sir.”
“Certainly you may use the expression, Jeeves,” I said, cordially. “And I may add that in my opinion this is one of your best and ripest.”
“Yes, but I say, you know,” bleated young Bingo. “I mean to say—old Anatole, I mean—what I’m driving at is that he’s a cook in a million.”
“You poor chump, if he wasn’t there would be no point in the scheme.”
“Yes, but what I mean—I shall miss him, you know. Miss him fearfully.”
“Good heavens!” I cried. “Don’t tell me that you are thinking of your tummy in a crisis like this?”
Bingo sighed heavily.
“Oh, all right,” he said. “I suppose it’s a case of the surgeon’s knife. All right, Jeeves, you may carry on. Yes, carry on, Jeeves. Yes, yes, Jeeves, carry on. I’ll look in tomorrow morning and hear what you have to report.”
And with bowed head young Bingo biffed off.
He was bright and early next morning. In fact, he turned up at such an indecent hour that Jeeves very properly refused to allow him to break in on my slumbers.
By the time I was awake and receiving, he and Jeeves had had a heart-to-heart chat in the kitchen; and when Bingo eventually crept into my room I could see by the look on his face that something had gone wrong.
“It’s all off,” he said, slumping