All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression. But, as it has worked out, he looks positively dissipated. '
'Just what I was going to suggest, old man. He looks as if he were in the middle of a colossal spree, and enjoying every minute of it.
Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a moment, but - but it was an ugly sort of kid, wasn't it, if I remember rightly?'
'As ugly as that? '
I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
'I don't see how it could have been, old chap.
You ate something that disagreed with you last night, didn't you?' I said, by way of giving him a chance to slide out of it if he wanted to. But he wouldn't have it at any price.
'No!' he replied firmly. 'I didn't do anything of the kind. I drank too much. Much too much. Lots and lots too much. And, what's more, I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it every night. If ever you see me sober, old top,' he said, with a kind of holy exaltation, 'tap me on the shoulder and say "Tut! Tut!" and I'll apologise and remedythe defect.
You see, I had decided - rightly or wrongly - to grow a moustache, and this had cut Jeeves to the quick. He couldn't stick the thing at any price, and I had been living ever since in an atmosphere of bally disapproval till I was getting jolly well fed up with it. What I mean is, while there's no doubt that in certain matters of dress Jeeves's judgment is absolutely sound and should be followed, it seemed to me that it was getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my face as well as my costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and many's the time I've given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted against one of my pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet's staking out a claim on your upper lip you've simply got to have a bit of the good old bulldog pluck and defy the blighter.
P.G. WodehouseThat's always the way in this world. The chappies you'd like to lend money to won't let you, whereas the chappies you don't want to lend it to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift the specie out of your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled tolerably freely in the right stuff, I've had lots of experience of the second class. Many's the time, back in London, I've hurried along Piccadilly and felt the hot breath of the toucher on the back of my neck and heard his sharp excited yapping as he closed in on me. I've simply spent my life scattering largesse to blighters I didn't care a hang for; yet here was I now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight and longing to hand them over, and. Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his uppers, not taking any at any price.
P.G. WodehouseYoung Reggie Foljambe to my certain knowledge offered him double what I was giving him, and Alistair Bingham-Reeves, who's got a valet who had been known to press his trousers sideways, used to look at him, when he came to see me, with a kind of glittering, hungry eye which disturbed me deucedly. Bally pirates!
P.G. WodehouseWon't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or something?'
'No, thank you.'
She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for the suppression of eggs. ..
There was another slightly frappe silence.
I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad. The whole thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive chappies out of the old homestead into the snow.
'Good-bye, Jeeves,' I said.
'Good-bye, sir.'
And I staggered out.
Pretty soft!' he cried. 'To have to come and live in New York! To have to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St Vitus's dance, and imagine that they're having a good time because they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn't come near the place if I hadn't got to see editors occasionally. There's a blight on it. It's got moral delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!'
I felt rather like Lot's friends must have done when they dropped in for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
'It would kill me to have to live in New York,' he went on. 'To have to share the air with six million people! TO have to wear stiff collars and decent clothes all the time! To - ' He started. 'Good Lord! I suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a ghastly notion!'
I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
'My dear chap!' I said, reproachfully.
'Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?'
'Jeeves,' I said coldly. 'How many suits of evening clothes have we?'
'We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets- '
'Three.'
'For practical purposes, two only, sir. If you remember, we cannot wear the third. We have also seven white waistcoats.'
'And shirts?'
'Four dozen, sir.'
'And white ties?'
'The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely filled with our white ties, sir.'
I turned to Rocky.
'You see?'
The chappie writhed like an electric fan.
'I won't do it! I can't do it! I'll be hanged if I'll do it! How on earth can I dress up like that? Do you realise that most days I don't get out of my pyjamas till five in the afternoon and then I just put on an old sweater?'
I saw Jeeves wince, poor chap. This sort of revelation shocked his finest feelings.
Tea, tea, tea - what? What?' I said.
It wasn't what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her out a cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.
'Do you mean to say, young man,' she said, frostily, ' that you expect me to drink this stuff?'
'Rather! Bucks you up, you know.'
'What do you mean by the expression "Bucks you up"?'
'Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz.'
'I don't understand a word you say. You're English, aren't you?'
I admitted it. She didn't say a word. And she did it in a way that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was brought home to me that she didn't like Englishmen, and that if she had had to meet an Englishman I was the one she'd have chosen last.
Conversation languished once more after that.
Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you can't make a real lively salon with a couple of people, especially if one of them lets it go a word at a time.
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