‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ I said, for one simply has to say the civil thing. ‘You look a bit damp,’ I added, changing the subject. ‘Was it raining when you were out?’
‘A little, but I didn’t mind. I was saying good night to the flowers.’
‘Oh, you say good night to them, too?’
‘Of course. Their poor little feelings would be so hurt if I didn’t.’
‘Wise of you to come in. Might have got lumbago.’
‘That was not why I came in. I saw you through the window, and I had a question to ask you. A very, very serious question.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘But it’s so difficult to know how to put it. I shall have to ask it as they do in books. You know what they say in books.’
‘What who say in books?’
‘Detectives and people like that. Bertie, are you going straight now ? ‘
‘I beg your pardon ? ‘
‘You know what I mean. Have you given up stealing things? ‘
I laughed one of those gay debonair ones. ‘Oh, absolutely.’
‘I’m so glad. You don’t feel the urge any more? You’ve conquered the craving? I told Daddy it was just a kind of illness. I said you couldn’t help yourself.’
I remembered her submitting this theory to him… I was hiding behind a sofa at the time, a thing I have been compelled to do rather oftener than I could wish… and Sir Watkyn had replied in what I thought dubious taste that it was precisely my habit of helping myself to everything I could lay my hands on that he was criticizing.
Another girl might have left it at that, but not M. Bassett. She was all eager curiosity.
‘Did you have psychiatric treatment? Or was it will power?
‘ ‘Just will power.’
‘How splendid. I’m so proud of you. It must have been a terrible struggle.’
‘Oh, so-so.’
‘I shall write to Daddy and tell him-‘
Here she paused and put a hand to her left eye, and it was easy for a man of my discernment to see what had happened. The french window being open, gnats in fairly large numbers had been coming through and flitting to and fro. It’s a thing one always has to budget for in the English countryside. In America they have screens, of course, which make flying objects feel pretty non-plussed, but these have never caught on in England and the gnats have it more or less their own way. They horse around and now and then get into people’s eyes. One of these, it was evident, had now got into Madeline’s. I would be the last to deny that Bertram Wooster has his limitations, but in one field of endeavour I am pre-eminent. In the matter of taking things out of eyes I yield to no one. I know what to say and what to do.
Counselling her not to rub it, I advanced handkerchief in hand.
I remember going into the technique of operations of this kind with Gussie Fink-Nottle at Totleigh when he had removed a fly from the eye of Stephanie Byng, now the Reverend Mrs. Stinker Pinker, and we were in agreement that success could be achieved only by placing a hand under the patient’s chin in order to steady the head. Omit this preliminary and your efforts are bootless. My first move, accordingly, was to do so. and it was characteristic of Spode that he should have chosen this moment to join us, just when we twain were in what you might call close juxtaposition.
I confess that there have been times when I have felt more at my ease. Spode, in addition to being constructed on the lines of a rather oversized gorilla, has a disposition like that of a short-tempered tiger of the jungle and a nasty mind which leads him to fall a ready prey to what I have heard Jeeves call the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on, — viz. jealousy. Such a man, finding you steadying the head of the girl he loves, is always extremely likely to start trying to ascertain the colour of your insides, and to avert this I greeted him with what nonchalance I could muster.