“And yet⁠—and this is where I want you to follow me very closely, Jeeves⁠—when I hear that my Aunt Agatha is out with her hatchet and moving in my direction, I run like a rabbit. Why? Because she gives me an inferiority complex. And so it is with Mr. Sipperley. He would, if called upon, mount the deadly breach, and do it without a tremor; but he cannot bring himself to propose to Miss Moon, and he cannot kick his old head master in the stomach and tell him to take his beastly essays on ‘The Old School Cloisters’ elsewhere, because he has an inferiority complex. So what about it, Jeeves?”

“I fear I have no plan which I could advance with any confidence on the spur of the moment, sir.”

“You want time to think, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take it, Jeeves, take it. You may feel brainier after a night’s sleep. What is it Shakespeare calls sleep, Jeeves?”