Jeeves in the Offing

once-over was one of relief, all the junk appearing to be in statu quo. It was only after Pop Glossop had said ‘Woof!’ and was starting to dry off the brow, for the going had been fast, that I spotted the hiatus.
The cow-creamer was not among those present.

7
This cow-creamer, in case you’re interested, was a silver jug or pitcher or whatever you call it shaped, of all silly things, like a cow with an arching tail and a juvenile-delinquent expression on its face, a cow that looked as if it were planning, next time it was milked, to haul off and let the milkmaid have it in the lower ribs. Its back opened on a hinge and the tip of the tail touched the spine, thus giving the householder something to catch hold of when pouring. Why anyone should want such a revolting object had always been a mystery to me, it ranking high up on the list of things I would have been reluctant to be found dead in a ditch with, but apparently they liked that sort of jug in the eighteenth century and, coming down to more modern times, Uncle Tom was all for it and so, according to the evidence of the witness Glossop, was Wilbert. No accounting for tastes is the way one has to look at these things, one man’s caviar being another man’s major-general, as the old saw says.
However, be that as it may and whether you liked the bally thing or didn’t, the point was that it had vanished, leaving not a wrack behind, and I was about to apprise Pop Glossop of this and canvass his views, when we were joined by Bobbie Wickham. She had doffed the shirt and Bermuda-shorts which she had been wearing and was now dressed for her journey home.
‘Hullo, souls,’ she said. ‘How goes it? You look a bit hot and bothered, Bertie. What’s up?’
I made no attempt to break the n. gently.
‘I’ll tell you what’s up. You know that cow-creamer of Uncle Tom’s?’
‘No, I don’t. What is it?’
‘Sort of cream jug kind of thing, ghastly but very valuable. One would not be far out in describing it as Uncle Tom’s ewe lamb. He loves it dearly.’
‘Bless his heart.’
‘It’s all right blessing his heart, but the damn thing’s gone.’
The still summer air was disturbed by a sound like beer coming out of a bottle. It was Pop Glossop gurgling. His eyes were round, his nose wiggled, and one could readily discern that this news item had come to him not as rare and refreshing fruit but more like a buffet on the base of the skull with a sock full of wet sand.
‘Gone?’
‘Gone.’
‘Are you sure?’
I said that sure was just what I wasn’t anything but.
‘It is not possible that you may have overlooked it?’
‘You can’t overlook a thing like that.’
He re-gurgled.
‘But this is terrible.’
‘Might be considerably better, I agree.’
‘Your uncle will be most upset.’
‘He’ll have kittens.’
‘Kittens?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why kittens?’
‘Why not?’
From the look on Bobbie’s face, as she stood listening to our cross- talk act, I could see that the inner gist was passing over her head. Cryptic, she seemed to be registering it as.
‘I don’t get this,’ she said. ‘How do you mean it’s gone?’
‘It’s been pinched.’
‘Things don’t get pinched in country-houses.’
‘They do if there’s a Wilbert Cream on the premises. He’s a klep- whatever-it-is,’ I said, and thrust Jeeves’s letter on her. She perused it with an interested eye and having mastered its contents said, ‘Cor chase my Aunt Fanny up a gum tree,’ adding that you never knew what was going to happen next these days. There was, however, she said, a bright side.
‘You’ll be able now to give it as your considered opinion that the man is as loony as a coot, Sir Roderick.’
A pause ensued during which Pop Glossop appeared to be weighing this, possibly thinking back to coots he had met in the course of his professional career and trying to estimate their dippiness as compared with that of W. Cream.
‘Unquestionably his metabolism is unduly susceptible to stresses resulting from the interaction of external excitations,’ he said, and Bobbie patted him on the shoulder in a maternal sort of way, a thing I wouldn’t have cared to do myself though our relations were, as I have indicated, more cordial than they had been at one time, and told him he had said a mouthful.
‘That’s how I like to hear you talk. You must tell Mrs Travers that when she gets back. It’ll put her in a strong position to cope with Upjohn in this matter of Wilbert