Carry On Jeeves Page #3

								

he had been compelled to give up a favourite pair of brown shoes
simply because Meekyn, his man, disapproved of them. You have to
keep these fellows in their place, don't you know. You have to work
the good old iron-hand-in-the-velvet-glove wheeze. If you give them a
what's-its-name, they take a thingummy.

'Don't you like this suit, Jeeves?' I said coldly.

'Oh, yes, sir.'

'Well, what don't you like about it?'

'It is a very nice suit, sir.'

'Well, what's wrong with it? Out with it, dash it!'

'If I might make the suggestion, sir, a simple brown or blue, with a
hint of some quiet twill--'

'What absolute rot!'

'Very good, sir.'

'Perfectly blithering, my dear man!'

'As you say, sir.'

I felt as if I had stepped on the place where the last stair ought to
have been, but wasn't. I felt defiant, if you know what I mean, and
there didn't seem anything to defy.

'All right, then,' I said.

'Yes, sir.'

And then he went away to collect his kit, while I started in again
on Types of Ethical Theory and took a stab at a chapter headed
'Idiopsychological Ethics'.

       *       *       *       *       *

Most of the way down in the train that afternoon, I was wondering what
could be up at the other end. I simply couldn't see what could have
happened. Easeby wasn't one of those country houses you read about in
the society novels, where young girls are lured on to play baccarat and
then skinned to the bone of their jewellery, and so on. The house-party
I had left had consisted entirely of law-abiding birds like myself.

Besides, my uncle wouldn't have let anything of that kind go on in his
house. He was a rather stiff, precise sort of old boy, who liked a
quiet life. He was just finishing a history of the family or something,
which he had been working on for the last year, and didn't stir much
from the library. He was rather a good instance of what they say about
its being a good scheme for a fellow to sow his wild oats. I'd been
told that in his youth Uncle Willoughby had been a bit of a rounder.
You would never have thought it to look at him now.

When I got to the house, Oakshott, the butler, told me that Florence
was in her room, watching her maid pack. Apparently there was a dance
on at a house about twenty miles away that night, and she was motoring
over with some of the Easeby lot and would be away some nights.
Oakshott said she had told him to tell her the moment I arrived; so I
trickled into the smoking-room and waited, and presently in she came. A
glance showed me that she was perturbed, and even peeved. Her eyes had
a goggly look, and altogether she appeared considerably pipped.

'Darling!' I said, and attempted the good old embrace; but she
side-stepped like a bantam-weight.

'Don't!'

'What's the matter?'

'Everything's the matter! Bertie, you remember asking me, when you
left, to make myself pleasant to your uncle?'

'Yes.'

The idea being, of course, that as at that time I was more or less
dependent on Uncle Willoughby I couldn't very well marry without his
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