were devouring his best friend in the kitchen garden, he would look at you and say, “Oh, ah?” or words to that effect. I knew that he would not give a thought to young Thomas and the Right Hon. till the last ball had bounced, and, as I dressed for dinner that night, I was conscious of an impending doom.
“Jeeves,” I said, “have you ever pondered on Life?”
“From time to time, sir, in my leisure moments.”
“Grim, isn’t it, what?”
“Grim, sir?”
“I mean to say, the difference between things as they look and things as they are.”
“The trousers perhaps a half-inch higher, sir. A very slight adjustment of the braces will effect the necessary alteration. You were saying, sir?”
“I mean, here at Woollam Chersey we have apparently a happy, carefree country-house party. But beneath the glittering surface, Jeeves, dark currents are running. One gazes at the Right Hon. wrapping himself round the salmon mayonnaise at lunch, and he seems a man without a care in the world. Yet all the while a dreadful fate is hanging over him, creeping nearer and nearer. What exact steps do you think the kid Thomas intends to take?”
“In the course of an informal conversation which I had with the young gentleman this afternoon, sir, he informed me that he had been reading a romance