'The inmates of the leper colony under advisement,' I said, 'consist of Sir Watkyn Bassett, his daughter Madeline, his niece Stephanie Byng, a chap named Spode who recently took to calling himself Lord Sidcup, and Stiffy Byng's Aberdeen terrier Bartholomew, the last of whom you would do well to watch closely if he gets anywhere near your ankles, for he biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.
'Looks are not everything. I admit that any redblooded Sultan or Pasha, if offered the opportunity of adding M. Bassett to the personnel of his harem, would jump to it without hesitation, but he would regret his impulsiveness before the end of the first week.
we talked most of the evening. I thought he was a lamb.' 'You mean a fish.' 'I don't mean a fish.' 'He looks like a fish.' 'He does not look like a fish.' 'Well, have it your own way,' I said tolerantly, knowing it was futile to attempt to reason with a girl who had spent an evening vis-a-vis Gussie Fink-Nottle and didn't think he looked like a fish.
while I personally, though fond of the young gumboil, would run a mile in tight shoes to avoid marrying Stiffy, I knew him to be strongly in favour of signing her up.
proprietor's face as if it were trying to tell him something. Are
She lacks that balanced judgment which we like to see in girls. She gets ideas, and if you care to call them bizarre ideas, it will be all right with me.
So now, instead of being cold and distant and aloof, as a lesser man would have been, he showed the utmost agitation and concern. That is to say, he allowed one eyebrow to rise perhaps an eighth of an inch, which is as far as he ever goes in the way of expressing emotion.
I'm going down there to try to heal the rift.' 'What can you do?' 'My role, as I see it, will be that of what the French call the raisonneur? 'And what does that mean?' 'Ah, there you have me, but that's what Jeeves says I'll be.'
it, and it was in no tranquil mood that I eased the Arab
'Oh, Bertie, you should not have come here. I had not the heart to deny your pathetic request - I knew how much you yearned to see me again, however briefly, however hopelessly - but was it wise! Is it not merely twisting the knife in the wound? Will it not simply cause you needless pain to be near me, knowing we can never be more than just good friends? It is useless, Bertie. You must not hope. I love Augustus.' Her words, as you may well imagine, were music to my e. She
'Oh, Bertie, you should not have come here. I had not the heart to deny your pathetic request - I knew how much you yearned to see me again, however briefly, however hopelessly - but was it wise! Is it not merely twisting the knife in the wound? Will it not simply cause you needless pain to be near me, knowing we can never be more than just good friends? It is useless, Bertie. You must not hope. I love Augustus.' Her words, as you may well imagine, were music to my e.
To ease the strain, I asked him if he would have a cucumber sandwich, but with an impassioned gesture he indicated that he was not in the market for cucumber sandwiches, though I could have told him, for I had found them excellent, that he was passing up a good thing.
Think of the Red Indians, Bassett, I would have said to him, had we been on better terms, pointing out that they were never in livelier spirits than when being cooked on both sides at the stake.
he contributed little or nothing to what I have heard Jeeves call the feast of reason and the flow of soul.
in order to improve his mind, which, as is widely known, can do with all the improvement that's coming to it.
I seek in vain for a solution.
You remember the day I lunched at the Ritz?' 'Yes, sir. You were wearing an Alpine hat.' 'There is no need to dwell on the Alpine hat, Jeeves.' 'No, sir.' 'If you really want to know, several fellows at the Drones asked me where I had got it.' 'No doubt with a view to avoiding your hatter, sir.'
'I fear, sir, that you are too sanguine. Miss Bassett's attitude may well be such as you have described, but on Mr. Fink-Nottle's side, I am sorry to say there exists no little dissatisfaction and resentment.' The smile which had been splitting my face faded. It's never easy to translate what Jeeves says into basic English,
Her heart melted in sympathy with his distress.' I was in no mood to hear about cooks' hearts, soluble or otherwise,
A simple journey, not to be compared for complexity with some I had taken at night in my time.
for some reason not easy to explain it nearly always happens that the smaller the ex-magistrate, the louder the dressing-gown. His was a bright purple number with yellow frogs, and I am not deceiving my public when I say that it smote me like a blow, rendering me speechless. Not that I'd have felt chatty even if he had been upholstered in something quiet in dark blue.
A thing I never know, and probably never will, is what to say when somebody says 'You!' to me. A mild 'Oh, hullo' was the best I could do on this occasion, and I felt at the time it wasn't good. Better, of course, than 'What ho, there, Bassett!' but nevertheless not good.
The trouble on these occasions is that one is always weaponless. It was the same some years ago when an angry swan chased self and friend on to the roof of a sort of boathouse
But my misguided young shrimp, do you really suppose that Pop Bassett looks on me as a friend and counsellor to whom he is always willing to lend a ready ear?
'Jeeves,' I said as he accompanied me to my car at the conclusion of the meal, speaking rather peevishly, perhaps, for I was not my usual sunny self, 'doesn't it strike you as odd that, with infant mortality so rife, a girl like Stiffy should have been permitted to survive into the early twenties?
'Witherspoon, sir.' 'Why Witherspoon? On the other hand,' I added, for I like to look on both sides of a thing, 'why not Witherspoon?
I saw that the time had come to be a raisonneur. 'This was at Brinkley?' 'Yes.' 'I see. After you had made him become a vegetarian. Are you sure,' I said, raisonneuring like nobody's business,
What's the boy's name?' 'I could not say, sir. His actions were cloaked in anonymity.'
Among other vicissitudes that he underwent,
Roderick Spode may have had his merits, though I had never been able to spot them, but his warmest admirer couldn't have called him couth.
'Well, really, Spode! Is this not becoming a bit thick? It's not so long ago that you were turning over in your mind the idea of breaking mine. I think you should watch yourself in this matter of neck-breaking and check the urge before it gets too strong a grip on you. No doubt you say to yourself that you can take it or leave it alone, but isn't there the danger of the thing becoming habit-forming?
I should imagine that if there's one thing that makes a fellow forget that he's in holy orders, it's a crisp punch on the beezer.
My face being buried as stated, I couldn't see if he went into a buck-and-wing dance, but I should think it highly probable that he did a step or two,
I have known my Aunt Agatha to go on calling me names long after you would have supposed that both breath and inventiveness would have given out. Her theme was the stupendous bit
I have known my Aunt Agatha to go on calling me names long after you would have supposed that both breath and inventiveness would have given out.
The savages in the books I used to read in my childhood would have had him in the Obituary column before he could say 'What ho', but with the ones you get nowadays it's all slackness and laissez-faire. Can't be bothered. Leave it to somebody else. Let George do it. One sometimes wonders what the world's coming to.
It didn't occur to you to envisage what would happen if he met me?' 'I was sure that your keen intelligence would enable you to find a means of avoiding him, sir, as indeed it did. You concealed yourself behind the sofa?' 'On all fours.' 'A very shrewd manoeuvre on your part, if I may say so, sir. It showed a resource and swiftness of thought which it would be difficult to overpraise.'