up to take brother and the girl for a nice drive that afternoon. And the thought of it depressed me to such an extent that I felt there was only one thing to be done. I went straight back to my room, dug out the cummerbund, and draped it round the old tum. I turned round and Jeeves shied like a startled mustang.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said in a sort of hushed voice. “You are surely not proposing to appear in public in that thing?”
“The cummerbund?” I said in a careless, debonair way, passing it off. “Oh, rather!”
“I should not advise it, sir, really I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“The effect, sir, is loud in the extreme.”
I tackled the blighter squarely. I mean to say, nobody knows better than I do that Jeeves is a master mind and all that, but, dash it, a fellow must call his soul his own. You can’t be a serf to your valet. Besides, I was feeling pretty low and the cummerbund was the only thing which could cheer me up.
“You know, the trouble with you, Jeeves,” I said, “is that you’re too—what’s the word I want?—too bally insular. You can’t realise that you aren’t in Piccadilly all the time. In a place like this a bit of colour and touch of the poetic is expected of you. Why, I’ve just seen a fellow downstairs in a morning suit of yellow velvet.”
“Nevertheless, sir—”
“Jeeves,” I said firmly, “my mind is made up. I