Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

don’t. I’m not an ass.’
    This, of course, was a debatable point, as I once heard Jeeves describe it, but I didn’t press it.
    ‘I know that aunt of yours,’ he proceeded. ‘She would steal the filling out of your back teeth if she thought she could do it without detection.’ He paused for a moment, and I knew that he was thinking of the cow-creamer. He had always - and, I must admit, not without reason - suspected the old flesh-and-blood of being the motive force behind its disappearance, and I imagine it had been a nasty knock to him that nothing could be proved. ‘Well, I strongly advise you, Wooster, not to let her make a catspaw of you this time, because if you’re caught, as you certainly will be, you’ll be for it. Don’t think that Sir Watkyn will hush the thing up to avoid a scandal. You’ll go to prison, that’s where you’ll go. He dislikes you intensely, and nothing would please him more than to be able to give you a long stretch without the option.’
    I thought this showed a vindictive spirit in the old wart hog and one that I deplored, but I felt it would be injudicious to say so. I merely nodded understandingly. I was thankful that there was no danger of this contingency, as Jeeves would have called it, arising. Strong in the knowledge that nothing would induce me to pinch their ruddy statuette, I was able to remain calm and nonchalant, or as calm and nonchalant as you can be when a fellow eight foot six in height with one eye bunged up and the other behaving like an oxyacetylene blowpipe is glaring at you.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Spode, ‘it’ll be chokey for you.’
    And he was going on to say that he would derive great pleasure from coming on visiting days and making faces at me through the bars, when Pop Bassett returned.
    But a very different Bassett from the fizzy rejoicer who had exited so short a while before. Then he had been all buck and beans, as any father would have been whose daughter was not going to marry Gussie Fink-Nottle. Now his face was drawn and his general demeanour that of an incautious luncher who discovers when there is no time to draw back that he has swallowed a rather too elderly oyster.
    ‘Madeline tells me,’ he began. Then he saw Spode’s eye, and broke off. It was the sort of eye which, even if you have a lot on your mind, you can’t help noticing. ‘Good gracious, Roderick,’ he said, ‘did you have a fall?’
    ‘Fall, my foot,’ said Spode, ‘I was socked by a curate.’
    ‘Good heavens! What curate?’
    ‘There’s only one in these parts, isn’t there?’
    ‘You mean you were assaulted by Mr. Pinker? You astound me, Roderick.’
    Spode spoke with genuine feeling.
    ‘Not half as much as he astounded me. He was more or less of a revelation to me, I don’t mind telling you, because I didn’t know curates had left hooks like that. He’s got a knack of feinting you off balance and then coming in with a sort of corkscrew punch which it’s impossible not to admire. I must get him to teach it to me some time.’
    ‘You speak as though you bore him no animosity.’
    ‘Of course I don’t. A very pleasant little scrap with no ill feeling on either side. I’ve nothing against Pinker. The one I’ve got it in for is the cook. She beaned me with a china basin. From behind, of all unsporting things. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and have a word with that cook.’
    He was so obviously looking forward to telling Emerald Stoker what he thought of her that it gave me quite a pang to have to break it to him that his errand would be bootless.
    ‘You can’t,’ I pointed out. ‘She is no longer with us.’
    ‘Don’t be an ass. She’s in the kitchen, isn’t she?’
    ‘I’m sorry, no. She’s eloped with Gussie Fink-Nottle. A wedding has been arranged and will take place as soon as the Archbish of Canterbury lets him have a special licence.’
    Spode reeled. He had only one eye to stare at me with, but he got all the mileage out of it that was possible.
    ‘Is that true?’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘Well, that makes up for everything. If Madeline’s back in circulation … Thank you for telling me, Wooster, old chap.’
    ‘Don’t mention it, Spode, old man, or, rather, Lord Sidcup, old man.’
    For the first time Pop Bassett appeared to become aware that the slight, distinguished-looking young fellow standing on one leg by the sofa was Bertram.
    ‘Mr. Wooster,’ he said. Then he stopped, swallowed once or twice and groped his way to