Free Joy in the Morning by P. G. Wodehouse Page A

I bandage you?’
    ‘You’ll get a thick ear, if you try.’
    ‘You may get gangrene.’
    ‘I anticipate no such contingency.’
    ‘You’ll look silly if you get gangrene.’
    ‘No, I shan’t. I shall look fine.’
    ‘I knew a chap who bumped his leg, and it turned black and had to be cut off at the knee.’
    ‘You do seem to mix with the most extraordinary people.’
    ‘I could turn the cold tap on it.’
    ‘No, you couldn’t.’
    Again, that baffled air came into his demeanour. I had nonplussed him.
    ‘Then I’ll be getting back to the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do the chimney. It needs a jolly good cleaning out. This place would have been in a fearful mess, if it hadn’t been for me,’ he added, with a smugness which jarred upon my sensibilities.
    ‘How do you mean, if it hadn’t been for you?’ I riposted, in my keen way. ‘I’ll bet you’ve been spreading ruin and desolation on all sides.’
    ‘I’ve been tidying up,’ he said, with a touch of pique. ‘Florence put some flowers for you in the sitting-room.’
    ‘I know. She told me.’
    ‘I fetched the water. Well, I’ll go and do that chimney, shall I?’
    ‘Do it, if it pleases you, till your eyes bubble,’ I said, and dismissed him with a cold gesture.
    Now, I don’t know how you would have made a cold gesture – no doubt people’s methods vary – but the way I did it was by raising the right arm in a sort of salute and allowing it to fall to my side. And, as it fell, I became aware of something missing. The coat pocket against which the wrist impinged should have contained a small, solid object – to wit, the package containing the brooch which Aunt Agatha had told me to convey to Florence for her birthday. And it didn’t. The pocket was empty.
    And at the same moment the kid Edwin said ‘Coo!’ and stooped, and came up holding the thing.
    ‘Did you drop this?’ he asked.
    Any doubts that may have lingered in the child’s mind as to my having broken my leg must have been dispelled by the spring I made. I flew through the air with the greatest of ease. A panther could not have moved more nippily. I wrenched the thing from his grasp, and once more pocketed it.
    He seemed intrigued.
    ‘What was it?’
    A brooch. Birthday present for Florence.’
    ‘Shall I take it to her?’
    ‘No, thanks.’
    ‘I will, if you like.’
    ‘No, thanks.’
    ‘It would save you trouble.’
    Had the circumstances been other than they were, I might have found this benevolence of his cloying – so much so, indeed, as to cause me to kick him in the pants. But he had rendered me so signal a service that I merely smiled warmly at the young blister, a thing I hadn’t done for years.
    ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I don’t let it out of my hands. I will run across and deliver it this evening. Well, well, young Edwin,’ I continued affably, ‘a smart piece of work, that. They train you sprouts to keep your eyes open. Tell me, how have you been all this while? All right? No colds, colics or other juvenile ailments? Splendid. I should hate to feel that you had been suffering in any way. It was decent of you to suggest putting my leg under the tap. Greatly appreciated. I wish I had a drink to offer you. You must come up and see me some time, when I am more settled.’
    And on this cordial note our interview terminated. I tottered out into the garden, and for a space stood leaning on the front gate, for my spine was still feeling a bit jellified and I needed support.
    I say my spine had become as jelly, and if you knew my Aunt Agatha you would agree that so it jolly well might.
    This relative is a woman who, like Napoleon, if it was Napoleon, listens to no excuses for failure, however sound. If she gives you a brooch to take to a stepdaughter, and you lose it, it is no sort of use trying to tell her that the whole thing was an Act of God, caused by your tripping over unforeseen pails and having the object jerked out of your pocket. Pawn