e lowered her eyes and said, "Oh, yes?"

He then, I should imagine, said it was something very important; to which
her response would, one assumes, have been something on the lines of
"Really?" or "Indeed?" or possibly just the sharp intake of the breath.
And then their eyes met, just as mine met the dentist's, and something
suddenly seemed to catch him in the pit of the stomach and everything
went black and he heard his voice starting to drool about newts. Yes, I
could follow the psychology.

Nevertheless, I found myself blaming Gussie. On discovering that he was
stressing the newt note in this manner, he ought, of course, to have
tuned out, even if it had meant sitting there saying nothing. No matter
how much of a twitter he was in, he should have had sense enough to see
that he was throwing a spanner into the works. 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.

"Bad, Jeeves."

"Yes, sir."

"And how long did this nuisance continue?"

"For some not inconsiderable time, I gather, sir. According to Mr.
Fink-Nottle, he supplied Miss Bassett with very full and complete
information not only with respect to the common newt, but also the
crested and palmated varieties. He described to her how newts, during
the breeding season, live in the water, subsisting upon tadpoles, insect
larvae, and crustaceans; how, later, they make their way to the land and
eat slugs and worms; and how the newly born newt has three pairs of long,
plumlike, external gills. And he was just observing that newts differ
from salamanders in the shape of the tail, which is compressed, and that
a marked sexual dimorphism prevails in most species, when the young lady
rose and said that she thought she would go back to the house."

"And then----"

"She went, sir."

I stood musing. More and more, it was beginning to be borne in upon me
what a particularly difficult chap Gussie was to help. He seemed to so
marked an extent to lack snap and finish. With infinite toil, you
manoeuvred him into a position where all he had to do was charge ahead,
and he didn't charge ahead, but went off sideways, missing the objective
completely.

"Difficult, Jeeves."

"Yes, sir."

In happier circs., of course, I would have canvassed his views on the
matter. But after what had occurred in connection with