Much Obliged, Jeeves

say return, she came whizzing in but didn’t stop, just whizzed through, and I saw, for I am pretty quick at noticing things, that she was upset about something. Reasoning closely, I deduced that her interview with L. P. Runkle must have gone awry or, as I much prefer to put it, agley.
    And so it proved when she bobbed up again some little time later. Her first observation was that L. P. Runkle was an illegitimate offspring to end all illegitimate offsprings, and I hastened to commiserate with her. I could have done with a bit of commiseration myself, but Women and Children First is always the Wooster slogan.
    ‘No luck?’ I said.
    ‘None.’
    ‘Wouldn’t part?’
    ‘Not a penny.’
    ‘You mentioned that without his co-operation Tuppy and Angela’s wedding bells would not ring out?’
    ‘Of course I.did. And he said it was a great mistake for young people to marry before they knew their own minds.’
    ‘You could have pointed out that Tuppy and Angela have been engaged for two years.’
    ‘I did.’
    ‘What did he say to that? ‘
    ‘He said “Not nearly long enough”.’
    ‘So what are you going to do?’
    ‘I’ve done it,’ said the old ancestor. ‘I pinched his porringer.’

CHAPTER Fifteen

    I goggled at her, one hundred per cent non-plussed. She had spoken with the exuberance of an aunt busily engaged in patting herself between the shoulder-blades for having done something particularly clever, but I could make nothing of her statement. This habit of speaking in riddles seemed to be growing on her.
    ‘You what?’ I said. ‘You pinched his what?’
    ‘His porringer. I told you about it the day you got here. Don’t you remember? That silver thing he came to try to sell to Tom.’
    She had refreshed my memory. I recalled the conversation to which she referred. I had asked her why she was entertaining in her home a waste product like L. P. Runkle, and she had said that he had come hoping to sell Uncle Tom a silver something for his collection and she had got him to stay on in order to soften him up with Anatole’s cooking and put to him, when softened up, her request for cash for Tuppy.
    ‘When he turned me down just now, it suddenly occurred to me that if I got hold of the thing and told him he wouldn’t get it back unless he made a satisfactory settlement, I would have a valuable bargaining point and we could discuss the matter further at any time that suited him.’
    I was ap-what-is-it. Forget my own name next. Appalled, that’s the word, though shocked to the core would be about as good; nothing much in it, really. I hadn’t read any of those etiquette books you see all over the place, but I was prepared to bet that the leaders of Society who wrote them would raise an eyebrow or two at carrying-ons of this description. The chapter on Hints To Hostesses would be bound to have a couple of paragraphs warning them that it wasn’t the done things to invite people to the home and having got them settled in to pinch their porringers.
    ‘But good Lord I ‘ I ejaculated, appalled or, if you prefer it, shocked to the core.
    ‘Now what?’
    ‘The man is under your roof.’
    ‘Did you expect him to be on it?’
    ‘He has eaten your salt.’
    ‘Very imprudent, with blood pressure like his. His doctor probably forbids it.’
    ‘You can’t do this.’
    ‘I know I can’t, but I have,’ she said, just like the chap in the story, and I saw it would be fruitless or bootless to go on arguing. It rarely is with aunts, - if you’re their nephew, I mean, because they were at your side all through your formative years and know what an ass you were then and can’t believe that anything that you may say later is worth listening to. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Jeeves’s three aunts don’t shut him up when he starts talking, remembering that at the age of six the child Jeeves didn’t know the difference between the poet Burns and a hole in the ground.
    Ceasing to expostulate, therefore, if expostulate is the word I want, I went to the bell and pressed it, and when she asked for footnotes throwing a light on why I did this, I told her I proposed to place the matter in the hands of a higher power.
    ‘I’m ringing for Jeeves.’
    ‘You’ll only get Seppings.’
    ‘Seppings will provide Jeeves.’
    ‘And what do you think Jeeves can do? ‘
    ‘Make you see reason.’
    ‘I doubt it.’
    ‘Well, it’s worth a try.’
    Further chit-chat was suspended till Jeeves arrived and