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not one of those fellows who get all restless and depressed if things arenā€™t happening to them all the time. You canā€™t make it too placid for me. Give me regular meals, a good show with decent music every now and then, and one or two pals to totter round with, and I ask no more.

That is why the jar, when it came, was such a particularly nasty jar. I mean, Iā€™d returned from Roville with a sort of feeling that from now on nothing could occur to upset me. Aunt Agatha, I imagined, would require at least a year to recover from the Hemmingway affair: and apart from Aunt Agatha there isnā€™t anybody who really does much in the way of harrying me. It seemed to me that the skies were blue, so to speak, and no clouds in sight.

I little thought.ā ā€Šā ā€¦ Well, look here, what happened was this, and I ask you if it wasnā€™t enough to rattle anybody.

Once a year Jeeves takes a couple of weeksā€™ vacation and biffs off to the sea or somewhere to restore his tissues. Pretty rotten for me, of course, while heā€™s away. But it has to be stuck, so I stick it; and I must admit that he usually manages to get hold of a fairly decent fellow to look after me in his absence.

Well, the time had come round again, and Jeeves was in the kitchen giving the understudy a few tips about his duties. I happened to want a stamp or something, and I toddled down the passage to ask him for it. The silly ass had left the kitchen door open, and I hadnā€™t gone two steps when his voice caught me squarely in the eardrum.

ā€œYou will find Mr. Wooster,ā€ he was saying to the substitute chappie, ā€œan exceedingly pleasant and amiable young gentleman, but not intelligent. By no means intelligent. Mentally he is negligibleā ā€”quite negligible.ā€

Well, I mean to say, what!

I suppose, strictly speaking, I ought to have charged in and ticked the blighter off properly in no uncertain voice. But I doubt whether itā€™s humanly possible to tick Jeeves off. Personally, I didnā€™t even have a dash at it. I merely called for my hat and stick in a marked manner and legged it. But the memory rankled, if you know what I mean. We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we doā ā€”some thingsā ā€”appointments, and peopleā€™s birthdays, and letters to post, and all thatā ā€”but not an absolute bally insult like the above. I brooded like the dickens.

I was still brooding when I dropped in at the oyster-bar at Buckā€™s for a quick bracer. I needed a bracer rather particularly at the moment, because I was on my way to lunch with Aunt Agatha. A pretty frightful ordeal, believe me or believe me not, even though I took it that after what had happened at Roville she would be in a fairly subdued and amiable mood. I had just had one quick and another rather slower, and was feeling about as cheerio as was possible under the circs, when a muffled voice hailed me from the northeast, and, turning round, I saw young Bingo Little propped up in a corner, wrapping himself round a sizable chunk of bread and cheese.

ā€œHallo-allo-allo!ā€ I said. ā€œHavenā€™t seen you for ages. Youā€™ve not been in here lately, have you?ā€

ā€œNo. Iā€™ve been living out in the country.ā€

ā€œEh?ā€ I said, for Bingoā€™s loathing for the country was well known. ā€œWhereabouts?ā€

ā€œDown in Hampshire, at a place called Ditteredge.ā€

ā€œNo, really? I know some people whoā€™ve got a house there. The Glossops. Have you met them?ā€

ā€œWhy, thatā€™s where Iā€™m staying!ā€ said young Bingo. ā€œIā€™m tutoring the Glossop kid.ā€

ā€œWhat for?ā€ I said. I couldnā€™t seem to see young Bingo as a tutor. Though, of course, he did get a degree of sorts at Oxford, and I suppose you can always fool some of the people some of the time.

ā€œWhat for? For money, of course! An absolute sitter came unstitched in the second race at Haydock Park,ā€ said young Bingo, with some bitterness, ā€œand I dropped my entire monthā€™s allowance. I hadnā€™t the nerve to touch my uncle for any more, so it was a case of buzzing round to the agents and getting a job. Iā€™ve been down there three weeks.ā€

ā€œI havenā€™t met the Glossop kid.ā€

ā€œDonā€™t!ā€ advised Bingo, briefly.

ā€œThe only one of the family I really know is the girl.ā€ I had hardly spoken these words when the most extraordinary change came over young Bingoā€™s face. His eyes bulged, his cheeks flushed, and his Adamā€™s apple hopped about like one of those india-rubber balls on the top of the fountain in a shooting-gallery.

ā€œOh, Bertie!ā€ he said, in a strangled sort of voice.

I looked at the poor fish anxiously. I knew that he was always falling in love with someone, but it didnā€™t seem possible that even he could have fallen in love with Honoria Glossop. To me the girl was simply nothing more nor less than a pot of poison. One of those dashed large, brainy, strenuous, dynamic girls you see so many of these days. She had been at Girton, where, in addition to enlarging her brain to the most frightful extent, she had gone in for every kind of sport and developed the physique of a middleweight catch-as-catch-can wrestler. Iā€™m not sure she didnā€™t box for the Varsity while she was up. The effect she had on me whenever she appeared was to make me want to slide into a cellar and lie low till they blew the All-Clear.

Yet here was young Bingo obviously all for her. There was no mistaking it. The love-light was in the blighterā€™s eyes.

ā€œI worship her, Bertie! I worship the very ground she treads on!ā€ continued the patient, in a loud, penetrating voice. Fred Thompson and one or two fellows had come in, and McGarry, the chappie behind the bar, was listening with his ears flapping. But thereā€™s no reticence about Bingo. He always reminds me of the hero of a

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