your Uncle Cyril thought it funny?"

"Yes, sir."

"Golly, what a family! Next time you meet your Uncle Cyril, Jeeves, you
can tell him from me that his sense of humour is morbid and unpleasant."

"He is dead, sir."

"Thank heaven for that.... Well, give me the blasted machine."

"Very good, sir."

"Are the tyres inflated?"

"Yes, sir."

"The nuts firm, the brakes in order, the sprockets running true with the
differential gear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right ho, Jeeves."

In Tuppy's statement that, when at the University of Oxford, I had been
known to ride a bicycle in the nude about the quadrangle of our mutual
college, there had been, I cannot deny, a certain amount of substance.
Correct, however, though his facts were, so far as they went, he had not
told all. What he had omitted to mention was that I had invariably been
well oiled at the time, and when in that condition a chap is capable of
feats at which in cooler moments his reason would rebel.

Stimulated by the juice, I believe, men have even been known to ride
alligators.

As I started now to pedal out into the great world, I was icily sober,
and the old skill, in consequence, had deserted me entirely. I found
myself wobbling badly, and all the stories I had ever heard of nasty
bicycle accidents came back to me with a rush, headed by Jeeves's Uncle
Cyril's cheery little anecdote about Nicholls and Jackson.

Pounding wearily through the darkness, I found myself at a loss to fathom
the mentality of men like Jeeves's Uncle Cyril. What on earth he could
see funny in a disaster which had apparently involved the complete
extinction of a human creature--or, at any rate, of half a human creature
and half another human creature--was more than I could understand. To me,
the thing was one of the most poignant tragedies that had ever been
brought to my attention, and I have no doubt that I should have continued
to brood over it for quite a time, had my thoughts not been diverted by
the sudden necessity of zigzagging sharply in order to avoid a pig in the
fairway.

For a moment it looked like being real Nicholls-and-Jackson stuff, but,
fortunately, a quick zig on my part, coinciding with an adroit zag on the
part of the pig, enabled me to win through, and I continued my ride safe,
but with the heart fluttering like a captive bird.

The effect of this narrow squeak upon me was to shake the nerve to the
utmost. The fact that pigs were abroad in the night seemed to