Дживс, вы – гений! / Thank you, Jeeves!

I was chewing the lip in some chagrin.

“What the devil did he mean, ‘mentally negligible’?”

“Oh, you know. Loopy.”

“Tchah!”

“Eh?”

“I said ‘Tchah!’”

“Why?”

“Why? Well, wouldn’t you say ‘Tchah!’ if your late servant was telling people you were mentally negligible?”

“But with a heart of gold.”

“Never mind the heart of gold.”

“Bertie! Are you annoyed?”

“Annoyed!”

“You sound annoyed. And I can’t see why. I thought that you would help me get to the man I love. Having this heart of gold.”

“The point is not whether I have a heart of gold. Many people have hearts of gold and yet they will be upset at finding girls in their bedrooms at night. The girls who come in, in the middle of the night, and coolly take your pyjamas—”

“You didn’t expect me to sleep in a wet swimming suit?”

“—and leap into your bed—”

She uttered an exclamation.

“I know what this reminds me of. I’ve been trying to think ever since you came in. The story of the Three Bears. ‘There’s somebody in my bed…’ Wasn’t that what the Big Bear said?”

I frowned doubtfully.

“As I recollect it, it was something about porridge. ‘Who’s been eating my porridge?’”

“I’m sure there was a bed in it.”

“Bed? Bed? I can’t remember any bed. What will people say when they find you here?”

“But they won’t find me here.”

“You think so? Ha! What about Brinkley?”

“Who’s he?”

“My new man. At nine tomorrow morning he will bring me tea.”

“But wait a minute. You are talking about Brinkley, but there is no Brinkley.”

“There is Brinkley. One Brinkley. And one Brinkley coming into this room at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and finding you in that bed will start a scandal.”

“I mean, he can’t be in the house.”

“Of course he’s in the house.”

“Well, he must be deaf, then. I made big noise getting in.”

“Did you smash the window?”

“I had to, or I couldn’t have got in. It was the window of some sort of bedroom on the ground floor.”

“Why, dash it, that’s Brinkley’s bedroom.”

“Well, he wasn’t in it.”

“Why not?”

But what she would answer, I did not learn. Somebody was knocking on the front door.

8

Police Persecution

We looked at each other with a wild surmise.

“It’s father!” Pauline gargled, and she doused the candle.

“What did you do that for?” I said. The sudden darkness seemed to make things worse.

“So that he shouldn’t see a light in the window, of course. If he thinks you’re asleep he may go away.”

“What a hope!” I retorted, as the knocking started again.

“Well, I suppose you had better go down,” said the girl. “Or”—she seemed to brighten—“shall we pour water on him from the staircase window?”

I started.

“Don’t dream of it!” I whispered urgently.

I mean to say, dry J. Washburn Stoker was bad enough. But wet J. Washburn Stoker was even worse.

“I’ll have to see him,” I said.

“Well, be careful.”