“I’m going to get into a frightful row,” she began. “Miss Tomlinson will be perfectly furious.”
“No, really?” said Mr. Wooster.
“It’s a half-holiday, you know, and I sneaked away to Brighton, because I wanted to go on the pier and put pennies in the slot-machines. I thought I could get back in time so that nobody would notice I’d gone, but I got this nail in my shoe, and now there’ll be a fearful row. Oh, well,” she said, with a philosophy which, I confess, I admired, “it can’t be helped. What’s your car? A Sunbeam, isn’t it? We’ve got a Wolseley at home.”
Mr. Wooster was visibly perturbed. As I have indicated, he was at this time in a highly malleable frame of mind, tenderhearted to a degree where the young of the female sex were concerned. Her sad case touched him deeply.
“Oh, I say, this is rather rotten,” he observed. “Isn’t there anything to be done? I say, Jeeves, don’t you think something could be done?”
“It was not my place to make the suggestion, sir,” I replied, “but, as you yourself have brought the matter up, I fancy the trouble is susceptible of adjustment. I think it would be a legitimate subterfuge were you to inform the young lady’s schoolmistress that you are an old friend of the young lady’s father. In this case you could inform Miss Tomlinson that you had been passing the school and had seen the young lady at the gate and taken her for a drive. Miss Tomlinson’s chagrin would no doubt in these circumstances be sensibly diminished if not altogether dispersed.”
“Well, you are a sportsman!” observed the young person, with great enthusiasm. And she proceeded to kiss me—in connection with which I have only to say that I was sorry she had just been devouring some sticky species of sweetmeat.