the moment, I regret to say, sir.”
Bingo uttered a stricken woofle like a bulldog that has been refused cake.
“Well, then, the only thing I can do, I suppose,” he said sombrely, “is not to let the pie-faced little thug out of my sight for a second.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Ceaseless vigilance, eh, Jeeves?”
“Precisely, sir.”
“But, meanwhile, Jeeves,” said Bingo in a low, earnest voice, “you will be devoting your best thought to the matter, won’t you?”
“Most certainly, sir.”
“Thank you, Jeeves.”
“Not at all, sir.”
I will say for young Bingo that, once the need for action arrived, he behaved with an energy and determination which compelled respect.
I suppose there was not a minute during the next two days when the kid Thos was able to say to himself, “Alone at last!”
But on the evening of the second day Aunt Agatha announced that some people were coming over on the morrow for a spot of tennis, and I feared that the worst must now befall.
Young Bingo, you see, is one of those fellows who, once their fingers close over the handle of a tennis racket, fall into a sort of trance in which nothing outside the radius of the lawn exists for them. If you came up to Bingo in the middle of a set and told him that panthers