Free Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks

minutes.
    ‘“Please bring me a whisky and soda, Wilberforce. Put it over there, please, Wilberforce”,’ Georgiana was saying – and plenty more such rot.
    ‘I’d love to help,’ I said. ‘But it’s simply beyond me.’
    At this moment, Georgiana took my hands in hers. My heart, already skipping the odd one from the prolonged eye contact, now began to beat the sort of rhythm you hear in the Congo before the missionary gets lobbed into the bouillon .
    ‘Just do it to please me, Bertie,’ said Georgiana, lowering the voice a half-octave and giving the fingers a final squeeze. ‘I’ll make sure you’re all right. We can meet beside the tennis court in the evening and I’ll bring you a nice half-bottle of something from the cellar. Do it for Woody and Amelia. It’s only till Sunday evening. Please, Bertie, please.’
    The packing of the suitcases involved some redistribution of clothing. Jeevesward went the tennis garb, the linen jacket, a pair of new co-respondent shoes (a painful loss), the stiff-fronted shirts and a half-dozen studs in Drones Club colours (the last received with a faint but perceptible flaring of the nostril); among my new effects were two pairs of spongebag trousers and a navy blue tie of singular drabness.
    Jeeves, having pushed out the dent in the rear bumper, took the wheel of the two-seater in a sporting tweed cap, while I donned his bowler. Considering all it had to encompass, it came as no surprise that this hat was several sizes too large. Only some nifty work by Jeeves with tissue paper and cow gum round the inner rim prevented the thing from falling over my eyes.
    We said au revoir to Seaview Cottage as the engine coughed twice and fired into life. Jeeves was a more careful driver than Georgiana, and it was not fear for my personal safety that caused an odd feeling in the pit of the stomach as we swung off the main village street and up the lime-tree avenue towards the distant prospect of Melbury Hall.
    ‘Once more unto the breach, sir.’
    For once I thought I wouldn’t let him have the last word in quotations. ‘“I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me,”’ I spouted from memory. ‘“To fright me, if they could.”’
    ‘Very apt, sir.’
    ‘I played the part of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at school when I was sixteen. It’s funny how the lines you learn at that age stay with you for life. I couldn’t learn it if you paid me now.’
    ‘The young mind is undoubtedly more receptive, sir. Was your performance well received?’
    ‘Tolerably so. The Chronicle , as I recall, said, “Wooster gave it all he’d got.”’
    ‘Most gratifying, sir.’
    ‘Why are we going this way?’
    ‘So that I can drop you off, if I may, sir, at the tradesmen’s entrance.’

CASTING AN ENVIOUS eye over the duck downs and woollen coverings of the four-poster where Jeeves sat propped among the pillows, sipping his morning tea, I found it easy enough to picture how well he had slept.
    ‘How’s the tea?’ I said.
    ‘Most refreshing, thank you, sir.’
    ‘You’d better thank Mrs Tilman. She made it.’
    ‘Ah, yes. She is said to be a most capable woman.’
    ‘Lucky old Mr Tilman, what?’
    ‘Doubtless he appreciated her talents while alive, sir.’
    ‘Oh dear. She seems young to be a widow.’
    ‘He was taken in the prime of life, I believe. How was your own accommodation, sir?’
    ‘Who are those Indian chaps who sleep on nails?’
    ‘Fakirs, sir.’
    ‘Well, if you bump into one, do recommend the top floorback at Melbury Hall. I think he’d find it right up his street.’
    ‘I shall bear that in mind, sir, though in Melbury-cum-Kingston the contingency is a remote one.’
    ‘Is it always so bally uncomfortable?’
    ‘The accommodation varies considerably in my experience, sir. The opulence of the main house is by no means a reliable guide.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘Totleigh Towers, Sir Watkyn Bassett’s residence—’
    ‘Or castle, near as