Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Bertie,’ he said, ‘we decided to go for a walk, not a row. We thought it might be a little chilly on the water. What a beautiful evening, Bertie, is it not?’
    I couldn’t see eye to eye with him there.
    ‘It strikes you as that, does it? It doesn’t me.’
    He seemed surprised.
    ‘In what respect do you find it not up to sample?’
    Til tell you in what respect I find it not up to sample. What’s all this I hear about you and Emerald Stoker? Did you kiss her?’
    The Soul’s Awakening expression on his face became intensified. Before my revolted eyes Augustus Fink-Nottle definitely smirked.
    ‘Yes, Bertie, I did, and I’ll do it again if it’s the last thing I do. What a girl, Bertie! So kind, so sympathetic. She’s my idea of a thoroughly womanly woman, and you don’t see many of them around these days. I hadn’t time when I was in your room to tell you about what happened at the school treat.’
    ‘Jeeves told me. He said Bartholomew bit you.’
    ‘And how right he was. The bounder bit me to the bone. And do you know what Emerald Stoker did? Not only did she coo over me like a mother comforting a favourite child, but she bathed and bandaged my lacerated leg. She was a ministering angel, the nearest thing to Florence Nightingale you could hope to find. It was shortly after she had done the swabbing and bandaging that I kissed her.’
    ‘Well, you shouldn’t have kissed her.’
    Again he showed surprise. He had thought it, he said, a pretty sound idea.
    ‘But you’re engaged to Madeline.’
    I had hoped with these words to start his conscience working on all twelve cylinders, but something seemed to have gone wrong with the machinery, for he remained as calm and unmoved as the fish on ice he so closely resembled.
    ‘Ah, Madeline,’ he said. ‘I was about to touch on Madeline. Shall I tell you what’s wrong with Madeline Bassett? No heart. That’s where she slips up. Lovely to look at, but nothing here,’ he said, tapping the left side of his chest. ‘Do you know how she reacted to that serious flesh wound of mine? She espoused Bartholomew’s cause. She said the whole thing was my fault. She accused me of having teased the little blister. In short, she behaved like a louse. How different from Emerald Stoker. Do you know what Emerald Stoker did?’
    ‘You told me.’
    ‘I mean in addition to binding up my wounds. She went straight off to the kitchen and cut me a package of sandwiches. I have them here,’ said Gussie, exhibiting a large parcel and eyeing it reverently. ‘Ham,’ he added in a voice that throbbed with emotion. ‘She made them for me with her own hands, and I think it was her thoughtfulness even more than her divine sympathy that showed me that she was the only girl in the world for me. The scales fell from my eyes, and I saw that what I had once felt for Madeline had been just a boyish infatuation. What I feel for Emerald Stoker is the real thing. In my opinion she stands alone, and I shall be glad if you will stop going about the place saying that she looks like a Pekinese.’
    ‘But, Gussie -‘
    He silenced me with an imperious wave of the ham sandwiches.
    ‘It’s no good your saying “But, Gussie”. The trouble with you, Bertie, is that you haven’t got it in you to understand true love. You’re a mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower and sipping, like Freddie Widgeon and the rest of the halfwits of whom the Drones Club is far too full. A girl to you is just the plaything of an idle hour, and anything in the nature of a grand passion is beyond you. I’m different. I have depth. I’m a marrying man.’
    ‘But you can’t marry Emerald Stoker.’
    ‘Why not? We’re twin souls.’
    I thought for a moment of giving him a word-portrait of old Stoker, to show him the sort of father-in-law he would be getting if he carried through the project he had in mind, but I let it go. Reason told me that a fellow who for months had been expecting to draw Pop Bassett as a father-in-law was not going to be swayed by an argument like that. However frank my description of him, Stoker could scarcely seem anything but a change for the better.
    I stood there at a loss, and was still standing there at a loss, when I heard my name called and looking behind me saw Stinker and Stiffy. They were waving hands and things, and I gathered that they had come to thresh out with me the matter of Sir Watkyn Bassett and the hard-boiled egg.
    The last thing I would have wished at