‘Oh, hullo, Aunt Dahlia.’
There had been no mistaking that loved voice. As always when we converse on the telephone, it had nearly fractured my ear-drum. This aunt was at one time a prominent figure in hunting circles, and when in the saddle, so I’m told, could make herself heard not only in the field or meadow where she happened to be, but in several adjoining counties. Retired now from active fox-chivvying, she still tends to address a nephew in the tone of voice previously reserved for rebuking hounds for taking time off to chase rabbits.
‘So you’re up and about, are you?’ she boomed. ‘I thought you’d be in bed, snoring your head off.’
‘It is a little unusual for me to be in circulation at this hour,’ I agreed, ‘but I rose today with the lark and, I think, the snail. Jeeves!’
‘Sir?’
‘Didn’t you tell me once that snails were early risers?’
‘Yes, sir. The poet Browning in his Pippa Passes, having established that the hour is seven a.m., goes on to say, “The lark’s on the wing, the snail’s on the thorn.” ‘
‘Thank you, Jeeves. I was right, Aunt Dahlia. When I slid from between the sheets, the lark was on the wing, the snail on the thorn.’
‘What the devil are you babbling about?’
‘Don’t ask me, ask the poet Browning. I was merely apprising you that I was up betimes. I thought it was the least I could do to celebrate Jeeves’s return.’
‘He got back all right, did he?’
‘Looking bronzed and fit.’
‘He was in rare form here. Bassett was terrifically impressed.’
I was glad to have this opportunity of solving the puzzle which had been perplexing me.
‘Now there,’ I said, ‘you have touched on something I’d very much like to have information re. What on earth made you invite Pop Bassett to Brinkley?’
‘I did it for the wife and kiddies.’
I eh-what-ed. ‘You wouldn’t care to amplify that?’ I said. ‘It got past me to some extent.’
‘For Tom’s sake, I mean,’ she replied with a hearty laugh that rocked me to my foundations. ‘Tom’s been feeling rather low of late because of what he calls iniquitous taxation. You know how he hates to give up-‘
I did, indeed. If Uncle Tom had his way, the Revenue authorities wouldn’t get so much as a glimpse of his money.
‘Well, I thought having to fraternize with Bassett would take his mind off it – show him that there are worse things in this world than income tax. Our doctor here gave me the idea. He was telling me about a thing called Hodgkin’s Disease that you cure by giving the patient arsenic. The principle’s the same. That Bassett really is the limit. When I see you, I’ll tell you the story of the black amber statuette. It’s a thing he’s just bought for his collection. He was showing it to Tom when he was here, gloating over it. Tom suffered agonies, poor old buzzard.’
‘Jeeves told me he was low-spirited.’
‘So would you be, if you were a collector and another collector you particularly disliked had got hold of a thing you’d have given your eyeteeth to have in your own collection.’
‘I see what you mean,’ I said, marvelling, as I had often done before, that Uncle Tom could attach so much value to objects which I personally would have preferred not to be found dead in a ditch with. The cow-creamer I mentioned earlier was one of them, being a milk jug shaped like a cow, of all ghastly ideas. I have always maintained fearlessly that the spiritual home of all these fellows who collect things is a padded cell in a loony bin.
‘It gave Tom the worst attack of indigestion he’s had since he was last lured into eating lobster. And talking of indigestion, I’m coming up to London for the day the day after tomorrow and shall require you to give me lunch.’
I assured her that that should be attended to, and after the exchange of a few more civilities she rang off.
‘That was Aunt Dahlia, Jeeves,’ I said, coming away from the machine.