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Reader, if you have followed my previous literary excursions, you may have noticed a certain tendency to begin a story in the middle of events, share a particularly dramatic mo. or two, then circle back to the beginning of the narrative.
In fact, you may have complained about this tendency. Vocally. At length. In multiple letters to my editor. Who has kindly passed them on, reassuring me all the while that you do not have veto power over my publication.
Well, dear hypothetical reader (if hypothetical is the word I want), in deference to you, I promise I have made the noble effort to start this story at the beginning.
Only to be completely stymied at the question of where the most fitting beginning is.
Should I, for instance, start with the predicament of choosing a gift for the grubby little moppet of Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline nee Bassett? A problem compounded by the fact that I, in an effort to avoid all possible misunderstandings re: Wooster’s interest in babysitting, had avoided the subject of said g. little m. with such success, I had yet to discern the little tyke’s name. (Madeline always calls it by a sequence of impenetrable pet names, each more treacly than the last.)
Or perhaps I need to step back and reassure you of the existence of a Bassett-Fink-Nottle wedding? Long-time readers may recall Madeline’s erstwhile misunderstandings re: Wooster’s interest in marriage, and will be reassured that her threats to throw over Gussie and drag said Wooster down the aisle have quite evaporated.
My editor flatly vetoed my attempt to start any farther back in the happy couple’s romance. I am instructed to urge any protesting readers to loosen the purse-strings and acquire copies of my earlier works.
To summarize: Madeline is an unbearably sappy sort of filly who believes field-mice ought to dress up for fine occasions by wearing tiny wee hats made of acorn-caps, and Gussie inexplicably claims this makes him almost as happy as newts do.
The gift, then. I was to buy something suitable for the Bassett-Fink-Nottle blot’s birthday. Only the first one, unless I had repressed a memory of being forced to attend a similar event the year before.
“How do people choose first-birthday presents?” I pleaded with Jeeves over breakfast one morning. “I have my wardrobe, of course – the spiffing new bowler hat with the green trim.”
Jeeves did not rise to the provocation of the hat. He had, over the years, largely given up trying to dictate the young master’s wardrobe. Oh, he would be plotting the hat’s untimely disappearance in half a dozen ways – he simply wouldn’t admit it.
“But the gift remains a puzzle. It seems to me a one-year-old doesn’t know enough to want anything.” Short of mother’s milk, and, well, suffice to say this Wooster lacks the means of production.
“I am given to understand, sir,” said Jeeves calmly, “that the gift at this age is more for the benefit of the caregiver than the child.”
“Ah! I had already considered that,” I assured him. “But Gussie has warned me against such a tack. According to him, Madeline has been somewhat overwhelmed with practical baby gifts. Her exact words, he reported, were ‘if I receive one more pair of ootsy-wootsy bootsies for my sweetiekins’ little feet, I shall scream.’”
“Clearly a warning to be followed, sir.”
“Rather!”
“That said, I suspect you would not want the gift to seem too thoughtful. Lest you inadvertently stoke Mrs. Bassett-Fink-Nottle’s conviction that you continue to secretly pine for her hand.”
“A brilliant insight, Jeeves,” I exclaimed. “But what sort of gift would strike the right balance?”
“Nothing immediately comes to mind, sir.”
Have I emphasized yet that Jeeves is brilliant? If he hadn’t thrown himself so fully into the career of valeting, he would surely have been some sort of detective. Or physicist. Or writer of puzzle-box mysteries so complex, they would have made that Doyle chap throw down his pen and take up gardening.
So his lack of an answer here was quite a blow. “You’ll keep thinking on it, though, won’t you?”
“I will.”
“This Gordian knot is beyond my skill to thread.”
“I do not believe that was the difficulty with the Gordian knot, sir.”
“Well, hang the knot, then.”
“That is closer, sir.”
“Forget the knot, Jeeves. Put all further corrections about knots from your mind.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“The issue at hand is the little lovey-puff’s imminent birthday.”
Jeeves, bless the man, made no attempt to enlighten me about said l.-p.’s name. He was aware of my campaign to know as few details of the tot’s life as possible, and thus far had been more than obliging.
Just then, I was struck with a horrifying thought. “I have been struck with a horrifying thought, Jeeves,” I said.
One of Jeeves’s eyebrows quirked upward about an eighth of an inch. “Do tell.”
“Do you suppose Madeline considers “Bunny-boo” or “Ickle-wickle” suitable to be the poor child’s actual name?”
For a moment I could have sworn I saw, of all things, a twinkle in Jeeves’s eye. Which was both uncharacteristic of Jeeves, and wholly inappropriate to the gravity of the situation. Probably I was imagining things.
“The young infant’s Christian name is one that you would consider perfectly respectable,” he said simply. And whatever extended oratory about respectable naming was churning in that great brain, he kept to himself.
---
In short order, Jeeves finished threading...whichever proverbial item it was that the legendary chappies were all so keen to thread.
He returned home from the shops one afternoon with a book. Which you might think sounds the sort of present Jeeves would pick in hopes of keeping it himself, but you can rest easy on that count, for Jeeves has access to as much of the folding stuff as he likes to buy his own reading material. It’s how he keeps that keen mind in fine fettle when there is a shortage of accidental engagements to solve.
Although I confess a touch of doubt fluttered in the Wooster breast when I caught sight of the author.
“I say, Jeeves, I don’t know that Madeline is too keen on mysteries. And they might be too advanced for the little sprog.” Some of them were too advanced for me, and I had been to Eton.
“The topic is not Mr. Doyle’s usual subject matter,” replied Jeeves. “I suspect it will fall within the young lady’s interest – and it contains a series of fantastical pictures, which the child may enjoy looking at.”
“Well, let me have a look at them myself before you wrap it,” I said. “Just to be prudent, you understand.”
Jeeves agreed re: the prudence of the thing, surrendered the book into my hands, and shimmered off to do the ironing. (And, likely as not, to covertly extract the green hat from my luggage. For the third time.)
Reader, I don’t know if you are familiar with this book of Sir Arthur’s. Perhaps you spotted the trick of it immediately, and are about to think poor Bertram rather foolish. Nevertheless, I must confess that I spent what must have been several hours wholly absorbed in the photographs – to all appearances, authentic ones – of two young girls playing in a garden, interacting with what could only be described as “tiny wee fairies.”
If Madeline Bassett of all people had the soberest and most clear-eyed vision of the secret workings of the world…! It scarcely bore thinking about.
At last Jeeves shimmered to the rescue, that is to say, to the sitting room. “Do you think the book will suit, sir?”
“It isn’t true, is it?” I burst out. “That is, it can’t be real! Can it?”
Jeeves’s profile, normally as regal and un-moving as a marble statue, softened ever so slightly. “I do not believe the photographs depict genuine fairies, no.”
“Then how is it done? What was the trick? You must have absorbed a book or two on photography in your time – I’m sure I won’t understand the technical whatsit of it all, but you can give the translation for simple folk and I’ll do my best.”
“If I may, sir…” Jeeves circled around behind the couch where I sat, the better to lean over my shoulder and study the currently-open page. “Consider the shadows on the young lady’s face – the lighter portions on her forehead and cheeks, in contrast to the darkness under her nose and chin. Do you see how there are no such deep shadows on the figure of the fairy?”
“I suppose not,” I admitted, stammering only a little. Of course the human girl was wearing a perfectly respectable dress, but her little companion was all done up like some sort of flapper – bare arms, tight dress, legs uncovered right up to the knee. It felt a bit indecent to be scrutinising her body so closely.
Especially with one’s valet so close up against one’s back, leaning almost tenderly into one’s personal space. And that was a line of thought one was not going to pursue too closely, thank you very much.
“In fact, you can see that her feet cast no shadow on the branch below her, either.”
This was obvious as well, once Jeeves had pointed it out. “But mightn’t that just mean that fairies are too...diaffa-thingummy?”
“Diaphanous, sir?”
“That’s the chap! Too diaphanous to cast proper shadows.”
“I think it more likely that the images of the fairies are illustrations. Cut out from paper, mounted on some sort of sturdy backing, and arranged in these garden scenes. The artist must have some talent for drawing realistic figures, but they lack either the practice or the materials to produce sufficiently deep shadows – and of course, a sheet of paper will hardly cast the same shadow as a three-dimensional object.”
My breath must have gotten rather shallow over the course of the examination, without my noticing, but now it all came back in a rush. “Why, Jeeves, that’s genius.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Oh, you too, of course! – but I meant this whole staged photography wheeze,” I said quickly, tearing my eyes from the confounding book pages to address him. “These two fillies must have quite a dab hand with a camera. Or perhaps one is the photographer, and the other is the artist? Although I suppose they aren’t letting on, either way. Giving up the game would ruin the mystique.”
If Jeeves was flustered about his mistake (which he needn’t have been, I’ve called him a genius any number of times, only reasonable to assume this followed the pattern), he didn’t let on. Even at such close range. “Undoubtedly.”
“Only one question remains.”
“Does it, sir?”
“If you were able to discern all this from a brief examination of the photographs – I won’t say any other human could work it out quite so speedily, of course, but – good Sir Arthur must have had them on hand for reference, the entire time he was writing this book. If something was amiss, certainly the writer of the Great Detective should have worked it out?”
Jeeves grew solemn. Well, more solemn than usual. Which was quite a feat. “You know my methods, sir. I make a careful study of the psychology of the individual. Without knowing Mr. Doyle in person, I have no foundation on which to apply my methods.”
I sighed, resigned to the mystery being forever unsolved. “I suppose even a paragon like you must be bound by the laws of nature at some point.”
“Everything is bound by the laws of nature, sir,” said Jeeves with calm satisfaction. “Supernatural theories cannot be considered, if one is to truly rule out the impossible.”
---
We arrived at Brinkley Court in good time for the party, armed with the properly-wrapped gift. Also, with the green-trimmed hat. For all Jeeves’s attempts to discard it, I had contrived to rescue it every time.
To be quite honest, my motives were not – at least, not purely – sartorial. I still had that lingering animal instinct that I might be snared in an unwanted engagement at any moment, and if Jeeves’ intervention should be required to fish the young master out of the soup, this particular hat could be sacrificed in gratitude without too many tears.
Of course Madeline and Gussie didn’t live at Brinkley, but my favourite cousin Angela does, and as a friend of Madeline’s, I understand she offered it as a party setting. The Bassett-Fink-Nottles leaped to accept the invitation, as would any sensible human being who had tasted the resident chef Anatole’s cooking, and here we were.
I had conceded that I would not wear the spiffing new hat at the gathering, and so I was outshone by the one-year-old blot in its elaborate infant frock, accented with an elaborate green bow. Later I would have to confront Jeeves with this bit of intelligence – I could have been following the fashion sense of the host!
We had a delicious cake courtesy of Anatole (which the child dutifully smashed into its face), then set to opening the presents (a task handled alternately by Gussie and Madeline, in deference to the child’s still-sticky fingers).
And sure enough, the moment arrived when I would need Jeeves’s sage advice.
Not in matrimonial affairs this time, but that was cold comfort. Not when Madeline, who had been cooing over every gift and informing her utterly-oblivious babsy-wabsy what a treasure it was, lifted the book of fairies from its tissue-paper wrapping...and did not coo.
Rather, she looked puzzled – then, as she opened it, almost hurt – then sad.
All this flashed across her face in the span of a few moments. Then she recovered, at least enough to coo about what delights her dear giggle-cakes would uncover once it learned to read. Not quite about the book itself, and not with her previous enthusiasm, either.
I mean. What?
The plans post-gift-distribution had, I thought, involved an evening of light music and social jollity. Instead, Madeline excused herself. “My little Snuggle-Bug has had such an exciting day, I think it’s time for some quiet,” she explained. “We’ll be and I’ll be in the gardens to get some fresh air.”
The momentary stumble re: pronouns was resolved when she scooped up the child and made an exit, leaving nothing but a fading patter of your great grand-mumsies and dadsies might want to whisper your happy-birthday through the wind in the trees…
I made my own excuses as quickly as possible, and ankled off at top speed to get Jeeves’s thoughts. The Code of the Woosters does not permit a filly’s distress to go unanswered. Besides which – Madeline might be drippy as a leaking rain spout, but I hardly wanted to make her sad.
---
Jeeves assured me he would do some reconnaissance, then left me holed up in my rooms, where I paced for a good five minutes before it occurred to me to search for the green-trimmed hat.
This was a jolly good distraction, occupying my thoughts for a good long while. No sooner had I found the hat in Jeeves’s hiding place, and moved it to a safer hiding place of my own, then the paragon himself returned.
He looked...rattled. A word which, by-the-by, hardly covers the strangeness of it. To see my man discomfited is about as common as seeing a blue moon, or hens’ teeth. Why, his cuffs had come out of perfect alignment, and he might have had two or three hairs out of place.
“I believe your best course of action is to apologise to the young lady, sir,” he said by way of greeting.
“Of course,” I said. “I would be happy to, even assuming the Code didn’t demand it. But what sort of apology, Jeeves? I still haven’t grasped how the book offended Madeline, and you must know a milquetoast line like ‘gosh, so sorry you were upset’ is hardly going to do the job.”
Jeeves took a slow breath, visibly trying to compose himself. Working through the puzzle seemed to be helping, at least. “She was able to spot the trickery in the photographs, sir, and felt you were...poking fun at her beliefs, by presenting a book of such obvious fakes.”
“Oh.” When he put it like that, it did seem rather a churlish move.
“You may tell her the purchase was my idea. It is unfair to have the blame placed on you.”
“Tosh,” I said. Then added, “Wait, you haven’t told her already?”
“I did not interact with her, sir. I merely observed.”
“In that case: tosh again,” I declared. “I gave it my approval. And I’m the one who actually knows Madeline – I ought to have been able to do my own individual psycholo-whatsit and seen this coming, even if you didn’t. No, Jeeves, I shan’t throw you under the proverbial rails like that.”
Jeeves nodded, though it didn’t seem to settle his mood. Whatever had shaken him so, the fear of Madeline’s wrath wasn’t part of it.
“Shall I set out right away, do you think? Or is she on the flower-strewn warpath, and I’d better give the fires time to cool?”
“She will return to the house in her own time, sir. I believe it would be prudent to wait.”
---
The wait stretched on rather longer than expected, as Madeline came back in when the evening was getting on. Her guests who lived close by had drifted off to their homes. The child was handed over to a nursemaid and put to bed. My dear Aunt Dahlia, still the matron of the house but not as game for late nights as she used to be, was put to bed as well.
Which left my cousin Angela, who commandeered Madeline for conversation before I could, and they got deep into it in the sitting-room while Gussie hovered nearby and I hovered outside.
At last Angela got bored of politely pretending she hadn’t noticed. “Come on in, Bertie,” she called – and I entered to see her with the fairy-book open on her lap. “This is a corker of a book, isn’t it? Be honest, did you even know the fairies were fake?”
“Not at first,” I admitted, with a nervous glance at Madeline on the next chair over. (Gussie was on the settee by the window, either absorbed in his own reading, or doing a jolly good impression of same.) “Jeeves worked it out.”
“See, Maddy?” said Angela brightly. “Bertie just has no idea how to tell a good fairy book from a bad fairy book.”
In other circs. I might have complained, but I recalled that I was trying to be apologetic. “Entirely true. I thought ‘ah, it has fairies in it, Madeline likes those,’ and was far too much of a fathead to judge whether they were the proper sort. If I went out and got a book on newts, I’d probably offend Gussie just the same way, by picking one with all the wrong newt facts.”
Gussie looked up for a moment at that, and opened his mouth – then perhaps sensed anything he said would be putting his foot in it, and closed it again.
“It’s all right,” said Madeline. Her voice was high and breathy, but not as if she was struggling with undue emotions – more as if she was, well, Madeline. “Of course you’d never make fun of me, dear Bertie. I shouldn’t have thought badly of you.”
“And don’t be too hard on yourself,” added Angela, continuing to cement her lifetime position as my favourite cousin. “No surprise Jeeves could tell – he’s a genius, nothing gets by him – but I’ll be honest, I can’t figure this out either.”
This time, Gussie spoke up. “Nor I. Honestly, I’ve no idea how Madeline spotted it.”
“Was it the shadows?” By now I felt safe enough to take a seat of my own. “Jeeves deduced all sorts of things from the shadows. If you look at--”
“Don’t give it all away at once!” exclaimed Angela, and bent over the book again, no doubt scrutinising the shadows more closely.
Madeline just sighed, a long and dreamy sigh. “It wasn’t anything so complex as all that. It’s only – that isn’t what fairies look like.”
---
By all rights, that ought to have been the end of it. Ruffled feathers were smoothed, misunderstandings were de-missed, the lark was back on the snail and so on and so forth.
Most of the re-snailing in this incident had been achieved by Angela’s crafty hands, and it seemed to me it would have done whether I was armed with Jeeves’s advice or not. As such, I made up my mind not to surrender the hat.
This conviction survived right up until the moment I retired for the evening, and found Jeeves still in a state. His normally-keen eyes were vague and distracted – his responses to whatever I said were unusually brief – he had even set out the things for my bath in a visibly not-quite-straight line.
Well, I got in the bath, because one tries not to have sensitive conversations with dirt under one’s nails. Once I was safely ensconced in suds, and with Jeeves arranging the bedclothes on the far side of the open doorway, I dared to broach the subject. “Jeeves, I sense you remain troubled.”
“If my work has suffered from any distraction, I apologise most sincerely, sir.”
“Dash it all, Jeeves, this is not about the work! I care about you. Have you received some terrible news?”
Jeeves hesitated, but it seemed to me to be a puzzled-ish sort of hesitation, rather than a reluctant-to-confess-all-to-the-young-master-ish sort. “No, sir. Nothing of the kind.”
“It isn’t all to do with the hat, is it? If it discomfits you this badly…if ‘discomfit’ is the world I want...I am prepared to relinquish the hat.”
There was a slight chance the whole situation was a performance, cunningly contrived – Jeeves was a master at both cunning and contrivance – to push me to exactly this conclusion. Well if so, then it had bally well worked, hadn’t it.
Another hesitation, this one revealed to be a wrestling with conscience. “Much as I would like to take advantage of this offer, I cannot honestly place blame on your sartorial follies.”
I let the “follies” slide. For now. “A conflict with someone on-site, then?” It struck me that, much as I trusted Angela, and Gussie, and even Madeline when it came to being a decent egg (if not when it came to “do the leaves change in the fall by natural processes or because God has spilled his paint-box”), I hardly knew most of the other friends Madeline had invited to fuss over the little chubby-chirroo. “Has someone...harmed you?”
Another hesitation, then Jeeves appeared in the bathroom door, his gaze trained modestly on a bit of grout in the ceiling-tiles. “Mr. Wooster, please, set your mind at ease. Nobody is hurt. Nobody is in danger. Earlier today I happened upon a sight that was…unexpected…and has caused me to re-evaluate my estimation of certain persons. I fear I have been preoccupied. Nothing more than that.”
---
We were set to return to the flat the next morning, but only after I had breakfast, and fished the green-trimmed hat out of its latest hiding place, and went for a bracing walk.
A discreet sort of bracing, mind you. I had taken the hat with me, but in a spirit of respect for Jeeves’s delicate spirit, declined to wear it until I escaped the line-of-sight from any of Brinkley’s windows. Or the road, or the drive. Or, truth be told, any of the well-groomed paths at all.
I was in the shade of a sort of grove, if grove is the word for when a few trees get together on the same bit of land and cook up wildly unrealistic aspirations of calling themselves a forest, when I heard the distinctive syrup of Madeline’s talking-to-the-baby voice.
Of course there was nothing for it but to lean deeper into the shade, and privately lament that I hadn’t thought to wear a dark-brown suit.
Madeline’s voice grew closer and closer, until she stopped on a part of the path not twenty feet away from a trunk that no longer felt nearly broad enough. The baby made some sort of gurgling noise, which evidently was Madeline’s cue to lift it out of its carriage-y thing and lower it to the grass, chattering about how the petals of the flowers revealed what colour slippers were on the fairy that walked over its seeds, or some such.
“We’ll be, help me look for other fairy-signs,” she urged. “Some of these feathers were left by sweet little birdies, but you see, if you look closely…”
A fist-sized something dropped out of the tree above, and whooshed past, inches from the Wooster nose.
It was a sweet little birdie. It must have been. It was the right size for a bird, and the right mostly-brown with a few artful spots of colour, and it flew around with little feathery wings. The list of things reasonably fitting that description is not a long one, and you must acknowledge, dear reader, that “bird” absolutely tops it.
And if Madeline’s conversation was presently joined by a new voice – too soft and chattery to make out the words, but it certainly did not belong to her wubbsy-wumpkins, it wasn’t anywhere near sticky enough for that – well, what of it? There are some dashed clever birds out there, what?
---
I returned to the house in such a rumpled state that both of Jeeves’s eyebrows took a visible rise, held up one hand to forestall any comment, and proffered the remains of the green-trimmed hat.
“Dispose of it, Jeeves,” I announced. “Take it away. Send it to a landfill, or tear it up and stuff a pillow with it, or whatever one does to clothing that is no longer in a fit state for anyone to wear.”
To my great relief, Jeeves withheld any comments about how this particular hat had never been in a fit state for anyone to wear. “Of course, sir. May I ask what became of it?”
“I happened upon an unexpected sight in the garden,” I said, with all the dignity one can muster when one has been leaping about in the dirt and has grass-stains at odd angles. “I attempted to catch the unexpected sight, and restrain it for further examination. Through some combination of athletic prowess and sheer luck I was able to enclose it in this hat, only to have it remove itself. Forcefully.”
Jeeves had gone quite still. “Sir, this unexpected sight of yours...did it, perhaps...bear very little resemblance to the depictions of fairies photographed in Mr. Doyle’s book?”
“It did indeed,” I replied. “Especially in the sense that it cast perfectly natural shadows.”
We both fell silent for a long moment, considering each other.
At last I said, “Jeeves, am I right in thinking that if we tried to describe this experience to others who didn’t share it, no rational soul would believe a word?”
“It is a likely prediction, yes.”
“Do you think it wise to embark upon a quest to obtain proof? Buy some of that photographic equipment, rehearse a bit, take to lurking in wooded places when we know Madeline is passing by?”
“If no more-experienced photographer has succeeded up till now, it seems unlikely our own efforts would prove to be successful.”
“Shall we forget the whole thing, then, and resign ourselves to never speaking of it again?”
“I think perhaps that would be best, sir.”
---
We both kept to the resignation on our drive back to the city – but thinking of any other topic of conversation was an awful challenge under the circumstances, and the silence grew oppressively awkward.
At last, I resorted to extreme measures.
“Dash it all, Jeeves, I can suppress the curiosity no longer. What is the sticky little gremlin’s name?”
At the wheel, Jeeves’s gaze remained firmly trained on the road, but one of his eyebrows chipped upward perhaps an eighth of an inch. “Did you encounter a gremlin in the gardens as well, sir, or is this in reference to the child?”
“Ah! I see this was not the time for such a figure of speech. I did, indeed, mean Madeline’s awful-but-probably-entirely-human child.”
“And you are certain you wish to break your carefully-maintained unawares? Once the name is known, it can never be un-known.”
In all honesty, I could have happily remained unawares until the next birthday. But these were desperate times. “I am sick and tired of resorting to epithets like the little bittle-wittle. I am certain, Jeeves. I desire enlightenment. Please, bestow it on me.”
The uncharacteristic twinkle reappeared in Jeeves’s eye. Certainly this proved I was going down the right emotional path. “We’ll be, sir.”
I waited for the sentence to finish. It appeared, inexplicably, that it had already done. “What will we be, Jeeves?”
“I did not mean...Sir, Mr. and Mrs. Bassett-Fink-Nottle agreed to name their firstborn child in honour of you. In recognition for your role in bringing the happy couple together. When they requested my review of the idea, I observed it might cause confusion to have two people in their lives both addressed as ‘Bertram’ or ‘Bertie’. Thus, the boy’s name is Wilberforce.”
If a photograph had been snapped of the two of us at that moment, it would undoubtedly have caught my mouth hanging open. “And they’ve been clipping it to ‘Wilby’ all this time?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“They named him after me. And I never said anything about it! What must they think?”
“I conveyed your appreciation to them privately. And suggested they not draw attention to it in public, at least not in your presence, lest you become flustered and overwhelmed at the immense honour.”
I was flustered. Perhaps not overwhelmed, but certainly an uncomfortable degree of whelmed. “Why, Jeeves, from now on we shall have to do right by the little fellow. No gifts aimed at pleasing his parents next year! Even if he develops his own interest in newts and/or daisy-chains, Gussie and Madeline will provide more than enough nurturing for those. We could get him something to do with music. Or sport. Or adventure stories. Perhaps fashion! Where does one find up-to-date information on What The Well-Dressed Tot Is Wearing?”
Jeeves’s mouth twitched. “When you say ‘we’, sir, do you intend to include my advice in the decision-making? Or will you be determined to corrupt the child with the worst excesses of poor taste?”
I sighed. “Of course I will take your advice, Jeeves. With the exception of this latest incident, which was disrupted by events so fantastically unforeseeable that it hardly counts, your gift-giving talents have never steered me wrong.”
“I am gratified to hear it, sir.”
“Although, Jeeves, you must admit,” I said, as the sun shone down and the wind tousled our hair and the road before us stretched out ahead – “young Wilby would look quite dashing in a wee little bowler hat.”