RICHARD LITTLE.


"What do you make of it, Jeeves?" I said.

"I confess I am a little doubtful, sir. I think Mr. Little would have
done better to follow my advice and confine himself to good works about
the village."

"You think the things will be a frost?"

"I could not hazard a conjecture, sir. But my experience has been that
what pleases the London public is not always so acceptable to the rural
mind. The metropolitan touch sometimes proves a trifle too exotic for
the provinces."

"I suppose I ought to go down and see the dashed thing?"

"I think Mr. Little would be wounded were you not present, sir."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Village Hall at Twing is a smallish building, smelling of apples.
It was full when I turned up on the evening of the twenty-third, for I
had purposely timed myself to arrive not long before the kick-off. I
had had experience of one or two of these binges, and didn't want to
run any risk of coming early and finding myself shoved into a seat in
one of the front rows where I wouldn't be able to execute a quiet sneak
into the open air half-way through the proceedings, if the occasion
seemed to demand it. I secured a nice strategic position near the door
at the back of the hall.

From where I stood I had a good view of the audience. As always
on these occasions, the first few rows were occupied by the
Nibs--consisting of the Squire, a fairly mauve old sportsman with white
whiskers, his family, a platoon of local parsons and perhaps a couple
of dozen of prominent pew-holders. Then came a dense squash of what you
might call the lower middle classes. And at the back, where I was, we
came down with a jerk in the social scale, this end of the hall being
given up almost entirely to a collection of frankly Tough Eggs, who had
rolled up not so much for any love of the drama as because there was
a free tea after the show. Take it for all in all, a representative
gathering of Twing life and thought. The Nibs were whispering in a
pleased manner to each other, the Lower Middles were sitting up very
straight, as if they'd been bleached, and the Tough Eggs whiled away
the time by cracking nuts and exchanging low rustic wheezes. The girl,
Mary Burgess, was at the piano playing a waltz. Beside her stood the
curate, Wingham, apparently recovered. The temperature, I should think,
was about a hundred and twenty-seven.

Somebody jabbed me heartily in the lower ribs, and I perceived the man
Steggles.

"Hallo!" he said. "I didn't know you were coming down."

I didn't like the chap, but we Woosters can wear the mask. I beamed a
bit.

"Oh, yes," I said. "Bingo wanted me to roll up and see his show."

"I hear he's giving us something pretty ambitious," said the man
Steggles. "Big effects and all that sort of thing."

"I believe so."

"Of course, it means a lot to him, doesn't it? He's told you about the
girl, of course?"

"Yes. And I hear you're laying seven to one against him," I said,
eyeing the blighter a trifle austerely.

He didn't even quiver.

"Just a little flutter to relieve the monotony of country life," he
said. "But you've got the facts a bit wrong. It's down in the village
that they're laying seven to one. I can do you better than that, if you
feel in a speculative mood. How about a tenner at a hundred to eight?"

"Good Lord! Are you giving that?"

"Yes. Somehow," said Steggles meditatively, "I have a sort of feeling,
a kind of premonition that something's going to go wrong to-night.
You know what Little is. A bungler, if ever there was one. Something
tells me that this show of his is going to be a frost. And if it is, of
course, I should think it would prejudice the girl against him pretty
badly. His standing always was rather shaky."

"Are you going to try and smash up the show?" I said sternly.

"Me!" said Steggles. "Why, what could I do? Half a minute, I want to go
and speak to a man."

He buzzed off, leaving me distinctly disturbed. I could see from the
fellow's eye that he was meditating some of his customary rough stuff,
and I thought Bingo ought to be warned. But there wasn't time and I
couldn't get at him. Almost immediately after Steggles had left me the
curtain went up.

Except as a prompter, Bingo wasn't much in evidence in the early part
of the performance. The thing at the outset was merely one of those
weird dramas which you dig out of books published around Christmas time
and entitled "Twelve Little Plays for the Tots," or something like
that. The kids drooled on in the usual manner, the booming voice of
Bingo ringing out from time to time behind the scenes when the fatheads
forgot their lines; and the audience was settling down into the sort of
torpor usual on these occasions, when the first of Bingo's interpolated
bits occurred. It was that number which What's-her-name sings in that
revue at the Palace--you would recognise the tune if I hummed it, but
I can never get hold of the dashed thing. It always got three encores
at the Palace, and it went well now, even with a squeaky-voiced child
jumping on and off the key like a chamois of the Alps leaping from crag
to crag. Even the Tough Eggs liked it. At the end of the second refrain
the entire house was shouting for an encore, and the kid with the voice
like a slate-pencil took a deep breath and started to let it go once
more.

At this point all the lights went out.

       *       *       *       *       *

I don't know when I've had anything so sudden and devastating happen
to me before. They didn't flicker. They just went out. The hall was in
complete darkness.

Well, of course, that sort of broke the spell, as you might put it.
People started to shout directions, and the Tough Eggs stamped their
feet and settled down for a pleasant time. And, of course, young Bingo
had to make an ass of himself. His voice suddenly shot at us out of the
darkness.

"Ladies and gentlemen, something has gone wrong with the lights----"

The Tough Eggs were tickled by this bit of information straight from
the stable. They took it up as a sort of battle-cry. Then, after about
five minutes, the lights went up again, and the show was resumed.

It took ten minutes after that to get the audience back into its state
of coma, but eventually they began to settle down, and everything was
going nicely when a small boy with a face like a turbot edged out in
front of the curtain, which had been lowered after a pretty painful
scene about a wishing-ring or a fairy's curse or something of that
sort, and started to sing that song of George Thingummy's out of
"Cuddle Up." You know the one I mean. "Always Listen to Mother, Girls!"
it's called, and he gets the audience to join in and sing the refrain.
Quite a ripeish ballad, and one which I myself have frequently sung
in my bath with not a little vim; but by no means--as anyone but a
perfect sapheaded prune like young Bingo would have known--by no means
the sort of thing for a children's Christmas entertainment in the old
village hall. Right from the start of the first refrain the bulk of the
audience had begun to stiffen in their seats and fan themselves, and
the Burgess girl at the piano was accompanying in a stunned, mechanical
sort of way, while the curate at her side averted his gaze in a pained
manner. The Tough Eggs, however, were all for it.

At the end of the second refrain the kid stopped and began to sidle
towards the wings. Upon which the following brief duologue took place:


     YOUNG BINGO (_Voice heard off, ringing against the
     rafters_): "Go on!"

     THE KID (_coyly_): "I don't like to."

     YOUNG BINGO (_still louder_): "Go on, you little
     blighter, or I'll slay you!"


I suppose the kid thought it over swiftly and realised that Bingo,
being in a position to get at him, had better be conciliated, whatever
the harvest might be; for he shuffled down to the front and, having
shut his eyes and giggled hysterically, said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I
will now call upon Squire Tressidder to oblige by singing the refrain!"

You know, with the most charitable feelings towards him, there are
moments when you can't help thinking that young Bingo ought to be in
some sort of a home. I suppose, poor fish, he had pictured this as the
big punch of the evening. He had imagined, I take it, that the Squire
would spring jovially to his feet, rip the song off his chest, and all
would be gaiety and mirth. Well, what happened was simply that old
Tressidder--and, mark you, I'm not blaming him--just sat where he was,
swelling and turning a brighter purple every second. The lower middle
classes remained in frozen silence, waiting for the roof to fall. The
only section of the audience that really seemed to enjoy the idea was
the Tough Eggs, who yelled with enthusiasm. It was jam for the Tough
Eggs.

And then the lights went out again.

       *       *       *       *       *

When they went up, some minutes later, they disclosed the Squire
marching stiffly out at the head of his family, fed up to the eyebrows;
the Burgess girl at the piano with a pale, set look; and the curate
gazing at her with something in his expression that seemed to suggest
that, although all this was no doubt deplorable, he had spotted the
silver fining.

The show went on once more. There were great chunks of
Plays-for-the-Tots dialogue, and then the girl at the piano struck up
the prelude to that Orange-Girl number that's the big hit of the Palace
revue. I took it that this was to be Bingo's smashing act one finale.
The entire company was on the stage, and a clutching hand had appeared
round the edge of the curtain, ready to pull at the right moment. 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.

But at the Palace, of course, the oranges are made of yellow wool, and
the girls don't so much chuck them as drop them limply into the first
and second rows. I began to gather that the business was going to be
treated rather differently to-night when a dashed great chunk of pips
and mildew sailed past my ear and burst on the wall behind me. Another
landed with a squelch on the neck of one of the Nibs in the third row.
And then a third took me right on the tip of the nose, and I kind of
lost interest in the proceedings for awhile.

When I had scrubbed my face and got my eye to stop watering for a
moment, I saw that the evening's entertainment had begun to resemble
one of Belfast's livelier nights. The air was thick with shrieks and
fruit. The kids on the stage, with Bingo buzzing distractedly to and
fro in their midst, were having the time of their lives. I suppose they
realised that this couldn't go on for ever, and were making the most of
their chances. The Tough Eggs had begun to pick up all the oranges that
hadn't burst and were shooting them back, so that the audience got it
both coming and going. In fact, take it all round, there was a certain
amount of confusion; and, just as things had begun really to hot up,
out went the lights again.

It seemed to me about my time for leaving, so I slid for the door. I
was hardly outside when the audience began to stream out. 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.

There were such a dickens of a lot of these enthusiasts and they looked
so jolly determined that it seemed to me that the only matey thing to
do was to go behind and warn young Bingo to turn his coat-collar up
and breeze off snakily by some side exit. 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.

"Bertie," he said hollowly, as he saw me, "it was that blighter
Steggles! I caught one of the kids before he could get away and got
it all out of him. Steggles substituted real oranges for the balls of
wool which with infinite sweat and at a cost of nearly a quid I had
specially prepared. 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!"

"Bertie," said Bingo in a dull voice, "she was here just now. She said
it was all my fault and that she would never speak to me again. She
said she had always suspected me of being a heartless practical joker,
and now she knew. She said---- Oh, well, she ticked me off properly."

"That's the least of your troubles," I said. It seemed impossible to
rouse the poor zib to a sense of his position. "Do you realise that
about two hundred of Twing's heftiest are waiting for you outside to
chuck you into the pond?"

"No!"

"Absolutely!"

For a moment the poor chap seemed crushed. But only for a moment. There
has always been something of the good old English bulldog breed about
Bingo. A strange, sweet smile flickered for an instant over his face.

"It's all right," he said. "I can sneak out through the cellar and
climb over the wall at the back. They can't intimidate _me_!"

       *       *       *       *       *

It couldn't have been more than a week later when Jeeves, after he had
brought me my tea, gently steered me away from the sporting page of
the _Morning Post_ and directed my attention to an announcement in the
engagements and marriages column.

It was a brief statement that a marriage had been arranged and would
shortly take place between the Hon. and Rev. Hubert Wingham, third son
of the Right Hon. the Earl of Sturridge, and Mary, only daughter of the
late Matthew Burgess, of Weatherly Court, Hants.

"Of course," I said, after I had given it the east-to-west, "I expected
this, Jeeves."

"Yes, sir."

"She would never forgive him what happened that night."

"No, sir."

"Well," I said, as I took a sip of the fragrant and steaming, "I don't
suppose it will take old Bingo long to get over it. It's about the
hundred and eleventh time this sort of thing has happened to him.
You're the man I'm sorry for."

"Me, sir?"

"Well, dash it all, you can't have forgotten what a deuce of a lot of
trouble you took to bring the thing off for Bingo. It's too bad that
all your work should have been wasted."

"Not entirely wasted, sir."

"Eh?"

"It is true that my efforts to bring about the match between Mr. Little
and the young lady were not successful, but still I look back upon the
matter with a certain satisfaction."

"Because you did your best, you mean?"

"Not entirely, sir, though of course that thought also gives me
pleasure. I was alluding more particularly to the fact that I found the
affair financially remunerative."

"Financially remunerative? What do you mean?"

"When I learned that Mr. Steggles had interested himself in the
contest, sir, I went shares with my friend Brookfield and bought the
book which had been made on the issue by the 'Cow and Horses.' It has
proved a highly profitable investment. Your breakfast will be ready
almost immediately, sir. Kidneys on toast and mushrooms. I will bring
it when you ring."




CHAPTER XVI

THE DELAYED EXIT OF CLAUDE AND EUSTACE


The feeling I had when Aunt Agatha trapped me in my lair that morning
and spilled the bad news was that my luck had broken at last. 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's 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 good 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 while I
was having a placid cigarette and started to tell me about Claude and
Eustace.

"Thank goodness," said Aunt Agatha, "arrangements have at last been
made about Eustace and Claude."

"Arrangements?" I said, not having the foggiest.

"They sail on Friday for South Africa. Mr. Van Alstyne, a friend of
poor Emily's, has given them berths in his firm at Johannesburg, and
we are hoping that they will settle down there and do well."

I didn't get the thing at all.

"Friday? The day after to-morrow, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"For South Africa?"

"Yes. They leave on the _Edinburgh Castle_."

"But what's the idea? I mean, aren't they in the middle of their term
at Oxford?"

Aunt Agatha looked at me coldly.

"Do you positively mean to tell me, Bertie, that you take so little
interest in the affairs of your nearest relatives that you are not
aware that Claude and Eustace were expelled from Oxford over a
fortnight ago?"

"No, really?"

"You are hopeless, Bertie. I should have thought that even you----"

"Why were they sent down?"

"They poured lemonade on the Junior Dean of their college.... I see
nothing amusing in the outrage, Bertie."

"No, no, rather not," I said hurriedly. "I wasn't laughing. Choking.
Got something stuck in my throat, you know."

"Poor Emily," went on Aunt Agatha, "being one of those doting mothers
who are the ruin of their children, wished to keep the boys in London.
She suggested that they might cram for the Army. But I was firm. The
Colonies are the only place for wild youths like Eustace and Claude. So
they sail on Friday. They have been staying for the last two weeks with
your Uncle Clive in Worcestershire. They will spend to-morrow night in
London and catch the boat-train on Friday morning."

"Bit risky, isn't it? I mean, aren't they apt to cut loose a bit
to-morrow night if they're left all alone in London?"

"They will not be alone. They will be in your charge."

"Mine!"

"Yes. I wish you to put them up in your flat for the night, and see
that they do not miss the train in the morning."

"Oh, I say, no!"

"Bertie!"

"Well, I mean, quite jolly coves both of them, but I don't know.
They're rather nuts, you know---- Always glad to see them, of course,
but when it comes to putting them up for the night----"

"Bertie, if you are so sunk in callous self-indulgence that you cannot
even put yourself to this trifling inconvenience for the sake of----"

"Oh, all right," I said. "All right."

It was no good arguing, of course. Aunt Agatha always makes me feel
as if I had gelatine where my spine ought to be. She's one of those
forceful females. I should think Queen Elizabeth must have been
something like her. When she holds me with her glittering eye and says,
"Jump to it, my lad," or words to that effect, I make it so without
further discussion.

When she had gone, I rang for Jeeves to break the news to him.

"Oh, Jeeves," I said, "Mr. Claude and Mr. Eustace will be staying here
to-morrow night."

"Very good, sir."

"I'm glad you think so. To me the outlook seems black and scaly. You
know what those two lads are!"

"Very high-spirited young gentlemen, sir."

"Blisters, Jeeves. Undeniable blisters. It's a bit thick!"

"Would there be anything further, sir?"

At that, I'm bound to say, I drew myself up a trifle haughtily. We
Woosters freeze like the dickens when we seek sympathy and meet with
cold reserve. I knew what was up, of course. For the last day or so
there had been a certain amount of coolness in the home over a pair
of jazz spats which I had dug up while exploring in the Burlington
Arcade. Some dashed brainy cove, probably the chap who invented those
coloured cigarette-cases, had recently had the rather topping idea of
putting out a line of spats on the same system. 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 chappie 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. Hide-bound, 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!

       *       *       *       *       *

Anything merrier and brighter than the Twins, when they curveted into
the old flat while I was dressing for dinner the next night, I have
never struck in my whole puff. I'm only about half a dozen years older
than Claude and Eustace, but in some rummy manner they always make me
feel as if I were well on in the grandfather class and just waiting
for the end. Almost before I realised they were in the place, they had
collared the best chairs, pinched a couple of my special cigarettes,
poured themselves out a whisky-and-soda apiece, and started to prattle
with the gaiety and abandon of two birds who had achieved their life's
ambition instead of having come a most frightful purler and being under
sentence of exile.

"Hallo, Bertie, old thing," said Claude. "Jolly decent of you to put us
up."

"Oh, no," I said. "Only wish you were staying a good long time."

"Hear that, Eustace? He wishes we were staying a good long time."

"I expect it will seem a good long time," said Eustace, philosophically.

"You heard about the binge, Bertie? Our little bit of trouble, I mean?"

"Oh, yes. Aunt Agatha was telling me."

"We leave our country for our country's good," said Eustace.

"And let there be no moaning at the bar," said Claude, "when I put out
to sea. What did Aunt Agatha tell you?"

"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.

"Now what," said Eustace, "do you propose to do, Bertie, in the way of
entertaining the handsome guests to-night?"

"My idea was to have a bite of dinner in the flat," I said. "Jeeves is
getting it ready now."

"And afterwards?"

"Well, I thought we might chat of this and that, and then it struck me
that you would probably like to turn in early, as your train goes about
ten or something, doesn't it?"

The twins looked at each other in a pitying sort of way.

"Bertie," said Eustace, "you've got the programme nearly right, but not
quite. I envisage the evening's events thus: We will toddle along to
Ciro's after dinner. It's an extension night, isn't it? Well, that will
see us through till about two-thirty or three."

"After which, no doubt," said Claude, "the Lord will provide."

"But I thought you would want to get a good night's rest."

"Good night's rest!" said Eustace. "My dear old chap, you don't for a
moment imagine that we are dreaming of going to _bed_ to-night, do you?"

I suppose the fact of the matter is, I'm not the man I was. I mean,
these all-night vigils don't seem to fascinate me as they used to a
few years ago. I can remember the time, when I was up at Oxford, when
a Covent Garden ball till six in the morning, with breakfast at the
Hammams and probably a free fight with a few selected costermongers to
follow, seemed to me what the doctor ordered. But nowadays two o'clock
is about my limit; and by two o'clock the twins were just settling down
and beginning to go nicely.

As far as I can remember, we went on from Ciro's to play chemmy with
some fellows I don't recall having met before, and it must have been
about nine in the morning when we fetched up again at the flat. By
which time, I'm bound to admit, as far as I was concerned the first
careless freshness was beginning to wear off a bit. In fact, I'd got
just enough strength to say good-bye to the twins, wish them a pleasant
voyage and a happy and successful career in South Africa, and stagger
into bed. The last I remember was hearing the blighters chanting like
larks under the cold shower, breaking off from time to time to shout to
Jeeves to rush along the eggs and bacon.

It must have been about one in the afternoon when I woke. I was feeling
more or less like something the Pure Food Committee had rejected, but
there was one bright thought which cheered me up, and that was that
about now the twins would be leaning on the rail of the liner, taking
their last glimpse of the dear old homeland. Which made it all the more
of a shock when the door opened and Claude walked in.

"Hallo, Bertie!" said Claude. "Had a nice refreshing sleep? Now, what
about a good old bite of lunch?"

I'd been having so many distorted nightmares since I had dropped off
to sleep that for half a minute I thought this was simply one more of
them, and the worst of the lot. It was only when Claude sat down on my
feet that I got on to the fact that this was stern reality.

"Great Scott! What on earth are you doing here?" I gurgled.

Claude looked at me reproachfully.

"Hardly the tone I like to hear in a host, Bertie," he said
reprovingly. "Why, it was only last night that you were saying you
wished I was stopping a good long time. Your dream has come true. I am!"

"But why aren't you on your way to South Africa?"

"Now that," said Claude, "is a point I rather thought you would want
to have explained. It's like this, old man. You remember that girl you
introduced me to at Ciro's last night?"

"Which girl?"

"There was only one," said Claude coldly. "Only one that counted, that
is to say. Her name was Marion Wardour. I danced with her a good deal,
if you remember."

I began to recollect in a hazy sort of way. Marion Wardour has been
a pal of mine for some time. A very good sort. She's playing in that
show at the Apollo at the moment. I remembered now that she had been
at Ciro's with a party the night before, and the twins had insisted on
being introduced.

"We are soul-mates, Bertie," said Claude. "I found it out quite early
in the p.m., and the more thought I've given to the matter the more
convinced I've become. It happens like that now and then, you know.
Two hearts that beat as one, I mean, and all that sort of thing. So
the long and the short of it is that I gave old Eustace the slip at
Waterloo and slid back here. The idea of going to South Africa and
leaving a girl like that in England doesn't appeal to me a bit. I'm
all for thinking imperially and giving the Colonies a leg-up and all
that sort of thing; but it can't be done. After all," said Claude
reasonably, "South Africa has got along all right without me up till
now, so why shouldn't it stick it?"

"But what about Van Alstyne, or whatever his name is? He'll be
expecting you to turn up."

"Oh, he'll have Eustace. That'll satisfy him. Very sound fellow,
Eustace. Probably end up by being a magnate of some kind. I shall watch
his future progress with considerable interest. And now you must excuse
me for a moment, Bertie. I want to go and hunt up Jeeves and get him to
mix me one of those pick-me-ups of his. For some reason which I can't
explain, I've got a slight headache this morning."

And, believe me or believe me not, the door had hardly closed behind
him when in blew Eustace with a shining morning face that made me ill
to look at.

"Oh, my aunt!" I said.

Eustace started to giggle pretty freely.

"Smooth work, Bertie, smooth work!" he said. "I'm sorry for poor
old Claude, but there was no alternative. I eluded his vigilance at
Waterloo and snaked off in a taxi. I suppose the poor old ass is
wondering where the deuce I've got to. But it couldn't be helped. If
you really seriously expected me to go slogging off to South Africa,
you shouldn't have introduced me to Miss Wardour last night. I want to
tell you all about that, Bertie. I'm not a man," said Eustace, sitting
down on the bed, "who falls in love with every girl he sees. I suppose
'strong, silent,' would be the best description you could find for me.
But when I do meet my affinity I don't waste time. I----"

"Oh, heaven! Are you in love with Marion Wardour, too?"

"Too? What do you mean, 'too'?"

I was going to tell him about Claude, when the blighter came in in
person, looking like a giant refreshed. There's no doubt that Jeeves's
pick-me-ups will produce immediate results in anything short of an
Egyptian mummy. It's something he puts in them--the Worcester sauce
or something. Claude had revived like a watered flower, but he nearly
had a relapse when he saw his bally brother goggling at him over the
bed-rail.

"What on earth are you doing here?" he said.

"What on earth are _you_ doing here?" said Eustace.

"Have you come back to inflict your beastly society upon Miss Wardour?"

"Is that why you've come back?"

They thrashed the subject out a bit further.

"Well," said Claude at last. "I suppose it can't be helped. If you're
here, you're here. May the best man win!"

"Yes, but dash it all!" I managed to put in at this point. "What's
the idea? Where do you think you're going to stay if you stick on in
London?"

"Why, here," said Eustace, surprised.

"Where else?" said Claude, raising his eyebrows.

"You won't object to putting us up, Bertie?" said Eustace.

"Not a sportsman like you," said Claude.

"But, you silly asses, suppose Aunt Agatha finds out that I'm hiding
you when you ought to be in South Africa? Where do I get off?"

"Where _does_ he get off?" Claude asked Eustace.

"Oh, I expect he'll manage somehow," said Eustace to Claude.

"Of course," said Claude, quite cheered up. "_He_'ll manage."

"Rather!" said Eustace. "A resourceful chap like Bertie! Of course he
will."

"And now," said Claude, shelving the subject, "what about that bite
of lunch we were discussing a moment ago, Bertie? That stuff good old
Jeeves slipped into me just now has given me what you might call an
appetite. Something in the nature of six chops and a batter pudding
would about meet the case, I think."

I suppose every chappie in the world has 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.

All was quiet along the Potomac for about twenty-four hours, and then
Aunt Agatha trickled in to have a chat. Twenty minutes earlier and she
would have found the twins gaily shoving themselves outside a couple of
rashers and an egg. She sank into a chair, and I could see that she was
not in her usual sunny spirits.

"Bertie," she said, "I am uneasy."

So was I. I didn't know how long she intended to stop, or when the
twins were coming back.

"I wonder," she said, "if I took too harsh a view towards Claude and
Eustace."

"You couldn't."

"What do you mean?"

"I--er--mean it would be so unlike you to be harsh to anybody, Aunt
Agatha." And not bad, either. I mean, quick--like that--without
thinking. It pleased the old relative, and she looked at me with
slightly less loathing than she usually does.

"It is nice of you to say that, Bertie, 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.

"Do you think all is well with them?"

"How do you mean?"

Aunt Agatha eyed me almost wistfully.

"Has it ever occurred to you, Bertie," she said, "that your Uncle
George may be psychic?"

She seemed to me to be changing the subject.

"Psychic?"

"Do you think it is possible that he could _see_ things not visible to
the normal eye?"

I thought it dashed possible, if not probable. I don't know if you've
ever met my Uncle George. He's a festive old egg who wanders from club
to club continually having a couple with other festive old eggs. 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.

"Your Uncle George was dining with me last night, and he was quite
shaken. He declares that, while on his way from the Devonshire Club to
Boodle's he suddenly saw the phantasm of Eustace."

"The what of Eustace?"

"The phantasm. The wraith. It was so clear that he thought for an
instant that it was Eustace himself. The figure vanished round a
corner, and when Uncle George got there nothing was to be seen. It is
all very queer and disturbing. It had a marked effect on poor George.
All through dinner he touched nothing but barley-water, and his manner
was quite disturbed. 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 the twins came in, I put it squarely to the blighters. Jolly as it
was to give Uncle George shocks, they must not wander at large about
the metrop.

"But, my dear old soul," said Claude. "Be reasonable. We can't have our
movements hampered."

"Out of the question," said Eustace.

"The whole essence of the thing, if you understand me," said Claude,
"is that we should be at liberty to flit hither and thither."

"Exactly," said Eustace. "Now hither, now thither."

"But, damn it----"

"Bertie!" said Eustace reprovingly. "Not before the boy!"

"Of course, in a way I see his point," said Claude. "I suppose the
solution of the problem would be to buy a couple of disguises."

"My dear old chap!" said Eustace, looking at him with admiration. "The
brightest idea on record. Not your own, surely?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, it was Bertie who put it into my head."

"Me!"

"You were telling me the other day about old Bingo Little and the beard
he bought when he didn't want his uncle to recognise him."

"If you think I'm going to have you two excrescences popping in and out
of my flat in beards----"

"Something in that," agreed Eustace. "We'll make it whiskers, then."

"And false noses," said Claude.

"And, as you say, false noses. Right-o, then, Bertie, old chap, that's
a load off your mind. We don't want to be any trouble to you while
we're paying you this little visit."

And, when I went buzzing round to Jeeves for consolation, all he would
say was something about Young Blood. No sympathy.

"Very good, Jeeves," I said. "I shall go for a walk in the Park. Kindly
put me out the Old Etonian spats."

"Very good, sir."

       *       *       *       *       *

It must have been a couple of days after that that Marion Wardour
rolled in at about the hour of tea. She looked warily round the room
before sitting down.

"Your cousins not at home, Bertie?" she said.

"No, thank goodness!"

"Then I'll tell you where they are. They're in my sitting-room, glaring
at each other from opposite corners, waiting for me to come in. Bertie,
this has got to stop."

"You're seeing a good deal of them, are you?"

Jeeves came in with the tea, but the poor girl was so worked up that
she didn't wait for him to pop off before going on with her complaint.
She had an absolutely hunted air, poor thing.

"I can't move a step without tripping over one or both of them," she
said. "Generally both. They've taken to calling together, and they just
settle down grimly and try to sit each other out. It's wearing me to a
shadow."

"I know," I said sympathetically. "I know."

"Well, what's to be done?"

"It beats me. Couldn't you tell your maid to say you are not at home?"

She shuddered slightly.

"I tried that once. They camped on the stairs, and I couldn't get
out all the afternoon. And I had a lot of particularly important
engagements. I wish you would persuade them to go to South Africa,
where they seem to be wanted."

"You must have made the dickens of an impression on them."

"I should say I have. They've started giving me presents now. At least,
Claude has. He insisted on my accepting this cigarette-case last night.
Came round to the theatre and wouldn't go away till I took it. It's not
a bad one, I must say."

It wasn't. It was a distinctly fruity concern in gold with a diamond
stuck in the middle. And the rummy thing was that I had a notion I'd
seen something very like it before somewhere. How the deuce Claude had
been able to dig up the cash to buy a thing like that was more than I
could imagine.

Next day was a Wednesday, and as the object of their devotion had a
_matinée_, the twins were, so to speak, off duty. Claude had gone with
his whiskers on to Hurst Park, and Eustace and I were in the flat,
talking. At least, he was talking and I was wishing he would go.

"The love of a good woman, Bertie," he was saying, "must be a
wonderful thing. Sometimes---- Good Lord! what's that?"

The front door had opened, and from out in the hall there came the
sound of Aunt Agatha's voice asking if I was in. Aunt Agatha has one of
those high, penetrating voices, but this was the first time I'd ever
been thankful for it. There was just about two seconds to clear the way
for her, but it was long enough for Eustace to dive under the sofa. His
last shoe had just disappeared when she came in.

She had a worried look. It seemed to me about this time that everybody
had.

"Bertie," she said, "what are your immediate plans?"

"How do you mean? I'm dining to-night with----"

"No, no, I don't mean to-night. Are you busy for the next few days?
But, of course you are not," she went on, not waiting for me to answer.
"You never have anything to do. Your whole life is spent in idle--but
we can go into that later. What I came for this afternoon was to tell
you that I wish you to go with your poor Uncle George to Harrogate for
a few weeks. The sooner you can start, the better."

This appeared to me to approximate so closely to the frozen limit that
I uttered a yelp of protest. Uncle George is all right, but he won't
do. I was trying to say as much when she waved me down.

"If you are not entirely heartless, Bertie, you will do as I ask you.
Your poor Uncle George has had a severe shock."

"What, another!"

"He feels that only complete rest and careful medical attendance can
restore his nervous system to its normal poise. It seems that in the
past he has derived benefit from taking the waters at Harrogate, and
he wishes to go there now. We do not think he ought to be alone, so I
wish you to accompany him."

"But, I say!"

"Bertie!"

There was a lull in the conversation.

"What shock has he had?" I asked.

"Between ourselves," said Aunt Agatha, lowering her voice in an
impressive manner, "I incline to think that the whole affair was the
outcome of an over-excited imagination. You are one of the family,
Bertie, and I can speak freely to you. You know as well as I do
that your poor Uncle George has for many years _not_ been a--he
has--er--developed a habit of--how shall I put it?"

"Shifting it a bit?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Mopping up the stuff to some extent?"

"I dislike your way of putting it exceedingly, but I must confess
that he has not been, perhaps, as temperate as he should. He is
highly-strung, and---- Well, the fact is, that he has had a shock."

"Yes, but what?"

"That is what it is so hard to induce him to explain with any
precision. With all his good points, your poor Uncle George is apt to
become incoherent when strongly moved. As far as I could gather, he
appears to have been the victim of a burglary."

"Burglary!"

"He says that a strange man with whiskers and a peculiar nose entered
his rooms in Jermyn Street during his absence and stole some of
his property. He says that he came back and found the man in his
sitting-room. He immediately rushed out of the room and disappeared."

"Uncle George?"

"No, the man. And, according to your Uncle George, he had stolen a
valuable cigarette-case. But, as I say, I am inclined to think that the
whole thing was imagination. He has not been himself since the day when
he fancied that he saw Eustace in the street. So I should like you,
Bertie, to be prepared to start for Harrogate with him not later than
Saturday."

She popped off, and Eustace crawled out from under the sofa. The
blighter was strongly moved. So was I, for the matter of that. The
idea of several weeks with Uncle George at Harrogate seemed to make
everything go black.

"So that's where he got that cigarette-case, dash him!" said Eustace
bitterly. "Of all the dirty tricks! Robbing his own flesh and blood!
The fellow ought to be in chokey."

"He ought to be in South Africa," I said. "And so ought you."

And with an eloquence which rather surprised me, I hauled up my
slacks for perhaps ten minutes on the subject of his duty to his
family and what not. I appealed to his sense of decency. I boosted
South Africa with vim. I said everything I could think of, much of it
twice over. But all the blighter did was to babble about his dashed
brother's baseness in putting one over on him in the matter of the
cigarette-case. He seemed to think that Claude, by slinging in the
handsome gift, had got right ahead of him; and there was a painful
scene when the latter came back from Hurst Park. I could hear them
talking half the night, long after I had tottered off to bed. I don't
know when I've met fellows who could do with less sleep than those two.

       *       *       *       *       *

After this, things became a bit strained at the flat owing to Claude
and Eustace not being on speaking terms. I'm all for a certain
chumminess in the home, and it was wearing to have to live with two
fellows who wouldn't admit that the other one was on the map at all.

One felt the thing couldn't go on like that for long, and, by Jove, it
didn't. But, if anyone had come to me the day before and told me what
was going to happen, I should simply have smiled wanly. I mean, I'd got
so accustomed to thinking that nothing short of a dynamite explosion
could ever dislodge those two nestlers from my midst that, when Claude
sidled up to me on the Friday morning and told me his bit of news, I
could hardly believe I was hearing right.

"Bertie," he said, "I've been thinking it over."

"What over?" I said.

"The whole thing. This business of staying in London when I ought to be
in South Africa. It isn't fair," said Claude warmly. "It isn't right.
And the long and the short of it is, Bertie, old man, I'm leaving
to-morrow."

I reeled in my tracks.

"You are?" I gasped.

"Yes. If," said Claude, "you won't mind sending old Jeeves out to buy a
ticket for me. I'm afraid I'll have to stick you for the passage money,
old man. You don't mind?"

"Mind!" I said, clutching his hand fervently.

"That's all right, then. Oh, I say, you won't say a word to Eustace
about this, will you?"

"But isn't he going, too?"

Claude shuddered.

"No, thank heaven! The idea of being cooped up on board a ship with
that blighter gives me the pip just to think of it. No, not a word to
Eustace. I say, I suppose you can get me a berth all right at such
short notice?"

"Rather!" I said. Sooner than let this opportunity slip, I would have
bought the bally boat.

"Jeeves," I said, breezing into the kitchen. "Go out on first speed to
the Union-Castle offices and book a berth on to-morrow's boat for Mr.
Claude. He is leaving us, Jeeves."

"Yes, sir."

"Mr. Claude does not wish any mention of this to be made to Mr.
Eustace."

"No, sir. Mr. Eustace made the same proviso when he desired me to
obtain a berth on to-morrow's boat for himself."

I gaped at the man.

"Is he going, too?"

"Yes, sir."

"This is rummy."

"Yes, sir."

Had circumstances been other than they were, I would at this juncture
have unbent considerably towards Jeeves. Frisked round him a bit and
whooped to a certain extent, and what not. But those spats still formed
a barrier, and I regret to say that I took the opportunity of rather
rubbing it in a bit on the man. I mean, he'd been so dashed aloof and
unsympathetic, though perfectly aware that the young master was in the
soup and that it was up to him to rally round, that I couldn't help
pointing out how the happy ending had been snaffled without any help
from him.

"So that's that, Jeeves," I said. "The episode is concluded. I knew
things would sort themselves out if one gave them time and didn't get
rattled. Many chaps in my place would have got rattled, Jeeves."

"Yes, sir."

"Gone rushing about, I mean, asking people for help and advice and so
forth."

"Very possibly, sir."

"But not me, Jeeves."

"No, sir."

I left him to brood on it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Even the thought that I'd got to go to Harrogate with Uncle George
couldn't depress me that Saturday when I gazed about the old flat and
realised that Claude and Eustace weren't in it. They had slunk off
stealthily and separately immediately after breakfast, Eustace to catch
the boat-train at Waterloo, Claude to go round to the garage where I
kept my car. I didn't want any chance of the two meeting at Waterloo
and changing their minds, so I had suggested to Claude that he might
find it pleasanter to drive down to Southampton.

I was lying back on the old settee, gazing peacefully up at the flies
on the ceiling and feeling what a wonderful world this was, when Jeeves
came in with a letter.

"A messenger-boy has brought this, sir."

I opened the envelope, and the first thing that fell out was a
five-pound note.

"Great Scott!" I said. "What's all this?"

The letter was scribbled in pencil, and was quite brief:


     _Dear Bertie,--Will you give enclosed to your man, and tell him I
     wish I could make it more. He has saved my life. This is the first
     happy day I've had for a week._

     _Yours_,

     M. W.


Jeeves was standing holding out the fiver, which had fluttered to the
floor.

"You'd better stick to it," I said. "It seems to be for you."

"Sir?"

"I say that fiver is for you, apparently. Miss Wardour sent it."

"That was extremely kind of her, sir."

"What the dickens is she sending you fivers for? She says you saved her
life."

Jeeves smiled gently.

"She over-estimates my services, sir."

"But what _were_ your services, dash it?"

"It was in the matter of Mr. Claude and Mr. Eustace, sir. I was hoping
that she would not refer to the matter, as I did not wish you to think
that I had been taking a liberty."

"What do you mean?"

"I chanced to be in the room while Miss Wardour was complaining with
some warmth of the manner in which Mr. Claude and Mr. Eustace were
thrusting their society upon her. I felt that in the circumstances
it might be excusable if I suggested a slight ruse to enable her to
dispense with their attentions."

"Good Lord! You don't mean to say you were at the bottom of their
popping off, after all!"

Silly ass it made me feel. I mean, after rubbing it in to him like that
about having clicked without his assistance.

"It occurred to me that, were Miss Wardour to inform Mr. Claude and Mr.
Eustace independently that she proposed sailing for South Africa to
take up a theatrical engagement, the desired effect might be produced.
It appears that my anticipations were correct, sir. The young gentlemen
ate it, if I may use the expression."

"Jeeves," I said--we Woosters may make bloomers, but we are never too
proud to admit it--"you stand alone!"

"Thank you very much, sir."

"Oh, but I say!" A ghastly thought had struck me. "When they get on the
boat and find she isn't there, won't they come buzzing back?"

"I anticipated that possibility, sir. At my suggestion, Miss Wardour
informed the young gentlemen that she proposed to travel overland to
Madeira and join the vessel there."

"And where do they touch after Madeira?"

"Nowhere, sir."

For a moment I just lay back, letting the idea of the thing soak in.
There seemed to me to be only one flaw.

"The only pity is," I said, "that on a large boat like that they will
be able to avoid each other. I mean, I should have liked to feel that
Claude was having a good deal of Eustace's society and _vice versa_."

"I fancy that that will be so, sir. I secured a two-berth stateroom.
Mr. Claude will occupy one berth, Mr. Eustace the other."

I sighed with pure ecstasy. It seemed a dashed shame that on this
joyful occasion I should have to go off to Harrogate with my Uncle
George.

"Have you started packing yet, Jeeves?" I asked.

"Packing, sir?"

"For Harrogate. I've got to go there to-day with Sir George."

"Of course, yes, sir. I forgot to mention it. Sir George rang up on the
telephone this morning while you were still asleep, and said that he
had changed his plans. He does not intend to go to Harrogate."

"Oh, I say, how absolutely topping!"

"I thought you might be pleased, sir."

"What made him change his plans? Did he say?"

"No, sir. But I gather from his man, Stevens, that he is feeling much
better and does not now require a rest-cure. I took the liberty of
giving Stevens the recipe for that pick-me-up of mine, of which you
have always approved so much. Stevens tells me that Sir George informed
him this morning that he is feeling a new man."

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."




CHAPTER XVII

BINGO AND THE LITTLE WOMAN


It must have been a week or so after the departure of Claude and
Eustace that I ran into young Bingo Little in the smoking-room of the
Senior Liberal Club. He was lying back in an arm-chair with his mouth
open and a sort of goofy expression in his eyes, while a grey-bearded
cove in the middle distance watched him with so much dislike that I
concluded that Bingo had pinched his favourite seat. That's the worst
of being in a strange club--absolutely without intending it, you find
yourself constantly trampling upon the vested interests of the Oldest
Inhabitants.

"Hallo, face," I said.

"Cheerio, ugly," said young Bingo, and we settled down to have a small
one before lunch.

Once a year the committee of the Drones decides that the old club could
do with a wash and brush-up, so they shoo us out and dump us down for
a few weeks at some other institution. This time we were roosting
at the Senior Liberal, and personally I had found the strain pretty
fearful. I mean, when you've got used to a club where everything's nice
and cheery, and where, if you want to attract a chappie'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?" he said.

"No."

He seemed disappointed, but pulled round.

"Well, I've heard that the cooking's the best in London."

"So they say. Shall we be going in?"

"All right. I expect," said young Bingo, "that at the end of the
meal--or possibly at the beginning--the waitress will say, 'Both
together, sir?' Reply in the affirmative. I haven't a bean."

"Hasn't your uncle forgiven you yet?"

"Not yet, confound him!"

I was sorry to hear the row was still on. I resolved to do the poor
old thing well at the festive board, and I scanned the menu with some
intentness when the girl rolled up with it.

"How would this do you, Bingo?" I said at length. "A few plovers' eggs
to weigh in with, a cup of soup, a touch of cold salmon, some cold
curry, and a splash of gooseberry tart and cream with a bite of cheese
to finish?"

I don't know that I had expected the man actually to scream with
delight, though I had picked the items from my knowledge of his pet
dishes, but I had expected him to say something. I looked up, and
found that his attention was elsewhere. He was gazing at the waitress
with the look of a dog that's just remembered where its bone was buried.

She was a tallish girl with sort of soft, soulful brown eyes. Nice
figure and all that. Rather decent hands, too. I didn't remember having
seen her about before, and I must say she raised the standard of the
place quite a bit.

"How about it, laddie?" I said, being all for getting the order booked
and going on to the serious knife-and-fork work.

"Eh?" said young Bingo absently.

I recited the programme once more.

"Oh, yes, fine!" said Bingo. "Anything, anything." The girl pushed off,
and he turned to me with protruding eyes. "I thought you said they
weren't pretty, Bertie!" he said reproachfully.

"Oh, my heavens!" I said. "You surely haven't fallen in love again--and
with a girl you've only just seen?"

"There are times, Bertie," said young Bingo, "when a look is
enough--when, passing through a crowd, we meet somebody's eye and
something seems to whisper...."

At this point the plovers' eggs arrived, and he suspended his remarks
in order to swoop on them with some vigour.

"Jeeves," I said that night when I got home, "stand by."

"Sir?"

"Burnish the old brain and be alert and vigilant. I suspect that Mr.
Little will be calling round shortly for sympathy and assistance."

"Is Mr. Little in trouble, sir?"

"Well, you might call it that. He's in love. For about the fifty-third
time. I ask you, Jeeves, as man to man, did you ever see such a chap?"

"Mr. Little is certainly warm-hearted, sir."

"Warm-hearted! I should think he has to wear asbestos vests. Well,
stand by, Jeeves."

"Very good, sir."

And sure enough, it wasn't ten days before in rolled the old ass,
bleating for volunteers to step one pace forward and come to the aid of
the party.

"Bertie," he said, "if you are a pal of mine, now is the time to show
it."

"Proceed, old gargoyle," I replied. "You have our ear."

"You remember giving me lunch at the Senior Liberal some days ago. We
were waited on by a----"

"I remember. Tall, lissom female."

He shuddered somewhat.

"I wish you wouldn't talk of her like that, dash it all. She's an
angel."

"All right. Carry on."

"I love her."

"Right-o! Push along."

"For goodness sake don't bustle me. Let me tell the story in my own
way. I love her, as I was saying, and I want you, Bertie, old boy, to
pop round to my uncle and do a bit of diplomatic work. That allowance
of mine must be restored, and dashed quick, too. What's more, it must
be increased."

"But look here," I said, being far from keen on the bally business,
"why not wait awhile?"

"Wait? What's the good of waiting?"

"Well, you know what generally happens when you fall in love. Something
goes wrong with the works and you get left. Much better tackle your
uncle after the whole thing's fixed and settled."

"It _is_ fixed and settled. She accepted me this morning."

"Good Lord! That's quick work. You haven't known her two weeks."

"Not in this life, no," said young Bingo. "But she has a sort of idea
that we must have met in some previous existence. She thinks I must
have been a king in Babylon when she was a Christian slave. I can't say
I remember it myself, but there may be something in it."

"Great Scott!" I said. "Do waitresses really talk like that?"

"How should _I_ know how waitresses talk?"

"Well, you ought to by now. The first time I ever met your uncle was
when you hounded me on to ask him if he would rally round to help you
marry that girl Mabel in the Piccadilly bun-shop."

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. You've given me an idea,
Bertie." He waited till I had finished massaging the limb, and resumed
his remarks. "Can you throw your mind back to that occasion, Bertie? Do
you remember the frightfully subtle scheme I worked? Telling him you
were what's-her-name, the woman who wrote those books, I mean?"

It wasn't likely I'd forget. The ghastly thing was absolutely seared
into my memory.

"That is the line of attack," said Bingo. "That is the scheme. Rosie M.
Banks forward once more."

"It can't be done, old thing. Sorry, but it's out of the question. I
couldn't go through all that again."

"Not for me?"

"Not for a dozen more like you."

"I never thought," said Bingo sorrowfully, "to hear those words from
Bertie Wooster!"

"Well, you've heard them now," I said. "Paste them in your hat."

"Bertie, we were at 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 judgment by means of the
deaf-and-dumb language.

"Well, what do you want me to do?" I said, realising that it was
hopeless to struggle.

"Start off by sending the old boy an autographed copy of your latest
effort with a flattering inscription. That will tickle him to death.
Then you pop round and put it across."

"What _is_ my latest?"

"'The Woman Who Braved All,'" said young Bingo. "I've seen it all over
the place. The shop windows and bookstalls are full of nothing but it.
It looks to me from the picture on the jacket the sort of book any
chappie would be proud to have written. Of course, he will want to
discuss it with you."

"Ah!" I said, cheering up. "That dishes the scheme, doesn't it? I don't
know what the bally thing is about."

"You will have to read it, naturally."

"Read it! No, I say...."

"Bertie, we were at school together."

"Oh, right-o! Right-o!" I said.

"I knew I could rely on you. You have a heart of gold. Jeeves," said
young Bingo, as the faithful servitor rolled in, "Mr. Wooster has a
heart of gold."

"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.

Bar a weekly wrestle with the Pink 'Un and an occasional dip into the
form book I'm not much of a lad for reading, and my sufferings as I
tackled "The Woman" (curse her!) "Who Braved All" were pretty fearful.
But I managed to get through it, and only just in time, as it happened,
for I'd hardly reached the bit where their lips met in one long,
slow kiss and everything was still but for the gentle sighing of the
breeze in the laburnum, when a messenger boy brought a note from old
Bittlesham asking me to trickle round to lunch.

I found the old boy in a mood you could only describe as melting. He
had a copy of the book on the table beside him and kept turning the
pages in the intervals of dealing with things in aspic and what not.

"Mr. Wooster," he said, swallowing a chunk of trout, "I wish to
congratulate you. I wish to thank you. You go from strength to
strength. I have read 'All For Love'; I have read 'Only a Factory
Girl'; I know 'Madcap Myrtle' by heart. But this--this is your bravest
and best. It tears the heartstrings."

"Yes?"

"Indeed yes! I have read it three times since you most kindly
sent me the volume--I wish to thank you once more for the charming
inscription--and I think I may say that I am a better, sweeter, deeper
man. I am full of human charity and kindliness toward my species."

"No, really?"

"Indeed, indeed I am."

"Towards the whole species?"

"Towards the whole species."

"Even young Bingo?" I said, trying him pretty high.

"My nephew? Richard?" He looked a bit thoughtful, but stuck it like a
man and refused to hedge. "Yes, even towards Richard. Well ... that is
to say ... perhaps ... yes, even towards Richard."

"That's good, because I wanted to talk about him. He's pretty hard up,
you know."

"In straitened circumstances?"

"Stoney. And he could use a bit of the right stuff paid every quarter,
if you felt like unbelting."

He mused awhile and got through a slab of cold guinea hen before
replying. He toyed with the book, and it fell open at page two hundred
and fifteen. I couldn't remember what was on page two hundred and
fifteen, but it must have been something tolerably zippy, for his
expression changed and he gazed up at me with misty eyes, as if he'd
taken a shade too much mustard with his last bite of ham.

"Very well, Mr. Wooster," he said. "Fresh from a perusal of this
noble work of yours, I cannot harden my heart. Richard shall have his
allowance."

"Stout fellow!" I said. Then it occurred to me that the expression
might strike a chappie who weighed seventeen stone as a bit personal.
"Good egg, I mean. That'll take a weight off his mind. He wants to get
married, you know."

"I did not know. And I am not sure that I altogether approve. Who is
the lady?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, she's a waitress."

He leaped in his seat.

"You don't say so, Mr. Wooster! This is remarkable. This is most
cheering. I had not given the boy credit for such tenacity of purpose.
An excellent trait in him which I had not hitherto suspected. I
recollect clearly that, on the occasion when I first had the pleasure
of making your acquaintance, nearly eighteen months ago, Richard was
desirous of marrying this same waitress."

I had to break it to him.

"Well, not absolutely this same waitress. In fact, quite a different
waitress. Still, a waitress, you know."

The light of avuncular affection died out of the old boy's eyes.

"H'm!" he said a bit dubiously. "I had supposed that Richard was
displaying the quality of constancy which is so rare in the modern
young man. I--I must think it over."

So we left it at that, and I came away and told Bingo the position of
affairs.

"Allowance O.K.," I said. "Uncle blessing a trifle wobbly."

"Doesn't he seem to want the wedding bells to ring out?"

"I left him thinking it over. If I were a bookie, I should feel
justified in offering a hundred to eight against."

"You can't have approached him properly. I might have known you would
muck it up," said young Bingo. Which, considering what I had been
through for his sake, struck me as a good bit sharper than a serpent's
tooth.

"It's awkward," said young Bingo. "It's infernally awkward. I can't
tell you all the details at the moment, but ... yes, it's awkward."

He helped himself absently to a handful of my cigars and pushed off.

I didn't see him again for three days. Early in the afternoon of the
third day he blew in with a flower in his buttonhole and a look on his
face as if someone had hit him behind the ear with a stuffed eel skin.

"Hallo, Bertie."

"Hallo, old turnip. Where have you been all this while?"

"Oh, here and there! Ripping weather we're having, Bertie."

"Not bad."

"I see the Bank Rate is down again."

"No, really?"

"Disturbing news from Lower Silesia, what?"

"Oh, dashed!"

He pottered about the room for a bit, babbling at intervals. The boy
seemed cuckoo.

"Oh, I say, Bertie!" he said suddenly, dropping a vase which he had
picked off the mantelpiece and was fiddling with. "I know what it was I
wanted to tell you. I'm married."




CHAPTER XVIII

ALL'S WELL


I stared at him. That flower in his buttonhole.... That dazed look....
Yes, he had all the symptoms; and yet the thing seemed incredible. The
fact is, I suppose, I'd seen so many of young Bingo's love affairs
start off with a whoop and a rattle and poof themselves out half-way
down the straight that I couldn't believe he had actually brought it
off at last.

"Married!"

"Yes. This morning at a registrar's in Holburn. I've just come from the
wedding breakfast."

I sat up in my chair. Alert. The man of affairs. It seemed to me that
this thing wanted threshing out in all its aspects.

"Let's get this straight," I said. "You're really married?"

"Yes."

"The same girl you were in love with the day before yesterday?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know what you're like. Tell me, what made you commit this
rash act?"

"I wish the deuce you wouldn't talk like that. I married her because I
love her, dash it. The best little woman," said young Bingo, "in the
world."

"That's all right, and deuced creditable, I'm sure. But have you
reflected what your uncle's going to say? The last I saw of him, he
was by no means in a confetti-scattering mood."

"Bertie," said Bingo, "I'll be frank with you. The little woman rather
put it up to me, if you know what I mean. I told her how my uncle felt
about it, and she said that we must part unless I loved her enough
to brave the old boy's wrath and marry her right away. So I had no
alternative. I bought a buttonhole and went to it."

"And what do you propose to do now?"

"Oh, I've got it all planned out! After you've seen my uncle and broken
the news...."

"What!"

"After you've...."

"You don't mean to say you think you're going to lug _me_ into it?"

He looked at me like Lilian Gish coming out of a swoon.

"Is this Bertie Wooster talking?" he said, pained.

"Yes, it jolly well is."

"Bertie, old man," said Bingo, patting me gently here and there,
"reflect! We were at school----"

"Oh, all right!"

"Good man! I knew I could rely on you. She's waiting down below in the
hall. We'll pick her up and dash round to Pounceby Gardens right away."

I had only seen the bride before in her waitress kit, and I was rather
expecting that on her wedding day she would have launched out into
something fairly zippy in the way of upholstery. The first gleam of
hope I had felt since the start of this black business came to me when
I saw that, instead of being all velvet and scent and flowery hat, she
was dressed in dashed good taste. Quiet. Nothing loud. So far as looks
went, she might have stepped straight out of Berkeley Square.

"This is my old pal, Bertie Wooster, darling," said Bingo. "We were at
school together, weren't we, Bertie?"

"We were!" I said. "How do you do? I think we--er--met at lunch the
other day, didn't we?"

"Oh, yes! How do you do?"

"My uncle eats out of Bertie's hand," explained Bingo. "So he's coming
round with us to start things off and kind of pave the way. Hi, taxi!"

We didn't talk much on the journey. Kind of tense feeling. I was glad
when the cab stopped at old Bittlesham's wigwam and we all hopped
out. I left Bingo and wife in the hall while I went upstairs to the
drawing-room, and the butler toddled off to dig out the big chief.

While I was prowling about the room waiting for him to show up, I
suddenly caught sight of that bally "Woman Who Braved All" lying on
one of the tables. It was open at page two hundred and fifteen, and a
passage heavily marked in pencil caught my eye. And directly I read it
I saw that it was all to the mustard and was going to help me in my
business.

This was the passage:


     _"What can prevail"--Millicent's eyes flashed as she faced the
     stern old man--"what can prevail against a pure and all-consuming
     love? Neither principalities nor powers, my lord, nor all the
     puny prohibitions of guardians and parents. I love your son, Lord
     Mindermere, and nothing can keep us apart. Since time first began
     this love of ours was fated, and who are you to pit yourself
     against the decrees of Fate?"_

     _The earl looked at her keenly from beneath his bushy eyebrows._

     _"Humph!" he said._


Before I had time to refresh my memory as to what Millicent's come-back
had been to that remark, the door opened and old Bittlesham rolled in.
All over me, as usual.

"My dear Mr. Wooster, this is an unexpected pleasure. Pray take a seat.
What can I do for you?"

"Well, the fact is, I'm more or less in the capacity of a jolly old
ambassador at the moment. Representing young Bingo, you know."

His geniality sagged a trifle, I thought, but he didn't heave me out,
so I pushed on.

"The way I always look at it," I said, "is that it's dashed difficult
for anything to prevail against what you might call a pure and
all-consuming love. I mean, can it be done? I doubt it."

My eyes didn't exactly flash as I faced the stern old man, but I sort
of waggled my eyebrows. He puffed a bit and looked doubtful.

"We discussed this matter at our last meeting, Mr. Wooster. And on that
occasion...."

"Yes. But there have been developments, as it were, since then. The
fact of the matter is," I said, coming to the point, "this morning
young Bingo went and jumped off the dock."

"Good heavens!" He jerked himself to his feet with his mouth open.
"Why? Where? Which dock?"

I saw that he wasn't quite on.

"I was speaking metaphorically," I explained, "if that's the word I
want. I mean he got married."

"Married!"

"Absolutely hitched up. I hope you aren't ratty about it, what? Young
blood, you know. Two loving hearts, and all that."

He panted in a rather overwrought way.

"I am greatly disturbed by your news. I--I consider that I have
been--er--defied. Yes, defied."

"But who are you to pit yourself against the decrees of Fate?" I said,
taking a look at the prompt book out of the corner of my eye.

"Eh?"

"You see, this love of theirs was fated. Since time began, you know."

I'm bound to admit that if he'd said "Humph!" at this juncture, he
would have had me stymied. Luckily it didn't occur to him. There was a
silence, during which he appeared to brood a bit. Then his eye fell on
the book and he gave a sort of start.

"Why, bless my soul, Mr. Wooster, you have been quoting!"

"More or less."

"I thought your words sounded familiar." His whole appearance changed
and he gave a sort of gurgling chuckle. "Dear me, dear me, you know my
weak spot!" He picked up the book and buried himself in it for quite
a while. I began to think he had forgotten I was there. After a bit,
however, he put it down again, and wiped his eyes. "Ah, well!" he said.

I shuffled my feet and hoped for the best.

"Ah, well," he said again. "I must not be like Lord Windermere, must I,
Mr. Wooster? Tell me, did you draw that haughty old man from a living
model?"

"Oh, no! Just thought of him and bunged him down, you know."

"Genius!" murmured old Bittlesham. "Genius! Well, Mr. Wooster, you have
won me over. Who, as you say, am I to pit myself against the decrees of
Fate? I will write to Richard to-night and inform him of my consent to
his marriage."

"You can slip him the glad news in person," I said. "He's waiting
downstairs, with wife complete. I'll pop down and send them up.
Cheerio, and thanks very much. Bingo will be most awfully bucked."

I shot out and went downstairs. Bingo and Mrs. were sitting on a couple
of chairs like patients in a dentist's waiting-room.

"Well?" said Bingo eagerly.

"All over except the hand-clasping," I replied, slapping the old
crumpet on the back. "Charge up and get matey. Toodle-oo, old things.
You know where to find me, if wanted. A thousand congratulations, and
all that sort of rot."

And I pipped, not wishing to be fawned upon.

       *       *       *       *       *

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.

"My dear old soul," I said, "what's up?"

Bingo plunged about the room.

"I _will_ be calm!" he said, knocking over an occasional table. "Calm,
dammit!" He upset a chair.

"Surely nothing has gone wrong?"

Bingo uttered one of those hollow, mirthless yelps.

"Only every bally thing that could go wrong. What do you think happened
after you left us? You know that beastly book you insisted on sending
my uncle?"

It wasn't the way I should have put it myself, but I saw the poor old
bean was upset for some reason or other, so I didn't correct him.

"'The Woman Who Braved All'?" I said. "It came in dashed useful. It was
by quoting bits out of it that I managed to talk him round."

"Well, it didn't come in useful when we got into the room. It was lying
on the table, and after we had started to chat a bit and everything
was going along nicely the little woman spotted it. 'Oh, have you read
this, Lord Bittlesham?' she said. 'Three times already,' said my uncle.
'I'm so glad,' said the little woman. 'Why, are you also an admirer of
Rosie M. Banks?' asked the old boy, beaming. 'I _am_ Rosie M. Banks!'
said the little woman."

"Oh, my aunt! Not really?"

"Yes."

"But how could she be? I mean, dash it, she was slinging the foodstuffs
at the Senior Liberal Club."

Bingo gave the settee a moody kick.

"She took the job to collect material for a book she's writing called
'Mervyn Keene, Clubman.'"

"She might have told you."

"It made such a hit with her when she found that I loved her for
herself alone, despite her humble station, that she kept it under her
hat. She meant to spring it on me later on, she said."

"Well, what happened then?"

"There was the dickens of a painful scene. The old boy nearly got
apoplexy. Called her an impostor. They both started talking at once
at the top of their voices, and the thing ended with the little woman
buzzing off to her publishers to collect proofs as a preliminary to
getting a written apology from the old boy. What's going to happen now,
I don't know. Apart from the fact that my uncle will be as mad as a wet
hen when he finds out that he has been fooled, there's going to be a
lot of trouble when the little woman discovers that we worked the Rosie
M. Banks wheeze with a view to trying to get me married to somebody
else. You see, one of the things that first attracted her to me was the
fact that I had never been in love before."

"Did you tell her that?"

"Yes."

"Great Scott!"

"Well, I hadn't been ... not really in love. There's all the difference
in the world between.... Well, never mind that. What am I going to do?
That's the point."

"I don't know."

"Thanks," said young Bingo. "That's a lot of help."

       *       *       *       *       *

Next morning he rang me up on the phone just after I'd got the bacon
and eggs into my system--the one moment of the day, in short, when a
chappie wishes to muse on life absolutely undisturbed.

"Bertie!"

"Hallo?"

"Things are hotting up."

"What's happened now?"

"My uncle has given the little woman's proofs the once-over and admits
her claim. I've just been having five snappy minutes with him on the
telephone. He says that you and I made a fool of him, and he could
hardly speak, he was so shirty. Still, he made it clear all right that
my allowance has gone phut again."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't waste time being sorry for me," said young Bingo grimly. "He's
coming to call on you to-day to demand a personal explanation."

"Great Scott!"

"And the little woman is coming to call on you to demand a personal
explanation."

"Good Lord!"

"I shall watch your future career with some considerable interest,"
said young Bingo.

I bellowed for Jeeves.

"Jeeves!"

"Sir?"

"I'm in the soup."

"Indeed, sir?"

I sketched out the scenario for him.

"What would you advise?"

"I think if I were you, sir, I would accept Mr. Pitt-Waley's invitation
immediately. If you remember, sir, he invited you to shoot with him in
Norfolk this week."

"So he did! By Jove, Jeeves, you're always right. Meet me at the
station with my things the first train after lunch. I'll go and lie low
at the club for the rest of the morning."

"Would you require my company on this visit, sir?"

"Do you want to come?"

"If I might suggest it, sir, I think it would be better if I remained
here and kept in touch with Mr. Little. I might possibly hit upon some
method of pacifying the various parties, sir."

"Right-o! But, if you do, you're a marvel."

       *       *       *       *       *

I didn't enjoy myself much in Norfolk. It rained most of the time, and
when it wasn't raining I was so dashed jumpy I couldn't hit a thing. By
the end of the week I couldn't stand it any longer. Too bally absurd,
I mean, being marooned miles away in the country just because young
Bingo's uncle and wife wanted to have a few words with me. I made up
my mind that I would pop back and do the strong, manly thing by lying
low in my flat and telling Jeeves to inform everybody who called that I
wasn't at home.

I sent Jeeves a telegram saying I was coming, and drove straight to
Bingo's place when I reached town. I wanted to find out the general
posish of affairs. But apparently the man was out. I rang a couple of
times but nothing happened, and I was just going to leg it when I heard
the sound of footsteps inside and the door opened. It wasn't one of the
cheeriest moments of my career when I found myself peering into the
globular face of Lord Bittlesham.

"Oh, er, hallo!" I said. And there was a bit of a pause.

I don't quite know what I had been expecting the old boy to do if, by
bad luck, we should ever meet again, but I had a sort of general idea
that he would turn fairly purple and start almost immediately to let me
have it in the gizzard. It struck me as somewhat rummy, therefore, when
he simply smiled weakly. A sort of frozen smile it was. His eyes kind
of bulged and he swallowed once or twice.

"Er...." he said.

I waited for him to continue, but apparently that was all there was.

"Bingo in?" I said, after a rather embarrassing pause.

He shook his head and smiled again. And then, suddenly, just as the
flow of conversation had begun to slacken once more, I'm dashed if he
didn't make a sort of lumbering leap back into the flat and bang the
door.

I couldn't understand it. But, as it seemed that the interview, such
as it was, was over, I thought I might as well be shifting. I had just
started down the stairs when I met young Bingo, charging up three steps
at a time.

"Hallo, Bertie!" he said. "Where did you spring from? I thought you
were out of town."

"I've just got back. I looked in on you to see how the land lay."

"How do you mean?"

"Why, all that business, you know."

"Oh, that!" said young Bingo airily. "That was all settled days
ago. The dove of peace is flapping its wings all over the place.
Everything's as right as it can be. Jeeves fixed it all up. He's a
marvel, that man, Bertie, I've always said so. Put the whole thing
straight in half a minute with one of those brilliant ideas of his."

"This is topping!"

"I knew you'd be pleased."

"Congratulate you."

"Thanks."

"What did Jeeves do? I couldn't think of any solution of the bally
thing myself."

"Oh, he took the matter in hand and smoothed it all out in a second!
My uncle and the little woman are tremendous pals now. They gas away by
the hour together about literature and all that. He's always dropping
in for a chat."

This reminded me.

"He's in there now," I said. "I say, Bingo, how _is_ your uncle these
days?"

"Much as usual. How do you mean?"

"I mean he hasn't been feeling the strain of things a bit, has he? He
seemed rather strange in his manner just now."

"Why, have you met him?"

"He opened the door when I rang. And then, after he had stood goggling
at me for a bit, he suddenly banged the door in my face. Puzzled me,
you know. I mean, I could have understood it if he'd ticked me off and
all that, but dash it, the man seemed absolutely scared."

Young Bingo laughed a care-free laugh.

"Oh, that's all right!" he said. "I forgot to tell you about that.
Meant to write, but kept putting it off. He thinks you're a looney."

"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 perfectly 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 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, and fate
can't touch you."

I can stand 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?"

       *       *       *       *       *

I pushed on to the old flat, seething like the dickens. One thing I
was jolly certain of, and that was that this was where Jeeves and I
parted company. A topping valet, of course, none better in London, but
I wasn't going to allow that to weaken me. I buzzed into the flat like
an east wind ... and there was the box of cigarettes on the small table
and the illustrated weekly papers on the big table and my slippers on
the floor, and every dashed thing so bally _right_, if you know what
I mean, that I started to calm down in the first two seconds. It was
like one of those moments in a play where the chappie, about to steep
himself in crime, suddenly hears the soft, appealing strains of the
old melody he learned at his mother's knee. Softened, I mean to say.
That's the word I want. I was softened.

And then through the doorway there shimmered good old Jeeves in the
wake of a tray full of the necessary ingredients, and there was
something about the mere look of the man....

However, I steeled the old heart and had a stab at it.

"I have just met Mr. Little, Jeeves," I said.

"Indeed, sir?"

"He--er--he told me you had been helping him."

"I did my best, sir. And I am happy to say that matters now appear to
be proceeding smoothly. Whisky, sir?"

"Thanks. Er--Jeeves."

"Sir?"

"Another time...."

"Sir?"

"Oh, nothing.... Not all the soda, Jeeves."

"Very good, sir."

He started to drift out.

"Oh, Jeeves!"

"Sir?"

"I wish ... that is ... I think ... I mean.... Oh, nothing!"

"Very good, sir. The cigarettes are at your elbow, sir. Dinner will be
ready at a quarter to eight precisely, unless you desire to dine out?"

"No. I'll dine in."

"Yes, sir."

"Jeeves!"

"Sir?"

"Oh, nothing!" I said.

"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.




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|Transcriber's note:                              |
|                                                 |
|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.  |
|                                                 |
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