Right Ho, Jeeves

the matter, Dahlia, darling?’ ‘Why, yes, Tom, darling,’ you will reply. ‘It is kind of you to ask, darling. The fact is, darling, I am terribly worried.’ ‘My darling,’ he will say–-”
    Aunt Dahlia interrupted at this point to observe that these Traverses seemed to be a pretty soppy couple of blighters, to judge by their dialogue. She also wished to know when I was going to get to the point.
    I gave her a look.
    “‘My darling,’ he will say tenderly, ‘is there anything I can do?’ To which your reply will be that there jolly well is—viz. reach for his cheque-book and start writing.”
    I was watching her closely as I spoke, and was pleased to note respect suddenly dawn in her eyes.
    “But, Bertie, this is positively bright.”
    “I told you Jeeves wasn’t the only fellow with brain.”
    “I believe it would work.”
    “It’s bound to work. I’ve recommended it to Tuppy.”
    “Young Glossop?”
    “In order to soften Angela.”
    “Splendid!”
    “And to Gussie Fink-Nottle, who wants to make a hit with the Bassett.”
    “Well, well, well! What a busy little brain it is.”
    “Always working, Aunt Dahlia, always working.”
    “You’re not the chump I took you for, Bertie.”
    “When did you ever take me for a chump?”
    “Oh, some time last summer. I forget what gave me the idea. Yes, Bertie, this scheme is bright. I suppose, as a matter of fact, Jeeves suggested it.”
    “Jeeves did not suggest it. I resent these implications. Jeeves had nothing to do with it whatsoever.”
    “Well, all right, no need to get excited about it. Yes, I think it will work. Tom’s devoted to me.”
    “Who wouldn’t be?”
    “I’ll do it.”
    And then the rest of the party trickled in, and we toddled down to dinner.
    Conditions being as they were at Brinkley Court—I mean to say, the place being loaded down above the Primsoll mark with aching hearts and standing room only as regarded tortured souls—I hadn’t expected the evening meal to be particularly effervescent. Nor was it. Silent. Sombre. The whole thing more than a bit like Christmas dinner on Devil’s Island.
    I was glad when it was over.
    What with having, on top of her other troubles, to rein herself back from the trough, Aunt Dahlia was a total loss as far as anything in the shape of brilliant badinage was concerned. The fact that he was fifty quid in the red and expecting Civilisation to take a toss at any moment had caused Uncle Tom, who always looked a bit like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow, to take on a deeper melancholy. The Bassett was a silent bread crumbler. Angela might have been hewn from the living rock. Tuppy had the air of a condemned murderer refusing to make the usual hearty breakfast before tooling off to the execution shed.
    And as for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming him on sight.
    This was the first glimpse I had had of Gussie since we parted at my flat, and I must say his demeanour disappointed me. I had been expecting something a great deal more sparkling.
    At my flat, on the occasion alluded to, he had, if you recall, practically given me a signed guarantee that all he needed to touch him off was a rural setting. Yet in this aspect now I could detect no indication whatsoever that he was about to round into mid-season form. He still looked like a cat in an adage, and it did not take me long to realise that my very first act on escaping from this morgue must be to draw him aside and give him a pep talk.
    If ever a chap wanted the clarion note, it looked as if it was this Fink-Nottle.
    In the general exodus of mourners, however, I lost sight of him, and, owing to the fact that Aunt Dahlia roped me in for a game of backgammon, it was not immediately that I was able to institute a search. But after we had been playing for a while, the butler came in and asked her if she would speak to Anatole, so I managed to get away. And some ten minutes later, having failed to find scent in the house, I started to throw out the drag-net through the grounds, and flushed him in the rose garden.
    He was smelling a rose at the moment in a limp sort of way, but removed the beak as I approached.
    “Well, Gussie,” I said.
    I had beamed genially upon him as I spoke, such being my customary policy on meeting an old pal; but instead of beaming back genially, he gave me a most unpleasant look. His attitude perplexed me. It was as if he were not