I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and west of it, staring down at me from an upper window.
“Hi!” it shouted again. “You can’t come in.”
“I don’t want to come in.”
“Because—Oh, is that Tootles?”
“My name is not Tootles. Are you Mr. Kegworthy? I’ve brought back your son.”
“I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles, Dadda can see ’oo.”
The face disappeared with a jerk. I could hear voices. The face reappeared.
“Hi!”
I churned the gravel madly. This blighter was giving me the pip.
“Do you live here?” asked the face.
“I have taken a cottage here for a few weeks.”
“What’s your name?”
“Wooster.”
“Fancy that! Do you spell it W-o-r-c-e-s-t-e-r or W-o-o-s-t-e-r?”
“W-o-o—”
“I ask because I once knew a Miss Wooster, spelled W-o-o—”
I had had about enough of this spelling-bee.
“Will you open the door and take this child in?”
“I mustn’t open the door. This Miss Wooster that I knew married a man named Spenser. Was she any relation?”
“She is my Aunt Agatha,” I replied, and I spoke with a good deal of bitterness, trying to suggest by my manner that he was exactly the sort of man, in my opinion, who would know my Aunt Agatha.
He beamed down at me.
“This is most fortunate. We were wondering what to do with Tootles. You see, we have mumps here. My daughter Booties has just developed mumps. Tootles must not be exposed to the risk of infection. We could not think what to do with him. It was most fortunate, your finding the dear child. He strayed from his nurse. I would hesitate to trust him to a stranger, but you are different. Any nephew of Mrs. Spenser’s has my complete confidence. You must take Tootles into your house. It will be an ideal arrangement. I have written to my brother in London to come and fetch him. He may be here in a few days.”
“May!”
“He is a busy man, of course, but he should certainly be here within a week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan. Very much obliged to you. Your wife will like Tootles.”
“I haven’t got a wife!” I yelled, but the window had closed with a bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to escape and had headed it off just in time.
I breathed a deep breath and wiped the old forehead.
The window flew up again.
“Hi!”
A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a bomb.
“Did you catch it?” said the face, reappearing. “Dear me, you missed it. Never mind. You can get it at the grocer’s. Ask for Bailey’s Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast with a little milk. Not cream. Milk. Be sure to get Bailey’s.”
“Yes, but—”
The face disappeared, and the window was banged down again. I lingered a while, but nothing else happened, so, taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away.
And as we turned up the road we met Freddie’s Elizabeth.
“Well, baby?” she said, sighting the kid. “So daddy found you again, did he? Your little son and I made great friends on the beach this morning,” she said to me.
This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered lunatic, it so utterly unnerved me that she had nodded goodbye and was halfway down the road before I caught up with my breath enough to deny the charge of being the infant’s father.
I hadn’t expected Freddie to sing with joy when he saw me looming up with child complete, but I did think he might have showed a little more manly fortitude, a little more of the old British bulldog spirit. He leaped up when we came in, glared at the kid and clutched his head. He didn’t speak for a long time, but, to make up for it, when he began he did not leave off for a long time.
“Well,” he said, when he had finished the body of his remarks, “say something! Heavens, man, why don’t you say something?”
“If you’ll give me a chance, I will,” I said, and shot the bad news.
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked. And it would be idle to deny that his manner was peevish.
“What can we do about it?”
“We? What do you mean, we? I’m not going to spend my time taking turns as a nursemaid to this excrescence. I’m going back to London.”
“Freddie!” I cried. “Freddie, old man!” My voice shook. “Would you desert a pal at a time like this?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Freddie,” I said, “you’ve got to stand by me. You must. Do you realise that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and dressed again? You wouldn’t leave me to do all that single-handed?”
“Jeeves can help you.”
“No, sir,” said Jeeves, who had just rolled in with lunch, “I must, I fear, disassociate myself completely from the matter.” He spoke respectfully but firmly. “I have had little or no experience with children.”
“Now’s the time to start,” I urged.
“No, sir, I am sorry to say that I cannot involve myself in any way.”
“Then you must stand by me, Freddie.”
“I won’t.”
“You must. Reflect, old man! We have been pals for years. Your mother likes me.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“Well, anyway, we were at school together and you owe me a tenner.”
“Oh, well,” he said in a resigned sort of voice.
“Besides, old thing,” I said, “I did it all for your sake, you know.”
He looked at me in a curious way, and breathed rather hard for some moments.
“Bertie,” he said, “one moment. I will stand a good deal, but I will not stand being expected to be grateful.”
Looking back at it, I can see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in this crisis was my bright idea in buying up most of the contents of the local sweet-shop. By serving out sweets to the kid practically incessantly we managed to get through the rest of that day pretty satisfactorily. At eight o’clock he fell asleep in a chair;
