The World of Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. (3/4)

[midnight_birth]

Title: The World of Jeeves.
Author: P.G. Wodehouse.
Genre: Literature, fiction, short stories, humour.
Country: England.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1926, 1927, 1929, (this collection 1967).
Summary: A collection of 34 stories about Wooster and his crafty and trusted valet, Jeeves. (Stories 21-29 in this post, refer to PART 1 for stories 1-11, PART 2 for stories 12-20, and PART 4 for stories 30-34.) 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. In The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy (1926), Wooster and Jeeves help out Sippy, an editor of a paper, when he is bullied by his former head-master and falls in love with one of his contributing poetesses, but does not feel himself up to the task of solving either problems on his own. In Jeeves and the Yuletide Spirit (1927), Wooster visits a country house for Christmas in pursuit of a young lady he believes himself in love with, and it's up to Jeeves to demonstrate, through some ingenious string-pulling, that she's not the right fit for him at all. In Jeeves and the Song of Songs (1929), Wooster and Jeeves are implored by Aunt Dahlia to break up Wooster's rival Tuppy and a singer he has recently taken up with, which leads to Jeeves working his usual ingenious magic. In Episode of the Dog McIntosh (1929), Wooster is stuck dog-sitting his Aunt Agatha's dog, but has to turn to Jeeves for help when one of his flighty girlfriends gives the dog away to a theater director's son. In A Spot of Art (1929), Bertie finds himself smitten with an artist, but when the young woman hits his rival for her hand with a car and he has to take the credit for the accident to the man's volatile sister, things get complicated. In Jeeves and the Kid Clementina (1930), the incorrigible Miss Wickham gets Wooster into hot water again when he's stuck having to sneak her 13-year-old cousin back into a girls' boarding school in the middle of the night, and only Jeeves's ingenuity can get him out of it. In The Love That Purifies (1929), Wooster is inadvertently thrust in the midst of two behaviourally-challenged teen boys in a "good-behaviour" contest while visiting his favorite Aunt Dahlia, but has to rely on Jeeves once more when his aunt asks him to help her hopeless son win. In Jeeves and the Old School Chum (1930), Wooster's friend Bingo finds himself in an unpleasant home and marriage environment when his wife's old school chum begins to have too much influence on her, and only Jeeves's schemes are up to the challenge of removing her.

My rating: 8/10
My review:


♥ "I particularly wish you to make a good impression on Mr. Filmer."

"Right-ho."

"Don't speak in that casual way, as if you supposed that it was perfectly natural that you would make a good impression upon him. Mr. Filmer is a serious-minded man of high character and purpose, and you are just the type of vapid and frivolous wastrel against which he is most likely to be prejudiced."

Hard words, of course, from one's own flesh and blood, but well in keeping with past form.

♥ And so began what, looking back along a fairly eventful career, I think I can confidently say was the scaliest visit I have ever experienced in the course of my life. What with the agony of missing the life-giving cocktail before dinner; the painful necessity of being obliged, every time I wanted a quiet cigarette, to lie on the floor in my bedroom and puff the smoke up the chimney; the constant discomfort of meeting Aunt Agatha round unexpected corners; and the fearful strain on the morale of having to chum with the Right Hon. A.B. Filmer, it was not long before Bertram was up against it to an extent hitherto undreamed of.

♥ For when it is a question of a pal being in the soup, we Woosters no longer think of self; and that poor old Bingo was knee-deep in the bisque was made plain by his mere appearance - which was that of a cat which has just been struck by a half-brick and is expecting another shortly.

♥ "I will also now reveal why I am staying in this pest-house, tutoring a kid who requires not education in the Greek and Latin languages but a swift slosh on the base of the skull with a black-jack."

♥ "Rosie is the dearest girl in the world; but if you were a married man, Bertie, you would be aware that the best of wives is apt to cut up rough if she finds that her husband has dropped six weeks' housekeeping money on a single race. Isn't that so, Jeeves?"

"Yes, sir. Women are odd in that respect."

♥ I saw all.

"Jeeves," I said.

"Sir?"

"I see all. Do you see all?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then flock round."

"I fear, sir-"

Bingo gave a low moan.

"Don't tell me, Jeeves," he said, brokenly, "that nothing suggests itself."

"Nothing at the moment, I regret to say, sir."

Bingo uttered a stricken woofle like a bull-dog that has been refused cake.

♥ Young Bingo, you see, is one of those fellows who, once their fingers close over the handle of a tennis racket, fall into a sort of trance in which nothing outside the radius of the lawn exists for them. If you came up to Bingo in the middle of a set and told him that panthers were devouring his best friend in the kitchen garden, he would look at you and say: "Oh, ah?" or words to that effect. I knew that he would not give a thought to young Thomas and the Right Hon. till the last ball had pounced, and, as I dressed for dinner that night, I was conscious of an impending doom.

♥ "What exact steps do you think the kid Thomas intends to take?"

"In the course of an informal conversation which I had with the young gentleman this afternoon, sir, he informed me that he had been reading a romance entitled Treasure Island, and had been much struck by the character and actions of a certain Captain Flint. I gathered that he was weighing the advisability of modelling his own conduct on that of the Captain."

"But, good heavens, Jeeves! If I remember Treasure Island, Flint was the bird who went about hitting people with a cutlass. You don't think young Thomas would bean Mr. Filmer with a cutlass?"

"Possibly he does not possess a cutlass, sir."

"Well, with anything."

"We can but wait and see, sir. The tie, if I might suggest it, sir, a shade more tightly knotted. One is at the perfect butterfly effect. If you will permit me-"

"What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this? Do you realise that Mr. Little's domestic happiness is handing in the scale?"

"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter."

I could see the man was pained, but I did not try to heal the wound. What's the word I want? Preoccupied. I was too preoccupied, don't you know. And distrait. Not to say careworn.

♥ "He must have got caught in the rain and be sheltering somewhere in the grounds," said Aunt Agatha. "Bertie, go out and find him. Take a raincoat to him."

"Right-ho!" I said. My only desire in life now was to find the Right Hon. And I hoped it wouldn't be merely his body.

..But the feature of the place was the lake.

It stood to the east of the house, beyond the rose garden, and covered several acres. In the middle of it was an island. In the middle of the island was a building known as the Octagon. And in the middle of the Octagon, seated on the roof and spouting water like a public fountain, was the Right Hon. A.B. Filmer.

..only just then, at the very instant when I was getting ready to say something good, there was a hissing noise like a tyre bursting in a nest of cobras, and out of the bushes to my left there popped something so large and white and active that, thinking quicker than I have ever done in my puff, I rose like a rocketing pheasant, and, before I knew what I was doing, had begun the climb for life. Something slapped against the wall about an inch below my right ankle, and any doubts I may have had about remaining below vanished. The lad who bore 'mid snow and ice the banner with the strange device "Excelsior!" was the model for Bertram.

"Be careful!" yipped the Right Hon.

I was.

Whoever built the Octagon might have constructed it especially for this sort of crisis. Its walls had grooves at regular intervals which were just right for the hands and feet, and it wasn't very long before I was parked up in the roof beside the Right Hon., gazing down at one of the largest and shortest-tempered swans I had ever seen. It was standing below, stretching up a neck like a hose-pipe, just where a bit of brick, judiciously bunged, would catch it amidships.

I bunged the brick and scored a bull's eye.

The Right Hon. didn't seem any too well pleased.

"Don't tease it!" he said.

"It teased me," I said.

The swan extended another eight feet of neck and gave an imitation of steam escaping from a leaky pipe. The rain continued to lash down with what you might call indescribable fury, and I was sorry that in the agitation inseparable from shinning up a stone wall at practically a second's notice I had dropped the raincoat which I had been bringing with me for my fellow-rooster.

♥ "Sir?"

"I'm sitting on the roof."

"Very good, sir."

"Don't say 'Very good'. Come and help us. Mr. Filmer and I are treed, Jeeves."

"Very good, sir."

"Don't keep saying 'Very good'. It's nothing of the kind. The place is alive with swans."

"I will attend to the matter immediately, sir."

I turned to the Right Hon, I even went so far as to pat him on the back. It was like slapping a wet sponge.

"All is well," I said. "Jeeves is coming."

"What can he do?"

I frowned a trifle. The man's tone had been peevish, and I didn't like it.

"That," I replied with a touch of stiffness, "we cannot say until we see him in action. He may pursue one course, or he may pursue another. But on one thing you can rely with the utmost confidence - Jeeves will find a way.

♥ The swan had been uncoiling a further supply of neck in our direction; but now he whipped round.

♥ Well, I could have told that swan it was no use. As swans go, he may have been well up in the ranks of the intelligentsia; but, when it came to pitting his brains against Jeeves, he was simply wasting his time. He might just as well have gone home at once.

Every young man starting life ought to know how to cope with an angry swan, so I will briefly relate the proper procedure. You begin by picking up the raincoat which somebody has dropped; and then, judging the distance to a nicety, you simply shove the raincoat over the bird's head; and, taking the boat-hook which you have prudently brought with you, you insert it underneath the swan and heave. The swan goes into a bush and starts trying to unscramble itself; and you saunter back to your boat, taking with you any friends who may happen at the moment to be sitting on roofs in the vicinity. That was Jeeves's method, and I cannot see how it could have been improved upon.

♥ "..Mrs. Little will find out what Mr. Little has been up to, and what will be the upshot and outcome, Jeeves? I will tell you. It will mean that Mrs. Little will get the goods on Mr. Little to an extent to which, though only a bachelor myself, I should say that no wife ought to get the goods on her husband if the proper give and take of married life - what you might call the essential balance, as it were - is to be preserved. Women bring these things up, Jeeves. They do not forget and forgive."

"Very true, sir."

♥ "I conceived the notion of going to Mr. Filmer and saying that it was you who had stolen his boat, sir."

The man flickered before me. I clutched a sock in a feverish grip.

"Saying - what?"

~~Jeeves and the Impending Doom.

♥ If you ask my Aunt Agatha she will tell you - in fact, she is quite likely to tell you even if you don't ask her - that I am a vapid and irreflective chump. Barely sentient, was the way she once described me: and I'm not saying that in a broad, general sense she isn't right. But there is one department of life in which I am Hawkshaw the detective in person. I can recognise Love's Young Dream more quickly than any other bloke of my weight and age in the Metropolis. So many of my pals have copped it in the past few year that now I can spot it a mile off on a foggy day.

♥ "Bertie, I love her."

"Have you told her so?"

"How can I?"

"I don't see why not. Quite easy to bring into the general conversation."

Sippy groaned hollowly.

"Do you know what it is, Bertie, to feel the humility of a worm?"

"Rather! I do sometimes with Jeeves."

♥ He withdrew, leaving a gap in the atmosphere about ten feet by six.

♥ I pondered. It was a tough problem.

"How would it be-?" I said.

"That's no good."

"Only a suggestion," I said.

♥ "At present this head master bloke, this Waterbury, is trampling all over Mr. Sipperley because he is hedged about with dignity, if you understand what I mean. Yeats have passed; Mr. Sipperley now shaves daily and is in an important editorial position; but he can never forget that this bird once gave him six of the juiciest. Result: an inferiority complex. The only way to remove that complex, Jeeves, is to arrange that Mr. Sipperley shall see this Waterbury in a thoroughly undignified position. This done, the scales will fall from his eyes. You must see that for yourself, Jeeves. Take your own case. No doubt there are a number of your friends and relations who look up to you and respect you greatly. But suppose one night they were to see you, in an advanced state of intoxication, dancing the Charleston in your underwear in the muddle of Piccadilly Circus?"

"The contingency is remote, sir."

♥ The first thing you need in matters of this kind, as every general knows, is a thorough knowledge of the terrain. Not know the terrain, and where are you? Look at Napoleon and that sunken road at Waterloo. Silly ass!

♥ Now, setting a booby-trap for a respectable citizen like a head master (even of an inferior school to your own) is not a matter to be approached lightly and without careful preparation. I don't suppose I've ever selected a lunch with more thought than I did that day. And after a nicely-balanced meal, preceded by a couple of dry Martinis, washed down with half a bot. of nice light, dry champagne, and followed by a spot of brandy, I could have set a booby-trap for a bishop.

♥ "They're engaged. But how did it happen?"

"I took the liberty of telephoning to Mr. Sipperley in your name, asking him to come immediately to the flat, sir."

"Oh, that's how he came to be at the flat? Well?"

"I then took the liberty of telephoning to Miss Moon and informing her that Mr. Sipperley had met with a nasty accident. As I anticipated, the young lady was strongly moved and announced her intention of coming to see Mr. Sipperley immediately. When she arrived, it required only a few moments to arrange the matter. It seems that Miss Moon has long loved Mr. Sipperley, sir, and-"

"I should have thought that, when she turned up and found he hadn't had a nasty accident, she would have been thoroughly pipped at being fooled."

"Mr. Sipperley had had a nasty accident, sir."

"He had?"

"Yes, sir."

"Rummy coincidence. I mean, after what you were saying this morning."

"Not altogether, sir. Before telephoning to Miss Moon, I took the further liberty of striking Mr. Sipperley a sharp blow on the head with one of your golf-clubs, which was fortunately lying in a corner of the room. The putter, I believe, sir. If you recollect, you were practising with it this morning before you left."

I gaped at the blighter. I had always known Jeeves for a man of infinite sagacity, sound beyond belief on any question of ties or spats; but never before had I suspected him capable of strong-arm work like this. It seemed to open up an entirely new aspect of the fellow. I can't put it better than by saying that, as I gazed at him, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes.

"Good heavens, Jeeves!"

"I did it with the utmost regret, sir. It appeared to me the only course."

~~The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy.

♥ ..I decided to break the news to Jeeves without delay. As Shakespeare says, if you're going to do a thing you might just as well pop right at it and get it over. The man would be disappointed, of course, and possibly even chagrined: but, dash it all, a splash of disappointment here and there does a fellow good. Makes him realise that life is stern and life is earnest.

♥ "Well, mind you behave yourself. Lady Wickham is an old friend of mine."

I was in no mood for this sort of thing over the telephone. Face to face, I'm not saying, but at the end of a wire, no.

"I shall naturally endeavour, Aunt Agatha," I replied stiffly, "to conduct myself in a manner befitting an English gentleman paying a visit-"

"What did you say? Speak up. I can't hear."

"I said Right-ho."

♥ ..I once got engaged to his daughter, Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rock-bound coast. The fixture was scratched owing to events occurring which convinced the old boy that I was off my napper, and since then he has always had my name at the top of his list of "Loonies I have Lunched With".

♥ "Nevertheless, considered as a matrimonial prospect for a gentleman of your description, I cannot look upon her as suitable. In my opinion Miss Wickham lacks seriousness, sir. She is too volatile and frivolous. To qualify as Miss Wickham's husband, a gentleman would need to possess a commanding personality and considerable strength of character."

"Exactly!"

"I would always hesitate to recommend as a life's companion a young lady with quite such a vivid shade of red hair. Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous."

I eyed the blighter squarely.

"Jeeves," I said, "you're talking rot."

"Very good, sir."

"Absolute drivel."

"Very good, sir."

"Pure mashed potatoes."

"Very good, sir."

"Very good, sir - I mean very good Jeeves, that will be all," I said.

And I drank a modicum of tea, with a good deal of hauteur.

♥ "They took a long stick, Jeeves, and - follow me closely here - they tied a darning-needle to the end of it. Then at dead of night, it appears, they sneaked privily into the party of the second part's cubicle and shoved the needle through the bed-clothes and punctured her hot-water bottle. Girls are much subtler in these matters than boys, Jeeves. At my old school one would occasionally heave a jug of water over another bloke during the night-watches, but we never thought of effecting the same result in this particularly neat and scientific manner. Well, Jeeves, that was the scheme which Miss Wickham suggested I should work on young Tuppy, and that is the girl you call frivolous and lacking in seriousness. Any girl who can think up a wheeze like that is my idea of a helpmeet. I shall be glad, Jeeves, if by the time I come to bed tonight you have waiting for me in this room a stout stick with a good sharp darning needle attached."

"Well, sir-"

I raised my hand.

"Jeeves," I said. "Not another word. Stick, one, and needle, darning, good, sharp, one, without fail on this room at eleven-thirty tonight."

"Very good, sir."

♥ The task to which I had set myself was one that involved hardship and discomfort, for it meant sitting up till well into the small hours and then padding down a cold corridor, but I did not shrink from it. After all, there is a lot to be said for family tradition. We Woosters did our bit in the Crusades.

♥ I suppose a burglar - I mean a real professional who works at the job six nights a week all the year round - gets so that finding himself standing in the dark in somebody else's bedroom means absolutely nothing to him. But for a bird like me, who has had no previous experience, there's a lot to be said in favour of washing the whole thing out and closing the door gently and popping back to bed again. It was only by summoning up all the old bull-dog courage of the Woosters, and reminding myself that, if I let this opportunity slip another might never occur, that I managed to stick out what you might call the initial minute of the binge. Then the weakness passed, and Bertram was himself again.

♥ There only remained now the rather tricky problem of locating the old hot-water bottle. I mean to say, the one thing you can't do if you want to carry a job like this through with secrecy and dispatch is to stand at the end of a fellow's bed, jabbing the blanket at random with a darning-needle. Before proceeding to anything in the nature of definite steps, it is imperative that you locate the bot.

♥ By rights, I suppose, at this point I ought to have said something. The best I could manage, however, was a faint, soft bleating sound. Even on ordinary social occasions, when meeting this bloke as man to man and with a clear conscience, I could never be completely at my ease: and now those eyebrows seemed to pierce me like a knife.

"Come in here," he said, lugging me into the room. "We don't want to wake the whole house. Now," he said, depositing me on the carpet, and closing the door and doing a bit of eyebrow work, "kindly inform me what is this latest manifestation of insanity?"

It seemed to me that a light and cheery laugh might help the thing along. So I had a pop at one.

"Don't gibber!" said my genial host. And I'm bound to admit that the light and cheery hadn't come out quite as I'd intended.

♥ "But, Jeeves, on calm reflection, won't Sir Roderick have gathered by now that my objective was young Tuppy and that puncturing his hot-water bottle was just one of those things that occur when the Yule-tide spirit is abroad - one of those things that have to be overlooked and taken with the indulgent smile and the fatherly shake of the head? I mean to say, Young Blood and all that sort of thing? What I mean is he'll realise that I wasn't trying to snooter him, and then all the good work will have been wasted."

"No, sir. I fancy not. That might possibly have been Sir Roderick's mental reaction, had it not been for the second incident."

"The second incident?"

"During the night, sir, while Sir Roderick was occupying your bed, somebody entered the room, pierced his hot-water bottle with some sharp instrument, and vanished in the darkness."

I could make nothing of this.

"What! Do you think I walked in my sleep?"

"No, sir. It was young Mr. Glossop who did it. I encountered him this morning, sir, shortly before I came here. He was in cheerful spirits and inquired of me how you were feeling about the incident. Not being aware that his victim had been Sir Roderick."

♥ "Are you cold, sir?"

"No, Jeeves. Just shuddering."

"The occurrence, if I may take the liberty of saying so, sir, will perhaps lend colour to the view which I put forward yesterday that Miss Wickham, though in many respects a charming young lady-"

I raised a hand.

"Say no more, Jeeves," I replied. "Love is dead."

"Very good, sir."

I brooded for a while.

♥ "But you cancelled the booking?"

"No, sir."

"I thought you had."

"No, sir."

"I told you to."

"Yes, sir. It was remiss of me, but the matter slipped my mind."

"Oh?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, Jeeves. Monte Carlo ho, then."

"Very good, sir."

"It's lucky, how things have turned out, that you forgot to cancel that booking."

"Very fortunate indeed, sir. If you will wait here, sir, I will return to your room and procure a suit of clothes."

~~Jeeves and the Yuletide Spirit.

♥ It seemed to me that the bloke was embarrassed. He had moved to the mantelpiece, and now he broke a vase in rather a constrained way.

♥ "Life is like that, sir."

"True, Jeeves. What have we here?" I asked, inspecting the tray.

"Kippered herrings, sir."

"And I shouldn't wonder," I said, for I was in thoughtful mood, "if even herrings haven't troubles of their own."

"Quite possibly, sir."

"I mean, apart from getting kippered."

"Yes, sir."

"And so it goes on, Jeeves, so it goes on."

♥ Delivered on the mat at one-twenty-five, she proved to be an upstanding light-heavyweight of some thirty summers, with a commanding eye and a square chin which I, personally, would have steered clear of. She seemed to me a good deal like what Cleopatra wold have been after going in too freely for the starches and cereals. I don't know why it is, but women who have anything to do with Opera, even if they're only studying for it, always appear to run to surplus poundage.

♥ I was shocked. Yes, dash it, I was shocked. You see, I held strong views on "Sonny Boy". I considered it a song only to be attempted by a few of the elect in the privacy of the bathroom. And the thought of it being murdered in open Oddfellows' Hall by a man who could treat a pal as young Tuppy had treated me that night at the Drones sickened me. Yes, sickened me.

♥ Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that in his journey through life he is impeded and generally snootered by about as scaly a platoon of aunts as was ever assembled. But there is one exception to the general ghastliness - viz., my Aunt Dahlia.

♥ "Jeeves," said Aunt Dahlia, "you're a marvel!"

"Thank you, madam."

"Jeeves," I said, "you're an ass!"

♥ "Bertie," said Aunt Dahlia, "you'll sing, and like it!"

"I will not."

"Bertie!"

"Nothing will induce-"

"Bertie," said Aunt Dahlia firmly, "you will sing 'Sonny Boy' on Tuesday, the third prox., and sing it like a lark at sunrise, or may an aunt's curse-"

"I won't!"

"Think of Angela!"

"Dash Angela!"

"Bertie!"

"No, I mean, hang it all!"

"You won't?"

"No, I won't."

"That is your last word, is it?"

"It is. Once and for all, Aunt Dahlia, nothing will induce me to let out so much as a single note."

And so that afternoon I sent a pre-paid wire to Beefy Bingham, offering my services in the cause, and by nightfall the thing was fixed up. I was billed to perform next but one after the intermission. Following me, came Tuppy. And, immediately after him, Miss Cora Bellinger, the well-known operatic soprano.

♥ A costermonger, roused, is a terrible thing. I had never seen the proletariat really stirred before, and I'm bound to say it rather awed me. I mean, it gave you some idea of what it must have been like during the French Revolution. From every corner of the hall there proceeded simultaneously the sort of noise which you hear, they tell me, at one of those East End boxing placeswhere the referee disqualifies the popular favourite and makes the quick dash for life. And then they passed beyond mere words and began to introduce the vegetable motive.

I don't know why, but somehow I had got it into my head that the first thing thrown at Tuppy would be as potato. One gets these fancies. It was, however, as a matter of fact, a banana, and I saw in an instant that the choice had been made by wiser heads than mine. These blokes who have grown up from childhood in the knowledge of how to treat a dramatic entertainment that doesn't please them are aware by a sort of instinct just what to do for the best, and the moment I saw that banana splash on Tuppy's shirt-front I realised how infinitely more effective and artistic it was than any potato could have been.

♥ It must have been about half-past ten, and I was in the old sitting-room sombrely sucking down a more or less final restorative, when the front door bell rang, and there on the mat was young Tuppy. He looked like a man who passed through some great experience and stood face to face with his soul. He had the beginnings of a black eye.

♥ "He tells me that it is all off between him and Miss Bellinger."

"Yes, sir."

"You don't seem surprised."

"No, sir. I confess I had anticipated some such eventuality."

"Eh? What gave you that idea?"

"It came to me, sir, when I observed Miss Bellinger strike Mr. Glossop in the eye."

"Strike him!"

"Yes, sir."

"In the eye?"

"The right eye, sir."

I clutched the brow.

"What on earth made her do that?"

"I fancy she was a little upset, sir, at the reception accorded to her singing."

"Great Scott! Don't tell me she got the bird, too?"

"Yes, sir."

"But why? She's got a red-hot voice."

"Yes, sir. But I think the audience resented her choice of song."

"Jeeves!" Reason was beginning to do a bit of tottering on its throne. "You aren't going to stand there and tell me that Miss Bellinger sang 'Sonny Boy', too!"

"Yes, sir. And - rashly, in my opinion - brought a large doll on to the platform to sing it to. The audience affected to mistake it for a ventriloquist's dummy, and there was some little disturbance."

"But, Jeeves, what a coincidence!"

"Not altogether, sir. I ventured to take the liberty of accosting Miss Bellinger on her arrival at the hall and recalling myself to her recollection. I then said that Mr. Glossop had asked me to request her that as a particular favour to him - the song being a favourite of his - she would sing 'Sonny Boy'. And when she found that you and Mr. Glossop had also sung the song immediately before her, I rather fancy that she supposed that she had been made the victim of a practical pleasantry by Mr. Glossop. Will there be anything further, sir?"

"No, thanks."

"Good night, sir."

"Good night, Jeeves," I said reverently.

~~Jeeves and the Song of Songs.

♥ Although a glance at my watch informed me tat it was barely ten, here was the animal absolutely up and about.

I pressed the bell, and presently in shimmered Jeeves, complete with tea-tray and preceded by dog, which leaped upon the bed, licked me smartly in the right eye, and immediately curled up and fell into a deep slumber. And where the sense is in getting up at some ungodly hour of the morning and coming scratching at people's doors, when you intend at the first opportunity to go to sleep again, beats me. Nevertheless, every day for the last five weeks this loony hound had pursued the same policy, and I confess I was getting a bit fed.

♥ "Employ the rest of the morning, then, in buzzing to and fro and collecting provender. The old King Wenceslas touch, Jeeves. You remember? Bring me fish and bring me fowl-"

"Bring me flesh and bring me wine, sir."

"Just as you say. You know best."

♥ She greeted me cordially as I entered - in fact, so cordially that I saw Jeeves pause at the door before biffing off to mix the cocktails and shoot me the sort of grave, warning look a wise old father might pass out to the effervescent son on seeing him going fairly strong with the local vamp. I nodded back, as much as to say "Chilled steel!" and he oozed out, leaving me to play the sparkling host.

♥ "Well, prepare yourself for a shock. He's coming to lunch."

"Indeed, sir?"

"I'm glad you can speak in that light, careless way. I only met the young stoup of arsenic for a few brief minutes, but I don't mind telling you the prospect of hob-nobbing with him again makes me tremble like a leaf. ..I give you fair warning that, if he tells me I have a face like a fish, I shall clump his head."

"Bertie!" cried the Wickham, contorted with anguish and apprehension and what not.

"Yes, I shall."

"Then you'll simply ruin the whole thing."

"I don't care. We Woosters have our pride."

"Perhaps the young gentleman will not notice that you have a face like a fish, sir," suggested Jeeves.

"Ah! There's that, of course."

.."In that case, miss," said Jeeves, "it might be the best plan if Mr. Wooster did not attend the luncheon."

I beamed on the man. As always, he had found the way.

"But Mr. Blumenfield will think it so odd."

"Well, tell him I'm eccentric. Tell him I have these moods, which come upon me quite suddenly, when I can't stand the sight of people. Tell him what you like."

"He'll be offended."

"Not half so offended as if I socked his son on the upper maxillary bone."

♥ "You remember saying to me once that there wasn't anything in the world you wouldn't do for me?"

I paused a trifle warily. It is true that I had expressed myself in some such terms as she had indicated, but that was before the affair of Tuppy and the hot-water bottle, and in the calmer frame of mind induced by that episode I wasn't feeling quite so spacious. You know how it is. Love's flame flickers and dies, Reasons returns to her throne, and you aren't nearly as ready to hop about and jump through hoops as in the first pristine glow of the divine passion.

♥ "Suppose the dog won't come away with me? You know how meagre his intelligence is. By this time, especially when he's got used to a new place, he may have forgotten me completely and will look on me as a perfect stranger."

"I had thought of that, sir. The most judicious move will be for you to sprinkle your trousers with aniseed."

"Aniseed?"

"Yes, sir. It is extensively used in the dog-stealing industry."

♥ You know, whatever you may say against old Jeeves - and I, for one, have never wavered in my opinion that his views on shirts for evening wear are hidebound and reactionary to a degree - you've got to admit that the man can plan a campaign. Napoleon could have taken his correspondence course. When he sketches out a scheme, all you have to do is to follow it in every detail, and there you are.

♥ "Tell me, were you always like this, or did it come on suddenly?"

"Sir?"

"The brain. The grey matter. Were you an outstandingly brilliant boy?"

"My mother thought me intelligent, sir."

"You can't go by that. My mother thought me intelligent. Anyway, setting that aside for the moment, would a fiver be any use to you?'

"Thank you very much, sir."

♥ I waggled the head rather sadly, and at this moment there was a ring at the front door bell. And not an ordinary ring, mind you, but one of those resounding peals that suggest that somebody with a high blood-pressure and a grievance stands without. I leaped in my tracks. My busy afternoon had left the old nervous system not quite in mid-season form.

.."Probably Mr. Blumenfield, senior, sir."

"What!"

"He rang up on the telephone, sir, shortly before you returned, to say that he was about to pay you a call."

"You don't mean that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Advise me, Jeeves."

"I fancy the most judicious procedure would be for you to conceal yourself behind the settee, sir."

I saw that his advice was good. I had never met this Blumenfield socially, but I had seen him from afar on the occasion when he and Cyril Bassington-Bassington had had their falling out, and he hadn't struck me then as a bloke with whom, if in one of his emotional moods, it would be at all agreeable to be shut up in a small room. A large, round, flat, overflowing bird, who might quite easily, if stirred, fall on a fellow and flatten him to the carpet.

So I nestled behind the settee, and in about five seconds there was a sound like a mighty, rushing wind and something extraordinarily substantial bounded into the sitting-room.

.."Not dangerous?"

"Yes, sir, when roused."

"Er - what rouses him chiefly?"

"One of Mr. Wooster's peculiarities is that he does not like the sight of gentlemen of full habit, sir. They seem to infuriate him."

"You mean, fat men?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why?"

"One cannot say, sir."

There was a long pause.

"I'm fat!" said old Blumenfield in a rather pensive sort of voice.

"I would not have ventured to suggest it myself, sir, but as you say so... You may recollect that, on being informed that you were to be a member of the luncheon party, Mr. Wooster, doubting his power of self-control, refused to be present."

"That's right. He went rushing out just as I arrived. I thought it odd at the time. My son thought it odd. We both thought it odd."

"Yes, sir. Mr. Wooster, I imagine, wished to avoid any possible unpleasantness, such as has occurred before... With regard to the smell of aniseed, sir, I fancy I have now located it. Unless I am mistaken it proceeds from behind the settee. No doubt Mr. Wooster is sleeping there."

"Doing what?"

"Sleeping, sir."

"Does he often sleep on the floor?"

"Most afternoons, sir. Would you desire me to wake him?"

"No!"

"I thought you had something that you wished to say to Mr. Wooster, sir."

Old Blumenfield drew a deep breath. "So did I," he said. "But I find I haven't. Just get me alive out of here, that's all I ask."

♥ "Not Mcintosh, sir. Mcintosh is at present in my bedroom. This was another animal of the same species which I purchased at the shop in Bond Street during your absence. Except to the eye of love, one Aberdeen terrier looks very much like another Aberdeen terrier, sir. Mr. Blumenfield, I am happy to say, did not detect the innocent subterfuge."

~~Episode of the Dog Mcintosh.

♥ "Who is she?"

"A Miss Pendlebury. Christian name, Gwladys. She spells it with a 'w'."

"With a 'g', you mean."

"With a 'w' and a 'g'."

"Not Gwladys?"

"That's it."

The relative uttered a yowl.

"You sit there and tell me you haven't enough sense to steer clear of a girl who calls herself Gwladys? Listen, Bertie," said Aunt Dahlia earnestly, "I'm an older woman than you are - well, you know what I mean - and I can tell you a thing or two. And one of them is that no good can come of association with anything labelled Gwladys or Ysobel or Ethyl or Mabelle or Kathryn. But particularly Gwladys. What sort of girl is she?"

"Slightly divine."

♥ "It would be madness to leave the metrop. at this juncture," I said. "You know what girls are. They forget the absent face."

♥ The responses were all right, but his manner was far from hearty, and I decided to tackle him squarely. I mean, dash it. I mean, I don't know if you have ever had your portrait painted, but if you have you will understand my feelings. The spectacle of one's portrait hanging on the wall creates in one a sort of paternal fondness for the thing: and what you demand from the outside public is approval and enthusiasm - not the curling lip, the twitching nostril, and the kind of supercilious look which you see in the eye of a dead mackerel. Especially is this so when the artist is a girl for whom you have conceived sentiments deeper and warmer than those of ordinary friendship.

♥ "Well, in my opinion, sir, Miss Pendlebury has given you a somewhat too hungry expression."

"Hungry?"

"A little like that of a dog regarding a distant bone, sir."

I checked the fellow.

"There is no resemblance whatever, Jeeves, to a dog regarding a distant bone. The look to which you allude is wistful and denotes Soul."

"I see, sir."

I proceeded to another subject.

♥ And I meant it, dash it. I mean to say, a girl can be pretty heftily divine and ensnare the heart and what not, but she's no right to turn a fellow's flat into a morgue. I'm bound to say that for a moment passion ebbed a trifle.

♥ "I am her favourite brother."

"You are?"

"I am."

"How many of you are there?"

"Six."

"And you're her favourite?"

"I am."

It seemed to me that the other five must be pretty fairly sub-human, but I didn't say so. We Woosters can curb the tongue.

♥ "I telegraphed to Mrs. Slingsby shortly before four. Assuming her to have been at her hotel in Paris at the moment of the telegram's delivery, she will no doubt take a boat early tomorrow afternoon, reaching Dover - or, should she prefer the alternative route, Folkestone - in time to begin the railway journey at an hour which will enable her to arrive in London at about seven. She will possibly proceed first to her London residence-"

"Yes, Jeeves," I said. "Yes. A gripping story, full of action and human interest. You must have it set to music some time and sing it. Meanwhile, get this into your head."

♥ "Convey my regrets and sympathy to Miss Pendlebury and tell her I have been called away on business."

"Yes, sir."

"Should the Slingsby require refreshment, feed her in moderation."

"Very good, sir."

"And, in poisoning Mr. Pim's soup, don't use arsenic, which is readily detected. Go to a good chemist and get something that leaves no traces." I sighed, and cocked an eye at the portrait.

"All this is very wonky, Jeeves."

"Yes, sir."

"When that portrait was painted, I was a happy man."

"Yes, sir."

"Ah, well, Jeeves!"

"Very true, sir." And we left it at that.

♥ "Wanted to thank me brokenly I suppose, for so courteously allowing her favourite brother a place to have his game legs in. Eh?"

"Possibly, sir. On the other hand, she alluded to you in terms suggestive of disapprobation, sir."

"She - what?"

"'Feckless idiot' was one of the expressions she employed, sir."

"Feckless idiot?"

"Yes, sir."

I couldn't make it out. I simply couldn't see what the woman had based her judgment on. My Aunt Agatha has frequently said that sort of thing about me, but she has known me from a boy.

♥ "It would have been awful if Beatrice had found out about Gwladys. I daresay you have noticed, Wooster, that when women find themselves in a position to take a running kick at one of their own sex they are twice as rough on her as they would be on a man. Now, you, being of the male persuasion, will find everything made nice and smooth for you. A quart of assorted roses, a few smiles, tactful word or two, and she'll have melted before you know where you are."

♥ The clock ticked on, but she did not come. A late riser, I took it, and was slightly encouraged by the reflection. My experience of women has been that the earlier they leave the hay the more vicious specimens they are apt to be. My Aunt Agatha, for instance, is always up with the lark, and look at her.

♥ Evidently those roses had not sweetened the female of the species. The only thing to do now seemed to be to take a stab at sweetening the male.

"Have a drink?" I said.

"No!"

"A cigarette?"

"No!"

"A chair?"

"No!"

I went into the silence once more. These non-drinking, non-smoking, non-sitters are hard birds to handle.

♥ A traffic block had occurred, and I was glancing idly this way and that, when suddenly my eye was caught by something that looked familiar. And then I saw what it was.

Pasted on a blank wall and measuring about a hundred feet each way was an enormous poster, mostly red and blue. At the top of it were the words:

SLINGSBY'S SUPERB SOUPS
and at the bottom:

SUCCULENT AND STRENGTHENING
And, in between me. Yes, dash it. Bertram Wooster in person. A reproduction of the Pendlebury portrait, perfect in every detail.

It was the sort of thing to make a fellow's eyes flicker, and mine flickered. You might say a mist seemed to roll before them. Then it lifted, and I was able to get a good long look before the traffic moved on.

If all the absolutely foul sights I have ever seen, this took the biscuit with ridiculous ease. The thing was a bally libel on the Wooster face, and yet it was as unmistakable as if it had had my name under it. I saw now what Jeeves had meant when he said that the portrait had given me a hungry look. In the poster this look had become one of bestial greed. There I sat absolutely slavering through a monocle about six inches in circumference at a plateful of soup, looking as if I hadn't had a meal for weeks. The whole thing seemed to take one straight away into a different and dreadful world.

I woke from a species of trance or come to find myself at the door of the block of flats.

♥ "A woman has tossed my heart lightly away, but what of it?"

"Exactly, sir."

"The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number. Is that going to crush me?"

"No, sir."

"No, Jeeves. It is not. But what does matter is this ghastly business of my face being spread from end to end of the Metropolis with the eyes fixed on a plate of Slingsby's Superb Soup. I must leave London."

♥ "The tang of the salt breezes, Jeeves!"

"Yes, sir."

"The moonlight on the water!"

"Precisely, sir."

"The gentle heaving of the waves!"

"Exactly, sir."

I felt absolutely in the pink. Gwladys - pah! The posters - bah! That was the way I looked at it.

"Yo-ho-ho, Jeeves!" I said, giving the trousers a bit of a hitch.

"Yes, sir."

"In fact, I will go further. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!"

"Very good, sir. I will bring it immediately."

~~The Spot of Art.

♥ "Very good, sir. Pardon me, sir, are you proposing to appear in those garments in public?"

Up to this point our conversation had been friendly and cordial, but I now perceived that the jarring note had been struck. I had been wondering when my new plus-fours would come under discussion, and I was prepared to battle for them like a tigress for her young.

"Certainly, Jeeves," I said. "Why? Don't you like them?"

"No, sir."

"You think them on the bright side?"

"Yes, sir."

"A little vivid, they strike you as?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I think highly of them, Jeeves," I said firmly.

♥ The trouble with Jeeves is that he tends occasionally to get above himself. Just because he has surged round and - I admit it freely - done the young master a bit of good in one or two crises, he has a nasty way of conveying the impression that he looks on Bertram Wooster as a sort of idiot child who, but for him, would conk in the first chukka. I resent this.

♥ "That would appear to be well within our scope. Eh, Jeeves?"

"I should be disposed to imagine so, sir."

The man's tone was cold and soupy: and, scanning his face, I observed on it an "If-you-would-only-be-guided-by-me" expression which annoyed me intensely. There are moments when Jeeves looks just like an aunt.

♥ "I suppose I really ought to have told you right at the start, but I didn't want to spoil your evening."

As a general rule, in my dealings with the delicately nurtured, I am the soul of knightly chivalry - suave, genial and polished. But I can on occasion say the bitter, cutting thing, and I said it now.

"Oh?" I said.

♥ I will say fro that tree that it might have been placed there for the purpose. My views on the broad, general principle of leaping from branch to branch in a garden belonging to Aunt Agatha's closest friend remained unaltered; but I had to admit that, if it was to be done, this was undoubtedly the tree to do it on. It was a cedar of sorts; and almost before I knew where I was, I was sitting on top of the world with the conservatory roof gleaming below me. I balanced the flower-pot on my knee and began to tie the string round it.

And, as I tied, my thoughts turned in a moody sort of way to the subject of Woman.

I was suffering from a considerable strain of the old nerves at the moment, of course, and, looking back, it may be that I was too harsh; but the way I felt in that dark, roosting hour was that you can say what you like, but the more a thoughtful man has to do with women, the more extraordinary it seems to him that such a sex should be allowed to clutter up the earth.

Women, the way I looked at it, simply wouldn't do.

♥ "Who are you?"

"I am Mr. Wooster's personal gentleman's gentleman."

"Whose?"

"Mr. Wooster's."

"Is this man's name Wooster?"

"This gentleman's name is Mr. Wooster. I am in his employment as gentleman's personal gentleman."

I think the cop was awed by the man's majesty of demeanour, but he came back strongly.

"Ho!" he said. "Not in Miss Mapleton's employment?"

"Miss Mapleton does not employ a gentleman's personal gentleman."

♥ Even to me his story had rang almost true in spots, and it was a great blow that the man behind the lantern had not sucked it in without question. There's no doubt about it, being a policeman warps a man's mind and ruins that sunny faith in his fellow human beings which is the foundation of a lovable character. There seems no way of avoiding this.

♥ "Ah!" said Miss Mapleton.

Now, uttered in a certain way - dragged out, if you know what I mean, and starting high up and going down into the lower register, the word "Ah!" can be as sinister and devastating as the word "Ho!" In fact, it is a very moot question which is the scalier.

♥ In short, through years of disciplining the young - ticking off Isabel and speaking with quiet severity to Gertrude and that sort of thing - Miss Mapleton had acquired in the process of time rather the air of a female lion-tamer; and it was this air which had caused me after the first swift look to shut my eyes and utter a short prayer. But now, though she still resembled a lion-tamer her bearing had most surprisingly become that of a chummy lion-tamer - a tamer who, after tucking the lions in for the night, relaxes in the society of the boys.

♥ "The officer is a fool," said Miss Mapleton. It seemed a close thing for a moment whether or not she would rap him on the knuckles with a ruler. "By this time, no doubt, owing to his idiocy, the miscreants have made good their escape. And it is for this," said Miss Mapleton, "that we pay rates and taxes!"

"Awful!" I said.

"Iniquitous."

"A bally shame."

"A crying scandal," said Miss Mapleton.

"A grim show," I agreed.

In fact, we were just becoming more like a couple of love-birds than anything, when through the open window there suddenly breezed a noise.

I'm never at my best at describing things. At school, when we used to do essays and English composition, my report generally read "Has little or no ability, but does his best", or words to that affect. True, in the course of years I have picked up a vocabulary of sorts from Jeeves, but even so I'm not nearly hot enough to draw a word-picture that would do justice to that extraordinarily hefty crash. Try to imagine the Albert Hall falling on the Crystal Palace, and you will have got the rough idea.

All four of us, even Jeeves, sprang several inches from the floor. The policeman uttered a startled "Ho!"

Miss Mapleton was her calm masterful self again in a second.

"One of the men appears to have fallen through the conservatory roof," she said. "Perhaps you will endeavour at the eleventh hour to justify your existence, officer, by proceeding there and making investigations."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And try not to bungle matters this time."

"No, ma'am."

"Please hurry, then. Do you intend to stand there gaping all night?"

"Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. Yes, ma'am."

It was pretty to hear him.

♥ I drew a deep breath. It was too dark for me to see the superhuman intelligence which must have been sloshing about all over the surface of the man's features. I tried to, but couldn't make it.

"Jeeves," I said, "I should have been guided by you from the first."

"It might have spared you some temporary unpleasantness, sir."

"Unpleasantness is right. When that lantern shone up at me in the silent night, Jeeves, just as I had finished poising the pot, I thought I had unshipped a rib."

~~Jeeves and the Kid Clementina.

♥ I had just got across the lawn when a head poked itself out of the smoking-room window and beamed at me in an amiable sort of way.

.."Just arrived?" he asked, beaming as before."

"This minute," I said, also beaming.

"I fancy you will find our good hostess in the drawing-room.

"Right," I said, and after a bit more beaming to and fro I pushed on.

Aunt Dahlia was in the drawing-room, and welcomed me with gratifying enthusiasm. She beamed, too. It was one of those big days for beamers.

♥ "You haven't brought Jeeves?"

"No. He always takes his holiday at this time of year. He's down at Bognor for the shrimping."

Aunt Dahlia registered deep concern.

"Then send for him at once! What earthly use do you suppose you are without Jeeves, you poor ditherer?"

I drew myself up a trifle - in fact, to my full height. Nobody has a greater respect for Jeeves than I have, but the Wooster pride was stung.

"Jeeves isn't the only one with brains," I said coldly.

♥ This scourge of humanity was a chunky kid whom a too indulgent public had allowed to infest the country for a matter of fourteen years. His nose was snub, his eyes green, his general aspect that of one studying to be a gangster. I had never liked his looks much, and with a saintlike smile added to them they became ghastly to a degree.

I ran over in my mind a few assorted taunts.

"Well, young Thos.," I said. "So there you are. You're getting as fat as a pig."

It seemed as good an opening as any other.

♥ There is good stuff in Jeeves. His heart is in the right place. The acid test does not find him wanting. Many men in his position, summoned back by telegram in the middle of their annual vacation, might have cut up rough a bit. But not Jeeves. On the following afternoon in he blew, looking bronzed and fit, and I gave him the scenario without delay.

♥ "But, Jeeves. Granted that little Sebastian is the pot of poison you indicate, why won't he act just as forcibly on young Bonzo as on Thos.? Pretty silly we should look if our nominee started putting it across him. Never forger that already Bonzo is twenty marks down and falling back in the betting."

"I do not anticipate any such contingency, sir. Master Travers is in love, and love is a very powerful restraining influence at the age of thirteen."

♥ I'm bound to say that the spectacle of little Sebastian when he arrived two days later did much to remove pessimism from my outlook. If ever there was a kid whose whole appearance seemed to call aloud to any right-minded boy to lure him into a quiet spot and inflict violence upon him, that kid was undeniably Sebastian Moon. He reminded me strongly of Little Lord Fauntleroy. I marked young Thos.'s demeanour closely at the moment of their meeting and, unless I was much mistaken, there came into his eyes the sort of look which would come into those of an Indian chief - Chinchagook, let us say, or Sitting Bull - just before he started reaching for his scalping-knife. He had the air of one who is about ready to begin.

♥ "It's a good idea, sir."

"It is more than a good idea, Jeeves," I said. "It is pip."

♥ "I had feared this, sir."

"Had you? I hadn't. I was convinced Thos. would have massacred young Sebastian. I banked on it. It just shows what the greed for money will do. This is a commercial age, Jeeves. What I was a boy, I would cheerfully have forfeited five quid in order to deal faithfully with a kid like Sebastian. I would have considered it money well spent."

♥ "Yes sir."

"Then the only thing I can do is square the shoulders and face the inevitable."

"Yes, sir."

"Like some aristocrat of the French Revolution popping into the tumbril, what? The brave smile. The stiff upper lip."

"Yes, sir."

"Right ho, then. Is the shirt studded?"

"Yes, sir."

"The tie chosen?"

"Yes, sir."

"The collar and evening underwear all in order?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then I'll have a bath and be with you in two ticks."

♥ I gazed down at the sleeping septuagenarian.

"In my young days, Jeeves," I said, "however much I might have been in love, I could never have resisted the spectacle of an old gentleman asleep like that in a deck-chair. I would have done something to him, no matter what the cost."

"Indeed, sir?"

"Yes. Probably with a pea-shooter. But the modern boy is degenerate. He has lost his vim. I suppose Thos. is indoors on this lovely afternoon, showing Sebastian his stamp-album or something."

♥ He had almost come up with Sebastian, when the latter, with great presence of mind, dodged behind Mr. Anstruther, and there for a moment the matter rested.

But only for a moment. Thos., for some reason plainly stirred to the depths of his being, moved adroidy to one side, and, poising the bucket for an instant, discharged its contents. And Mr. Anstruther, who had just moved to the same side, received, as far as I could gather from a distance, the entire consignment. In one second, without any previous training or upbringing, he had become the wettest man in Worcestershire."

"Jeeves!" I cried.

"Yes, indeed, sir," said Jeeves, and seemed to me to put the whole thing in a nutshell.

♥ "Once more you have stepped forward like the great man you are and spread sweetness and light in no uncertain measure."

"I am glad to have given satisfaction, sir. Would you be requiring my services any further?"

"You mean you wish to return to Bognor and its shrimps? Do so, Jeeves, and stay there another fortnight, if you wish. And may success attend your net."

"Thank you very much, sir."

I eyed the man fixedly. His head stuck out at the back, and his eyes sparkled wit the light of pure intelligence.

"I am sorry for the shrimp that tries to put its feeble cunning against you, Jeeves," I said.

And I meant it.

~~The Love That Purifies.

♥ "You're sure you don't mind?"

"Of course not. Any pal of yours-"

"Darling!" said Mrs. Bingo, blowing him a kiss.

"Angel!" said Bingo, going on with the sausages.

All very charming, in fact. Pleasant domestic scene, I mean. Cheery give-and-take in the home and all that. I said as much to Jeeves as we drove off.

"In these days of unrest, Jeeves," I said, "with wives yearning to fulfil themselves and husbands slipping round the corner to do what they shouldn't, and the home, generally speaking, in the melting-pot, as it were, it is nice to find a thoroughly united couple."

..And yet, if I had only known, what I had been listening to that a.m. was the first faint rumble of the coming storm. Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove.

♥ The brow was furrowed, the eye lacked that hearty sparkle, and the general bearing and demeanour were those of a body discovered after being several days in the water.

♥ "This business of schoolgirl friendship beats me. Hypnotic is the only word. I can't understand it. Men aren't like that. You and I were at school together, Bertie, but, my gosh, I don't look on you as a sort of mastermind."

"You don't?"

"I don't treat your lightest utterance as a pearl of wisdom."

"Why not?"

♥ "No cocktails!"

"No. And you'll be dashed lucky if it isn't a vegetarian dinner."

"Bingo," I cried deeply moved, "you must act. You must assert yourself. You must put your foot down. You must take a strong stand. You must be master in the home."

He looked at me. A long, strange look.

"You aren't married, are you, Bertie?"

"You know I'm not."

"I should have guessed it, anyway. Come on."

♥ "No affection can stand the strain. Twice during dinner tonight the Pyke said things about young Bingo's intestinal canal which I shouldn't have thought would have been possible in mixed company even in this lax post-War era. Well, you see what I mean. You can't go on knocking a man's intestinal canal indefinitely without causing his wife to stop and ponder. The danger, as I see it, is that after a bit more of this Mrs. Little will decide that tinkering is no use and that the only thing to do is to scrap Bingo and get a newer model."

"Most disturbing, sir."

"Something must be done, Jeeves. You must act. Unless you can find some way of getting this Pyke out of the woodwork, and that right speedily, the home's number is up. You see, what makes matters worse is that Mrs. Bingo is romantic. Women like her, who consider the day ill-spent if they have not churned out five thousand words of superfatted fiction, are apt even at the best of times to yearn a trifle. The ink gets into their heads. I mean to say, I shouldn't wonder if right from the start Mrs Bingo hasn't had a sort of sneaking regret that Bingo isn't one of those strong, curt, Empire-building kind of Englishmen she puts into her books, with sad, unfathomable eyes, lean, sensitive hands, and riding-boots. You see what I mean?"

"Precisely, sir. You imply that Miss Pyke's criticisms will have been instrumental in moving the hitherto unformulated dissatisfaction from the subconscious to the conscious mind."

♥ "Luncheon is a meal better omitted. If taken, it should consist merely of a few muscatels, bananas and grated carrots. It is a well-known fact-"

And she went on to speak at some length of the gastric juices in a vein far from suited to any gathering at which gentlemen were present.

♥ I began to think about that drink again, and the more I thought the better it looked. It's rummy how people differ in this matter of selecting the beverage that is to touch the spot. It's what Jeeves would call the psychology of the individual. Some fellows in my position might have voted for a tankard of ale, and the Pyke's idea of a refreshing snort was, as I knew from what she had told me on the journey out, a cupful of tepid pip-and-peel water or, failing that, what she called the fruit-liquor. You make this, apparently, by soaking raisins in cold water and adding the juice of a lemon. After which, I suppose, you invite a couple of old friends in and have an orgy, burying the bodies in the morning.

♥ "Ladies, ladies!" I said. "Ladies, ladies, ladies!"

It was rash. Looking back, I can see that. One of the first lessons life teaches us is that one these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-nurtured, a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crêpe and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is. The only result of my dash at the soothing intervention was that the Pyke turned on me like a wounded leopardess.

♥ "What I want," I said, "is petrol."

"What you'll get," said the bloke, "is a thick ear."

And, closing the door with the delicate caution of one brushing flies off a sleeping Venus, he passed out of my life.

Women as a sex are always apt to be a trifle down on the defeated warrior. Returning to the car, I was not well received. The impression seemed to be that Bertram had not acquired himself in a fashion worthy of his Crusading ancestors. I did my best to smooth matters over, but you know how it is. When you've broken down on a chilly autumn evening miles from anywhere and have missed lunch and look like missing tea as well, mere charm of manner can never be a really satisfactory substitute for a tinful of the juice.

♥ To this, Mrs. Bingo's reply was long and eloquent and touched on the fact that in her last term at St. Adela's a girl named Simpson had told her (Mrs. Bingo) that a girl named Waddesley that she (the Bingo) couldn't eat strawberries and cream without coming out in spits, and, in addition, had spoken in the most catty manner about the shape of her nose. It could all have been condensed, however, into the words "Right ho".

It was when the Pyke had begun to say that she had never had such a hearty laugh in her life as when she read the scene in Mrs. Bingo's last novel when the heroine's little boy dies of croup that we felt it best to call the meeting to order before bloodshed set in.

~~Jeeves and the Old School Chum.