Jeeves in the Offing

leaving.’
‘You can’t till your aunt gets back. There has to be some sort of host or hostess here, and I simply must go home tomorrow and see Mother. You’ll have to clench your teeth and stick it.’
‘And the severe mental strain to which I am being subjected doesn’t matter, I suppose?’
‘Not a bit. Does you good. Keeps your pores open.’
I should probably have said something pretty cutting in reply to this, if I could have thought of anything, but as I couldn’t I didn’t.
‘What’s Aunt Dahlia’s address?’ I said.
‘Royal Hotel, Eastbourne. Why?’
‘Because,’ I said, taking another cucumber sandwich, ‘I’m going to wire her to ring me up tomorrow without fail, so that I can apprise her of what’s going on in this joint.’

6
I forget how the subject arose, but I remember Jeeves once saying that sleep knits up the ravelled sleave of care. Balm of hurt minds, he described it as. The idea being, I took it, that if things are getting sticky, they tend to seem less glutinous after you’ve had your eight hours.
Apple sauce, in my opinion. It seldom pans out that way with me, and it didn’t now. I had retired to rest taking a dim view of the current situation at Brinkley Court and opening my eyes to a new day, as the expression is, I found myself taking an even dimmer. Who knew, I asked myself as I practically pushed the breakfast egg away untasted, what Ma Cream might not at any moment uncover? And who could say how soon, if I continued to be always at his side, Wilbert Cream would get it up his nose and start attacking me with tooth and claw? Already his manner was that of a man whom the society of Bertram Wooster had fed to the tonsils, and one more sight of the latter at his elbow might quite easily make him decide to take prompt steps through the proper channels.
Musing along these lines, I had little appetite for lunch, though Anatole had extended himself to the utmost. I winced every time the Cream shot a sharp, suspicious look at Pop Glossop as he messed about at the sideboard, and the long, loving looks her son Wilbert kept directing at Phyllis Mills chilled me to the marrow. At the conclusion of the meal he would, I presumed, invite the girl to accompany him again to that leafy glade, and it was idle to suppose that there would not be pique on his part, or even chagrin, when I came along, too.
Fortunately, as we rose from the table, Phyllis said she was going to her room to finish typing Daddy’s speech, and my mind was eased for the nonce. Even a New York playboy, accustomed from his earliest years to pursue blondes like a bloodhound, would hardly follow her there and press his suit.
Seeming himself to recognize that there was nothing constructive to be done in that direction for the moment, he said in a brooding voice that he would take Poppet for a walk. This, apparently, was his invariable method of healing the stings of disappointment, and an excellent thing of course from the point of view of a dog who liked getting around and seeing the sights. They headed for the horizon and passed out of view; the hound gambolling, he not gambolling but swishing his stick a good deal in an overwrought sort of manner, and I, feeling that this was a thing that ought to be done, selected one of Ma Cream’s books from Aunt Dahlia’s shelves and took it out to read in a deck chair on the lawn. And I should no doubt have enjoyed it enormously, for the Cream unquestionably wielded a gifted pen, had not the warmth of the day caused me to drop off into a gentle sleep in the middle of Chapter Two.
Waking from this some little time later and running an eye over myself to see if the ravelled sleave of care had been knitted up - which it hadn’t - I was told that I was wanted on the telephone. I hastened to the instrument, and Aunt Dahlia’s voice came thundering over the wire.
‘Bertie?’
‘Bertram it is.’
‘Why the devil have you been such a time? I’ve been hanging on to this damned receiver a long hour by Shrewsbury clock.’
‘Sorry. I came on winged feet, but I was out on the lawn when you broke loose.’
‘Sleeping off your lunch, I suppose?’
‘My eyes may have closed for a moment.’
‘Always eating, that’s you.’
‘It is customary, I believe, to take a little nourishment at about this hour,’ I said rather stiffly. ‘How’s Bonzo?’
‘Getting along.’
‘What was it?’
‘German measles, but he’s out of danger. Well, what’s all the excitement about? Why did