Right Ho, Jeeves

“No. Because he didn’t get to the ball. And that strengthens my argument. A man who can set out in a cab for a fancy-dress ball and not get there is manifestly a poop of no common order. I don’t think I have ever known anybody else who was such a dashed silly ass that he couldn’t even get to a fancy-dress ball. Have you, Jeeves?” “No, sir.” “But don’t forget this, because it is the point I wish, above all, to make: Even if Gussie had got to that ball; even if those scarlet tights, taken in conjunction with his horn-rimmed spectacles, hadn’t given the girl a fit of some kind; even if she had rallied from the shock and he had been able to dance and generally hobnob with her; even then your efforts would have been fruitless, because, Mephistopheles costume or no Mephistopheles costume, Augustus Fink-Nottle would never have been able to summon up the courage to ask her to be his. All that would have resulted would have been that she would have got that lecture on newts a few days earlier. And why, Jeeves? Shall I tell you why?” “Yes, sir.” “Because he would have been attempting the hopeless task of trying to do the thing on orange juice.” “Sir?” “Gussie is an orange-juice addict. He drinks nothing else.” “I was not aware of that, sir.” “I have it from his own lips. Whether from some hereditary taint, or because he promised his mother he wouldn’t, or simply because he doesn’t like the taste of the stuff, Gussie Fink-Nottle has never in the whole course of his career pushed so much as the simplest gin and tonic over the larynx. And he expects--this poop expects, Jeeves--this wabbling, shrinking, diffident rabbit in human shape expects under these conditions to propose to the girl he loves. One hardly knows whether to smile or weep, what?”