Free The Jeeves Omnibus by P. G. Wodehouse Page B

told Father that you ought to be under restraint. Why are you still at large? You must have a pull of some kind.’
    We Woosters are pretty sharp on this sort of thing. I spoke with a good deal of asperity.
    ‘The incident to which you allude is readily explained. I thought he was Chuffy.’
    ‘Thought who was Chuffy?’
    ‘Your father.’
    ‘If you’re trying to make out that Marmaduke looks the least bit like Father you must be cuckoo,’ she replied with a warmth equal to my own. I gathered that she was not a great admirer of the parent’s appearance, and I’m not saying she wasn’t right. ‘Besides, I don’t see what you mean.’
    I explained.
    ‘The idea was to let Chuffy observe you in my embrace, so that the generous fire would be stirred within him and he would get keyed up to proposing to you, feeling that if he didn’t get into action right speedily he might lose you.’
    Her manner softened.
    ‘You didn’t think that out by yourself?’
    ‘I did.’ I was somewhat nettled. ‘Why everybody should imagine that I can’t get ideas without the assistance of Jeeves …’
    ‘But that was very sweet of you.’
    ‘We Woosters
are
sweet, exceedingly sweet, when a pal’s happiness is in the balance.’
    ‘I can see now why I accepted you that night in New York,’ she said meditatively. ‘There’s a sort of woolly-headed duckiness about you. If I wasn’t so crazy about Marmaduke, I could easily marry you, Bertie.’
    ‘No, no,’ I said with some alarm. ‘Don’t dream of it. I mean to say …’
    ‘Oh, it’s all right. I’m not going to. I’m going to marry Marmaduke; that’s why I’m here.’
    ‘And now,’ I said, ‘we’ve come right back to it. Once more we have worked round to the very point concerning which I most desire enlightenment. What on earth is the idea behind all this? You say you swam ashore from the yacht? Why? You came and dumped yourself in my little home. Why?’
    ‘Because I wanted somewhere to lie low till I could get clothes, of course. I can’t go to the Hall in a swimming suit.’
    I began to follow the train of thought.
    ‘Oh, you swam ashore to get to Chuffy?’
    ‘Of course. Father was keeping me a prisoner on board the yacht, and this evening your man Jeeves –’
    I winced.
    ‘My late man.’
    ‘All right. Your late man. Your late man Jeeves arrived with an early letter from Marmaduke. Oh, boy!’
    ‘How do you mean, oh, boy?’
    ‘Was that a letter? I cried six pints when I read it.’
    ‘Hot stuff?’
    ‘It was beautiful. It throbbed with poetry.’
    ‘It did?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘This letter?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Chuffy’s letter?’
    ‘Yes. You seem surprised.’
    I was a bit. One of the very best, old Chuffy, of course, but I wouldn’t have said he could write letters like that. But then one has got to take into consideration the fact that when I’ve been with him he has generally been eating steak-and-kidney pudding or cursing horses for not running fast enough. On such occasions, the poetic side of a man is not uppermost.
    ‘So this letter stirred you up, did it?’
    ‘You bet it stirred me up. I felt I couldn’t wait another day without seeing him. What was that poem about a woman wailing for her demon lover?’
    ‘Ah, there you have me. Jeeves would know.’
    ‘Well, that’s what I felt like. And, talking of Jeeves, what a man! Sympathy? He drips with it.’
    ‘Oh, you confided in Jeeves?’
    ‘Yes. And told him what I was going to do.’
    ‘And he didn’t try to stop you?’
    ‘Stop me? He was all for it.’
    ‘He was, was he?’
    ‘You should have seen him. Such a kind smile. He said you would be delighted to help me.’
    ‘He did, eh?’
    ‘He spoke most highly of you.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Oh, yes, he thinks a lot of you. I remember his very words. “Mr Wooster, miss,” he said, “is, perhaps, mentally somewhat negligible, but he has a heart of gold.” He said that as he was lowering me from the side of the boat by a