‘As far as I can see, Wooster, you are without attraction of any kind. Intelligence? No. Looks? No. Effici- ency? No. You can’t even steal an umbrella without getting caught. All that can be said for you is that you don’t wear a moustache. They tell me you did grow one once, but mercifully shaved it off. That is to your credit, but it is a small thing to weigh in the balance against all your other defects. When one considers how numerous these are, one can only suppose that it is your shady record of stealing anything you can lay your hands on that appeals to Madeline’s romantic soul. She is marrying you in the hope of reforming you, and let me tell you, Wooster, that if you disappoint that hope, you will be sorry. She may have rejected me, but I shall always love her as I have done since she was so high, and I shall do my utmost to see that her gentle heart is not broken by any sneaking son of a what-not who looks like a chorus boy in a touring revue playing the small towns and cannot see anything of value without pocketing it. You will probably think you are safe from me when you are doing your stretch in Wormwood Scrubs for larceny, but I shall be waiting for you when you come out and I shall tear you limb from limb. And,’ he added, for his was a one-track mind, ‘dance on the fragments in hob-nailed boots.’
He paused, produced his cigarette case, asked me if I had a match, thanked me when I gave him one, and withdrew.
He left behind him a Bertram Wooster whom the dullest eye could have spotted as not being at the peak of his form. The prospect of being linked for life to a girl who would come down to breakfast and put her hands over my eyes and say ‘Guess who’ had given my morale a sickening wallop, reducing me to the level of one of those wee sleekit timorous cowering beasties Jeeves tells me the poet Burns used to write about. It is always my policy in times of crisis to try to look on the bright side, but I make one proviso, – viz. that there has to be a bright side to look on, and in the present case there wasn’t even the sniff of one.
As I sat there draining the bitter cup, there were noises off stage and my meditations were interrupted by the return of the old ancestor. Well, when I say return, she came whizzing in but didn’t stop, just whiz- zed through, and I saw, for I am pretty quick at noticing things, that she was upset about something. Reasoning closely, I deduced that her interview with L. P. Runkle must have gone awry or, as I much prefer to put it, agley.
And so it proved when she bobbed up again some little time later. Her first observation was that L. P. Runkle was an illegitimate offspring to end all illegitimate offsprings, and I hastened to commiserate with her. I could have done with a bit of commiseration myself, but Women and Children First is always the Wooster slogan.
‘No luck?’ I said.
‘None.’
‘Wouldn’t part?’
‘Not a penny.’
‘You mentioned that without his co-operation Tuppy and Angela’s wedding bells would not ring out?’
‘Of course I.did. And he said it was a great mistake for young people to marry before they knew their own minds.’
‘You could have pointed out that Tuppy and Angela have been engaged for two years.’
‘I did.’
‘What did he say to that? ‘
‘He said “Not nearly long enough”.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’ve done it,’ said the old ancestor. ‘I pinched his porringer.’
CHAPTER Fifteen
I goggled at her, one hundred per cent non-plussed. She had spoken with the exuberance of an aunt busily engaged in patting herself between the shoulder-blades for having done something particularly clever, but I could make nothing of her statement. This habit of speaking in riddles seemed to be growing on her.
‘You what?’ I said. ‘You pinched his what?’