well for me honoured me by accepting my hand this very morning.” A cold gleam of triumph came into his eye. “Now let ‘em try to get her away from me!” he muttered, defiantly.
“Young Mr. Little has been trying frequently during the afternoon to reach you on the telephone, sir,” said Jeeves that night, when I got home.
“I’ll bet he has,” I said. I had sent poor old Bingo an outline of the situation by messenger-boy shortly after lunch.
“He seemed a trifle agitated.”
“I don’t wonder. Jeeves,” I said, “so brace up and bite the bullet. I’m afraid I’ve bad news for you.
“That scheme of yours—reading those books to old Mr. Little and all that—has blown out a fuse.”
“They did not soften him?”
“They did. That’s the whole bally trouble. Jeeves, I’m sorry to say that
“Sir?”
“She’s handed you the mitten and gone and got engaged to old Mr. Little!”
“Indeed, sir?”
“You don’t seem much upset.”
“That fact is, sir, I had anticipated some such outcome.”
I stared at him. “Then what on earth did you suggest the scheme for?”
“To tell you the truth, sir, I was not wholly averse from a severance of my relations with Miss Watson. In fact, I greatly desired it. I respect Miss Watson exceedingly, but I have seen for a long time that we were not suited. Now, the
“Great Scott, Jeeves! There isn’t another?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“For some weeks, sir. I was greatly attracted by her when I first met her at a subscription dance at Camberwell.”
“My sainted aunt! Not–-“
Jeeves inclined his head gravely.
“Yes, sir. By an odd coincidence it is the same young person that young Mr. Little—I have placed the cigarettes on the small table. Good night, sir.”
CONCEALED ART
If a fellow has lots of money and lots of time and lots of curiosity about other fellows’ business, it is astonishing, don’t you know, what a lot of strange affairs he can get mixed up in. Now, I have money and curiosity and all the time there is. My name’s Pepper—Reggie Pepper. My uncle was the colliery-owner chappie, and he left me the dickens of a pile. And ever since the lawyer slipped the stuff into my hand, whispering “It’s yours!” life seems to have been one thing after another.
For instance, the dashed rummy case of dear old Archie. I first ran into old Archie when he was studying in Paris, and when he came back to London he looked me up, and we celebrated. He always liked me because I didn’t mind listening to his theories of Art. For Archie, you must know, was an artist. Not an ordinary artist either, but one of those fellows you read about who are several years ahead of the times, and paint the sort of thing that people will be educated up to by about 1999 or thereabouts.
Well, one day as I was sitting in the club watching the traffic coming up one way and going down the other, and thinking nothing in particular, in blew the old boy. He was looking rather worried.
“Reggie, I want your advice.”
“You shall have it,” I said. “State your point, old top.”
“It’s like this—I’m engaged to be married.”
“My dear old scout, a million con–-“
“Yes, I know. Thanks very much, and all that, but listen.”
“What’s the trouble? Don’t you like her?”
A kind of rapt expression came over his face.
“Like her! Why, she’s the only–-“
He gibbered for a spell. When he had calmed down, I said, “Well then, what’s your trouble?”
“Reggie,” he said, “do you think a man is bound to tell his wife all about his past life?”
“Oh, well,” I said, “of course, I suppose she’s prepared to find that a man has—er—sowed his wild oats, don’t you know, and all that sort of thing, and–-“
He seemed quite irritated.
“Don’t be a chump. It’s nothing like that. Listen. When I came back to London and started to try and make a living by painting, I found that people simply wouldn’t buy the sort of work I did at any price. Do you know, Reggie, I’ve been at it three years now, and I haven’t sold a single picture.”
I whooped in a sort of amazed way, but I should have been far more startled if he’d told me he
