Free Laughing Gas by P. G. Wodehouse

little toad.'
    I could not pass this.
    'I consider that highly offensive,' I said.
    For the fourth time she told me to be quiet. Then, attaching herself to my wrist in the old familiar way, she lugged me out and up the stairs to a bedroom on the first floor. Pushing me in, she told me to lie down and go to sleep.
    I could scarcely believe that I had heard her aright. 'Sleep?'
    'You've got to have your afternoon sleep, haven't you?' 'But, dash it —'
    'Oh, be quiet,' she said - making five in all. She then buzzed off, locking the door behind her.
    I must say I lau ghed a shade mirthlessly. Sleep, That struck me as pretty good. Sleep, I mean to say, what? As if I had time for any rot like that. The immediate task confronting me, as I saw it, was to examine the situation and, if possible, ascertain what the hell was to be done about it. Because something would have to be done, and that with the minimum of delay. Avenues would have to be explored and stones not left unturned. What I had got to do was not sleep, but ponder. I sat down on the bed and started in.
    I don't know how long I pondered, but it was a fairish time, and I might have stuck at it indefinitely without getting a bite had I not in the course of my pondering risen from the bed and walked over to the window. The moment I got to the window, things suddenly clarified. I saw now what I ought to have seen at once, that my first move, before taking any other steps, must be to establish contact with the kid Cooley and call a conference.
    I didn't suppose that he would be able to suggest any practical solution of our little difficulty - not being an Egyptian sorcerer, I mean - but at least he could give me a few pointers which might be of use to me in this new life of mine. And the best chance I had of getting together with him, it seemed to me, was to go to my bungalow at the Garden of the Hesperides, and see if he had turned up there. I had told him that that was where I lived, and if he remembered my words he would presumably repair thither sooner or later.
    We Havershots are men of action, even when we have been turned into kids with golden curls smelling, I now perceived, of a rather offensive brand of brilliantine. There came over me a yearning to be out and about. I felt cramped and confined in this bedroom. Stifled is the word. A couple of feet below the window there was the roof of a sort of outhouse, and from this roof to the ground was a simple drop. Thirty seconds later I was down in the garden, and thirty seconds after that out of it and speeding for the old home.
    I don't know if I had actually expected to find the kid at the bungalow. At any rate, he wasn't there. The place was empty. Wherever Joey Cooley was, he was not thinking things over quietl y in an arm-chair at the Garden of the Hesperides.
    This being so, there seemed nothing to do but to wait. So I sat down in the arm-chair myself and began to brood again.
    Now, with all the wealth of material for brooding with which these recent disturbing happenings had provided me, it should, one would have thought, have been easy enough for me to keep my mind from straying from the main issue. But no. It strayed like the dickens. Before I had been sitting two minutes, I had switched right off from the items on the agenda paper and was meditating with a sort of hideous tenseness on ice-cream, doughnuts, pumpkin pie, custard pie, layer cake, chocolate cake, fudge, peanut clusters, and all-day suckers. I couldn't seem to get away from them. With a terrific effort I would wrench my mind away from ice-cream, and - bingo - in a flash I would be thinking of doughnuts. And no sooner had I thrust the vision of doughnuts from me than along would come the pumpkin pie and the all-day suckers.
    It was a totally new experience for me. I hadn't thought - in an emotional way - of this type of foodstuff for years and years. But now fudge and chocolate cake seemed to be dancing sarabands before my eyes, and I felt that I would