“How about it, laddie?” I said, being all for getting the order booked and going on to the serious knife-and-fork work.
“Eh?” said young Bingo absently.
I recited the programme once more.
“Oh, yes, fine!” said Bingo. “Anything, anything.” The girl pushed off, and he turned to me with protruding eyes. “I thought you said they weren’t pretty, Bertie!” he said reproachfully.
“Oh, my heavens!” I said. “You surely haven’t fallen in love again—and with a girl you’ve only just seen?”
“There are times, Bertie,” said young Bingo, “when a look is enough—when, passing through a crowd, we meet somebody’s eye and something seems to whisper. …”
At this point the plovers’ eggs arrived, and he suspended his remarks in order to swoop on them with some vigour.
“Jeeves,” I said that night when I got home, “stand by.”
“Sir?”
“Burnish the old brain and be alert and vigilant. I suspect that Mr. Little will be calling round shortly for sympathy and assistance.”
“Is Mr. Little in trouble, sir?”
“Well, you might call it that. He’s in love. For about the fifty-third time. I ask you, Jeeves, as man to man, did you ever see such a chap?”
“Mr. Little is certainly warmhearted, sir.”
“Warmhearted! I should think he has to wear asbestos vests. Well, stand by, Jeeves.”
“Very good, sir.”
And sure enough, it wasn’t ten days before in rolled the old ass, bleating for volunteers to step one pace forward and come to the aid of the party.
“Bertie,” he said, “if you are a pal of mine, now is the time to show it.”
“Proceed, old gargoyle,” I replied. “You have our ear.”
“You remember giving me lunch at the Senior Liberal some days ago. We were waited on by a—”
“I remember. Tall, lissom female.”
He shuddered somewhat.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk of her like that, dash it all. She’s an angel.”
“All right. Carry on.”
“I love her.”
“Right-o! Push along.”
“For goodness sake don’t bustle me. Let me tell the story in my own way. I love her, as I was saying, and I want you, Bertie, old boy, to pop round to my uncle and do a bit of diplomatic work. That allowance of mine must be restored, and dashed quick, too. What’s more, it must be increased.”
“But look here,” I said, being far from keen on the bally business, “why not wait awhile?”
“Wait? What’s the good of waiting?”
“Well, you know what generally happens when you fall in love. Something goes wrong with the works and you get left. Much better tackle your uncle after the whole thing’s fixed and settled.”
“It is fixed and settled. She accepted me this morning.”
“Good Lord! That’s quick work. You haven’t known her two weeks.”
“Not in this life, no,” said young Bingo. “But she has a sort of idea that we must have met in some previous existence. She thinks I must have been a king in Babylon when she was a Christian slave. I can’t say I remember it myself, but there may be something in it.”
“Great Scott!” I said. “Do waitresses really talk like that?”
“How should I know how waitresses talk?”
“Well, you ought to by now. The first time I ever met your uncle was when you hounded me on to ask him if he would rally round to help you marry that girl Mabel in the Piccadilly bun-shop.”
Bingo started violently. A wild gleam came into his eyes. And before I knew what he was up to he had brought down his hand with a most frightful whack on my summer trousering, causing me to leap like a young ram.
“Here!” I said.
“Sorry,” said Bingo. “Excited. Carried away. You’ve given me an idea, Bertie.” He waited till I had finished massaging the limb, and resumed his remarks. “Can you throw your mind back to that occasion, Bertie? Do you remember the frightfully subtle scheme I worked? Telling him you were what’s-her-name, the woman who wrote those books, I mean?”
It wasn’t likely I’d forget. The ghastly thing was absolutely seared into my memory.
“That is the line of attack,” said Bingo. “That is the scheme. Rosie M. Banks forward once more.”
“It can’t be done, old thing. Sorry, but it’s out of the question. I couldn’t go through all that again.”
“Not for me?”
“Not for a dozen more like you.”
“I never thought,” said Bingo sorrowfully, “to hear those words from Bertie Wooster!”
“Well, you’ve heard them now,” I said. “Paste them in your hat.”
“Bertie, we were at school together.”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“We’ve been pals for fifteen years.”
“I know. It’s going to take me the rest of my life to live it down.”
“Bertie, old man,” said Bingo, drawing up his chair closer and starting to knead my shoulder-blade, “listen! Be reasonable!”
And of course, dash it, at the end of ten minutes I’d allowed the blighter to talk me round. It’s always the way. Anyone can talk me round. If I were in a Trappist monastery, the first thing that would happen would be that some smooth performer would lure me into some frightful idiocy against my better judgment by means of the deaf-and-dumb language.
“Well, what do you want me to do?” I said, realising that it was hopeless to struggle.
“Start off by sending the old boy an autographed copy of your latest effort with a flattering inscription. That will tickle him to death. Then you pop round and put it across.”
“What is my latest?”
“The Woman Who Braved All,” said young Bingo. “I’ve seen it all over the place. The shop windows and bookstalls are full of nothing but it. It looks to me from the picture on the jacket the sort of book any chappie would be proud to have written. Of course, he will want to discuss it with you.”
“Ah!” I said, cheering up. “That dishes the scheme, doesn’t it? I don’t know what the bally thing is about.”
“You will have to read it, naturally.”
“Read it! No, I say. …”
“Bertie, we were at school together.”
“Oh, right-o! Right-o!” I said.
“I knew I could
