Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse Read Free Book Online

said as we went out. Madeline seemed surprised. ‘Why did Roderick tell you to be careful?’
    ‘Ah, that we shall never know. Afraid I might slip on the parquet floor, do you think?’
    ‘He sounded as if he was angry with you. Had you been quarrelling?’
    ‘Good heavens, no. Our talk was conducted throughout in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality.’
    ‘I thought he might be annoyed at your coming here.’
    ‘On the contrary. Nothing could have exceeded the warmth of his “Welcome to Totleigh Towers”.’
    ‘I’m so glad. It would pain me so much if you and he were … Oh, there’s Daddy.’
    We had reached the upstairs corridor, and Sir Watkyn Bassett was emerging from his room, humming a light air. It died on his lips as he saw me, and he stood staring at me aghast. He reminded me of one of those fellows who spend the night in haunted houses and are found next morning dead to the last drop with a look of awful horror on their faces.
    ‘Oh, Daddy,’ said Madeline. ‘I forgot to tell you. I asked Bertie to come here for a few days.’ Pop Bassett swallowed painfully.
    ‘When you say a few days - ?’
    ‘At least a week, I hope.’
    ‘Good God!’
    ‘If not longer.’
    ‘Great heavens!’
    ‘There is tea in the drawing-room, Daddy.’
    ‘I need something stronger than tea,’ said Pop Bassett in a low, husky voice, and he tottered off, a broken man. The sight of his head disappearing as he made for the lower regions where the snootful awaited him brought to my mind a poem I used to read as a child. I’ve forgotten most of it, but it was about a storm at sea and the punch line ran “We are lost,” the captain shouted, as he staggered down the stairs.’
    ‘Daddy seems upset about something,’ said Madeline.
    ‘He did convey that impression,’ I said, speaking austerely, for the old blister’s attitude had offended me. I could make allowances for him, because naturally a man of regular habits doesn’t like suddenly finding Woosters in his midst, but I did feel that he might have made more of an effort to bear up. Think of the Red Indians, Bassett, I would have said to him, had we been on better terms, pointing out that they were never in livelier spirits than when being cooked on both sides at the stake.
    This painful encounter, following so quickly on my conversation, if you could call it a conversation, with Spode, might have been expected to depress me, but this was far from being the case. I was so uplifted by the official news that all was well between M. Bassett and G. Fink-Nottle that I gave it little thought. It’s never, of course, the ideal set-up to come to stay at a house where your host shudders to the depths of his being at the mere sight of you and is compelled to rush to where the bottles are and get a restorative, but the Woosters can take the rough with the s., and the bonging of the gong for dinner some little time later found me in excellent fettle. It was to all intents and purposes with a song on my lips that I straightened my tie and made my way to the trough.
    Dinner is usually the meal at which you catch Bertram at his best, and certainly it’s the meal I always most enjoy. Many of my happiest hours have been passed in the society of the soup, the fish, the pheasant or whatever it may be, the souffle, the fruits in their season and the spot of port to follow. They bring out the best in me. ‘Wooster,’ those who know me have sometimes said, ‘may be a pretty total loss during the daytime hours, but plunge the world in darkness, switch on the soft lights, uncork the champagne and shove a dinner into him, and you’d be surprised.’
    But if I am to sparkle and charm all and sundry, I make one provision - viz. that the company be congenial. And anything less congenial than the Co. on this occasion I have seldom encountered. Sir Watkyn Bassett, who was plainly still much shaken at finding me on the premises, was very far from being the jolly old Squire who makes the