preparation for the evening meal, in trickled young Bingo and took my mind off my own troubles.
For when it is a question of a pal being in the soup, we Woosters no longer think of self; and that poor old Bingo was knee-deep in the bisque was made plain by his mere appearance—which was that of a cat which has just been struck by a half-brick and is expecting another shortly.
“Bertie,” said Bingo, having sat down on the bed and diffused silent gloom for a moment, “how is Jeeves’s brain these days?”
“Fairly strong on the wing, I fancy. How is the grey matter, Jeeves? Surging about pretty freely?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank Heaven for that,” said young Bingo, “for I require your soundest counsel. Unless right-thinking people take strong steps through the proper channels, my name will be mud.”
“What’s wrong, old thing?” I asked, sympathetically.
Bingo plucked at the coverlet.
“I will tell you,” he said. “I will also now reveal why I am staying in this pesthouse, tutoring a kid who requires not education in the Greek and Latin languages but a swift slosh on the base of the skull with a blackjack. I came here, Bertie, because it was the only thing I could do. At the last moment before she sailed to America, Rosie decided that I had better stay behind and look after the Peke. She left me a couple of hundred quid to see me through till her return. This sum, judiciously expended over the period of her absence, would have been enough to keep the Peke and myself in moderate affluence. But you know how it is.”
“How what is?”