editors occasionally. There’s a blight on it. It’s got moral delirium tremens. It’s the limit. The very thought of staying more than a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!”
I felt rather like Lot’s friends must have done when they dropped in for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
“It would kill me to have to live in New York,” he went on. “To have to share the air with six million people! To have to wear stiff collars and decent clothes all the time! To—” He started. “Good Lord! I suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a ghastly notion!”
I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
“My dear chap!” I said reproachfully.
“Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?”
“Jeeves,” I said coldly. The man was still standing like a statue by the door. “How many suits of evening clothes have I?”
“We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets—”
“Three.”
“For practical purposes two only, sir. If you remember we cannot wear the third. We have also seven white waistcoats.”
“And shirts?”
“Four dozen, sir.”
“And white ties?”
“The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely filled with our white ties, sir.”