Последовательность чтения вудхауза. Английская литература, книги английских писателей

Встанем утром и руки друг другу пожмем,//На минуту забудем о горе своем,//С наслажденьем вдохнем этот утренний воздух,//Полной грудью, пока еще дышим, вздохнем.(с) Омар Хайам

Все переведённые на русский рассказы цикла в порядке внутрицикловой хронологии. (Именно событийная хронология, а не год написания!).
В списке названия тех вариантов перевода, которые больше понравились мне, но есть и другие варианты. Почти все их можно найти в сетевых библиотеках. В скобках даны английские названия.

1. Командует парадом Дживс (Jeeves Takes Charge)
2. На выручку юному Гасси = Спасение Гасси (Extricating Young Gussie) - есть только Вустер, Дживс упоминается мельком. В сети этого рассказа на русском языке нет.
3. Дживс и порядочный жила (Jeeves and the Hard Boiled Egg)
4. Лодырь Рокки и его тётушка (The Aunt and the Sluggard)
5. Тернистый путь к славе (The Artistic Career of Corky)
6. Дживз и незваный гость (Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest)
7. Дживс шевелит мозгами (Jeeves Exerts the old Cerebellum)
8. Свадебные колокола отменяются (No Wedding Bells for Bingo)
9. Коварные замыслы тети Агаты (Aunt Agatha Speaks her Mind)
10. Жемчуг - к слезам (Pearls Mean Tears)
11. Удар по самолюбию Вустеров (The Pride of the Woosters is Wounded)
12. Награда герою (The Hero’s Reward)
13. На сцене появляются Клод и Юстас (Introducing Claude and Eustace)
14. Сэр Родерик приходит обедать (Sir Roderick Comes to Lunch)
15. Рекомендательное письмо (A Letter of Introduction)
16. Нарядный лифтер (Startling Dressiness of a Lift Attendant)
17. Товарищ Бинго (Comrade Bingo)
18. Бинго не везет в Гудвуде (Bingo has a Bad Goodwood)
19. Большой гандикап проповедников (The Great Sermon Handicap)
20. Честная игра (The Purity of the Turf)
21. Столичные штучки (The Metropolitan Touch)
22. Берти меняет точку зрения (Bertie Changes His Mind)
23. Без права замены (Without the Option)
24. Поразительное происшествие со стариной Биффи (The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy)
25. Спасаем Фредди (Fixing it for Freddie)
26. Долгие проводы Клода и Юстаса (The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace)
27. Бинго и его новая пассия (Bingo and The Little Woman)
28. Всё хорошо, что хорошо кончается (All’s Well)
29. Горой за Бинго (Clustering Round Young Bingo)
30. Старина Сиппи и его комплекс неполноценности (The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy)
31. Дживс и неумолимый рок (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
32. Дживс и дух Рождества (Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit)
33. Случай с собакой Макинтошем (Episode of Dog McIntosh)
34. Дживс и песня песней (Jeeves and the Song of Songs)
35. Возвышающая душу любовь (The Love That Purifies)
36. Произведение искусства (The Spot of Art)
37. Дживс и маленькая Клементина (Jeeves and the Kid Clementina)
38. Золотая осень дядюшки Джорджа (The Indian Summer of an Uncle)
39. Дживс и старая школьная подруга (Jeeves and the Old School Chum)
40. Тяжкое испытание, выпавшее на долю Таппи Глоссопа (The Ordeal of Young Tuppy)
41. Дживс, вы - гений! (Thank You, Jeeves)
42. Дживс и скользкий тип (Jeeves and the Greasy Bird)
43. Ваша взяла, Дживс (Right Ho, Jeeves)
44. Фамильная честь Вустеров (The Code of the Woosters)
45. Радость поутру (Joy in the Morning)
46. Брачный сезон (The Mating Season)
47. Дживс готовит омлет (Jeeves Makes an Omelette)
48. Дживс и феодальная верность (Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit)
49. Нa помощь, Дживс! (Jeeves in the Offing)
50. Держим удар, Дживс! (Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves)
51. Тысяча благодарностей, Дживс (Much Obliged, Jeeves)
52. Тётки - не джентльмены (Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen)
53. Не позвать ли нам Дживса (Ring For Jeeves) - есть только Дживс, Вустер упоминается мельком.

Jeeves Takes Charge

Now, touching this business of old Jeeves-my man, you know-how do we stand? Lots of people think I"m much too dependent on him. My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man"s a genius. From the collar upward he stands alone. I gave up trying to run my own affairs within a week of his coming to me. That was about half a dozen years ago, directly after the rather rummy business of Florence Craye, my Uncle Willoughby"s book, and Edwin, the Boy Scout.

The thing really began when I got back to Easeby, my uncle"s place in Shropshire. I was spending a week or so there, as I generally did in the summer; and I had had to break my visit to come back to London to get a new valet. I had found Meadowes, the fellow I had taken to Easeby with me, sneaking my silk socks, a thing no bloke of spirit could stick at any price. It transpiring, moreover, that he had looted a lot of other things here and there about the place, I was reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten and go to London to ask the registry office to dig up another specimen for my approval. They sent me Jeeves.

I shall always remember the morning he came. It so happened that the night before I had been present at a rather cheery little supper, and I was feeling pretty rocky. On top of this I was trying to read a book Florence Craye had given me. She had been one of the house-party at Easeby, and two or three days before I left we had got engaged. I was due back at the end of the week, and I knew she would expect me to have finished the book by then. You see, she was particularly keen on boosting me up a bit nearer her own plane of intellect. She was a girl with a wonderful profile, but steeped to the gills in serious purpose. I can"t give you a better idea of the way things stood than by telling you that the book she"d given me to read was called "Types of Ethical Theory", and that when I opened it at random I struck a page beginning:

The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is certainly co-extensive, in the obligation it carries, with the social organism of which language is the instrument, and the ends of which it is an effort to subserve.

All perfectly true, no doubt; but not the sort of thing to spring on a lad with a morning head.

I was doing my best to skim through this bright little volume when the bell rang. I crawled off the sofa and opened the door. A kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnnie stood without.

"I was sent by the agency, sir," he said. "I was given to understand that you required a valet."

I"d have preferred an undertaker; but I told him to stagger in, and he floated noiselessly through the doorway like a healing zephyr. That impressed me from the start. Meadowes had had flat feet and used to clump. This fellow didn"t seem to have any feet at all. He just streamed in. He had a grave, sympathetic face, as if he, too, knew what it was to sup with the lads.

"Excuse me, sir," he said gently.

Then he seemed to flicker, and wasn"t there any longer. I heard him moving about in the kitchen, and presently he came back with a glass on a tray.

"If you would drink this, sir," he said, with a kind of bedside manner, rather like the royal doctor shooting the bracer into the sick prince. "It is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening."

I would have clutched at anything that looked like a lifeline that morning. I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more.

"You"re engaged!" I said, as soon as I could say anything.

I perceived clearly that this cove was one of the world"s workers, the sort no home should be without.

"Thank you, sir. My name is Jeeves."

"You can start in at once?"

"Immediately, sir."

"Because I"m due down at Easeby, in Shropshire, the day after tomorrow."

"Very good, sir." He looked past me at the mantelpiece. "That is an excellent likeness of Lady Florence Craye, sir. It is two years since I saw her ladyship. I was at one time in Lord Worplesdon"s employment. I tendered my resignation because I could not see eye to eye with his lordship in his desire to dine in dress trousers, a flannel shirt, and a shooting coat."

He couldn"t tell me anything I didn"t know about the old boy"s eccentricity. This Lord Worplesdon was Florence"s father. He was the old buster who, a few years later, came down to breakfast one morning. Lifted the first cover he saw, said "Eggs! Eggs! Eggs! Damn all eggs!" in an overwrought sort of voice, and instantly legged it for France, never to return to the bosom of his family. This, mind you, being a bit of luck for the bosom of the family, for old Worplesdon had the worst temper in the county.

I had known the family ever since I was a kid, and from boyhood up this old boy had put the fear of death into me. Time, the great healer, could never remove from my memory the occasion when he found me-then a stripling of fifteen-smoking one of his special cigars in the stables. He got after me with a hunting-crop just at the moment when I was beginning to realise that what I wanted most on earth was solitude and repose, and chased me more than a mile across difficult country. If there was a flaw, so to speak, in the pure joy of being engaged to Florence, it was the fact that she rather took after her father, and one was never certain when she might erupt. She had a wonderful profile, though.

"Lady Florence and I are engaged, Jeeves," I said.

You know, there was a kind of rummy something about his manner. Perfectly all right and all that, but not what you"d call chirpy. It somehow gave me the impression that he wasn"t keen on Florence. Well, of course, it wasn"t my business. I supposed that while he had been valeting old Worplesdon she must have trodden on his toes in some way. Florence was a dear girl, and, seen sideways, most awfully good-looking; but if she had a fault it was a tendency to be a bit imperious with the domestic staff.

At this point in the proceedings there was another ring at the front door. Jeeves shimmered out and came back with a telegram. I opened it. It ran:

Return immediately. Extremely urgent. Catch first train.

Florence.

It shows how little I knew Jeeves in those days that I didn"t go a bit deeper into the matter with him. Nowadays I would never dream of reading a rummy communication without asking him what he thought of it. And this one was devilish odd. What I mean is, Florence knew I was going back to Easeby the day after tomorrow, anyway; so why the hurry call? Something must have happened, of course; but I couldn"t see what on earth it could be.

"Jeeves," I said, "we shall be going down to Easeby this afternoon. Can you manage it?"

"Certainly, sir."

"You can get your packing done and all that?"

"Without any difficulty, sir. Which suit will you wear for the journey?"

I had on a rather sprightly young check that morning, to which I was a good deal attached; I fancied it, in fact, more than a little. It was perhaps rather sudden till you got used to it, but, nevertheless, an extremely sound effort, which many lads at the club and elsewhere had admired unrestrainedly.

Jeeves Takes Charge

Now, touching this business of old Jeeves-my man, you know-how do we stand? Lots of people think I"m much too dependent on him. My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man"s a genius. From the collar upward he stands alone. I gave up trying to run my own affairs within a week of his coming to me. That was about half a dozen years ago, directly after the rather rummy business of Florence Craye, my Uncle Willoughby"s book, and Edwin, the Boy Scout.

The thing really began when I got back to Easeby, my uncle"s place in Shropshire. I was spending a week or so there, as I generally did in the summer; and I had had to break my visit to come back to London to get a new valet. I had found Meadowes, the fellow I had taken to Easeby with me, sneaking my silk socks, a thing no bloke of spirit could stick at any price. It transpiring, moreover, that he had looted a lot of other things here and there about the place, I was reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten and go to London to ask the registry office to dig up another specimen for my approval. They sent me Jeeves.

I shall always remember the morning he came. It so happened that the night before I had been present at a rather cheery little supper, and I was feeling pretty rocky. On top of this I was trying to read a book Florence Craye had given me. She had been one of the house-party at Easeby, and two or three days before I left we had got engaged. I was due back at the end of the week, and I knew she would expect me to have finished the book by then. You see, she was particularly keen on boosting me up a bit nearer her own plane of intellect. She was a girl with a wonderful profile, but steeped to the gills in serious purpose. I can"t give you a better idea of the way things stood than by telling you that the book she"d given me to read was called "Types of Ethical Theory", and that when I opened it at random I struck a page beginning:

The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is certainly co-extensive, in the obligation it carries, with the social organism of which language is the instrument, and the ends of which it is an effort to subserve.

All perfectly true, no doubt; but not the sort of thing to spring on a lad with a morning head.

I was doing my best to skim through this bright little volume when the bell rang. I crawled off the sofa and opened the door. A kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnnie stood without.

"I was sent by the agency, sir," he said. "I was given to understand that you required a valet."

I"d have preferred an undertaker; but I told him to stagger in, and he floated noiselessly through the doorway like a healing zephyr. That impressed me from the start. Meadowes had had flat feet and used to clump. This fellow didn"t seem to have any feet at all. He just streamed in. He had a grave, sympathetic face, as if he, too, knew what it was to sup with the lads.

"Excuse me, sir," he said gently.

Then he seemed to flicker, and wasn"t there any longer. I heard him moving about in the kitchen, and presently he came back with a glass on a tray.

"If you would drink this, sir," he said, with a kind of bedside manner, rather like the royal doctor shooting the bracer into the sick prince. "It is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening."

I would have clutched at anything that looked like a lifeline that morning. I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more.

"You"re engaged!" I said, as soon as I could say anything.

I perceived clearly that this cove was one of the world"s workers, the sort no home should be without.

"Thank you, sir. My name is Jeeves."

"You can start in at once?"

"Immediately, sir."

"Because I"m due down at Easeby, in Shropshire, the day after tomorrow."

"Very good, sir." He looked past me at the mantelpiece. "That is an excellent likeness of Lady Florence Craye, sir. It is two years since I saw her ladyship. I was at one time in Lord Worplesdon"s employment. I tendered my resignation because I could not see eye to eye with his lordship in his desire to dine in dress trousers, a flannel shirt, and a shooting coat."

He couldn"t tell me anything I didn"t know about the old boy"s eccentricity. This Lord Worplesdon was Florence"s father. He was the old buster who, a few years later, came down to breakfast one morning. Lifted the first cover he saw, said "Eggs! Eggs! Eggs! Damn all eggs!" in an overwrought sort of voice, and instantly legged it for France, never to return to the bosom of his family. This, mind you, being a bit of luck for the bosom of the family, for old Worplesdon had the worst temper in the county.

I had known the family ever since I was a kid, and from boyhood up this old boy had put the fear of death into me. Time, the great healer, could never remove from my memory the occasion when he found me-then a stripling of fifteen-smoking one of his special cigars in the stables. He got after me with a hunting-crop just at the moment when I was beginning to realise that what I wanted most on earth was solitude and repose, and chased me more than a mile across difficult country. If there was a flaw, so to speak, in the pure joy of being engaged to Florence, it was the fact that she rather took after her father, and one was never certain when she might erupt. She had a wonderful profile, though.

"Lady Florence and I are engaged, Jeeves," I said.

You know, there was a kind of rummy something about his manner. Perfectly all right and all that, but not what you"d call chirpy. It somehow gave me the impression that he wasn"t keen on Florence. Well, of course, it wasn"t my business. I supposed that while he had been valeting old Worplesdon she must have trodden on his toes in some way. Florence was a dear girl, and, seen sideways, most awfully good-looking; but if she had a fault it was a tendency to be a bit imperious with the domestic staff.

At this point in the proceedings there was another ring at the front door. Jeeves shimmered out and came back with a telegram. I opened it. It ran:

Return immediately. Extremely urgent. Catch first train.

Florence.

It shows how little I knew Jeeves in those days that I didn"t go a bit deeper into the matter with him. Nowadays I would never dream of reading a rummy communication without asking him what he thought of it. And this one was devilish odd. What I mean is, Florence knew I was going back to Easeby the day after tomorrow, anyway; so why the hurry call? Something must have happened, of course; but I couldn"t see what on earth it could be.

"Jeeves," I said, "we shall be going down to Easeby this afternoon. Can you manage it?"

"Certainly, sir."

"You can get your packing done and all that?"

"Without any difficulty, sir. Which suit will you wear for the journey?"

I had on a rather sprightly young check that morning, to which I was a good deal attached; I fancied it, in fact, more than a little. It was perhaps rather sudden till you got used to it, but, nevertheless, an extremely sound effort, which many lads at the club and elsewhere had admired unrestrainedly.

"Very good, sir."

Again there was that kind of rummy something in his manner. It was the way he said it, don"t you know. He didn"t like the suit. I pulled myself together to assert myself. Something seemed to tell me that, unless I was jolly careful and nipped this lad in the bud, he would be starting to boss me. He had the aspect of a distinctly resolute blighter.

Steht für: Reginald Jeeves, eine Romanfigur des britisch amerikanischen Schriftstellers P. G. Wodehouse By Jeeves, ein Musical mit Musik von Andrew Lloyd Webber und Alan Ayckbourn Jeeves (ERP System), ein ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) System … Deutsch Wikipedia

Jeeves - a character in many humorous stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Jeeves is the valet (=male servant) of an upper class young man called Bertie Wooster, and is a very patient, sensible man. Wooster depends on him a lot and he always manages to solve… … Dictionary of contemporary English

jeeves - jeeves; jeeves·i·an; … English syllables

Jeeves - [ dʒivz ] noun count BRITISH INFORMAL a man who is a personal servant for another man … Usage of the words and phrases in modern English

Jeeves - personification of the perfect valet, 1930, from character in P.G. Wodehouse s novels … Etymology dictionary

Jeeves - Infobox character colour = #DDD name = Jeeves caption = Jeeves, as portrayed in 1990 by Stephen Fry in Jeeves and Wooster . first = 1915, in the story Extricating Young Gussie last = 1974, in the novel Aunts Aren t Gentlemen cause = nickname =… … Wikipedia

Jeeves - Reginald Jeeves Personnage de fiction apparaissant dans Jeeves Origine Royaume Uni Genre Homme … Wikipédia en Français

Jeeves - UK / US noun Word forms Jeeves: singular Jeeves plural Jeeveses British informal a man who is a personal servant for another man Etymology: From the name of Jeeves, the butler who appears in many stories by the… … English dictionary

Jeeves - the male servant of Bertie Wooster in the humorous stories of P G Wodehouse. Jeeves is the perfect example of an intelligent and efficient servant who remains calm and can solve any problem. * * * … Universalium

Jeeves - Recorded in several spellings including Jeaves, Jeeves, Geaves, and Geeves, this is a famous English surname of French origins. It is probably a metronymic, which is to say that it originates not from the fathers name sometime back in the 13th… … Surnames reference

Jeeves - noun a) derived from a diminutive of Genevieve. b) A fictional valet in the stories by . See Also: Jeevesian … Wiktionary

Книги

• Jeeves and the King of Clubs , Schott Ben , Storm clouds loom over Europe. Treason is afoot in the highest social circles. The very security of the nation is in peril. Jeeves, it transpires, has long been an agent of British… Категория: Random House, Inc. Серия: Издатель: Random House, Inc. , Купить за 1462 руб
• Jeeves and the Wedding Bells , Sebastian Faulks , A gloriously witty novel from Sebastian Faulks using P. G. Wodehouse`s much-loved characters, Jeeves and Wooster, fully authorised by the Wodehouse estate. Due to a series of extenuating… Категория: другие иностранные языки Издатель:

Now, touching this business of old Jeeves -- my man, you know -- how do we stand? Lots of people think I"m much too dependent on him. My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man"s a genius. From the collar upward he stands alone. I gave up trying to run my own affairs within a week of his coming to me. That was about half a dozen years ago, directly after the rather rummy business of Florence Craye, my Uncle Willoughby"s book, and Edwin, the Boy Scout.
The thing really began when I got back to Easeby, my uncle"s place in Shropshire. I was spending a week or so there, as I generally did in the summer; and I had had to break my visit to come back to London to get a new valet. I had found Meadowes, the fellow I had taken to Easeby with me, sneaking my silk socks, a thing no bloke of spirit could stick at any price. It transpiring, moreoever, that he had looted a lot of other things here and there about the place, I was reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten and go to London to ask the registry office to dig up another specimen for my approval. They sent me Jeeves.
I shall always remember the morning he came. It so happened that the night before I had been present at a rather cheery little supper, and I was feeling pretty rocky. On top of this I was trying to read a book Florence Craye had given me. She had been one of the house-party at Easeby, and two or three days before I left we had got engaged. I was due back at the end of the week, and I knew she would expect me to have finished the book by then. You see, she was particularly keen on boosting me up a bit nearer her own plane of intellect. She was a girl with a wonderful profile, but steeped to the gills in serious purpose. I can"t give you a better idea of the way things stood than by telling you that the book she"d given me to read was called "Types of Ethical Theory", and that when I opened it at random I struck a page beginning:
The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is
certainly co-extensive, in the obligation it carries, with the
social organism of which language is the instrument, and the
ends of which it is an effort to subserve.
All perfectly true, no doubt; but not the sort of thing to spring on a lad with a morning head.
I was doing my best to skim through this bright little volume when the bell rang. I crawled off the sofa and opened the door. A kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnnie stood without.
"I was sent by the agency, sir," he said. "I was given to understand that you required a valet."
I"d have preferred an undertaker; but I told him to stagger in, and he floated noiselessly through the doorway like a healing zephyr. That impressed me from the start. Meadows had had flat feet and used to clump. This fellow didn"t seem to have any feet at all. He just streamed in. He had a grave, sympathetic face, as if he, too, knew what it was to sup with the lads.
"Excuse me, sir," he said gently.
Then he seemed to flicker, and wasn"t there any longer. I heard him moving about in the kitchen, and presently he came back with a glass on a tray.
"If you would drink this, sir," he said, with a kind of bedside manner, rather like the royal doctor shooting the bracer into the sick prince. "It is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening."
I would have clutched at anything that looked like a lifeline that morning. I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more.
"You"re engaged!" I said, as soon as I could say anything.
I perceived dearly that this cove was one of the world"s workers, the sort no home should be without.
"Thank you, sir. My name is Jeeves."
"You can start in at once?"
"Immediately, sir."
"Because I"m due down at Easeby, in Shropshire, the day after tomorrow."
"Very good, sir." He looked past me at the mantelpiece. "That is an excellent likeness of Lady Florence Craye, sir. It is two years since I saw her ladyship. I was at one time in Lord Worplesdon"s employment. I tendered my resignation because I could not see eye to eye with his lordship in his desire to dine in dress trousers, a flannel shirt, and a shooting coat."
He couldn"t tell me anything I didn"t know about the old boy"s eccentricity. This Lord Worplesdon was Florence"s father. He was the old buster who, a few years later, came down to breakfast one morning. Lifted the first cover he saw, said "Eggs! Eggs! Eggs! Damn all eggs!" in an overwrought sort of voice, and instantly legged it for France, never to return to the bosom of his family. This, mind you, being a bit of luck for the bosom of the family, for old Worplesdon had the worst temper in the county.
I had known the family ever since I was a kid, and from boyhood up this old boy had put the fear of death into me. Time, the great healer, could never remove from my memory the occasion when he found me -- then a stripling of fifteen -- smoking one of his special cigars in the stables. He got after me with a hunting-crop just at the moment when I was beginning to realize that what I wanted most on earth was solitude and repose, and chased me more than a mile across difficult country. If there was a flaw, so to speak, in the pure joy of being engaged to Florence, it was the fact that she rather took after her father, and one was never certain when she might erupt. She had a wonderful profile, though.
"Lady Florence and I are engaged, Jeeves," I said.
"Indeed, sir?"
You know, there was a kind of rummy something about his manner. Perfectly all right and all that, but not what you"d call chirpy. It somehow gave me the impression that he wasn"t keen on Florence. Well, of course, it wasn"t my business. I supposed that while he had been valeting old Worplesdon she must have trodden on his toes in some way. Florence was a dear girl, and, seen sideways, most awfully good-looking; but if she had a fault it was a tendency to be a bit imperious with the domestic staff.
At this point in the proceedings there was another ring at the front door. Jeeves shimmered out and came back with a telegram. I opened it. It ran:
Return immediately. Extremely urgent. Catch first train.
Florence.
"Rum!" I said.
"Sir?"
"Oh, nothing"
It shows how little I knew Jeeves in those days that I didn"t go a bit deeper into the matter with him. Nowadays I would never dream of reading a rummy communication without asking him what he thought of it. And this one was devilish odd. What I mean is, Florence knew I was going back to Easeby the day after tomorrow, anyway; so why the hurry call? Something must have happened, of course; but I couldn"t see what on earth it could be.
"Jeeves," I said, "we shall be going down to Easeby this afternoon. Can you manage it?"
"Certainly, sir."
"You can get your packing done and all that?"
"Without any difficulty, sir. Which suit will you wear for the journey?"
"This one."
I had on a rather sprightly young check that morning, to which I was a good deal attached; I fancied it, in fact, more than a little. It was perhaps rather sudden till you got used to it, but, nevertheless, an extremely sound effort, which many lads at the dub and elsewhere had admired unrestrainedly.
"Very good, sir."
Again there was that kind of rummy something in his manner. It was the way he said it, don"t you know. He didn"t like the suit. I pulled myself together to assert myself. Something seemed to tell me that, unless I was jolly careful and nipped this lad in the bud, he would be starting to boss me. He had the aspect of a distinctly resolute blighter.
Well, I wasn"t going to have any of that sort of thing, by Jove! I"d seen so many cases of fellows who had become perfect slaves to their valets. I remember poor old Aubrey Fothergill telling me -- with absolute