It has happened so frequently in the past few years that young fellows starting in my profession have come to me for a word of advice, that I’ve found it convenient now to condense my system into a brief formula. “Resource and Tact”—that is my motto. Tact, of course, has always been with me a sine qua non, while as for resource, I think I may say that I have usually contrived to show a certain modicum of what I might call finesse in handling those little contretemps which inevitably arise from time to time in the daily life of a gentleman’s personal gentleman. I am reminded, just by way of an instance, of the Episode of the School for Young Ladies down Brighton—an affair which I think it may be said to have commenced one evening at the moment when I brought Mr. Wooster his whisky and siphon and he burst out at me with such remarkable petulance.
Not a little moody Mr. Wooster had been for some days—far from his usual bright self. This I had attributed to the natural reaction from a slight attack of influenza from which he had been suffering; and, of course, took no notice, merely performing my duties as usual, until on the evening of which I speak he exhibited this remarkable petulance when I brought him his whisky and siphon.
“Oh, dash it, Jeeves!” he said, manifestly overwrought. “I wish at least you’d put it on another table for a change.”
“Sir?” I said.
“Every night, dash it all,” proceeded Mr. Wooster morosely, “you come in at exactly the same old time with the same old tray and put it on the same old table. I’m fed up, I tell you. It’s the bally monotony of it that makes it all seem so frightfully bally.”