Free Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

characteristic of this breed of animal. Aberdeen terriers, possibly owing to their heavy eyebrows, always seem to look at you as if they were in the pulpit of the church of some particularly strict Scottish sect and you were a parishioner of dubious reputation sitting in the front row of the stalls.
    Not that I noticed his eyes very much, my attention being riveted on his teeth. He had an excellent set and was baring them, and all I had ever heard of his tendency to bite first and ask questions afterwards passed through my mind in a flash. Hence the leap for life. The Woosters are courageous, but they do not take chances.
    Pop Bassett was plainly nonplussed, and it was only when his gaze, too, fell upon Bartholomew that he abandoned what must have been his original theory, that Bertram had cracked under the strain and would do well to lose no time in seeing a good mental specialist. He eyed Bartholomew coldly and addressed him as if he had been up before him in his police court.
    ‘Go away, sir! Lie down, sir! Go away!’ he said, rasping, if that’s the word.
    Well, I could have told him that you can’t talk to an Aberdeen terrier in that tone of voice for, except perhaps for Doberman pin-schers, there is no breed of dog quicker to take offence.
    ‘Really, the way my niece allows this infernal animal to roam at large about the -‘
    ‘House’ I suppose he was about to say, but the word remained unspoken. It was a moment for rapid action, not for speech. The gargling noise had increased in volume, and Bartholomew was flexing his muscles and getting under way. He moved, he stirred, he seemed to feel the rush of life along his keel, as the fellow said, and Pop Bassett with a lissomness of which I would not have suspected him took to himself the wings of the dove and floated down beside me on the chest. Whether he clipped a second or two off my time I cannot say, but I rather think he did.
    ‘This is intolerable!’ he said as I moved courteously to make room for him, and I could see the thing from his point of view. All he asked from life, now that he had made his pile, was to be as far away as possible from Bertram Wooster, and here he was cheek by jowl, as you might say, on a rather uncomfortable chest with him. A certain peevishness was inevitable.
    ‘Not too good,’ I agreed. ‘Unquestionably open to criticism, the animal’s behaviour.’
    ‘He must be off his head. He knows me perfectly well. He sees me every day.’
    ‘Ah,’ I said, putting my finger on the weak spot in his argument, ‘but I don’t suppose he’s ever seen you in that dressing-gown.’
    I had been too outspoken. He let me see at once that he had taken umbrage.
    ‘What’s wrong with my dressing-gown?’ he demanded hotly.
    ‘A bit on the bright side, don’t you think?’
    ‘No, I do not.’
    ‘Well, that’s how it would strike a highly-strung dog.’
    I paused here to chuckle softly, and he asked what the devil I was giggling about. I put him abreast.
    ‘I was merely thinking that I wish we could strike the highly-strung dog. The trouble on these occasions is that one is always weaponless. It was the same some years ago when an angry swan chased self and friend on to the roof of a sort of boathouse building at my Aunt Agatha’s place in Hertfordshire. Nothing would have pleased us better than to bung a brick at the bird, or slosh him with a boathook, but we had no brick and were short of boathooks. We had to wait till Jeeves came along, which he eventually did in answer to our cries. It would have thrilled you to have seen Jeeves on that occasion. He advanced dauntlessly and -‘
    ‘Mr. Wooster!’
    ‘Speaking.’
    ‘Kindly spare me your reminiscences.’
    ‘I was merely saying -‘
    ‘Well, don’t.’
    Silence fell. On my part, a wounded silence, for all I’d tried to do was take his mind off things with entertaining chit-chat. I moved an inch or two away from him in a marked manner. The Woosters do not force their