary grey and white, you can now get them in your regimental or school colours. And, believe me, it would have taken a man of stronger fibre than I am to resist the pair of Old Etonian spats which had smiled up at me from inside the window. I was inside the shop, opening negotiations, before it had even occurred to me that Jeeves might not approve. And I must say he had taken the thing a bit hardly. The fact of the matter is, Jeeves, though in many ways the best valet in London is too conservative. Hidebound, if you know what I mean, and an enemy to Progress.
"Nothing further, Jeeves," I said, with quiet dignity.
"Very good, sir."
He gave one frosty look at the spats and biffed off. Dash him!
♥ "She said you poured lemonade on the Junior Dean."
"I wish the deuce," said Claude, annoyed, "that people would get these things right. It wasn't the Junior Dean. It was the Senior Tutor."
"And it wasn't lemonade," said Eustace. "It was soda-water. The dear old thing happened to be standing just under our window while I was leaning out with a siphon in my hand. He looked up, and - well, it would have been chucking away the opportunity of a lifetime if I hadn't let him have it in the eyeball."
"Simply chucking it away," agreed Claude.
"Might never have occurred again," said Eustace.
"Hundred to one against it," said Claude.
♥ I suppose every fellow in the world had black periods in his life to which he can't look back without the smouldering eye and the silent shudder. Some coves, if you can judge by the novels you read nowadays, have them practically all the time; but, what with enjoying a sizable private income and a topping digestion, I'm bound to say it isn't very often I find my own existence getting a flat tyre. That's why this particular epoch is one that I don't think about more often than I can help. For the days that followed the unexpected resurrection of the blighted twins were so absolutely foul that the old nerves began to stick out of my body a foot long and curling at the ends. All of a twitter, believe me. I imagine the fact of the matter is that we Woosters are so frightfully honest and open and all that, that it gives us the pip to have to deceive.
♥ "..but what I was thinking was, are they safe?"
"Are they what?"
It seemed such a rummy adjective to apply to the twins, they being about as innocuous as a couple of sprightly young tarantulas.
.."You do think those poor dear boys are safe, Bertie? They have not met with some horrible accident?"
It made my mouth water to think of it, but I said no, I didn't think they had met with any horrible accident. I thought Eustace was a horrible accident, and Claude about the same, but I didn't say so. And presently she biffed off, still worried.
♥ When he heaves in sight, waiters brace themselves up and the wine-steward toys with his corkscrew. It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
♥ "Well, there was only one thing to do, and I did it. I'm not saying it didn't hurt, but there was no alternative."
"Jeeves," I said, "those spats."
"Yes, sir?"
"You really dislike them?"
"Intensely, sir."
"You don't think time might induce you to change your views?"
"No, sir."
"All right, then. Very well. Say no more. You may burn them."
"Thank you very much, sir. I have already done so. Before breakfast this morning. A quiet grey is far more suitable, sir. Thank you, sir."
~~The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace.
♥ I mean, when you've got used to a club where everything's nice and cheery, and where, if you want to attract a fellow's attention, you heave a bit of bread at him, it kind of damps you to come to a place where the youngest member is about eighty-seven, and it isn't considered good form to talk to anyone unless you and he were through the Peninsular War together. It was a relief to come across Bingo. We started to talk in hushed voices.
"This club," I said, "is the limit."
"It is the eel's eyebrows," agreed young Bingo. "I believe that old boy over by the window has been dead three days, but I don't like to mention it to anyone."
"Have you lunched here yet?"
"No. Why?"
"They have waitresses instead of waiters."
"Good Lord! I thought that went out with the Armistice." Bingo mused a moment, straightening his tie absently. "Er - pretty girls?"
"No."
He seemed disappointed, but pulled round.
♥ Bingo started violently. A wild gleam came into his eyes. And before I knew what he was up to he had brought down his hand with a most frightful whack on my summer trousering, causing me to leap like a young ram.
"Here!" I said.
"Sorry," said Bingo. "Excited. Carried away."
♥ "Bertie, we were in school together."
"It wasn't my fault."
"We've been pals for fifteen years."
"I know. It's going to take me the rest of my life to live it down."
"Bertie, old man," said Bingo, drawing up his chair closer and starting to knead my shoulder-blade, "listen. Be reasonable!"
And, of course, dash it! at the end of ten minutes I'd allowed the blighter to talk me round. It's always the way. Anyone can talk me round. If I were in a Trappist monastery, the first thing that would happen would be that some smooth performer would lure me into some frightful idiocy against my better judgement by means of the deaf-and-dumb language.
♥ "You never can tell in this world. If ever I felt that something attempted, something done, had earned a night's repose, it was when I got back to the flat and shoved my feet up on the mantelpiece and started to absorb the cup of tea which Jeeves had brought in. Used as I am to seeing Life's sitters blow up in the home-stretch and finish nowhere, I couldn't see any cause for alarm in this affair of young Bingo's. All he had to do when I left him in Pounceby Gardens was to walk upstairs with the little missus and collect the blessing. I was so convinced of this that when, about half an hour later, he came galloping into my sitting-room, all I thought was that he wanted to thank me in broken accents and tell me what a good chap I had been. I merely beamed benevolently on the old creature as he entered, and was just going to offer him a cigarette when I observed that he seemed to have something on his mind. In fact, he looked as if something solid had hit him in the solar plexus.
♥ "He thinks you're a loony."
"He - what?"
"Yes. That was Jeeves's idea, you know. It's solved the whole problem splendidly. He suggested that I should tell my uncle that I had acted in perfect good faith in introducing you to him as Rosie M. Banks; that I had repeatedly had it from your own lips that you were, and that I didn't see any reason why you shouldn't be. The idea being that you were subject to hallucinations and generally potty. And then we got hold of Sir Roderick Glossop - you remember, the old boy whose kid you pushed into the lake that day down at Ditteredge Hall - and he rallied round with his story of how he had come to lunch with you once and found your bedroom full up with cats and fish, and how you had pinched his hat while you were driving past his car in a taxi, and all that, you know. It just rounded the whole thing off nicely. I always say, and I always shall say, that you've only got to stand on Jeeves that Fate can't touch you."
I can put up with a good deal, but there are limits.
"Well, of all the dashed bits of nerve I ever-"
Bingo looked at me, astonished.
"You aren't annoyed!" he said.
"Annoyed! At having half London going about under the impression that I'm off my chump? Dash it all-"
"Bertie," said Bingo, "you amaze and wound me. If I had dreamed that you would object to doing a trifling good turn to a fellow who's been a pal of yours for fifteen years-"
"Yes, but look here-"
"Have you forgotten," said young Bingo, "that we were at school together?"
~~Bingo and the Little Woman.
♥ "Biffy!" I cried. "Well, well, well!"
He peered at me in a blinking kind of way, rather like one of his Herefordshire cows prodded unexpectedly while lunching.
"Bertie!" he gurgled, in a devout sort of tone. "Thank God!" He clutched my arm. "Don't leave me, Bertie. I'm lost."
"What do you mean, lost?"
"I came out for a walk and suddenly discovered after a mile or two that I didn't know where on earth I was. I've been wandering round in circles for hours."
♥ I read the paragraph again. A peculiar feeling it gave me. I don't know if you have ever experienced the sensation of seeing the announcement of the engagement of a pal of yours to a girl whom you were only saved from marrying yourself by the skin of your teeth. It induces a sort of - well, it's difficult to describe it exactly; but I should imagine a fellow would feel much the same if he happened to be strolling through the jungle with a boyhood chum and met a tigress or a jaguar, or what not, and managed to shin up a tree and looked down and saw the friend of his youth vanishing into the undergrowth in the animal's slavering jaws. A sort of profound, prayerful relief, if you know what I mean, blended at the same time with a pang of pity. What I'm driving at is that thankful as I was that I hadn't had to marry Honoria myself, I was sorry to see a real good chap like old Biffy copping it. I sucked down a spot of tea and began to brood over the business.
♥ "And it sort of happened with me. You know how it is wen your heart's broken. A kind of lethargy comes over you. You get absentminded and cease to exercise proper precautions, and the first thing you know you're for it. I don't know how it happened, old man, but there it is. And what I want you to tell me is, what's the procedure?"
"You mean, how does a fellow edge out?"
"Exactly. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, Bertie, but I can't go through this thing. The shot is not on the board. For about a day and a half I thought it might be all right, but now- You remember that laugh of hers?"
"I do."
"Well, there's that, and then all this business of never letting a fellow alone - improving his mind and so forth-"
♥ "The trouble is there isn't any insanity in my family."
"None?"
It seemed to me almost incredible that a fellow could be such a perfect chump as dear old Biffy without a bit of assistance.
"Not a loony on the list," he said gloomily. "It's just like my luck."
♥ As a rule the bright ideas you get overnight have a trick of not seeming quite so frightfully fruity when you examine them by the light of day; but this one looked as good at breakfast as it had done before dinner. I examined it narrowly from every angle, and I didn't see how it could fail.
♥ The poor bird was looking pretty green about the gills. I recognised the symptoms. I had felt much the same myself when waiting for Sir Roderick to turn up and lunch with me. How the deuce people who have anything wrong with their nerves can bring themselves to chat with that man, I can't imagine; and yet without his having to sit on somebody's head and ring for the attendant to bring the strait-waistcoat..
♥ "Are you fond of flowers, Biffy?" I said.
"Eh?"
"Smell these."
Biffy extended the old beak in a careworn sort of way, and I pressed the bulb as per printed instructions on the label.
I do like getting my money's-worth. Elevenpence-ha'penny the thing had cost me, and it would have been cheap at double. The advertisement on the outside of the box had said that its effects were "indescribably ludicrous", and I can testify that it was no over-statement. Poor old Biffy leaped three feet in the air and overturned a small table.
"There!" I said.
The old egg was a trifle incoherent at first, but he found words fairly soon, and began to express himself with a good deal of warmth.
"Calm yourself, laddie," I said, as he paused for breath. "It was no mere jest to pass an idle hour. It was a demonstration. Take this, Biffy, with an old friend's blessing, refill the bulb, shove it into Sir Roderick's face, press firmly, and leave the rest to him. I'll guarantee that in something under three seconds the idea will have dawned on him that you are not required in his family."
Biffy stared at me.
"Are you suggesting I squirt Sir Roderick?"
"Absolutely. Squirt him good. Squirt as you have never squirted before."
♥ There is something about the man that is calculated to strike terror into the stoutest heart. If ever there was a bloke at the very mention of whose name it would be excusable for people to tremble like aspens, that bloke is Sir Roderick Glossop. He has an enormous bald head, all the hair which ought to be on it seeming to have run into his eyebrows, and his eyes go through you like a couple of Death Rays.
♥ Biffy's man came in with the nose-bags and we sat down to lunch.
♥ "Well, I am. Dashed disappointed. I do think you might rally round. Did you see Mr. Biffen's face?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, then."
"If you will pardon my saying so, sir, Mr. Biffen has surely only himself to thank if he has entered upon matrimonial obligations which do not please him."
"You're talking absolute rot, Jeeves. You know as well as I do that Honoria Glossop is an Act of God. You might just as well blame a fellow for getting run over by a truck."
"Yes, sir?"
"Absolutely yes. Besides, the poor ass wasn't in a condition to resist. He told me all about it. He had lost the only girl he had ever loved, and you know what a man's like when that happens to him."
♥ There are certain moments in life when words are not needed. I looked at Biffy, Biffy looked at me. A perfect understanding linked our two souls.
"?"
"!"
Three minutes later we had jointed the Planters.
♥ A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it contains at least seven ingredients, and I'm not saying, mind you, that he isn't right. The man behind the bar told us the things were called Green Swizzles; and, if ever I marry and have a son, Green Swizzle Wooster is the name that will go down on the register, in memory of the day his father's life was saved at Wembley.
♥ When I indulged in those few rather bitter words about exhibitions, it must be distinctly understood that I was not alluding to what you might call the more earthy portion of these curious places. I yield to no man in my approval of those institutions where on payment of a shilling you are permitted to slide down a slippery run-way sitting on a mat. I love the Jiggle-Joggle, and I am prepared to take on all and sundry at Skee Ball for money, stamps, or Brazil nuts.
But, joyous reveller as I am on these occasions, I was simply not in it with old Biffy. Whether it was the Green Swizzles or merely the relief of being parted from Sir Roderick, I don't know, but Biffy flung himself into the pastimes of the proletariat with a zest that was almost frightening. I could hardly drag him away from the Whip, and as for the Switchback, he looked like spending the rest of his life on it. I managed to remove him at last, and he was wandering through the crowd at my side with gleaming eyes, hesitating between having his fortune told and taking a whirl at the Wheel of Joy, when he suddenly grabbed my arm and uttered a sharp animal cry.
"Bertie!"
"Now what?"
He was pointing at a large sign over a building.
"Look! Palace of Beauty!"
I tried to choke him off. I was getting a bit weary by this time. Not so young as I was.
"You don't want to go in there," I said. "A fellow at the club was telling me about that. It's only a lot of girls. You don't want to see a lot of girls."
"I do want to see a lot of girls," said Biffy firmly. "Dozens of girls, and the more unlike Honoria they are, the better. Besides, I've suddenly remembered that that's the place Jeeves told me to be sure to visit. It all comes back to me. 'Mr. Biffen,' he said, 'I strongly advise you to visit the Palace of Beauty.' Now, what the man was driving at or what his motive was, I don't know; but I ask you, Bertie, is it wise, is it safe, is it judicious ever to ignore Jeeves's lightest word? We enter by the door on the left."
♥ "Mabel!" yelled Biffy, going off in my ear like a bomb.
I can't say I was feeling my chirpiest. Drama is all very well, but I hate getting mixed up in it in a public spot; and I had not realised before how dashed public this spot was. The crow seemed to have doubled itself in the last five seconds, and, while most of them had their eye on Biffy, quite a goodish few were looking at me as if they thought I was an important principal in the scene and might be expected at any moment to give of my best in the way of wholesome entertainment for the masses.
Biffy was jumping about like a lamb in the springtime - and, what is more, a feeble-minded lamb.
"Bertie! It's her! It's she!" He looked about him wildly. "Where the deuce is the stage-door?" he cried. "Where's the manager? I want to see the house-manager immediately."
And then he suddenly bounded forward and began hammering on the glass with his stick.
♥ "Well, he certainly owes you a lot. He's crazy about her."
"That is very gratifying, sir."
"And she ought to be pretty grateful to you, too. Old Biffy's got fifteen thousand a year, not to mention more cows, pigs, hens, and ducks than he knows what to do with. A dashed useful bird to have in any family."
"Yes, sir."
"Tell me, Jeeves," I said, "how did you happen to know the girl in the first place?"
Jeeves looked dreamily out into the traffic.
"She is my niece, sir. If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should not jerk the steering-wheel with quite such suddenness. We very nearly collided with that omnibus."
~~The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy.
♥ "Are you a friend of the prisoner?" asked the beak.
"I am in Mr. Wooster's employment, Your Worship, in the capacity of gentleman's personal gentleman."
♥ I nodded myself. I hadn't had my eight hours the night before, and what you might call a lethargy was showing a tendency to steal over me from time to time.
♥ "Carry on, then. And meanwhile pull down the blinds and bring a couple more cushions and heave that small chair this way so that I can put my feet up, and then go away and brood and let me hear from you in - say, a couple of hours, or maybe three. And if anybody calls and wants to see me, inform them that I am dead."
"Dead, sir?"
"Dead. You won't be so far wrong."
♥ There is something dashed insidious about Jeeves. Time and again since we first came together he has stunned me with some apparently drivelling suggestion or scheme or ruse or plan of campaign, and after about five minutes has convinced me that it is not only sound but fruity. It took nearly a quarter of an hour to reason me into this particular one, it being considerably the weirdest to date; but he did it.
♥ Professor Pringle was a thinnish, baldish, dyspeptic-lookingish cove with an eye like a haddock, while Mrs. Pringle's aspect was that of one who had had bad news round about the year 1900 and never really got over it. And I was just staggering under the impact of these two when I was introduced to a couple of ancient females with shawls all over them.
..There was a pause. The whole strength of the company gazed at me like a family group out of one of Edgar Allan Poe's less cheery yarns, and I felt my joie de vivre dying at the roots.
♥ It is all very well, though, to talk airily about avoiding a female's society; but when you are living in the same house with her, and she doesn't want to avoid you, it takes a bit of doing. It is a peculiar thing in life that the people you most particularly want to edge away from always seem to cluster round like a poultice. I hadn't been twenty-four hours in the place before I perceived that I was going to see a lot of this pestilence.
♥ "Nevertheless, Jeeves, it is a known scientific fact that there is a particular style of female that does seem strangely attracted to the sort of fellow I am."
"Very true, sir."
"I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don't know how to account for it, but it is so."
"It may be Nature's provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir."
♥ I welcomed him with a good deal of cordiality. Though but a cat, he did make a sort of third at this party; and he afforded a good excuse for changing the conversation.
"Jolly birds, cats," I said.
She wasn't having any.
♥ I edged away a couple of inches and sat staring before me, the old brow beginning to get slightly bedewed.
And then suddenly - well, you know how it is, I mean. I suppose everyone has had that ghastly feeling at one time or another of being urged by some overwhelming force to do some absolutely blithering act. You get it every now and then when you're in a crowded theatre, and something seems to be egging you on to shout "Fire!" and see what happens. Or you're talking to someone and all at once you feel, "Now, suppose I suddenly biffed this bird in the eye!"
Well, what I'm driving at is this, at this juncture, with her shoulder squashing against mine and her back hair tickling my nose, a perfectly loony impulse came sweeping over me to kiss her.
♥ At this point, when everything was going as sweet as a nut and I was feeling on top of my form, Mrs. Pringle suddenly soaked me on the base of the skull with a sandbag. Not actually, I don't mean. No, no. I speak figuratively, as it were.
♥ "Sir Roderick Glossop," announced the maid or some such person, and in he came.
One of the things that get this old crumb so generally disliked among the better element of the community is the fact that he has a head like the dome of St. Paul's and eyebrows that want bobbing or shingling to reduce them to anything like reasonable size. It is a nasty experience to see this bald and bushy bloke advancing on you when you haven't prepared the strategic railways in your rear.
As he came into the room I backed behind a sofa and commended my soul to God. I didn't need to have my hand read to know that trouble was coming to me through a dark man.
♥ "Come here!" bellowed Sir Roderick. "Am I to understand that you have inflicted yourself on this household under the pretence of being the nephew of an old friend?"
It seemed a pretty accurate description of the facts.
"Well - er - yes," I said.
Sir Roderick shot an eye at me. It entered the body somewhere about the top stud, roamed around inside for a bit and went out at the back.
"Insane! Quite insane, as I knew from the first moment I saw him."
♥ "In prison."
"In prison!"
"It was entirely my fault. We were strolling along on Boat-Race Night and I advised him to pinch a policeman's helmet."
"I don't understand."
"Well, he seemed depressed, don't you know; and rightly or wrongly, I thought it might cheer him up if he stepped across the street and collared a policeman's helmet. He thought it a good idea, too, so he started doing it, and the man made a fuss and Oliver sloshed him."
"Sloshed him?"
"Biffed him - smote him a blow - in the stomach."
"My nephew Oliver hit a policeman in the stomach?"
"Absolutely in the stomach. And next morning the beak sent him to the bastille for thirty days without the option."
.."I'm proud of him," she said.
"That's fine."
"If every young man in England went about hitting policemen in the stomach, it would be a better country to live in."
♥ "Jeeves," I said, "you move in a mysterious way your wonders to perform. You don't mind if I sing a bit, do you?"
"Not at all, sir," said Jeeves.
~~Without the Option.
♥ "Jeeves," I said looking in on him one afternoon on my return from the club, "I don't want to interrupt you."
"No, sir?"
"But I would like a word with you."
"Yes, sir?"
He had been packing a few of the Wooster necessaries in the old kit-bag against our approaching visit to the seaside, and he now rose and stood busting with courteous zeal.
♥ "Well, what I'm going to do for a start is to take him down to Marvis Bay with me. I know these birds who have been handed their hat by the girl of their dreams, Jeeves. What they want it complete change of scene."
"There is much in what you say, sir."
"Yes. Change of scene is the thing. I heard of a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl wired him 'Come back, Muriel.' Man started to write out a reply; suddenly found that he couldn't remember girl's surname; so never answered at all, and lived happily ever after."
♥ I don't know if you know Marvis Bay? It's in Dorsetshire; and, while not what you would cal a fiercely exciting spot, has many good points. You spend the day bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you stroll out on the shore with the mosquitoes. At nine p.m. you rub ointment on the wounds and go to bed. It was a simple, healthy life, and it seemed to suit poor old Freddie absolutely. Once the moon was up and the breeze sighing in the trees, you couldn't drag him from that beach with ropes. He became quite a popular pet with the mosquitoes. They would hang round waiting for him to come out, and would give a miss to perfectly good strollers just so as to be in good condition for him.
♥ Now, those who know me, if you ask them, will tell you that I'm a chump. My Aunt Agatha would testify to this effect. So would my Uncle Percy and many more of my nearest and - if you like to use the expression - dearest. Well, I don't mind. I admit it. I am a chump. But what I do say - and I should like to lay the greatest possible stress on this - is that every now and then, just when the populace has given up hope that I will ever show any real human intelligence - I get what it is idle to pretend is not an inspiration. And that's what happened now. I doubt if the idea that came to me at this juncture would have occurred to a single one of any dozen of the largest-brained blokes in history. Napoleon might have got it, but I'll bet Darwin and Shakespeare and Marcus Aurelius wouldn't have thought of it in a thousand years.
♥ From what I had seen of the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid: and, anyhow, he was her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: "If I kidnap this young heavyweight for a brief space of time: and if, when the girl has got frightfully anxious about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly appeared leading the infant by the hand and telling a story to the effect that he had found him wandering at large about the country and practically saved his life, the girl's gratitude is bound to make her chuck hostilities and be friends again."
So I gathered up the kid and made off with him.
..I was leaning back in a chair on the veranda, smoking a peaceful cigarette, when down the road I saw the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still with him.
"Hallo!" I said. "Couldn't you find her?"
I then perceived that Freddie was looking as if he had been kicked in the stomach.
"Yes, I found her," he replied, with one of those bitter, mirthless laughs you read about.
"Well, then-?"
He sank into a chair and groaned.
"This isn't her cousin, you idiot," he said. "He's no relation at all - just a kid she met on the beach. She had never seen him before in her life."
"But she was helping him build a sand-castle."
"I don't care. He's a perfect stranger."
It seemed to me that, if the modern girl goes about building sand-castles with kids she has only known for five minutes and probably without a proper introduction at that, then all that has been written about her is perfectly true. Brazen is the word that seems to meet the case.
I said as much to Freddie, but he wasn't listening.
"I don't know. O Lord, I've had a time! Thank goodness you will probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for kidnapping. That's my only consolation. I'll come and jeer at you through the bars on visiting days."
.."Who are his parents?"
"I don't know."
"Where do they live?"
"I don't know."
The kid didn't seem to know, either. A thoroughly vapid and uninformed infant. I got out of him the fact that he had a father, but that was as far as he went. It didn't seem ever to have occurred to him, chatting of an evening with the old man, to ask him his name and address. So, after a wasted ten minutes, out we went into the great world, more or less what you might call at random.
I give you my word that, until I started to tramp the place with this child, I never had a notion that it was such a difficult job restoring a son to his parents. How kidnappers ever get caught is a mystery to me. I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound, but nobody came forward to claim the infant. You would have thought, from the lack of interest in him, that he was stopping there all by himself in a cottage of his own.
♥ I hadn't expected Freddie to sing with joy when he saw me looming up with child complete, but I did think he might have shown a little more manly fortitude, a little more of the old British bull-dog spirit. He leaped up when we came in, glared at the kid and clutched his head. He didn't speak for a long time; but, to make up for it, when he began he did not leave off for a long time.
♥ "What can we do about it?"
"We? What do you mean, we? I'm not going to spend my time taking turns as a nursemaid to this excrescence. I'm going back to London."
"Freddie!" I cried. "Freddie, old man!" My voice shook. "Would you desert a pal at a time like this?"
"Yes, I would."
"Freddie," I said, "you've got to stand by me. You must. Do you realise that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and dressed again? You wouldn't leave me to do all that single-handed?"
"Jeeves can help you."
"No, sir," said Jeeves, who had just rolled in with lunch; "I must, I fear, disassociate myself completely from the matter."
♥ "Besides, old thing," I said, "I did it all for your sake, you know."
He looked at me in a curious way, and breathed rather hard for some moments.
"Bertie," he said, "one moment. I will stand a good deal, but I will not stand being expected to be grateful."
♥ At eight o'clock he fell asleep in a chair; and, having undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor with a sort of careworn wrinkle between his eyes, and I knew what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple - a mere matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I stirred the heap with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like nothing on earth. All most unpleasant.
♥ He bowed in a gratified manner. I beamed. And, while we didn't actually fall on each other's necks, we gave each other to understand that all was well once more.
♥ "What does it mean?" said the girl again. Her face was pink, and her eyes were sparking in the sort of way, don't you know, that makes a fellow feel as if he hadn't any bones in him, if you know what I mean. Yes, Bertram felt filleted. Did you ever treat on your partner's dress at a dance - I'm speaking now of the days when women wore dresses long enough to be trodden on - and hear it rip and see her smile at you like an angel and say, "Please don't apologise. It's nothing," and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you in the face? Well, that's how Freddie's Elizabeth looked.
Well?" she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much. Then I said, "Oh, well, it was this way." And I told her all about it. And all the while Idiot Freddie stood there gaping, without a word.
♥ "It would appear, sir," said Jeeves, "that everything has concluded most satisfactorily, after all."
"Yes. Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines," I said, "but his business certainly seems to have gone with a bang."
"Very true, sir," said Jeeves.
~~Fixing It for Freddie.
♥ "Yes, sir. She presents her compliments and would be glad to know what progress you have made with the article which you are writing for her."
"Jeeves, can I mention men's knee-length under-clothing in a woman's paper?"
"No, sir."
"Then tell her it's finished."
..My Aunt Dahlia, who runs a woman's paper called Milady's Boudoir, had recently backed me into a corner and made me promise to write her a few authoritative words for her "Husbands and Brothers" page on "What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing". I believe in encouraging aunts, when deserving; and, as there are many worse eggs than her knocking about the metrop, I had consented blithely. But I give you my honest word that if I had had the foggiest notion of what I was letting myself in for, not even a nephew's devotion would have kept me from giving her the raspberry. A deuce of a job it had been, taxing the physique to the utmost. I don't wonder now that all these author blokes have bald heads and faces like birds who have suffered.
♥ I watched him narrowly as he read on, and, as I was expecting, what you might call the love-light suddenly died out of his eyes. I braced myself for an unpleasant scene.
"Come to the bit about soft silk shirts for evening wear?" I asked carelessly.
"Yes, sir," said Jeeves, in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend.
"And if I may be pardoned for saying so-"
"You don't like it?"
"No, sir. I do not. Soft silk shirts with evening costume are not worn, sir."
♥ I thought about it a good deal as I walked home, and I was hoping he wouldn't roll round with his hard-luck story too early in the morning. He had the air of one who intends to charge in at about six-thirty.
♥ I picked at the coverlet. I had been a pal of Bingo's for many years, and we Woosters stand by our pals. "Jeeves," I said, "you have heard?"
"Yes, sir."
"The position is serious."
"Yes, sir."
"We must cluster round."
"Yes, sir."
"Does anything suggest itself to you?"
"Yes, sir."
"What! You don't really mean that?"
"Yes, sir."
"Bingo," I said, "the sun is still shining. Something suggests itself to Jeeves."
"Jeeves," said young Bingo in a quivering voice, "if you see me through this fearful crisis, ask of me what you will even until half my kingdom."
♥ "Now listen, Bingo," I said. "I'm frightfully sorry for you and all that, but I must firmly draw the line at burglary."
"But, dash it, I'm only asking you to do what you did at Easeby."
"No, you aren't. I was staying at Easeby. It was simply a case of having to lift a parcel off the hall table. I hadn't got to break into a house. I'm sorry, but I simply will not break into your beastly house on any consideration whatever."
He gazed at me, astonished and hurt.
"Is this Bertie Wooster speaking?" he said in a low voice.
"Yes, it is!"
"But, Bertie," he said gently, "we agreed that you were at school with me."
"I don't care."
"At school, Bertie. The dear old school."
"I don't care. I will not-"
"Bertie!"
"I will not-"
"Bertie!"
"No!"
"Bertie!"
"Oh, all right," I said.
"There," said young Bingo, patting me on the shoulder, "spoke the true Bertram Wooster!"
♥ Well, it was only a step to the desk, and nothing between me and it but a brown shaggy rug; so I avoided grandfather's eye and, summoning up the good old bulldog courage of the Woosters, moved forward and started to navigate the rug. And I had hardly taken a step when the southeast corner of it suddenly detached itself from the rest and sat up with a snuffle.
Well, I mean to say, to bear yourself fittingly in the face of an occurrence of this sort you want to be one of those strong, silent, phlegmatic birds who are ready for anything. This type of bloke, I imagine, would simply have cocked an eye at the rug, said to himself, "Ah, a Pekingese dog, and quite a good one, too!" and started at once to make cordial overtures to the animal in order to win its sympathy and moral support. I suppose I must be one of the neurotic younger generation you read about in the papers nowadays, because it was pretty plain within half a second that I wasn't strong and I wasn't phlegmatic. This wouldn't have mattered so much, but I wasn't silent either. In the emotion of the moment I let out a sort of sharp yowl and leaped about four feet in a north-westerly direction. And there was a crash that sounded as though somebody had touched off a bomb.
What a female novelist wants with an occasional table in her study containing a vase, two framed photographs, a saucer, a lacquer box, and a jar of potpourri, I don't know; but that was what Bingo's Rosie had, and I caught it squarely with my right hip and knocked it endways. It seemed to me for a moment as if the whole world had dissolved into a kind of cataract of glass and china. A few years ago, when I legged it to America to elude my Aunt Agatha, who was out with her hatchet, I remember going to Niagara and listening to the Falls. They made much the same sort of row, but not so loud.
And at the same instant the dog began to bark.
It was a small dog - the sort of animal from which you would have expected a noise like a squeaking slate-pencil; but it was simply baying. It had retired into a corner, and was leaning against the wall with bulging eyes; and every two seconds it chucked its head back in a kind of pained way and let out another terrific bellow.
Well, I know when I'm licked. I was sorry for Bingo and regretted the necessity of having to let him down; but the time had come, I felt, to shift. "Outside for Bertram!" was the slogan, and I took a running leap at the window and scrambled through.
And there on the path, as if they had been waiting for me by appointment, stood a policeman and a parlourmaid.
It was an embarrassing moment.
"Oh - er - there you are!" I said. And there was what you might call a contemplative silence for a moment.
♥ Aunt Dahlia was drinking something that smelled like a leak in the gas-pipe, and I thought for a moment that it was that that made her twist up her face. But I was wrong.
♥ "Yes, sir. I will unpack your clothes."
"Oh, Jeeves," I said, "did Peabody and Simms send those soft silk shirts?"
"Yes, sir. I sent them back."
"Sent them back!"
"Yes, sir."
I eyed him for a moment. But I mean to say. I mean, what's the use?
"Oh, all right," I said. "Then lay out one of the gents' stiff-bosomed."
"Very good, sir," said Jeeves
~~Clustering Round Young Bingo.