n to say, all this had come as a complete surprise. In formulating
the well-laid plan which I had just been putting into effect, the one
contingency I had not budgeted for was that she might adhere to the
sentiments which I expressed. I had braced myself for a gush of stormy
emotion. I was expecting the tearful ticking off, the girlish
recriminations and all the rest of the bag of tricks along those lines.

But this cordial agreement with my remarks I had not foreseen, and it
gave me what you might call pause for thought.

She proceeded to develop her theme, speaking in ringing, enthusiastic
tones, as if she loved the topic. Jeeves could tell you the word I want.
I think it's "ecstatic", unless that's the sort of rash you get on your
face and have to use ointment for. But if that is the right word, then
that's what her manner was as she ventilated the subject of poor old
Tuppy. If you had been able to go simply by the sound of her voice, she
might have been a court poet cutting loose about an Oriental monarch, or
Gussie Fink-Nottle describing his last consignment of newts.

"It's so nice, Bertie, talking to somebody who really takes a sensible
view about this man Glossop. Mother says he's a good chap, which is
simply absurd. Anybody can see that he's absolutely impossible. He's
conceited and opinionative and argues all the time, even when he knows
perfectly well that he's talking through his hat, and he smokes too much
and eats too much and drinks too much, and I don't like the colour of his
hair. Not that he'll have any hair in a year or two, because he's pretty
thin on the top already, and before he knows where he is he'll be as bald
as an egg, and he's the last man who can afford to go bald. And I think
it's simply disgusting, the way he gorges all the time. Do you know, I
found him in the larder at one o'clock this morning, absolutely wallowing
in a steak-and-kidney pie? There was hardly any of it left. And you
remember what an enormous dinner he had. Quite disgusting, I call it. But
I can't stop out here all night, talking about men who aren't worth
wasting a word on and haven't even enough sense to tell sharks from
flatfish. I'm going in."

And gathering about her slim shoulders the shawl which she had put on as
a protection against the evening dew, she buzzed off, leaving me alone in
the silent night.

Well, as a matter of fact, not absolutely alone, because a few moments
later there was a sort of upheaval in