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JEEVES TAKES CHARGE IX


at all. He just streamed in. He had a grave, sympathetic face, as if he, too, knew what it was to sup with the lads.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said gently. Then he seemed to flicker, and wasn’t there any longer. I heard him moving about in the kitchen, and presently he came back with a glass on a tray.

“If you would drink this, sir,” he said, with a kind of bedside manner, rather like the royal doctor shooting the bracer into the sick prince. “I t is a little prepara­tion of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.”

I would have clutched a t anything that looked like a life-line that morning. I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops. and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more. “You’re engaged!” I said, as soon as I could say anything.

I perceived clearly th at this cove was one of the world’s workers, the sort no home should be without. “Thank you, sir. My name is Jeeves.” “You can start in at once? ” “Immediately, sir.” “Because I ’m due down at Easeby, in Shropshire, the day after to-morrow.” “Very' good, sir.” He looked past me at the mantelpiece. “That is an excellent likeness of Lady Florence Craye, sir. It is two years since I saw her ladyship. I was at one time in Lord Worplesdon’s employment. I tendered my resignation because I could not see eye to eye with his lordship in his desire

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