“Would you care for a cup of tea?” I said.
“Tea?”
She spoke as if she had never heard of the stuff.
“Nothing like a cup after a journey,” I said. “Bucks you up! Puts a bit of zip into you. What I mean is, restores you, and so on, don’t you know. I’ll go and tell Jeeves.”
I tottered down the passage to Jeeves’s lair. The man was reading the evening paper as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“Jeeves,” I said, “we want some tea.”
“Very good, sir.”
“I say, Jeeves, this is a bit thick, what?”
I wanted sympathy, don’t you know—sympathy and kindness. The old nerve centres had had the deuce of a shock.
“She’s got the idea this place belongs to Mr. Todd. What on earth put that into her head?”
Jeeves filled the kettle with a restrained dignity.
“No doubt because of Mr. Todd’s letters, sir,” he said. “It was my suggestion, sir, if you remember, that they should be addressed from this apartment in order that Mr. Todd should appear to possess a good central residence in the city.”
I remembered. We had thought it a brainy scheme at the time.
“Well, it’s bally awkward, you know, Jeeves. She looks on me as an intruder. By Jove! I suppose she thinks I’m someone who hangs about here, touching Mr. Todd for free meals and borrowing his shirts.”