I would or would not have commented upon what I considered the insufferably patronizing pote in his voice as he called me his little man. I wanted to, but I saw that it would be fruitless unless I could think of something more than a little biting: and it was while I was searching in my mind for the telling phrase that the door of the hanging cupboard outside the room opened and Pauline Stoker came strolling in as if she hadn't a care in the world. In fact, she seemed distinctly entertained. " What a night, what a night! " she said amusedly. " A close call that, Bertie. Who were those men I heard going out ? " And then she suddenly sighted Chuffy, gave a kind of gasping squeak, and the love light came into her eyes as if somebody had pressed a switch. "
Marmaduke I " she cried, and stood there, staring. But, by Jove, it was the poor old schoolmate who was doing the real staring, in the truest and fullest sense of the word. I've seen starers in my time, many of them, but never one who came within a mile of putting up the performance which Chuffy did then. The eyebrows had shot up, the jaw had fallen, and the eyes were protruding from one to two inches from the parent sockets. He also appeared to be trying to say something, but in this he flopped badly. Nothing came through except a rather unpleasantwhistling sound, not quite so loud as
the row your radio makes when you twiddle the twiddler a bit too hard but in other respects closely resembling it. Pauline, meanwhile, had begun to advance with the air of a woman getting together with her demon lover, and a sort of pity for the girl shot through the Wooster bosom. I mean to say, any observant outsider like myself could see so clearly that she had got quite the wrong angle on the situation. I could read Chuffy like a book, and I knew that she was totally mistaken in what she supposed to be his emotions at this juncture. That odd noise he was making I could diagnose, not as the love call which she appeared to think it, but as the stern and censorious gruffle of a man who, finding his loved one on alien premises in heliotrope pyjamas, is stricken to the core, cut to the quick, and as sore as a gumboil. But she, poor simp, being so dashed glad to behold him, had not so much as begun to suspect that he, the circs being what they were, might possibly not be equally glad to behold her. With the result that when at this juncture he stepped back and folded his arms with a bitter sneer, it was as if he had jabbed her in the eye with a burnt stick. The light faded from her face, and in its stead there appeared the hurt, bewildered look of a barefoot dancer who, while half way through The Vision of Salome, steps on a tin tack.
" Marmaduke! " Chuffy unleashed another bitter sneer. " So I " he said, finding speech-if you can call that speech. " What do you mean ? Why are you looking like that ? " I thought it about time that I put in a word.
I had risen from the bed on Pauline's entry and for some moments had been teetering towards the door with a sort of sketchy idea of making for the great open spaces. But partly because I felt that it ill beseemed a Wooster to leg it at such a time and partly because I had no boots on, I had decided to remain. I now intervened, coming across with the word in season. " What you want on an occasion like this, Chuffy, old man," I said, " is simple faith. The poet Tennyson tells us . . ." "
Shut up," said Chuffy. " I don't want to hear anything from you." "Right ho," I said. "But, all the same, simple faith is better than Norman blood, and you can't get away from it." Pauline was looking a bit fogged. " Simple faith ? What . . . Oh I " she said, abruptly signing off. And I noted that the features were suffused with a crimson blush. "
Oh I " she said. The cheeks continued to glow. But now it was not the blush of modesty that hotted them up. That first "Oh!" I take it, had been l
caused by her catching sight of her pyjamaed limbs and suddenly getting on to the equivocal nature of her position. The second one was different. It was the heart cry of a woman who is madder than a hornet.
I mean, you know how it is. A sensitive and high-spirited girl goes through the deuce of an ordeal to win through to the bloke she loves, jumping off yachts, swimming through dashed cold water, climbing into cottages, and borrowingother people's pyjamas, and then, when she has come to journey's end, so to speak, and is expecting the tender smile and the whispered endearments, gets instead the lowering frown, the curled lip, the suspicious eye, and-in a word-the raspberry. Naturally, she's a bit upset. " Oh I " she said, for the third time, and her teeth gave a little click, most unpleasant. " So that's what you think ? "
Chuffy shook his head in an impatient sort of way. " Of course I don't."
" You do." " I don't." " Yes, you do." " I don't think anything of the kind," said Chuffy. " I know that Bertie has been . . ." "...
