Right Ho, Jeeves

“I’m afraid he doesn’t care for me in that way. At least, he has said nothing. You understand that I am only telling you this because----” “Oh, rather.” “It’s odd that you should have asked me if I believed in love at first sight.” She half closed her eyes. “‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’” she said in a rummy voice that brought back to me--I don’t know why--the picture of my Aunt Agatha, as Boadicea, reciting at that pageant I was speaking of. “It’s a silly little story. I was staying with some friends in the country, and I had gone for a walk with my dog, and the poor wee mite got a nasty thorn in his little foot and I didn’t know what to do. And then suddenly this man came along----” Harking back once again to that pageant, in sketching out for you my emotions on that occasion, I showed you only the darker side of the picture. There was, I should now mention, a splendid aftermath when, having climbed out of my suit of chain mail and sneaked off to the local pub, I entered the saloon bar and requested mine host to start pouring. A moment later, a tankard of their special home-brewed was in my hand, and the ecstasy of that first gollup is still green in my memory. The recollection of the agony through which I had passed was just what was needed to make it perfect. It was the same now. When I realized, listening to her words, that she must be referring to Gussie--I mean to say, there couldn’t have been a whole platoon of men taking thorns out of her dog that day; the animal wasn’t a pin-cushion--and became aware that Gussie, who an instant before had, to all appearances, gone so far back in the betting as not to be worth a quotation, was the big winner after all, a positive thrill permeated the frame and there escaped my lips a “Wow!” so crisp and hearty that the Bassett leaped a liberal inch and a half from terra firma.