it to you, Jeeves, can you see him declining?"

"Not readily, sir. I agree. Mrs. Travers is a forceful personality."

"He won't have a hope of declining. His only way out would be to slide
off. And he can't slide off, because he wants to be with Miss Bassett.
No, Gussie will have to toe the line, and I shall be saved from a job at
which I confess the soul shuddered. Getting up on a platform and
delivering a short, manly speech to a lot of foul school-kids! Golly,
Jeeves. I've been through that sort of thing once, what? You remember
that time at the girls' school?"

"Very vividly, sir."

"What an ass I made of myself!"

"Certainly I have seen you to better advantage, sir."

"I think you might bring me just one more of those dynamite specials of
yours, Jeeves. This narrow squeak has made me come over all faint."

I suppose it must have taken Aunt Dahlia three hours or so to get back to
Brinkley, because it wasn't till well after lunch that her telegram
arrived. It read like a telegram that had been dispatched in a white-hot
surge of emotion some two minutes after she had read mine.

As follows:

_Am taking legal advice to ascertain whether strangling an idiot nephew
counts as murder. If it doesn't look out for yourself. Consider your