“Oh, all right,” he said. “I suppose it’s a case of the surgeon’s knife. All right, Jeeves, you may carry on. Yes, carry on, Jeeves. Yes, yes, Jeeves, carry on. I’ll look in tomorrow morning and hear what you have to report.”
And with bowed head young Bingo biffed off.
He was bright and early next morning. In fact, he turned up at such an indecent hour that Jeeves very properly refused to allow him to break in on my slumbers.
By the time I was awake and receiving, he and Jeeves had had a heart-to-heart chat in the kitchen; and when Bingo eventually crept into my room I could see by the look on his face that something had gone wrong.
“It’s all off,” he said, slumping down on the bed.
“Off?”
“Yes; that cook-pinching business. Jeeves tells me he saw Anatole last night, and Anatole refused to leave.”
“But surely Aunt Dahlia had the sense to offer him more than he was getting with you?”
“The sky was the limit, as far as she was concerned. Nevertheless, he refused to skid. It seems he’s in love with our parlourmaid.”
“But you haven’t got a parlourmaid.”
“We have got a parlourmaid.”
“I’ve never seen her. A sort of bloke who looked like a provincial undertaker waited at table the night before last.”
“That was the local greengrocer, who comes to help out when desired. The parlourmaid is away on her holiday—or was till last night. She