Much Obliged, Jeeves

compelled to do rather oftener than I could wish… and Sir Watkyn had replied in what I thought dubious taste that it was precisely my habit of helping myself to everything I could lay my hands on that he was criticizing.
    Another girl might have left it at that, but not M. Bassett. She was all eager curiosity.
    ‘Did you have psychiatric treatment? Or was it will power?
    ‘ ‘Just will power.’
    ‘How splendid. I’m so proud of you. It must have been a terrible struggle.’
    ‘Oh, so-so.’
    ‘I shall write to Daddy and tell him-‘
    Here she paused and put a hand to her left eye, and it was easy for a man of my discernment to see what had happened. The french window being open, gnats in fairly large numbers had been coming through and flitting to and fro. It’s a thing one always has to budget for in the English countryside. In America they have screens, of course, which make flying objects feel pretty non-plussed, but these have never caught on in England and the gnats have it more or less their own way. They horse around and now and then get into people’s eyes. One of these, it was evident, had now got into Madeline’s. I would be the last to deny that Bertram Wooster has his limitations, but in one field of endeavour I am pre-eminent. In the matter of taking things out of eyes I yield to no one. I know what to say and what to do.
    Counselling her not to rub it, I advanced handkerchief in hand.
    I remember going into the technique of operations of this kind with Gussie Fink-Nottle at Totleigh when he had removed a fly from the eye of Stephanie Byng, now the Reverend Mrs. Stinker Pinker, and we were in agreement that success could be achieved only by placing a hand under the patient’s chin in order to steady the head. Omit this preliminary and your efforts are bootless. My first move, accordingly, was to do so. and it was characteristic of Spode that he should have chosen this moment to join us, just when we twain were in what you might call close juxtaposition.
    I confess that there have been times when I have felt more at my ease. Spode, in addition to being constructed on the lines of a rather oversized gorilla, has a disposition like that of a short-tempered tiger of the jungle and a nasty mind which leads him to fall a ready prey to what I have heard Jeeves call the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on, — viz. jealousy. Such a man, finding you steadying the head of the girl he loves, is always extremely likely to start trying to ascertain the colour of your insides, and to avert this I greeted him with what nonchalance I could muster.
    ‘Oh, hullo, Spode old chap, I mean Lord Sidcup old chap. Here we all are, what. Jeeves told me you were here, and Aunt Dahlia says you’ve been knocking the voting public base over apex with your oratory in the Conservative interest. Must be wonderful to be able to do that. It’s a gift, of course. Some have it, some haven’t. I couldn’t address a political meeting to please a dying grandmother. I should stand there opening and shutting my mouth like a goldfish. You, on the other hand, just clear your throat and the golden words come pouring out like syrup. I admire you enormously.’
    Conciliatory, I think you’ll agree. I could hardly have given him the old salve with a more liberal hand, and one might have expected him to simper, shuffle his feet and mumble ‘Awfully nice of you to say so’ or something along those lines. Instead of which, all he did was come back at me with a guttural sound like an opera basso 67 choking on a, fishbone, and I had to sustain the burden of the conversation by myself.
    ‘I’ve just been taking a gnat out of Madeline’s eye.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Dangerous devils, these gnats. Require skilled handling.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Everything’s back to normal now, I think.’
    ‘Yes, thank you ever so much, Bertie.’
    It was Madeline who said this, not Spode. He continued to gaze at me bleakly. She went on harping on the thing.
    ‘Bertie’s so clever.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘I don’t know what I would have done without him.’
    ‘Oh?’ ‘He showed wonderful presence of mind.’ ‘Oh?’
    ‘I feel so sorry, though, for the poor little gnat.’
    ‘It asked for it,’ I pointed out. ‘It was unquestionably the aggressor.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose that’s true, but…’ The clock on the mantelpiece caught her now de-gnatted eye, and she uttered an agitated squeak. ‘Oh, my goodness, is that the time? I must