that mess-jacket,
my lips were sealed.

"Well, I must think it over."

"Yes, sir."

"Burnish the brain a bit and endeavour to find the way out."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, good night, Jeeves."

"Good night, sir."

He shimmered off, leaving a pensive Bertram Wooster standing motionless
in the shadows. It seemed to me that it was hard to know what to do for
the best.

-12-

I don't know if it has happened you to at all, but a thing I've noticed
with myself is that, when I'm confronted by a problem which seems for the
moment to stump and baffle, a good sleep will often bring the solution in
the morning.

It was so on the present occasion.

The nibs who study these matters claim, I believe, that this has got
something to do with the subconscious mind, and very possibly they may be
right. I wouldn't have said off-hand that I had a subconscious mind, but
I suppose I must without knowing it, and no doubt it was there, sweating
away diligently at the old stand, all the while the corporeal Wooster was
getting his eight hours.

For directly I opened my eyes on the morrow, I saw daylight. Well, I
don't mean that exactly, because naturally I did. What I mean is that I
found I had the thing all mapped out. The good old subconscious m. had
delivered the goods, and I perceived exactly what steps must be taken in
order to put Augustus Fink-Nottle among the practising Romeos.

I should like you, if you can spare me a moment of your valuable time, to
throw your mind back to that conversation he and I had had in the garden
on the previous evening. Not the glimmering landscape bit, I don't mean
that, but the concluding passages of it. Having done so, you will recall
that when he informed me that he never touched alcoholic liquor, I shook
the head a bit, feeling that this must inevitably weaken him as a force
where proposing to girls was concerned.

And events had shown that my fears were well founded.

Put to the test, with nothing but orange juice inside him, he had proved
a complete bust. In a situation calling for words of molten passion of a
nature calculated to go through Madeline Bassett like a red-hot gimlet
through half a pound of butter, he had said not a syllable that could
bring a blush to the cheek of modesty, merely delivering a well-phrased
but, in the circumstances, quite misplaced lecture on newts.

A romantic girl is not to be won by such tactics. Obviously, before
attempting to proceed further, Augus