Read Online Aunts Aren't Gentlemen by Sir P G Wodehouse - Free Book Online Page B

solving any little problems you may have will
be freely given. I am only here to help.'
    The amount of sunny charm I had put into these words
ought to have melted the reserve of a brass monkey, but they
got absolutely nowhere with him. He continued to eye me in
an Aunt Agathaesque manner.
    'It seems odd, if as you say you are the merest acquaintance,
that she should be paying you clandestine visits at your cottage.
Taken in conjunction with your surreptitious appearance at
Eggesford Court, it cannot but invite suspicion.'
    When someone talks like that, using words like 'clandestine'
and 'surreptitious' and saying that something cannot but invite
suspicion, the prudent man watches his step. It was a great
relief to me that I had a watertight explanation. I gave it with
a winning frankness which I felt could scarcely fail to bring
home the bacon.
    'My appearance at Eggesford Court wasn't surreptitious. I
was there because I had come to the wrong house. And Miss
Cook's visit to my cottage had to be clandestine because her
father watches her as closely as the paper on the wall. And she
visited my cottage because there was no other way of getting in
touch with you. She didn't know you were in Maiden
Eggesford, and she thought if you wrote her a letter that Pop
would intercept it, he being a man who would intercept a
daughter's letter at the drop of a hat.'
    It sounded absolutely copper-bottomed to me, but he went
on giving me the eye.
    'All the same,' he said, 'I find it curious that she should have
confided in you. It suggests an intimacy.'
    'Oh, I wouldn't call it that. Girls I hardly know confide in
me. They look upon me as a father figure.'
    'Father figure my foot. Any girl who takes you for a father
figure ought to have her head examined.'
    'Well, let us say a brother figure. They know their secrets are
safe with good old Bertie.'
    'I'm not so sure you are good old Bertie. More like a snake
who goes about the place robbing men of the women they love,
if you ask me.'
    'Certainly not,' I protested, learning for the first time that
this was what snakes did.
    'Well, it looks fishy to me,' he said. Then to my relief
he changed the subject. 'Do you know a man named
Spofforth?'
    I said No, I didn't think so.
    'P. B. Spofforth. Big fellow with a clipped moustache.'
    'No, I've never met him.'
    'And you won't for some time. He's in hospital.'
    'Too bad. What sent him there?'
    'I did. He kissed the woman I love at the annual picnic of
the Slade Social and Outing Club. Have you ever kissed the
woman I love, Wooster?'
    'Good Lord, no.'
    'Be careful not to. Did she make a long stay at your cottage?'
    'No, very short. In and out like a flash, Just had time to say
you were like a knight in shining armour riding up on a white
horse and to tell me to tell you to show up at my address
tomorrow at three on the dot, and she was off.'
    This seemed to soothe him. He went on brooding but now
not so much like Jack the Ripper getting up steam for his next
murder. He was not, however, quite satisfied.
    'I don't call it much of an idea meeting at your cottage,' he
said.
    'Why not?'
    'We shall have you underfoot all the time.'
    'Oh, that's all right, Comrade. I shall be going for a walk.'
    'Ah,' he said, brightening visibly. 'Going for a walk, eh? Just
the thing to do. Capital exercise. Bring the roses to your
cheeks. Take your time. Don't hurry back. They tell me there
are beauty spots around here well worth seeing.'
    And on this cordial note we parted, he to go to the bar for
another gin and ginger, I to go back and tell Vanessa that the pourparlers had been completed and that he would be at the
starting post at three pip-emma on the morrow.
    'How did he look?' she asked, all eagerness.
    It was a little difficult to answer this, because he had looked
like a small-time gangster with a painful gum-boil, but I threw
together a tactful word or two which, as Jeeves would say, gave
satisfaction, and she buzzed off.
    Jeeves came shimmering in shortly after she