“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves.

Bar a weekly wrestle with the Pink ’Un and an occasional dip into the form book I’m not much of a lad for reading, and my sufferings as I tackled The Woman (curse her!) Who Braved All were pretty fearful. But I managed to get through it, and only just in time, as it happened, for I’d hardly reached the bit where their lips met in one long, slow kiss and everything was still but for the gentle sighing of the breeze in the laburnum, when a messenger boy brought a note from old Bittlesham asking me to trickle round to lunch.

I found the old boy in a mood you could only describe as melting. He had a copy of the book on the table beside him and kept turning the pages in the intervals of dealing with things in aspic and whatnot.