I felt like Doctor Watson hearing Sherlock Holmes talking about the one hundred and forty-seven varieties of tobacco ash and the time it takes parsley to settle in the butter dish.
No girl, when she has been led to expect that a man is about to pour forth his soul in a fervour of passion, likes to find him suddenly shelving the whole topic in favour of an address on aquatic Salamandridae.
Mere surprise, however, was never enough to prevent Psmith talking. He began at once.
The Empress of Blandings was a pig who took things as they came. Her motto, like Horace’s, was nil admirari.
It occurred to him as a passing thought that all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
But he has. Much funnier.” In a way it was a sort of compliment, but Archie felt embarrassed. He withdrew coyly into the cushioned recess.
Very good,” I said coldly. “In that case, tinkerty tonk.” And I meant it to sting.
You smoke too much. You stay up too late at night. You don’t get enough exercise. At your age you ought to be playing Rugby football for the old boys of your school.
My attention was drawn to the spots on my chest when I was in the bath, singing, if I remember rightly, the Toreador song from the opera “Carmen.
It was as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment.
What ho!” I said. “What ho!” said Motty. “What ho! What ho!” “What ho! What ho! What ho!” After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
I don’t know if it has ever occurred to you, but to the thoughtful cove there is something dashed reassuring in all the reports if burglaries you read in the papers. I mean, if you’re keen on Great Britain maintaining her prestige and all that. I mean, there can’t be much wrong with the moral of a country whose sons go in to such a large extent for housebreaking, because you can take it from me that the job requires a nerve of the more cast-iron description.
I can’t help your troubles,” said Motty firmly. “Listen to me, old thing: this is the first time in my life that I’ve had a real chance to yield to the temptations of a great city. What’s the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don’t yield to them?
All my bally life, dear boy,” Motty went on, “I’ve been cooped up in the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you’ve been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don’t know what cooping.
Properly considered, there is no such thing as an insoluble mystery. It may seem puzzling at first sight when ex-secretaries start falling as the gentle rain from heaven upon the lobelias beneath, but there is always a reason for it.
As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I’d always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven’t got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on.
Bertie,’ he said, ‘I want your advice.’ ‘Carry on.’ ‘At least, not your advice, because that wouldn’t be much good to anybody. I mean, you’re a pretty consummate old ass, aren’t you? Not that I want to hurt your feelings, of course.’ ‘No, no, I see that.
I suppose a man who has been hit over the head with a picture of a girl chirruping to a pigeon and almost immediately afterwards enmeshed in a sheet can never really retain the cool, intelligent outlook.
I HEADED FOR the cottage, where I had left the car. By the time I got there I should have done three miles of foot-slogging and I proposed to give the leg muscles a bit of time off, and if E. Jimpson Murgatroyd didn’t like it, let him eat cake.
As two-seaters go, I had always found mine fairly comfortable, but then I had never before tried to get the eight hours in it, and you would be surprised at the number of knobs and protuberances which seem suddenly to sprout out of a car’s upholstery when you seek to convert it into a bed.