“It’s a half-holiday, you know, and I sneaked away to Brighton, because I wanted to go on the pier and put pennies in the slot-machines. I thought I could get back in time so that nobody would notice I’d gone, but I got this nail in my shoe, and now there’ll be a fearful row. Oh, well,” she said, with a philosophy which, I confess, I admired, “it can’t be helped. What’s your car? A Sunbeam, isn’t it? We’ve got a Wolseley at home.”

Mr. Wooster was visibly perturbed. As I have indicated, he was at this time in a highly malleable frame of mind, tenderhearted to a degree where the young of the female sex were concerned. Her sad case touched him deeply.

“Oh, I say, this is rather rotten,” he observed. “Isn’t there anything to be done? I say, Jeeves, don’t you think something could be done?”