The inimitable Jeeves

she said I must go to Roville, it was all over except buying the tickets.
    ‘What’s the idea, Jeeves? I wonder why she wants me.’
    ‘I could not say, sir.’
    Well, it was no good talking about it. The only gleam of consolation, the only bit of blue among the clouds, was the fact that at Roville I should at last be able to wear the rather fruity cummerbund I had bought six months ago and had never had the nerve to put on. One of those silk contrivances, you know, which you tie round your waist instead of a waistcoat, something on the order of a sash only more substantial. I had never been able to muster up the courage to put it on so far, for I knew that there would be trouble with Jeeves when I did, it being a pretty brightish scarlet. Still, at a place like Roville, presumably dripping with the gaiety and joie de vivre of France, it seemed to me that something might be done.

    Roville, which I reached early in the morning after a beastly choppy crossing and a jerky night in the train, is a fairly nifty spot where a chappie without encumbrances in the shape of aunts might spend a somewhat genial week or so. It is like all these French places, mainly sands and hotels and casinos. The hotel which had had the bad luck to draw Aunt Agatha’s custom was the Splendide, and by the time I got there there wasn’t a member of the staff who didn’t seem to be feeling it deeply. I sympathized with them. I’ve had experience of Aunt Agatha at hotels before. Of course, the real rough work was all over when I arrived, but I could tell by the way everyone grovelled before her that she had started by having her first room changed because it hadn’t a southern exposure and her next because it had a creaking wardrobe and that she had said her say on the subject of the cooking, the waiting, the chambermaiding and everything else, with perfect freedom and candour. She had got the whole gang nicely under control by now. The manager, a whiskered cove who looked like a bandit, simply tied himself into knots whenever she looked at him.
    All this triumph had produced a sort of grim geniality in her, and she was almost motherly when we met.
    ‘I am so glad you were able to come, Bertie,’ she said. ‘The air will do you so much good. Far better for you than spending your time in stuffy London night clubs.’
    ‘Oh, ah,’ I said.
    ‘You will meet some pleasant people, too. I want to introduce you to a Miss Hemmingway and her brother, who have become great friends of mine. I am sure you will like Miss Hemmingway. A nice, quiet girl, so different from so many of the bold girls one meets in London nowadays. Her brother is curate at Chipley-in-the-Glen in Dorsetshire. He tells me they are connected with the Kent Hem-mingways. A very good family. She is a charming girl.’
    I had a grim foreboding of an awful doom. All this boosting was so unlike Aunt Agatha, who normally is one of the most celebrated right-and-left-hand knockers in London society. I felt a clammy suspicion. And, by Jove, I was right.
    ‘Aline Hemmingway,’ said Aunt Agatha, ‘is just the girl I should like to see you marry, Bertie. You ought to be thinking of getting married. Marriage might make something of you. And I could not wish you a better wife than dear Aline. She would be such a good influence in your life.’
    ‘Here, I say!’ I chipped in at this juncture, chilled to the marrow.
    ‘Bertie!’ said Aunt Agatha, dropping the motherly manner for a bit and giving me the cold eye.
    ‘Yes, but I say -‘
    ‘It is young men like you, Bertie, who make the person with the future of the race at heart despair. Cursed with too much money, you fritter away in idle selfishness a life which might have been made useful, helpful and profitable. You do nothing but waste your time on frivolous pleasures. You are simply an anti-social animal, a drone. Bertie, it is imperative that you marry.’
    ‘But, dash it all -‘
    ‘Yes! You should be breeding children to - ‘
    ‘No, really, I say, please!’ I said, blushing richly. Aunt Agatha belongs to two or three of these women’s clubs, and she keeps forgetting she isn’t in the smoking-room.
    ‘Bertie,’ she resumed, and would no doubt have hauled up her slacks at some length, had we not been interrupted. ‘Ah, here they are!’ she said. ‘Aline, dear!’
    And I perceived a girl and a chappie bearing down on me, smiling in a pleased sort of manner.
    ‘I want you to meet my nephew, Bertie Wooster,’ said