Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse Page B

to
have fired from the hip like somebody in a Western B. picture.
    ‘Don’t
try me too high, Bertie dear,’ she said gently, and fell into what looked like
a reverie. ‘Do you know what I think is the trouble?’ she went on, coming out
of it. ‘I believe Ma Trotter is responsible for this non-co-operation of his.
For some reason she doesn’t want him to put the deal through, and has told him
he mustn’t. It’s the only explanation I can think of. When I met him at
Agatha’s, he spoke as if it were just a matter of arranging terms, but these
last few days he has come over all coy, as if acting under orders from up top.
When you stood them dinner that night, did he strike you as being crushed
beneath her heel?’
    ‘Very
much so. He wept with delight when she gave him a smile and trembled with fear
at her frown. But why would she object to him buying the Boudoir?’
    ‘Don’t
ask me. It’s a complete mystery.’
    ‘You
haven’t put her back up somehow since she got here?’
    ‘Certainly
not. I’ve been fascinating.’
    ‘And
yet there it is, what?’
    ‘Exactly.
There it blasted well is, curse it!’
    I
heaved a sympathetic sigh. Mine is a tender heart, easily wrung, and the
spectacle of this good old egg mourning over what might have been had wrung it
like a ton of bricks.
    ‘Too
bad,’ I said. ‘One had hoped for better things.’
    ‘One
had,’ she assented. ‘I was so sure that Morehead serial would have brought home
the bacon.’
    ‘Of
course, he may be just thinking it over.’
    ‘That’s
true.’
    ‘A
fellow thinking it over would naturally hum.’
    ‘And
haw?’
    ‘And,
possibly, also haw. You could scarcely expect him to do less.’ We would no doubt
have proceeded to go more deeply into the matter, subjecting this humming and
hawing of L.G. Trotter’s to a close analysis, but at this moment the door
opened and a careworn face peered in, a face disfigured on either side by short
whiskers and in the middle by tortoiseshell—rimmed spectacles.
    ‘I
say,’ said the face, contorted with anguish, ‘have you seen Florence?’
    Aunt
Dahlia replied that she had not been privileged to do so since lunch.
    ‘I
thought she might be with you.’
    ‘She
isn‘t.’
    ‘Oh,’
said the face, still running the gamut of the emotions, and began to recede.
    ‘Hey!’
cried Aunt Dahlia, arresting it as it was about to disappear. She went to the
desk and picked up a buff envelope. ‘This telegram came for her just now. Will
you give it to her if you see her. And while you’re here, meet my nephew Bertie
Wooster, the pride of Piccadilly.’
    Well, I
hadn’t expected him on learning of my identity to dance about the room on the
tips of his toes, and he didn’t. He gave me a long, reproachful look, similar
in its essentials to that which a black beetle gives a cook when the latter is
sprinkling insect powder on it.
    ‘I have
corresponded with Mr. Wooster,’ he said coldly. ‘We have also spoken on the
telephone.’
    He
turned and was gone, gazing at me reproachfully to the last. It was plain that
the Gorringes did not lightly forget.
    ‘That
was Percy,’ said Aunt Dahlia.
    I
replied that I had divined as much.
    ‘Did
you notice how he looked when he said “Florence”? Like a dying duck in a
thunderstorm.’
    ‘And
did you notice,’ I inquired in my turn, ‘how he looked when you said “Bertie
Wooster”? Like someone finding a dead mouse in his pint of beer. Not a
bonhomous bird. Not my type.’
    ‘No.
You would scarcely suppose that even a mother could view him without nausea,
would you? And yet he is the apple of Ma Trotter’s eye. She loves him as much
as she hates Mrs. Alderman Blenkinsop. Did she touch on Mrs. Alderman
Blenkinsop at that dinner of yours?’
    ‘At
several points during the meal. Who is she?’
    ‘Her
bitterest social rival up in Liverpool.’
    ‘Do
they have social rivals up in Liverpool?’
    ‘You
bet they do, in droves. I gather that it is nip and tuck between