Thank You, Jeeves

What do you mean, a fortune-hunting English lord ? " " I mean what I say. You haven't a cent, and you're trying to marry a girl in Pauline's position. Why, darn it, you're just like that fellow in that musical comedy I saw once . . . what was the name . . . Lord Wotwotleigh." An animal cry escaped Chuffy's ashen lips. " Wotwotleigh I " " The living spit of him. Same sort of face, same expression, same way of talking.

I've been wondering all along who it was you reminded me of, and now I know. Lord Wotwotleigh." Pauline charged in again. " You're talking perfect nonsense, father. The whole trouble all along was that Marmaduke was so scrupulous and chivalrous that he wouldn't ask me to marry him till he felt he had enough money. I couldn't think what was the matter with him. And then you promised to buy Chuffnell Hall, and five minutes later he came bounding up to me and started proposing.If you didn't mean to buy the Hall, you ought not to have said you would. And I don't see why you won't, either."

" I was planning to buy it because Glossop asked me to," said old Stoker. " The way I feel towards that guy now, I wouldn't buy a peanut stand to please him." I felt impelled to put in a word. " Not a bad sort, old Glossop. I like him." " You can have him." " What first endeared him to me was the way he set about little Seabury last night.

It seemed to me to argue the right outlook." Stoker was staring with his left eye. The other had now closed like some tired flower at nightfall.

I couldn't help feeling that Brinkley must have been a jolly good shot to have plugged him so squarely. It's not the easiest thing in the world to hit a fellow in the eye with a potato at a longish range. I know, because I've tried it. The very nature of the potato, it being a rummy shape and covered with knobs, renders accurate aiming a tricky business.

" What's that you're saying ? Glossop soaked that boy ? " " With a will, they tell me." " Well, I'm darned I " I don't know if you've ever seen one of those films where the tough guy hears the old song his mother used to teach him at her knee and you get a close-up of his face working and before you know where you are he's a melted man and off doing lots of good to all and sundry. A bit sudden I've always looked on it as, but you can take it from me that these lightning softenings do occur. Because now before our very eyes old Stoker was undergoing one of them. One moment he had been absolutely the man of chilled steel. The next, he was practically human. He stared at me, speechless. Then he licked his lips. " You really tell me old Glossop did that ? " " I was not present in person, but I have it straight from Jeeves, who got it from Mary, the parlourmaid, who was an eyewitness throughout. He put it across little Seabury properly-at a venture, I should say with the back of a hairbrush." " Well, I'm darned I " Pauline was doing a bit of eye-sparkling, You could see that hope had dawned once more. I'm not sure she didn't clap her hands in girlish ^lee. " You see, father. You got him all wrong. He's really a splendid man. You'll have to go to him and tell him you're sorry you were so snooty and that you're going to buy the house for him, after all." Well, I could have told the poor cloth-head that she was doing the wrong thing, butting in like this. Girls have no idea of handling any situation that calls for nice tact. I mean to say. Jeeves will tell you that on these occasions the whole thing is to study the psychology of the individual, and an owl could have seen what old Stoker's psychology was like. A male owl, that is. He was one of those fellows who

get their backs up the minute they think their nearest and dearest are trying to shove them i3?to anything; a chap who, as the Bible puts it, if you say Go, he cometh, and if you say Come, he goeth ; a fellow, in a word, who, if he came to a door with " Push " on it, would always pull.

And I was right. Left to himself, this Stoker in about another half-minute would have been dancing round the room, strewing roses out of his hat. He was within a short jump of becoming a thing compact entirely of sweetness and light. Now he suddenly stiffened, and a mulish look came into his eye. You could see his haughty spirit resented being rushed. " I won't do anything of the sort! " " Oh, father 1 " " Telling me what I'm to do and what I'm not to do." " I didn't mean it like that." " Never mind how you meant it." Affairs had taken an unpleasant turn. Old Stoker was gruffling to himself like a not too sunny bulldog.

Pauline was looking as if she had recently taken a short-arm punch in the solar plexus. Chuffy had the air of a man who ^ has not yet recovered from being compared to Lord Wotwotleigh. And, as for me, while I could see that it was a moment that called for the intervention of a silver-tongued orator, I | felt it wasn't much use having a pop at being a silver-tongued orator if one hadn't anything to say, and I hadn't.