It seemed to me that even at Christmas-time, with all the peace on earth and goodwill towards men that there is knocking about at that season, a reunion with this bloke was likely to be tough going. If I hadn’t had more than one particularly good reason for wanting to go to Skeldings, I’d have called the thing off.
“Jeeves,” I said, all of a twitter, “do you know what? Sir Roderick Glossop is going to be at Lady Wickham’s.”
“Very good, sir. If you have finished breakfast, I will clear away.”
Cold and haughty. No sympathy. None of the rallying-round spirit which one likes to see. As I had anticipated, the information that we were not going to Monte Carlo had got in amongst him. There is a keen sporting streak in Jeeves, and I knew he had been looking forward to a little flutter at the tables.
We Woosters can wear the mask. I ignored his lack of decent feeling.
“Do so, Jeeves,” I said, proudly, “and with all convenient speed.”
Relations continued pretty fairly strained all through the rest of the week. There was a frigid detachment in the way the man brought me my dollop of tea in the mornings. Going down to Skeldings in the car on the afternoon of the twenty-third, he was aloof and reserved. And before dinner on the first night of my visit he put the studs in my dress-shirt in what I can only call a marked manner. The whole thing was extremely painful, and it seemed to me, as I lay in bed on the morning of the twenty-fourth, that the only step to take was to put the whole facts of the case before him and trust to his native good sense to effect an understanding.
I was feeling considerably in the pink that morning. Everything had gone like a breeze. My hostess, Lady Wickham, was a beaky female built far