The inimitable Jeeves

When I was a kid, I used to read stories about knights and vikings and that species of chappie who would get up without a blush in the middle of a crowded banquet and loose off a song about how perfectly priceless they thought their best girl. I’ve often felt that those days would have suited young Bingo down to the ground.
    Jeeves had brought the thing in with the evening drink, and I slung it over to him.
    ‘It’s about due, of course,’ I said. ‘Young Bingo hasn’t been in love for at least a couple of months. I wonder who it is this time?’
    ‘Miss Mary Burgess, sir,’ said Jeeves, ‘the niece of the Reverend Mr Heppenstall. She is staying at Twing Vicarage.’
    ‘Great Scott!’ I knew that Jeeves knew practically everything in the world, but this sounded like second-sight. ‘How do you know that?’
    ‘When we were visiting Twing Hall in the summer, sir, I formed a somewhat close friendship with Mr Heppenstall’s butler. He is good enough to keep me abreast of the local news from time to time. From his account, sir, the young lady appears to be a very estimable young lady. Of a somewhat serious nature, I understand. Mr Little is very epris, sir. Brookfield, my correspondent, writes that last week he observed him in the moonlight at an advanced hour gazing up at his window.’
    ‘Whose window! Brookfield’s?’
    ‘Yes, sir. Presumably under the impression that it was the young lady’s.’
    ‘But what the deuce is he doing at Twing at all?’
    ‘Mr Little was compelled to resume his old position as tutor to Lord Wickhammersley’s son at Twing Hall, sir. Owing to having been unsuccessful in some speculations at Hurst Park at the end of October.’
    ‘Good Lord, Jeeves! Is there anything you don’t know?’
    ‘I couldn’t say, sir.’
    I picked up the telegram.
    ‘I suppose he wants us to go down and help him out a bit?’
    ‘That would appear to be his motive in dispatching the message, sir.’
    ‘Well, what shall we do? Go?’
    ‘I would advocate it, sir. If I may say so, I think that Mr Little should be encouraged in this particular matter.’
    ‘You think he’s picked a winner this time?’
    ‘I hear nothing but excellent reports of the young lady, sir. I think it is beyond question that she would be an admirable influence for Mr Little, should the affair come to a happy conclusion. Such a union would also, I fancy, go far to restore Mr Little to the good graces of his uncle, the young lady being well connected and possessing private means. In short, sir, I think that if there is anything that we can do we should do it.’
    ‘Well, with you behind him,’ I said, ‘I don’t see how he can fail to click.’
    ‘You are very good, sir,’ said Jeeves. ‘The tribute is much appreciated.’
    Bingo met us at Twing station next day, and insisted on my sending Jeeves on in the car with the bags while he and I walked. He started in about the female the moment we had begun to hoof it.
    ‘She is very wonderful, Bertie. She is not one of these flippant, shallow-minded modern girls. She is sweetly grave and beautifully earnest. She reminds me of - what is the name I want?’
    ‘Marie Lloyd?’
    ‘Saint Cecilia,’ said young Bingo, eyeing me with a good deal of loathing. ‘She reminds me of Saint Cecilia. She makes me yearn to be a better, nobler, deeper, broader man.’
    ‘What beats me,’ I said, following up a train of thought, ‘is what principle you pick them on. The girls you fall in love with, I mean. I mean to say, what’s your system? As far as I can see, no two of them are alike. First it was Mabel the waitress, then Honoria Glossop, then that fearful blister Charlotte Corday Rowbotham -‘
    I own that Bingo had the decency to shudder. Thinking of Charlotte always made me shudder, too.
    ‘You don’t seriously mean, Bertie, that you are intending to compare the feeling I have for Mary Burgess, the holy devotion, the spiritual -‘
    ‘Oh, all right, let it go,’ I said. ‘I say, old lad, aren’t we going rather a long way round?’
    Considering that we were supposed to be heading for Twing Hall, it seemed to me that we were making a longish job of it. The Hall is about two miles from the station by the main road, and we had cut off down a lane, gone across country for a bit, climbed a stile or two, and were now working our way across a field that ended in another lane.
    ‘She sometimes takes her little brother for a walk round this way,’ explained Bingo. ‘I