P G Wodehouse – Uneasy Money

Bill perceived Elizabeth coming toward him from the house. He threw away his cigar and went to meet her. Seen by daylight, she was more attractive than ever. She looked so small and neat and wholesome, so extremely unlike Miss Daisy Leonard’s friend. And such was the reaction from what might be termed his later Reigelheimer’s mood that if he had been asked to define feminine charm in a few words, he would have replied without hesitation that it was the quality of being as different as possible in every way from the Good Sport. Elizabeth fulfilled this qualification. She was not only small and neat, but she had a soft voice to which it was a joy to listen.

‘I was just admiring your place,’ he said.

‘Its appearance is the best part of it,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It is a deceptive place. The bay looks beautiful, but you can’t bathe in it because of the jellyfish. The woods are lovely, but you daren’t go near them because of the ticks.’

‘Ticks?’

‘They jump on you and suck your blood,’ said Elizabeth, carelessly. ‘And the nights are gorgeous, but you have to stay indoors after dusk because of the mosquitoes.’ She paused to mark the effect of these horrors on her visitor. ‘And then, of course,’ she went on, as he showed no signs of flying to the house to pack his bag and catch the next train, ‘the bees are always stinging you. I hope you are not afraid of bees, Mr Chalmers?’

‘Rather not. Jolly little chaps!’

A gleam appeared in Elizabeth’s eye.

‘If you are so fond of them, perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming and helping me open one of the hives?’

‘Rather!’

‘I’ll go and fetch the things.’

She went into the house and ran up to Nutty’s room, waking that sufferer from a troubled sleep.

‘Nutty, he’s bitten.’

Nutty sat up violently.

‘Good gracious! What by?’

‘You don’t understand. What I meant was that I invited your Mr Chalmers to help me open a hive, and he said “Rather!” and is waiting to do it now. Be ready to say good-bye to him. If he comes out of this alive, his first act, after bathing the wounds with ammonia, will be to leave us for ever.’

‘But look here, he’s a visitor–‘

‘Cheer up! He won’t be much longer.’

‘You can’t let him in for a ghastly thing like opening a hive. When you made me do it that time I was picking stings out of myself for a week.’

‘That was because you had been smoking. Bees dislike the smell of tobacco.’

‘But this fellow may have been smoking.’

‘He has just finished a strong cigar.’

‘For Heaven’s sake!’

‘Good-bye, Nutty, dear; I mustn’t keep him waiting.’

Lord Dawlish looked with interest at the various implements which she had collected when she rejoined him outside. He relieved her of the stool, the smoker, the cotton-waste, the knife, the screwdriver, and the queen-clipping cage.

‘Let me carry these for you,’ he said, ‘unless you’ve hired a van.’

Elizabeth disapproved of this flippancy. It was out of place in one who should have been trembling at the prospect of doom.

‘Don’t you wear a veil for this sort of job?’

As a rule Elizabeth did. She had reached a stage of intimacy with her bees which rendered a veil a superfluous precaution, but until to-day she had never abandoned it. Her view of the matter was that, though the inhabitants of the hives were familiar and friendly with her by this time and recognized that she came among them without hostile intent, it might well happen that among so many thousands there might be one slow-witted enough and obtuse enough not to have grasped this fact. And in such an event a veil was better than any amount of explanations, for you cannot stick to pure reason when quarrelling with bees.

But to-day it had struck her that she could hardly protect herself in this way without offering a similar safeguard to her visitor, and she had no wish to hedge him about with safeguards.

‘Oh, no,’ she said, brightly; ‘I’m not afraid of a few bees. Are you?’

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