“Hallo, Bertie,” said Bingo.
“My God, man!” I gargled. “The cravat! The gent’s neckwear! Why? For what reason?”
“Oh, the tie?” He blushed. “I—er—I was given it.”
He seemed embarrassed, so I dropped the subject. We toddled along a bit, and sat down on a couple of chairs by the Serpentine.
“Jeeves tells me you want to talk to me about something,” I said.
“Eh?” said Bingo, with a start. “Oh yes, yes. Yes.”
I waited for him to unleash the topic of the day, but he didn’t seem to want to get going. Conversation languished. He stared straight ahead of him in a glassy sort of manner.
“I say, Bertie,” he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter.
“Hallo!”
“Do you like the name Mabel?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You don’t think there’s a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the treetops?”
“No.”
He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up.